Review The Temple of Gold

William Goldman, who wrote The Princess Bride, wrote The Temple of Gold as his debut novel. Im a big fan of The Princess Bride, so when I saw they shared the same author and Amazon offered it for a low low price of $1.99, I jumped on the novel and bought it.

I shouldnt have. This is an awful, awful novel. The lead character is unlike-able, and does so many stupid things that at one point I just stopped reading because I just couldnt stand reading a novel about someone this stupid. This isnt even about him being an anti-hero, this is just stupidity. For instance, he recognizes when someones really good for him in a relationship, but abandons the relationship anyway.

I eventually kept reading because I was stuck in a situation where I had nothing else to do, and kept hoping for a note of redemption in this novel. Unfortunately, there was none. Stay far far away from this book. I can hardly believe that the same person wrote The Princess Bride. Now I will hesitate to ever pick up another William Goldman novel again.

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Review Grand Pursuit The Story of Economic Genius

Ill admit it. Im an economics junkie, and enjoy even reading books like Minskys Stabilizing an Unstable Economy. So I was excited when Sylvia Nasar of "A Beautiful Mind" tackled the history of great economic minds in Grand Pursuit.

By far the biggest disappointment is that with only limited space and spanning this much time, Nasar could only grant superficial coverage of many of the ideas. I was even more annoyed when she insisted on wasting precious pages on boring genealogy details rather than the big ideas of the man.

That said, Nasar does a passable job of describing economic history. Her description of Karl Marx as a person whod never bothered to learn English despite writing his book there, and who never even visited a single factory to do his work. Several not very well known economists are covered, including Alfred Marshall, Beatrice Webb, and Joan Robinson. Strangely enough, she never talks about Adam Smith except in passing.

By the time we get to the greats like Schumpeter, Keynes, Friedman, and Samuelson, the repeated mini-biographies are starting to wear thin. However, this is where the action starts, so I was quite perked up. I learned quite a bit more about Keynes that I didnt know before. Nasar also "gets" Keynes, though she doesnt quite take the pains to explain why Keynes General Theory was widely misunderstood, even more so than say, Einsteins.

The war years are covered in great detail, though big breakthroughs (like Irving Fishers realization of the relationship between interest rate, the business cycle, and inflation) dont quite get the headline attention they deserve: sometimes you feel as though Nasar is more interested in Keynes bi-sexuality than in his ideas.

What does come across to me as brand new information is the section on Hayek. For instance, he and Keynes were friends and supported each others work. Hayek is definitely not the libertarian that his later followers make him out to be, and Nasar delights in pointing that out, especially when Republicans tried to court him and get his approval.

Ultimately, while the book was worth reading for me, I wonder how many non-economics junkies will be able to keep their eyes open during the long diversions. Not really recommended.

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How to remove the MSN Messenger service from XP

Want to remove MSN Messenger?

Locate SYSOC.INF in the WindowsINF folder (hidden file and folder), Open it in Notepad and locate the line: msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7

Remove the word "hide" from the line and save the file. You will now have an entry in add/remove programs.)

OR (XP Pro Only) leaves it installed, but tell Windows to never let it run. If youre running XP Professional, you can use GPEDIT.MSC to prevent Messenger from loading. Otherwise, even disabling it in startup wont cause it to "always" not run.

NOTE: Outlook, Outlook Express and some Microsoft web pages can still make it load.

· Start, Run and enter GPEDIT.MSC

· Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Messenger

· You can now modify whether it starts initially and/or whether its to run at all.

UPDATE: I got some email that say this fix slows down outlook when starting, that is because outlook wants to start messenger when it starts, the easiest and fastest way to disable messenger and still have a quickj starttime with outlook is to rename the exe file, located here c:program filesmessengermsmsgs.exe, to something other than msmsgs.exe, such as msmsgsnew.exe.

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Independent Cycle Touring featured in the Mercury News Oakland Tribue

Several weeks ago, I was interviewed for a cycling article that appeared last Sunday in the Mercury News/Oakland Tribune. I had other things occupying my mind on Sunday, so didnt get around to reading it today.

As far as free publicity goes, its pretty good: the article mentioned my web-site, and plugged my three favorite cycling clubs in the Bay Area. As for effectiveness: I did not sell a single copy of Independent Cycle Touring as a result, reflecting that mass media is not a good way to launch a very niche publication, as you might expect.

