By taking some of the great past and present innovations off the divine pedestal they have been put on, Scott Berkun illustrates what innovating is really about in his Myths of Innovation. And although the subject sounds negative, this classic by Scott Berkun is strangely empowering, inspires everyone to be innovative, and does all this in the extremely pleasant, entertaining, and easy to read style we’re used to from Berkun. Highly recommended!
Although I love the thrill of speaking in public, I unfortunately don’t get to do it as often as I used to (once, maybe twice a year lately). The few times I do speak, though, I’ld like it to be as good as possible. That’s why I was very interested in O’Reilly’s announcement of Scott Berkun’s Confessions of a Public Speaker, and so I put the book on my shopping list right away. Not having heard of the author before, I was hoping for the best (light, interesting, with a touch of “funny”), but expecting the worst (“I am your presentation God; people sell their own mother to hear my voice; although you are not worthy, I will lower myself to your level and give some insight in why I am so fantastic.”). After receiving the book in the mail, I read it from the first page to the last in merely one day (a new personal record). Needless to say the book exceeded my expectations.
When I was a kid, I used to be fascinated by Swiss clocks and watches (actually, mostly anything that was made in Switzerland). However, my attention in watches seems to have faded shortly after I got my very own black & red strapped Swatch: only a few years later, I replaced the Swatch with a digital Casio with built-in calculator, because it looked flashy and cool. I have to admit that the watches I wore (if any) haven’t really improved much since then. However, since I recently came to be without a timepiece again, I took the opportunity to read up on watches before buying a new one. I ordered the first well-rated book on the subject I could find, which happened to be Gene Stone’s The Watch. It turns out that this book was one of the most entertaining books I recently read, and I must admit I have become a watch fanatic ever since I read it.
At the occasion of Read an eBook week'</a>, I thought I'ld do something you can't actually do with real books: buy (and read) a version of a book before it is released. Andy Hunt, author of the excellent book <a href="http://www.pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-programmer">The Pragmatic Programmer' (a must read for every developer!), recently announced the availability of a beta'</em> version of his new book, <a href="http://pragprog.com/titles/ahptl">Refactor your wetware'. This beta version is an early electronic version of the book, which gives the reader the opportunity to get a sneak peek at the book, and give feedback for the final version (which, as a beta book owner, you can also download when it is released). So, I went over to the `Pragmatic Bookshelf' store, ordered my copy, and got an e-mail with my personalized copy only a few seconds later.
User interfaces: every piece of software needs one, but no programmer likes to write one. According to Joel Spolsky (host of the popular Joel on Software), the root cause of the problem is the (unnecessary) fear of being incapable of designing user interfaces. He claims that UI design actually is fun, challenging, and doesn’t require any artistic talent whatsoever (as opposed to what many programmers think). Since I have to write quite some UI code myself, and always thought it was the most boring and frustrating aspect of software development, I thought I'ld pick up Spolsky’s book `User Interface Design for Programmers', and let him try to convince me otherwise.
Lately, I have been searching for ways to trigger loops and samples from behind my drum kit. After playing around with a less than ideal setup involving many cables and devices (see below), I decided to buy myself a Roland SPD-S sampling pad. Turned out to be a pretty good move !
