Annals of the Homestarmy - Books

Free Audiobook - Jack London's "Call of the Wild"

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:19:07 -0600

Visit simplyaudiobooks.com, give them your name and email address (feel free to use your homestarmy email account!!), and you can begin downloading a free audio book - ack London's "Call of the Wild". I have to thank Johnny Elbows for my foray back into the world of audiobooks - I hadn't done much with them in years, until he loaned me Les Mis, and I realized how much more convenient audiobooks are now that I have commute time, etc. I've always enjoyed this particular book, so if you've never tried an audiobook before, here's a great opportunity - or, if you're just looking for a good, free one, it's that too.

An apology

nospam@example.com (The Mad Giggler) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:12:49 -0600

Mr. AoD (and everyone else), I'm sorry I took so long reading it. I'm not done yet, but I can't stop thinking about it. I watched the trailer again and now all the scenes just pop out at me. I hope this movie doesn't suck.

Mark Twain sucks

nospam@example.com (Radar) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:42:34 -0600

So I had a friend of mine recommend a book a to a month or so ago that I was excited to read. The first book she lent me was what I consider a sad failure since I had been so excited to read it and it ended up being a flop in my opinion. I don't blame her for the book sucking so much at all. Her second recommendation, and book lendation also had great promise. Sadly it didn't fare much better. The book was called The Diaries of Adam & Eve by Mark Twain.

Mark Twain is and should be considered a classic author and personality in every sense of those words. I, like many of you, read Huck Finn in high school and really enjoyed it. It managed to keep me quite interested even as a freshman who hated his English class. He even managed to make his way to a two part episode of Star Trek the Next Generation that was fantastic. However, this book was not.

I am sure that back in the day this was probably quite fresh and funny. To me it seemed like he wasn't really trying. The humor was flat and contrived. Very predictable. I will be honest and say that I was expecting more than what I got. I don't think my friend built it up too much, I just expected Twain to be better than he was. If any of you have read this, then I would be happy to accept dissenting views. As for me, I just could not in good conscience continue reading nor recommend it to anyone else.

You have now been "Literized."

Day 18: Prof. Lessig

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Sun, 18 May 2008 07:04:00 -0600

[Ed: Even though the project was a failure, I had already written a few, and just left them around to publish at the appropriate time]

Today, we'll focus on Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society Lessig is the author of "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" and an expert on the issues of copyright and "copyleft. His lecture is here, and three of his books:

The Future of Ideas
Free Culture
Code Version 2.0

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:53:59 -0600

So, I know I promised to stop flooding the front page with links to books, but I had to do one last one because it's only available for free download until the 13th - STAR WARS: LEGACY OF THE FORCE: BETRAYAL.

Blurb from the page:
Have you ever wondered what happened to Han, Luke and Leia after the events of Return of the Jedi?

Now, in BETRAYAL, the legacy that began with Anakin Skywalker has finally come full circle. Join Han, Luke, Leia, and the other heroes of the New Jedi Order in their epic struggle to maintain peace in the galaxy, as a new threat rises from the most unexpected of places.

Day 11: Another Sunday Special

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:17:00 -0600

This week's video lecture is from Brewster Kahle, Director and Co-founder of the Internet Archive, and originator of the print-on-demand Bookmobile. Therefore, it seems only appropriate to link to two books available in the Internet Archive.

First, there's Eric Raymond's The Art of Unix Programming.

Secondly, how about Richard F. Burton's "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1" (sometimes called "1,001 Arabian Nights")

08: To Please our Robot Overlords

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:03:57 -0600

Did I say "Overlords"? I meant Protectors.

Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms, one of the texts you'll need if you want to take the Utah State University "Open CourseWare" course ECE7680 - Information Theory.

Thicker than Blood which includes, starting on page 4, a ChangeLog of the revisions the book has gone through, starting with version 0.21...I wonder what happened to the revision notes prior to that.

Day 07: Paranoia

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:42:00 -0600

Intrusion Detection with SNORT: Advanced IDS Techniques Using SNORT, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and ACID, part of the Bruce Perens' Open Source Series.

Also, the fine folks at Project Gutenberg bring us Moby Dick.

Day 06: Not Feeling Quippy Today

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:20:59 -0600

Yeah, I've got nothing clever for you today.

Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns is an interesting book - if you look at the left-hand side, you'll notice that the author is attempting to adapt the body of the text to multiple programming languages, including such surprising choices as Lua, Perl, and PHP.

On the fiction front, we have John Sundman's novel, "Acts of the Apostles", described as a "techno-thriller novel".

Day 05: In a Hurry

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:39:22 -0600

I'm still in the middle of upgrading some stuff on the server (sorry for the outage, BTW), so no fanfare today, just the links:

Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash
1632 by Eric Flint - I don't normally go in for "historical fiction", especially not this sort, but I REALLY enjoyed this book (as well as the others in the series, which you can expect to find in future posts)

Day 04: Sunday Special!

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:02:00 -0600

Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar was a VERY key book in the formation of my interest in programming in general, and open source in specific...but the theory expressed there wouldn't have gotten me very far if it hadn't been for the implementation, in the form of the Debian Linux distribution, and the excellent book Learning Debian GNU/Linux.

And what's so special about Sunday, you ask?

I addition to the books of the day, Sundays will feature a link to one of a series of videos published by C-SPAN, in association with the US Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, on "The Library in the Digital Context". The first lecture features David Weinberger, one of the best known experts on "blogging" and coauthor of the bestselling book, "The Cluetrain Manifesto".

Day 03: O'Reilly and Associates, Part I

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Sat, 03 May 2008 09:00:00 -0600

I just realized that I should have been more clear in the initial post - "recreational" is defined as books I would read recreationally

Such as the excellent book from O'Reilly and Associates titled Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution

Personally, I was sad to see ORA's series on X11 go out of print, as there's still a lot to be said for the X11 framework/protocol, even though most people want to target Qt or the GNOME libraries instead. So I was happy to see they put them out under an "open book" license. You can find volume one of this collection on archive.org.

Day 02: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom / Programming from the Ground Up

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:00:00 -0600

[Ed: Typo'd Cory's last name - thanks, Johnny]

My very first experience with the writings of Cory Doctorow came from his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

And, as long as we're on "firsts", how about Programming from the Ground Up, a book on writing assembly for Linux?

New Category, and an Experiment

nospam@example.com (Ancient of Days) — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:28:41 -0600

My goal is to post a new article every day for the entire month of May linking to at least two books that can be read for free online - one technical, one recreational.

For the initial post, I've chosen two that everyone should read:

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (colloquially known as "the SICP")
and
the latest (2007) draft of Autonomy: Freedom of Thought, which is a bit rough in places but has some fun ideas

Books I should read

nospam@example.com (Radar) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:49:39 -0700

I recently finished reading The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny which was the final book in the Chronicles of Amber series. It was mostly enjoyable though it seemed unnecessarily verbose in a few spots (come on Roger you are no Tolkien). I would recommend it to those that enjoy Fantasy.

But I am now in a position to not have any bed-time reading material. I would love it if you guys could give me a few options* that you enjoy. Otherwise I am going to have to read Enders Game again.

*Radar is under no obligation to actually read any of the books that are recommended.