Nevertheless, the article does quote me, so Ive used up my quota of 15 minutes of fame for the rest of my life.

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Quantifying the Apple Tax

The last time I was a Mac user was in 2009 when I upgraded to the Canon 5D Mk 2 and got rid of my Mac Mini as being too slow to run Lightroom. Before 2006, I was a PC user and never bothered paying the Apple tax. It wasnt until I joined Quark Games, which was a mostly Mac shop that I ran into the Apple tax again.

The Apple tax impacts small development shops. Large corporations  like Adobe or Google arent cash constrained. In fact,  at Google, most developers wouldnt even be aware of the Apple tax because most of their computation is done in the cloud. At a small shop like Quark, however, we are cash constrained and most of our computation is done locally, at the developers desk.

Most of Apples desktops are incredibly under-powered. For instance, the iMacs dont even let you replace a hard drive, which means that you have to pay Apples incredible markup for SSDs, and in the case of the smaller iMacs, you cant even upgrade the memory yourself. For a developer workstation that potentially needs more than one SSDs, this is unacceptable. Yes, you can upgrade to a 3.4 GHz Core i7, but thats even more expensive than a Mac Pro and you end up with a machine you cannot upgrade.

Then theres the Mac Pro. Its mid-2013, and they cost $2500. Whats worse, is that they use a 2009 Xeon CPU which under-performs my 2008 home desktop! And that machine cost me $1200 back in 2008! You can compare it with a current Dell with the latest Haswell i7-4770 processor. That machine would cost $750, with twice the processing power of the Mac Pro! Sure, the Mac Pro has a nicer case which makes it easier to upgrade. And it has ECC RAM (for all the good thatll do you --- I cant remember a single instance where I wanted ECC RAM for any of my development needs). The fact is, Apple has no mid-range towers, but if you need to deliver iOS applications to your customers you have no choice: you have to buy an Apple product. Yes, Im aware Apple has a new Mac Pro at the end of the year. However, the new machine has no room for hard drive expansion at all, so I might as well buy an iMac!

At Quark, our solution has been to buy the 13 inch non-Retina Macbook Pros. With a couple of screwdrivers you can take those apart and upgrade the memory and hard drive. Unfortunately, when you need to process a lot of art and music assets, the CPUs on those machines bog down. Even then, using Macbook Pros save you because when we bought our Mac Pros, we could take the hard drives out of the laptops and stuff them into the desktops and get immediate productivity gains, without the pain of reinstalling all our software and losing a day in the process.

Whats amusing to me is that the art team tells me that the rest of the industry has gone to Windows PCs for 3D-modeling and other art needs precisely to escape the Apple tax (and these despite Apples reputation as the go-to computer for artists!). So its only engineering thats stuck paying the Apple tax. Certainly, if Android were too crush iOS devices, small development shops will be the first to switch sides completely just to avoid paying the Apple tax, which stands at $1700/developer. I know Ill be switching our art team over at the next available opportunity. In the mid-1990s, I dreamed of the days when wed escape the Microsoft hegemony. But now that weve largely escaped its clear the Apple overlords are much worse than the Microsoft ones ever were.

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Amazons Kindle Fire update brings the best of both worlds to the Fire HD and HDX

Amazon doesnt want to just be known as your entertainment portal--it wants to be your everything portal. The company hopes to continue to instill that vibe with the latest software update for its Android-based tablet line. Fire OS 3.1 begins rolling out Monday to Kindle Fire HD and Fire HDX devices, bringing with it a few new features, like enterprise support and wireless printing to turn your existing Kindle into more than just a destination for ebooks and video. The update also beefs up the last-generation Kindle Fire HD with some of the HDXs marquee features.

Amazon unveils Fire OS 3.1 update for Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Fire HDX tablets

BYOD, finally

For Amazon to make its tablets a be-all, end-all device for consumers, it needed to cater to the business crowd, too. The device now includes better enterprise support with features like the ability to connect to secure Wi-Fi networks and log on to a corporate network via VPN. Fire OS 3.1 also supports Kerberos authentication for more secure browsing of your companys internal Intranet through the Silk browser, as well as a Kindle-specific device management API to make life easier on your IT department.

