Meme #42

Following on from the lead of others,

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Result: “Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert.”

from Latin for all occasions (Beard).

(Interpretation is left as an exercise for the reader :-P)

| 14 Nov 2008 | #

Big Bang

Just finished reading Big Bang : The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh over the Christmas break. While I immensely enjoyed The Code Book and Fermet's Last Theorem, I found this volume of 600 or so pages lacking. Not that Singh doesn't tell a good tale, but his explanation of the Big Bang theory left me more dissatisfied than when I started.

He does well in establishing the history of cosmology, but very much fails to convince this reader of the water-tightness of the theory. All of the "good physics stuff" is crammed into the last section of the book and feels rushed - there's more on the competing personalities than on the physics.

With grand statements suggesting that the theory of the big bang is the greatest scientific achievement of this past century I'd expect him to make his case with scientific exactness. Instead we're reminded that several holes exist in the theory, but that it's the best "scientific" theory we've got today. Sorry, you've got to do better than that. One thing that was very annoying was that he insisted that the notion of a Creator has now been debunked, while in the same breath saying there were several big unanswered questions that the theory fails to address.

Singh invokes Occam's Razor as he tells his tale, suggesting that a wind storm is the more likely culprit of a fallen tree that a pair of self-vapourising meteorites. True enough. But he then fails to recognise that alternate theories may exist which more accurately tell of the long-ago unwitnessed past. He considers the Big Bang to be a done deal - can I hear the echo of Thomas Watson and the world-wide need for only 5 computers?

Singh fails to make the distinction between experimental physics, and observational physics - you can't be absolutely sure unless you can witness an experiment. And you can't experiment on a universe scale, meaning there's automatically a lower confidence level in any theory that is in this class. This is a point that should have been made.

It's still a good read, just like his other books, but there are holes and it's a big rushed in the later chapters. I reakon it's about a 3 out of 5.

| 03 Jan 2006 | #

A Man on the Moon

I've just finished reading A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin. This is an amazing book, and makes me feel even more respect for those involved with the Apollo program. He describes well the large push of people and resources working together to achieve something astronomically great (pun not intended). This is one of those books that you only put down when you're exhausted from reading - not because you're sick of it. Chaikin covers the entire Apollo series from the start to finish and does a very good job of stiring up awe inside you. He introduces us to the astronauts, their families, the NASA staff at the Cape, and the thousands of people working together to make it all a reality. You really feel the achievement of Apollo 8, the tension and subsequent relief of Apollo 11, the we-will-overcome attitude of Apollo 13, and the anger at the early end of the Apollo program when the politicians lacked the will to continue. Some of the most sobering words in the book are that we've lost the ability to return to the moon. This is a book I will read again.

Having said that, his coverage of the most historically significant mission - Apollo 11 - is lacking. Perhaps this is to do with the reclusive nature of the participants, but it is a downfall of the book. I can't help feel that the book needed more coverage of what Armstrong and Aldrin were feeling once they detached from the command module and headed for the moon. I guess the author can only record what they were prepared to share.

I can't help feel inspired about my own goals and things that are important to me after reading this book. Big things are possible to those who try. And this book has encouraged me to try.

| 02 Feb 2005 | #

Book Review: User Interface Design for Programmers

Last night my copy of User Interface Design for Programmers arrived in the mail from Amazon. I finished it just a little before midnight - I couldn't put it down! Joel of Joel on Software hits the UI mark with this book. There are many original observations about what makes an application usable, concepts that aren't difficult, non-intuitive, nor surprising, but enumerated together like this in just 144 pages (including index) is rare.

I've already emailed my boss asking if the company can buy a copy to give to the development team back home.

One highlight for me was on options dialogs:

"When you are designing and you try and abdicate your responsibility by forcing the user to decide something, you're not doing your job."

"... This doesn't mean eliminating all choice. ... There's another category of choice that that people seem to like: the ability to change the visual look of things without really changing the behavior. Everybody loves WinAmp skins; everybody sets theior desktop background to a picture. Since the choice affects the visual look without affecting the way anything functions, and since users are completely free to ignore the choice and get their work done anyway, this is a good use of options."

This caps off a great chapter explaining why functionality options should be minimised - the default should just work. It's like customising your emacs or vim extensively, works great until you need to use another machine and then you need to tar up your configuration and port it to a new machine. Sometimes it's just better to learn the defaults, and stick to them because your productivity will increase because the defaults are always there and they work all the time. (BTW, that's an argument to use vi[m] - it's always there :-P

Other ideas that are gold are Activity Based Planning, Imaginary Users, hallway usability testing, "Days are Seconds", "Months are Minutes", and "Seconds are Hours". You'll have to read the book to work out what they are. Chapter 16, Tricks of the Trade is also gold. Stuff that I'll use at work today.

Overall, a great book, a must have on your shelf. It's my latest addition to my Essential Books collection.

| 15 Oct 2004 | #

The Essential List

Whenever I go anywhere I always take a selection of technical books with me - with the number of books being proportional to the time I'll be away from home and the rest of my collection. As Chicago is only a week away I had to make my selection.

The Essential Books

Why these books? Some are reference books - what perl operator do I need?, some are for passing on to the unenlightened - Read Chapter 17 of Peopleware and then we can discuss. Others, like HHGTTG and Latin for all occasions provide inspiration for release names. I'm currently playing with C# using Gtk#, so Mono - A Developers Handbook and The Official GNOME 2 Developers Guide are essential.

P.S. Yes, all are mine except Object-Oriented Design Heuristics and C# in a Nutshell which are my employers.

| 27 Sep 2004 | #