Iconic and authen­tic. I remem­ber being mildly amused by the first incarn­a­tion of Andy Hertzfeld’s col­lec­tion of anec­dotes when it was first pub­lished. Revolu­tion in the Val­ley was an intriguing and enga­ging set of remin­is­cences by many of those involved in mak­ing the Macin­tosh a real­ity col­lec­ted from folklore.org. Newly re-released in 2011 here I find myself re-reading the stor­ies and enjoy­ing them even more.

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Before I jump into the book I thought I would quickly note what my expect­a­tions are so that these are clear in the eval­u­ation. Flash Cata­lyst is a high-level web devel­op­ment tool that allows for cre­ation of flash-based web pages dir­ectly from Pho­toshop or Illus­trator. Although these can be deployed to pro­duc­tion envir­on­ments from what I under­stand and per­ceive these are more use­ful as pro­to­types for user test­ing prior to actual pro­duc­tion and deploy­ment using more standards-compliant tools. So, here’s a quick guide and I judge from the end mat­ter I will gain a quick under­stand­ing of how the tool is posi­tioned as well as some rapid hands-on exer­cises to gain appre­ci­ation of its cap­ab­il­it­ies. That’s just what I am look­ing for. So let’s dive in. Read the rest of this entry »

I wouldn’t typ­ic­ally review my more gen­eral read­ing mater­ial here, but Anglo Repub­lic: Inside the Bank that Broke Ire­land by Simon Carswell war­ran­ted an excep­tion. A thor­oughly sat­is­fy­ing and com­pel­ling read, Carswell doc­u­ments the rise and fall of the bank demon­ised by the Irish media in a superb fash­ion. Eagerly anti­cip­ated, the volume brings together many of the tan­tal­isingly shock­ing stor­ies sur­round­ing the high-flying exec­ut­ives of Anglo Irish and weaves them together with tech­nical explan­a­tions and thor­ough research into an emin­ently read­able and ulti­mately ful­filling expose of the big decisions and the the mind­sets that led to the down­fall of the institution.

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 Wow! This is the manual that should come with the cam­era. If you, like me, come away from the stock manual dis­ap­poin­ted, frus­trated, or just feel­ing that it simply leaves out all the prac­tical ‘why’ type information…get this book. Com­ing on the heels of Young’s pre­vi­ous Mas­ter­ing a vari­ety of other Nikon DSLR’s this latest iter­a­tion is simply superb. Mas­ter­ing the Nikon D7000 by Dar­rell Young goes deep on every single fea­ture, switch, dial, bell, whistle and pos­sib­il­ity that this cam­era offers the novice or advanced digital photographer.

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