See what your friends are reading

Amazon aims to be more friendly with the integrated Goodreads social network for book lovers. The service lets you connect with friends to share things like your favorite quotes, what youre currently reading, and what you thought of the books youve read. You can also import every book youve ever bought or read through Amazon into your Goodreads account and sign up for a daily or weekly newsletter that offers suggestions on whats new to read in your favorite genres.

Share your screen with your TV
As if the Amazon Video app on almost every set-top box out there wasnt enough, the bundled Second Screen feature is now supported for the older Kindle Fire HD. Second Screen lets you "fling" movies from your Kindle to your television set through supported third-party devices. Amazon writes that the feature is meant to free up your device so that you can use it for apps like X-Ray or browsing the Web--a definite ploy to get you to always use the device when youre thinking of entertainment in your living room. The feature is currently limited to the PlayStation 3 and compatible Samsung TVs, though Amazon writes that it will be available later this year for the just-released PlayStation 4.

Other miscellaneous features in Fire OS 3.1 include things like wireless printing and voice dictation to convert your speech into text. Voice dictation is available in all languages when youre connected to a network, though only English is available offline.

If many of the new features sound familiar, thats because Amazon is taking a page out of the iOS/Android playbook to make its tablet lineup more attractive to those who want something more than just a content consumption device. You can pick up the update by heading into the Settings panel, Device, and then checking to see if there is a System update available, or by visiting Amazons official software updates page.

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LG wants the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 1 terminated

When Samsung came swinging with allegations of OLED patent infringements and corporate theft, LG promptly counter-sued. Samsung then escalated by broadening its list of patent complaints, forcing LG to do what any dignified electronics brawler would have to do: file for a retaliatory injunction against the "sale, manufacture and importation" of one of Sammys products.

The device at stake today is the unsuspecting Galaxy Note 10.1, which has no direct rival among LGs current product range but which is claimed to have breached three LG display patents concerning the improvement of viewing angles.

For its part, Samsung is dismissing the attack as "unjustified" and doesnt seem overly concerned by LGs demand for damages -- nothing less than a billion won ($1 million) for each day the Note 10.1 continues to be made and sold.

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Review The Newlyweds

The Newlyweds belongs in that category of mainstream fiction known as the immigrant womans narrative. Its considered an important literary art form, though unfortunately its become so cliche that you can list the tropes as a series of checkboxes and watch the author clicks through them one at a time.

This book is a typically cliched example of the genre. The protagonist is a Bangledesh woman (about 10 years ago, it would have been a Chinese woman via Amy Tan or Maxine Kingston Hong) who marries an American engineer and comes to the USA to start a new life. Theres the culture shock moments, theres the clash of religions/expectations, and theres the woman itself: she has next to no skills, and arrives penniless, and is wholly dependent on her software engineering husband. How about once in a while we get a protagonist whos capable of getting a green card all by herself for a change?!

The narrative revolves around the woman (for a change, I would also like to see someone write about the male immigrants, but I guess theyre all too busy being successful software engineers for someone to bother writing about their experience), and the discovery that her husband-to-be had lied to her before the wedding. In the grand scheme of things, these are small lies, and theyre lies of omission, rather than lies of commission. Ive heard of much worse stories in the Asian community. But in this genre, the smallest thing can be blown up into the biggest issue, because thats how the genre works. More importantly, the book is predictable right down to the ending: at no point does the protagonist make an attempt to effect her life in a positive way, or gets over her sense that shes at the center of the universe.

Towards the end of the novel I found myself flipping pages forward out of boredom. I was not surprised that at no point did skipping entire chapters cause me to lose sight of the plot --- thats how slowly the book moves, and how many worthless digressions are woven into the story.

If you enjoy this genre, I suppose this book might be interesting to you: the author is capable of putting together decent prose, and has a good grasp of Bangladeshi life. I cant tell how authentic this is or how well the authors done her homework without putting more effort into this book than it deserves. For all others whove read at least one book in this genre, I suspect that the book will feel ridiculously familiar.

Not recommended. Go read some science fiction instead. At least thats one genre where competent women protagonists are not excluded.

