Learning

Knowledge is Power

I try to read something every day, an article, a book, a journal, a web site. Some things I read to 'escape', other things I read to engross myself in a subject or idea. some things I read because I am bored. (as in dr. office without a good book). I do like to re-read my books. I know some people can't do that. I don't remember 'every little detail' in a story. after about 6 months, I am doing good just to remember the basic plot! So, I try to keep the book I have enjoyed reading. when I need a little intellectual down time, I pull one out and read it again.

Most of the time, I am working on 2 or 3 books at once. I start one, then pick up another then go back and read some more in the first one then pick up yet another book, ad nauseum... If I get really lucky, I can crank through a book in a single sitting. I read Congo, and Bloodwork in single sittings. Other books require more mentally effort to read absorb in a single shot like that. Results may vary...

Current || Recommended || Not Recommended || General Refs || Technical Refs

Currently Reading

• Understanding Supercomputing from the editors of Scientific American
  A little book for a little light reading.
• The Basic Works of Aristotle Edited by Richard McKeon
  Sometimes you just have to go to the original source...
• Number Theory and Its History Oystein Ore
  after another 5 years of math this will make sense.
• How to read and do proofs Daniel Solow
  see above
• LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring J. R. R. Tolkien
  Will I ever have the patience to finish the entire set???

Recommended

• Pattern Recognition William Gibson
  His best story yet.
• Congo Michael Crichton (again)
• Blood Work
• Southern Cross Patricia Cornwell
• Portrait of a Killer Patricia Cornwell
  You can really tell she didn't want to write this one. There is no plot or timeline. She jumps around, backwards and forwards, in time. Not her best work, but as she says in the intro, it was just something she felt she had to write.
• Virtual Light William Gibson (again)
• Fuzzy Logic Daniel McNeill and Paul Freiberger
  Tour of fuzzy logic concepts and real world applications.
• Fermat's Enigma Simon Singh
  This is the one that got me thinking about grad school for real!
• The Code Book Simon Singh
• Linux Cluster Architecture Alex Vrenios
  Alex wrote a quality book and helped me trouble shoot my implementation problems. Not often the author actually writes back and helps you with a problem. BUY THIS BOOK!

Not Recommended

• Thinking like Einstein?
  Boring after the first 10 pages... Same old 'think outside the box' mantra that we have all heard a thousand times before.

General References

• Anatomy for the Artist Tom Flint
• Anatomy for the Artist Jeno Barcsay

Technical References

• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web O'Reilly
• Instant Flash 5 McGraw hill
• Instant JavaScript McGraw hill
• JavaScript O'Reilly
• JavaScript Application Cookbook O'Reilly
• Java Cookbook O'Reilly
• Programming PHP O'Reilly
• PHP Programming WROX
• Network Programming with Perl Addison Wesley
• mySQL Cookbook O'Reilly
• High Performance Computing O'Reilly
• Red Hat Linux Survival Guide Red Hat Press
• Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C, Second Edition Bruce Schneier