Some good books and sounds...
Turns out I'm mainly using my PrataLife blog for music and book reviews. Thought I'd post a summary here of what I've been through over the past few months..
First, fiction:
- The Paris Option
- The Warden
- The Pyrates
- The Leavenworth Case
- The Best Laid Plans
- A Different Point of View
- HunterKiller
- The Ambler Warning
- The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burgler
Non-fiction/technology:
- Software Fortresses
- The Weather Makers
- Rails for Java Developers
- The World is Flat
- blink
- The Tipping Point
- Softwar - An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle
If there's one single recommendation I'd make, it would be to check out Terry Fallis' The Best Laid Plans. It's a delight - as a (free) podcast novel, and soon I will hopefully have the real, physical book in my hands...
Along the way I've snuck in a few music faves such as Gwen Stefani's The Sweet Escape (also with a mention of Japan's incredible Uplift Spice) and Rush's Exit.. Stage Left.
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Software Fortresses
I forget the first time I became aware of Roger Sessions. I think a collegue of mine in the .com days might have had him as a lecturer. Certainly I got on his ObjectWatch newsletter some time back. I picked up Software Fortresses - Modeling Enterprise Architectures from the library and it is an interesting read. While I don't see too much evidence that the methodology expoused by the book has been adopted by the mainstream, it is a book that is worth reading for some of the ideas none-the-less. Principle among these is the idea that system boundries should be seen in the context of organisational dynamics. In other words, if your organisation goes for a centralised database structure and that is unlikely to change in the near term, then it makes sense to model and build your systems that way. This is a great insight as far as I am concerned. It is too easy to be seduced by the idea that IT folk are hyper-rational geeks, and forget the reality that we are all just as human as the rest. Anyone who has tried to implement a system for real can attest to the fact that often it is the human factor that is the primary determinant of success. The last chapter ("Postlude") is worth the price of the book itself. Here it lists a series of Top-10s such as
The book was published in 2003, but I think we see some sign that the challenges expresed by Mr sessions may well be being addressed - such as the wide-spread adoption of SOAP/Web Services. Mr Sessions words do however spell a warning to those who try to overload such technologies with too much intre-fortress baggage. |
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BillMonk
I first heard about BillMonk on the Ruby on Rails podcast. It's a really neat concept, helping you to track and share bills and things you might lend. The podcast is very interesting because it of course covers the rails aspects as well as the story behind the site itself.
You can use the site stand-alone, but it also has good integration with facebook - which is what I've been testing with some of my friends.
Well worth checking out if you share a house or often end up splitting meal or vacation bills with friends - or even just to keep track of movies or books you may lend out.
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The Paris Option
It's not that I have anything against France, but reading The Paris Option comes only a month on the heels of Hunter Killer - another terrorist action thriller with the French cast as the villains. The Paris Option is another Covert-One novel in which Col. Jon Smith brings the world back from the brink, ably assisted by CIA operative Randi Russell, MI6 renegade Peter Howell and computer genius Marty Zellerbach. Its a rollicking good read, written by Gayle Lynds under the Robert Ludlum brand. Gayle Lynds also wrote The Hades Factor, which is the first in the Covert-One series. Peter Larkin is the other main writer in the series. Peter did The Lazarus Vendetta and The Moscow Vector, which are the other books in the series that I have read. The Covert-One series works really well - similar in a way the the Tom Clancy Net Force franchise - and I look forward to reading the remaining novels. | |||
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