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Review The Immigrants

The Immigrants is a novel set in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. For some reason, San Francisco has yet to have its Raymond Chandler, (Wallace Stegners amazing Angle of Repose notwithstanding) and unfortunately, Howard Fast isnt all that great a writer.

However, I found the book itself compelling reading. It follows the story of Dan Lavette, who as a young man was orphaned by the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. While he lots his parents, he made a ton of money with the boat his father left him, ferrying people to and from Oakland during and after the days of the disaster. With this, he expanded his fishing fleet, and eventually became a transportation tycoon, along the way picking up a beautiful wife, a mistress, business partners, friends, and enemies. The book ends right after the 1929 Great Depression started, granting a view through the broad sweep of history that the book encompasses. This was a time of history when cutters gave way to powerboats, when railroads were the principal mode of transportation. World War I and its after-effects were widely felt, and inflation became widespread.

What kept me reading was that the author clearly knew the San Francisco Bay Area really well. We get exposed to San Mateo, Menlo Park, Sonoma County, and the environment all during a period of time when $12/day was a princely sum. We get a good view of how hard it was to be a Chinese immigrant during that era. We get to see the prohibition and some of its effects. The weakest part of the novel are the characters. The protagonist, Dan Lavette, is barely fleshed out. His relationship with his estranged wife is described in a few bare sentences, so one is left having to make the leap from the passionate courtship to the estranged marriage with no way to connect the dots. Even the authors attempt to create a non-stereotyped Chinese woman is still weakened by his need to bend everything to his plot, resulting in a barely believable thing for an otherwise strong willed character to do. Ultimately, one sees Lavette as a "Mary Sue" character, one who right until the edge of the Depression, makes all the right decisions with the benefit of hindsight.

If you want literature, read Wallace Stegners Angle of Repose. Even for an airplane novel, The Immigrants is fun enough, but leaves one feeling empty. Im unlikely to bother looking at the rest of the 6 book series.

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Eye Popping Smartphone Screens of the Future

Retina displays are so yesterday. Heres some smartphone display tech that will knock your socks off.

Sharps Display in the HTC One

Remember when Apples Retina displays were the next big thing? Now it seems everyone has them - or something better. Whether it be a text message from a friend or just a version of Draw Something, the customers eye is always attracted to the bright and beautiful - and smartphone makers have quickly learned that a sharp, vibrant display can sell millions of smartphones.

Unfortunately, the smartphone market is a cutthroat, Darwinian environment where whats hot today can quickly seem like an anachronism from yesterday. (See Razr, Motorola). While phone manufacturers can align their entire brand around their displays, a strategy successfully employed by Samsung and Apple, lower-tier vendors have to pick and choose how they source their displays, leaving a few flagship "hero" phones with eye-popping screens, but with others feeling decidedly average.

When smartphone designers try to nail down the features of a next-generation phone, the most obvious axis of improvement is the display resolution, in a bid to simply "out-pop" the competition. But smartphone makers are also exploring flexible displays and trying to minimize power in a bid to conserve battery drain and maximize talk time and Web surfing.

The battery life of phones can be one of the hidden costs of owning a phones with a bright, beautiful display - all those pixels, especially using a traditional LCD, will require more power than a conventional, lower-resolution screen. Organic LEDs, which can actually turn off to conserve power, seem to be the way forward, replacing the traditional LCD backlight. However, theyre also expensive to manufacture, and for now, there are concerns with the longevity of the material itself.

For now, 3D mobile displays seem to be a gimmick that never quite took off; ditto for phone-mounted pico projectors, which can project an image upon the screen. The next trend of dubious value may end up being flexibility, for screens that can bend around your wrist or to enable new form factors. And you know, you may even get both.

One thing is for sure: each new display innovation will be substantially marketed, hyped, and dissected by the analyst and media community. And any success will be immediately copied by competitors.

Samsung Youm

At the Consumer Electronics Show this year, Samsung showed off its Youm flexible display. Based on OLED technology, Youm is just a prototype at the moment. Samsung also showed off a fixed, but curved HDTV display.

Plastic Logic

Plastic Logic teamed up with Intel and the Human Media Lab at Queens University in Canada to develop several flexible concept designs, like a real-time wristwatch, a companion e-paper accessory for smartphones, and the PaperTab, a flexible tablet. "Plastic Logics revolutionary flexible plastic displays enable innovative design approaches, which were previously impossible when using standard glass-based display technology," Steve Marsh, vice president of sales for Plastic Logic, said in a statement.

