The other day I was browsing the Rice library and ran across a little book called “Superheroes of the Round Table: Comics Connections to Medieval and Renaissance Literature.” It’s about how literature has influenced comic books, and how comic books…
Blog Archives
tl;dr
The slang “tl;dr” stands for “too long; didn’t read.” The context is often either a bad joke or a shallow understanding. What bothers me most about tl;dr is the mindset it implies, scanning everything but reading nothing. I find myself…
Machine Learning for Hackers
Drew Conway and John Myles White have a new book out, Machine Learning for Hackers. As the name implies, the emphasis is on exploration rather than mathematical theory. Lots of code, no equations. If you’re looking for a hands-on introduction…
Book review: Functional Analysis
Functional Analysis by Elias Stein and Rami Shakarchi is a fast-paced book on functional analysis and related topics. By page 60, you’ve had a decent course in functional analysis and you’ve got 360 pages left.
Review: The Linux Command Line
No Starch Press recently released The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction by William E. Shotts, Jr. True to its name, the book is about using Linux from command line. It’s not an encyclopedia of Linux. It doesn’t explain how…
Pax Romana
From A History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill: In our own fevered, changing, and precarious age, where all is in flux and nothing is accepted, we must survey with respect a period when, with only three hundred…
R in Action
No Starch Press sent me a copy of The Art of R Programming last Fall and I wrote a review of it here. Then a couple weeks ago, Manning sent me a copy of R in Action. Here I’ll give…
Flannery O’Connor’s accent
When Flannery O’Connor went to the University of Iowa for graduate school, her mentor Paul Engle could not understand her Georgian accent. Engle later recalled his reaction when she asked to attend his workshop. Embarrassed, I asked her to write…
Gutenberg + Readability
Here’s a very simple idea: Use Project Gutenberg for content and Readability for style. Project Gutenberg has a large collection of public domain books in digital form. The books are available in several formats, none of which are ideal for…
Houston Public Library, 1926
In 1926, Houston completed construction of a new public library. This building has been restored and reopened to the public this month. My wife and I visited the library yesterday and I took a few photos. When you visit the…
New programmer’s survival manual
A computer science degree doesn’t prepare you to be a programmer. Here’s an excerpt from a blog post I wrote comparing computer scientists and programmers: I had a conversation yesterday with someone who said he needed to hire a computer…
Never a time so completely parochial
“There never was a time when those that read at all, read so many books by living authors rather than books by dead authors. Therefore there was never a time so completely parochial, so completely shut off from the past.”…
Fundamental theorem of code readability
In The Art of Readable Code, the authors call the following the “Fundamental Theorem of Readability”: Code should be written to minimize the time it would take for someone else to understand it. They go on to explain And when…
The Tangled Web
The Tangled Web is a security book that you may find interesting even if you’re not interested in security. The first half of the book is an excellent explanation of how Web technologies work in theory and especially in practice.…
Cartoon guide to the uninteresting
If you’re not interested in a subject, do cartoons make it more palatable? My guess is that cartoons may help keep your attention if you’re moderately interested in a subject. If you’re fascinated by something, cartoons get in the way.…
