Wednesday, July 28, 2004
This post is three things.
It's a review and a link to a free useful book about linux.
No too shabby eh?
But, 2, it's a short prose piece by one of my new favorite writers, Jon Horvath.
If twain blew away fenimore cooper by writing plain clear funny text,
here you have a guy who writes code, does a good job of documenting code, and uses that techie approach to go off into a brand of fiction or narrative or whatever it is, that's.. i was going to say cyberpunk, but that's not quite it. but it reminds of of the cyberpubnks, neal stephenson, bruce sterling, and i'd throw in eric s raymond, maybe a bit of l neil smith.
But 3, this guy, Horvath, is the personal biographer of sid, of sid's music server.
Sid and I were roommates once, and his was my first case in federal court, so when he got the cease and desist letter from the music industry goons, i dropped a few subtle hints i'd be willing to take his case
and take on the music industry. Too subtle, he didn't understand what i was offering, and we didn't fight it.
That was, i think, 1996. No probably 95. Here it is 2004, and because we didn't stop them back then, they've come and shut down berry's music. I have a plan to fight back. But i have so many damn plans.
I have a hard time getting or staying focused. 13 blogs, none of them up to date.
I have an early appointment, trying to get a job with lilly as a lab rat. Not a tech, i just don't know how to spell guinea pig. anyway, here' jon, reviewing a linux cookbook.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use by Michael StutzEdition: Paperback
Price: $20.37
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
6 used from $9.88
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:A Linux book you can actually use to do stuff., August 13, 2001Linux may be cool, but the documentation is horrible. There are tons of inconsistent HOWTO files, out of date FAQs, and a bunch of programmers that don't really see the problem. Whenever you want to do anything with Linux, you usually have to read every piece of documentation out there, and basically reverse-engineer a solution.
Most commercial Linux books for beginners (or at least for people who don't dig through C++ on a daily basis) are not well laid out. I should know - I wrote several chapters in one a few years back. They are usually organized by major system - a chapter on installation, one for video, one for sound, one for networking, and so on. But what if you want to write a book? Or record an album? Unless you can dig around on the web to find someone else doing the same thing, you are out of luck.
I'm glad that a book like this is out there. First, it is much more theoretical and philisophical than most approaches. That means it doesn't matter if you have RedHat 7.0 or 7.1 or whatever. It's just like if you are using a cookbook to make food - it doesn't matter if you use fresh-squeezed orange juice or Minute Maid orange juice, other than the difference in taste and texture - the basic lessons still apply.
I haven't seen other No Starch books, so I don't know if the look and feel is specific or part of the series, but it works. It's not a glossy, corporate taste - it's easy to flip through and fun to use. After reading a few pages to solve a problem, you're suddenly reading for hours and realizing that there are a lot of other things you could be doing with Linux - and that's the point. People don't need to be programmers to use a computer, and people can use their computer for more than email, web browsing and minesweeper. It's like you wanted a recipe to make some hamburgers, and you find a dozen new dishes you'll want to try for the next few weeks.
Great approach overall, and it's also very cool that you can download the entire thing for free at dsl.org, if you want to check it out first, or just have a copy on your local hard drive. I wish more books did this.
Overall, very excellent! Now I just need some more time to try out all of the things I've seen in here...
It's a review and a link to a free useful book about linux.
No too shabby eh?
But, 2, it's a short prose piece by one of my new favorite writers, Jon Horvath.
If twain blew away fenimore cooper by writing plain clear funny text,
here you have a guy who writes code, does a good job of documenting code, and uses that techie approach to go off into a brand of fiction or narrative or whatever it is, that's.. i was going to say cyberpunk, but that's not quite it. but it reminds of of the cyberpubnks, neal stephenson, bruce sterling, and i'd throw in eric s raymond, maybe a bit of l neil smith.
But 3, this guy, Horvath, is the personal biographer of sid, of sid's music server.
Sid and I were roommates once, and his was my first case in federal court, so when he got the cease and desist letter from the music industry goons, i dropped a few subtle hints i'd be willing to take his case
and take on the music industry. Too subtle, he didn't understand what i was offering, and we didn't fight it.
That was, i think, 1996. No probably 95. Here it is 2004, and because we didn't stop them back then, they've come and shut down berry's music. I have a plan to fight back. But i have so many damn plans.
I have a hard time getting or staying focused. 13 blogs, none of them up to date.
I have an early appointment, trying to get a job with lilly as a lab rat. Not a tech, i just don't know how to spell guinea pig. anyway, here' jon, reviewing a linux cookbook.
The Linux Cookbook: Tips and Techniques for Everyday Use by Michael StutzEdition: Paperback
Price: $20.37
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
6 used from $9.88
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:A Linux book you can actually use to do stuff., August 13, 2001Linux may be cool, but the documentation is horrible. There are tons of inconsistent HOWTO files, out of date FAQs, and a bunch of programmers that don't really see the problem. Whenever you want to do anything with Linux, you usually have to read every piece of documentation out there, and basically reverse-engineer a solution.
Most commercial Linux books for beginners (or at least for people who don't dig through C++ on a daily basis) are not well laid out. I should know - I wrote several chapters in one a few years back. They are usually organized by major system - a chapter on installation, one for video, one for sound, one for networking, and so on. But what if you want to write a book? Or record an album? Unless you can dig around on the web to find someone else doing the same thing, you are out of luck.
I'm glad that a book like this is out there. First, it is much more theoretical and philisophical than most approaches. That means it doesn't matter if you have RedHat 7.0 or 7.1 or whatever. It's just like if you are using a cookbook to make food - it doesn't matter if you use fresh-squeezed orange juice or Minute Maid orange juice, other than the difference in taste and texture - the basic lessons still apply.
I haven't seen other No Starch books, so I don't know if the look and feel is specific or part of the series, but it works. It's not a glossy, corporate taste - it's easy to flip through and fun to use. After reading a few pages to solve a problem, you're suddenly reading for hours and realizing that there are a lot of other things you could be doing with Linux - and that's the point. People don't need to be programmers to use a computer, and people can use their computer for more than email, web browsing and minesweeper. It's like you wanted a recipe to make some hamburgers, and you find a dozen new dishes you'll want to try for the next few weeks.
Great approach overall, and it's also very cool that you can download the entire thing for free at dsl.org, if you want to check it out first, or just have a copy on your local hard drive. I wish more books did this.
Overall, very excellent! Now I just need some more time to try out all of the things I've seen in here...
Comments:
Post a Comment