Sharps Display in the HTC One

The Sharp display used by the HTC One takes the resolution of the Surface Pro, or 1,920-by-1,080 pixels in a 10.6-inch panel, and packs the same resolution into a 4.7-inch display. Forget about Apples Retina display - what the One does is simply amazing. Thats 468 pixels per inch, blowing away the 326 ppi used by the Apple iPhone 5.

Samsung Galaxy S 4

The new Galaxy S 4 smartphone from Samsung includes "Air Gestures," allowing the user to "swipe" the screen without actually touching it.

LGs Flexible OLED

LG said recently that it will introduce a smartphone with a flexible OLED screen in the fourth quarter of this year, according to the Wall Street

Kyocera Organic

Kyoceras Organic design is basically a curved glass screen. And not just a little curvy, like the Nexus S. Were talking full-on, angled to the contours of your hands and face curves.

Kyocera Infinito

Kyoceras Infinito design is a display that wraps longitudinally around the front and back of the handset, creating a frameless display.

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Review The Corpse Reader

The Corpse Reader is a strange novel as far as origin, subject matter, and story is concerned. Originally written in Spanish and translated/distributed/published by Amazon, the story is set in ancient China and his historical fiction about Song Ci, regarded by many as the father of forensic medicine.

In many ways, Song Ci is almost a perfect person for such a treatment. While he has written a massive treatise which serves as much of his legacy, little is actually known about the person. The author, Antonio Garrido, writes an afterwards where he reveals what his own research has said about Song Ci, and the life that he appears to have led does not seem to be particularly drama-filled. Nevertheless, Song Ci appeared to be much more politically inept as a person, in contrast to his pioneering competence in forensic science. In that regards, Garridos portrayal of Song Ci in the novel is fairly accurate.

The story revolves around Song Ci, who like many heroes is deprived of his family early in the story and begins a journey to maturity. He makes many many stupid decisions very early on, but does show some great qualities as well. Some of the stupid decisions are ridiculously stupid (Ci basically gets taken in by every woman hes ever met who wants to fool him), but the rest of the plot isnt terribly bad. Well, the motivation of one of the major villains makes no sense to me, but the plot moves fast enough that even that realization doesnt come until after youve zipped through the book.

Whats the most disappointing to me about the book is that theres no sense of progression for our protagonist. There isnt a series of challenging investigations where Ci is stretched to learn new things about Forensics. In some ways, the book focuses on his journey rather than his investigative challenges, so at the end youre left with very little impression of how he came to understand forensics.

All in all, this is a decent summer read. Very mildly recommended.

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Review The Cove

I dont usually review movies on this blog. First of all, I have my hands full just reviewing books. Secondly, to my mind, most movies cant rise beyond the point of brainless entertainment.

Thus it is that when Im writing this review of The Cove, I find myself in desperate straits.I want to be able to reach out from behind the screen and grab you, and make you watch this movie, (Its only $1.99 on Amazon Instant Video) but in my desire to do so I dont want to sound too earnest, too rabid, for fear that youd be scared off.

So let me back off a bit and talk about my relationship with dolphins. I never grew up watching Flipper, nor am I particularly a dolphin fan. Ive never swam with one, and probably wouldnt pay money to do so. On the other hand, Im a sailing skipper, and on many occasions have had dolphins swim with my boat, besides my boat, or play with the bow(s) of my boat while sailing. Ive also seen whales in San Francisco Bay while sailing. If the sight of these creatures in the wild leave you unmoved, youre not a candidate to see this movie.

The Cove is about dolphins. Specifically, its about the whaling community of Taiji, in Japan. Every September, Taiji engages in a slaughter of dolphins, killing over 2,000 animals. This movie is about the slaughter of the dolphins, the method by which they have been slaughtered, and the politics behind the International Whaling Commission which permits the slaughter to still happen.

Im not much of an animal activist: Ive killed animals for others to eat in my time, and if I had to kill animals in order to eat meat I wouldnt have any trouble doing so. But dolphins are on top of the food chain, which means that they accumulate more mercury in their bodies than just about any other kind of marine animal you could eat. The results of the dolphin slaughter is for no good reason at all: a lot of the meat produced gets distributed throughout Japan and sold as whale meat (which isnt a lie --- dolphins are pretty much whales). Taiji men and women have 5 times as much mercury found in their hair as other Japanese. These folks arent just destroying intelligent mammals, theyre also poisoning themselves and their fellow citizens (and children) as a result.

But why do they do so? It turns out that part of the catch is also to produce captive dolphins for the various Seaquariums around the world. Thats right. If youve ever visited SeaWorld, or taken your kids to one, youre part of the problem. While dolphin meat is not highly desired (see above), captive dolphins generate $150,000 each in revenue for the town of Taiji, and the slaughter of the remaining dolphins is just a by product.

The film follows a group of activists led by Ric Obarry, who used to be a dolphin trainer for the above mentioned TV series. He describes his change from animal trainer to activist, and all sorts of high technology comes into play for capturing the footage in this movie, which obviously the Japanese officials tried very hard to prevent from coming into existence. Underwater cameras, cameras disguised as rocks, blimps, night vision cameras, and a team of skin divers come into play. Its technically impressive and theres not a little bit of suspense as they play cat and mouse with the authorities.

This movie won the academy award in 2009 for best documentary. It deserves it. Im not the emotional type (and as mentioned, am fond of eating animals) and the movie touched everything about me that made want to go out and join the activists. Highly recommended. Watch it, and you may never be able to visit Seaworld again. But if you watch only one movie this year, watch this one. Please.

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Introducing the Chrome OS and app store

The Chrome OS is a web-based operating system created by Google, who pioneered the popular search engine and also created the Android operating system.

You log on to Chrome devices via an internet browser screen rather than the conventional desktop. Chrome offers fast startup and internet browsing, simple navigation and organisational features, and advanced internet security.

Chrome runs off a “cloud”, a safe online space that stores your apps, documents and settings for remote access from any compatible devices. It automatically updates your software and apps when you access them, saving you time and hassle. When you connect to the internet after working in offline mode, your work will automatically be saved to the Cloud.

On the Chrome Web Store you can download thousands of apps, extensions and themes, enabling you to personalise your device with content that matters to you.

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The Desktop Computer Comeback

Its senseless to do real computing on a laptop or iPad. For that, you need a big honkin desktop.

Although people spend all day with their iPhones, iPads or whatever else theyre using to casually search the web while watching TV or sitting at a cafe, most of them still have some sort of real computer on a desk somewhere. Some of these poor people (too many in fact) have been suckered into using a laptop as a desktop replacement. Theres really no such thing as a desktop replacement.

That said, the honkin desktop computer with the multi-core CPU isnt in vogue, plain and simple. The productivity benefits have been forgotten.

First of all, lets get real about computing in the modern world. Its not about looking things up on the Web; its about getting more work done in a shorter period of time than ever before. This is largely because of the processing power of desktop computers. And, yes, a powerful laptop can be a workhorse, but get real. If given a choice between using a laptop – no matter how powerful – with a 15-inch screen and using a multi-core tower machine with two or three or four 20-inch to 30-inch monitors, why would I choose the laptop?

Yes, the big rig will cost more, but with just one or two monitors, it wont cost that much more.

The drawback to the desktop rig, of course, is lack of portability. I dont know about you but I dont have this overwhelming desire to have a computer with me 24/7. Others do.

Ive noticed a few interesting phenomenon that bring us back to the olden days of the secretarial pool. Someone in your group will have an iPad or iPhone with an efficient Web browsing system. And the person will be adept at using these devices. Moreover, theyre more than willing to be your secretary to show off their skills on these devices.

"I think were lost, the restaurant isnt here."

"Let me pull out the iPad and figure out where we are."

"You do that while I go shopping."

Ive noticed myself barking commands to these people. "See what the capacity of that hall is. Ill bet its over 500." "Can you bring up a map of the area?" "See if there are any nearby ATM machines."

Never once does someone say, "Get an iPad and look it up yourself, you skinflint! Of course not, because they love using these machines and need a rationale for owning the things. Meanwhile, the machine that pays the bills is the desktop machine, and many of these same people use underpowered laptops for this function.

Im not sure why the buzz about desktops has waned to the point where nobody wants to talk about them. Theyre not totally uninteresting. Many use fiber connectors and have unusual architectures that are worth discussing. Maybe its too complicated for todays audience. After all, they think Facebook is high tech.

Well you can do what you want, but it just wont be as good or as fast unless its done on a big honkin machine. Get one today!

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The Endorsement Im Proudest Of

I wasnt allowed to blog about this or write about this until today for the obvious reasons. But the best endorsement Id ever heard from was from the CTO of the Obama for America campaign, Harper Reed. Reed bought a copy of Startup Engineering Management, and wrote back to me after reading it:

I have suggested to all of the tech leadership on the Obama campaign (and the DNC too) to read your book. I hope they take the advice and check it out. It was very good and worthwhile to read. We are not failing.

Needless to say, neither I nor the book can take any credit for the success of the Obama campaign. They did an amazing job and would have done so with or without the book. I can say that from outside the campaign, there were many days when I had my doubt about whether Obama would win, but like any good startup, the campaign labored on regardless of what everyone else said or thought. It is nice to hear that they thought highly of the book, and Im glad to have done even a tiny bit for the campaign. For an indepth-look at what the Obama campaign built and how it built it, please see this Ars Technica article. Im obviously very pleased with the results of yesterdays election, and hope to see the promise of Obamacare fulfilled.

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Review The Story of the Giro DItalia Volume 2

Theres no doubt in anyones mind that in recent years, the Giro has been the race to watch, rather than the Tour de France, which has tended to be boring, defensive racing. Im not a big fan of watching bike racing, and from the start, where races were sponsored by newspapers trying to boost circulation, bike racing has always belonged to the written medium. Bill McGanns series, The Story of the Tour De France (Vol 1, Vol 2), and Volume 1 of the Story of the Giro DItalia proudly belong in this category.

In addition to being an account of the races, its also an account of the history of doping and drug controls in the sport of cycling:

I spoke to a mechanic who traveled with a top-flight Spanish pro team in the mid-1990s. What he saw frightened him. The racers slept with heart-rate monitors hooked up to alarms. If a sleeping rider’s pulse fell below a certain rate, the alarm went off, the rider was awakened, given aspirin and a saline injection to thin the blood and put on a trainer to get his heart rate up and blood flowing. This was clearly dangerous stuff at the doses racers were using and everyone knew it, but it had a gigantic payoff to the talented and lucky user. As La Gazzetta put it, there was a change in the hierarchy of some teams: the doctor was now more important than the director. (Loc. 1846-50 )

The author does not refrain from speculation about who might have doped and when, and it adds to the entertainment.

Recommended for cycling fans, but read Volume 1 first.

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An Engineers Guide to Silicon Valley Startups now on the NOOK

Note that as with the Kindle version, this is the first edition. I have no expectation of significant revenue, but the BN store front was easy to use, so it didnt cost very much time.

Im not expecting a Mac version. The iBookstore requires owning a Mac, which I havent done since 2009 (and even that Mac ran Windows since I found myself repeatedly booting into it in order to run Quicken, etc).

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Try the Android operating system on your PC

Android smartphones and tablets are proving very popular, but it’s not easy to get a decent amount of hands-on time before buying. However, as we will show in this workshop, it is possible to create a ‘virtual’ Android device on an XP, Vista or Windows 7 PC, with most of the features of the real thing.

This means that you’ll be able to try out different versions of the Android operating system for free – even the latest tablet editions. You can’t make phone calls, of course, but you can see how all the menus and buttons work, experiment with the built-in apps and even surf the web. Note that there is over 1GB of software to download for this workshop, so check for download caps and expect a long wait for the download to complete.

1. NOTE THAT THIS IS A LEVEL 3 workshop, meaning that it is very challenging and not for beginners. The first step is to download the Java 7 Standard Edition Development Kit from www.snipca.com/X4567. Scroll down to find the correct download for your PC – choose ‘Windows x86’ for 32-bit versions of Windows, or ‘Windows x64’ for 64-bit versions. To find out which you need, click Start, then right-click Computer (My Computer in XP) and choose Properties: in Vista/7 the version is listed under System Type, but in XP it is 32-bit unless you see the words ‘64-bit Edition’. When downloaded, run the program and follow the simple wizard to install the Java 7 software..

2. AT THE END OF the install wizard, click Finish and a registration web page will open – close this as registration is not necessary. Now visit www.snipca.com/X4568 to download the Android Software Development Kit (SDK). Click on the link in the Windows section that starts with ‘installer_’ to get the latest version. When downloaded, run this and click Next – it should detect the Java SDK and show words to that effect. Click Next, then Next, then Install. When it’s finished, click Finish to launch the SDK Manager..

3. AFTER A FEW MOMENTS, the SDK Manager will show the available downloads. Find the entry in the list labelled ‘Android SDK Platform-tools, revision 7’, select it and click the Accept radio button. Do the same for all the entries that start with ‘SDK Platform Android’. Click Reject for all the other items (these are not needed for the Android emulator), then click Install. This can take a long time: each download is installed immediately after it is downloaded. Note that the ‘Choose packages’ window will appear every time the SDK Manager is launched – just click Cancel to dismiss it..

4. IF AN ADB RESTART MESSAGE APPEARS, click Yes. Click Close on the Installing Archives window. Now click New, type a name in the Name box, choose Android version 1.5 in the Target dropdown box, then type ‘512’ in the SD Card Size box. Click Create AVD. When a confirmation message appears, click OK. You can create as many virtual devices as you wish, using different Android versions. For example, repeat the above but choose Android version 3.2 for a tablet device. Virtual tablet devices may run very slowly though – even on a fast PC..

5. SELECT THE DEVICE, click Start, then click Launch. The virtual phone can take several minutes to start – it displays ‘Android’ while launching – so have patience. Eventually the Android home screen will appear. All the phone’s buttons work as they would on a real Android smartphone, but they’re operated by clicking with the mouse, rather than a finger on a touchscreen. The PC’s keyboard can be used for situations where text needs to be entered, such as typing in website addresses. Clicking the Home button (with a house icon) returns you to the Android home screen, and the left-pointing arrow is the Back button. Apps are launched with a single click. To view or change settings, click the Menu button, then Settings. Close the window (click the red X at the top-right corner) to turn off the emulator..

6. THE MOUSE IS ALSO USED TO emulate touch gestures: click and hold on an empty part of the screen, drag left or right, then release the mouse button to move between the three separate Android home screens, for example. Click and hold for a couple of seconds to bring up the customisation menu, then choose Widgets or Shortcuts to add items to any home screen. You can also change wallpapers and create folders with this menu. To remove an item, click and hold it until a wastepaper basket icon appears at the bottom of the screen, then drag the widget on to this.

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Review The Dragon Never Sleeps

The Dragon Never Sleeps (DRM-free kindle-compatible edition) was a difficult book for me to read. The first time I tried to read it, I couldnt become interested in the characters, and abandoned it. However, at this years WorldCon, Cook mentioned that it was one of his proudest novels, so I went back and read it again.

The universe Cook weaves is a compelling one. Youve got organic military vessels that are nevertheless non-sentient. Starships travel through space on strands of the Web, which turn out to harbor a deeper secret. The war against methane breathers comes with deeper intrigues. Planet-side, the feudal structure of the milieu provides us with a key source of human intrigue. Just as interesting, cloning is an option and is frequently used, and used imaginatively by the author. Yet all this is done without long expositions. It all just happens inside the text. Cook is the master of the brief sketches and dialog that brings out character, and he uses that in this novel in spades. As you might expect, there are no plot-holes here. Everything makes sense if youve been paying attention, yet the surprises are genuine. Its also interesting that the science fictional world portrayed is one where technology is more or less static, and has been for thousands of years, so one military force (guardships) could be designed for immortality without the risk of obsolescence.

There are flaws in this book. The big one is that there are too many characters for you to properly care about, and the important characters arent fully high-lighted, so if youre going along rapidly you might have to go back and re-read a passage when one reveal or another happens. Cook also flips between nick-names, titles, and real names all the time, which could be confusing, especially since the character cast so so large. All this combined together to make an unusually long (by Cooks standards) book means that the reading gets too dry at times and I had to take breaks. It took a long time to finish this book.

Nevertheless, if youre a fan of Cooks characters, matter of fact exposition, and want to see what he does with science fiction, this is definitely recommended (unlike Passage At Arms. Just dont expect it to be a quick airplane read.

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