Today, while searching for advice on how to publish a book on Lulu, I stumbled upon Jason Brownlee’s blog. He has published a book using Lulu and Latex. The book is available as a free download from Lulu and on Amazon
Jason has a post with great advice on publishing a book with Lulu. It was the first time I heard about 99 Designs
Also insteresting:
Latex and Lulu
Great examples on Mathematica: http://mathgis.blogspot.com/
A Safari Online subscription was one of the best things I took on in 2010. As part of the service, subscribers can access early drafts of Oreilly books. Yesterday, I had a quick look at the upcoming “Arduino Cookbook” and I here is my review.
I really like the Oreilly “Cookbook” series. With most programming books, it seems that the authors assume zero knowledge from their audience and start with variables, for loops, functions and classes etc etc… With the “Cookbook” series, the editors assume a more advanced audience and give solutions to real-life problems. For me, this is great for two reasons: first of all, due to my busy schedule and short attention span, I like being able to read 5-10 pages and feeling I’ve actually learnt something. The second reason is that these books, by giving us “recipes”, i.e. solutions to real-life problems, effectively teach us how to solve problems.
Now, the questions are “how the new Arduino Cookbook compares to other arduino books” and “is it a worthy member of the Cookbook series”?
The book is true to its Cookbook roots and gives practical advice on problems that arduino users will have at some point to deal with. I found numerous recipies on problems I had come across in the past and had spent hours on forums trying to figure out solutions.
Another good point about this book is that it’s using the new Arduino Uno.
Is this the best Arduino book to date? Yes. It’s better than “Practical Arduino” when it comes to quantity and quality of examples and more useful in the long term than Masimo Banzi’s “Getting Started with Arduino” which is a very basic intro to the subject. Should it be the first book on Arduino one should buy? No. This is a “cookbook” and expects some understanding of the subject. I still thing Tom Igoe’s book “Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects” is the best and most inspiring intro to the subject, but the Arduino Cookbook goes further when it comes to practical advice and knowledge that can be transfered to many different projects. It does stick to its “Cookbook” roots!
With the arrival of the iPad, I have stopped buying real books, as the ebooks are cheaper and the Safari Online subscription service is great. The Arduino Cookbook will be one of the few real books I will personally buy this year as I think it’s a book worth having on my library.
I spent a few hours today, trying to set up the Buffalo WBMR-HP-GN ADSL modem/wifi router.
The set up was easy, with one small problem: I couldn’t get it to connect to the internet (which is kind of a big deal for an ADSL modem…).
Anyway, the following article solved the problem:
http://www.buffalo-technology.com/knowledgebase/users/kb.php?id=10268
Basically, when using PPPoA, the SERVICE NAME should be left blank…
I noticed that a couple of people had returned their modems on Amazon and left bad feedback as a result.
Niklas Roy has put together a fun project that combines Processing, AVR and a camera.
http://www.niklasroy.com/project/88/my-little-piece-of-privacy
Definitely worth watching! An amazing piece of work!
I’ve had my iPad for about 9 months now and it has truly changed my life. I’m not a person that gets every single gadget on the planet and I’m not an Apple fan either. The iPad was my first Apple gadget, and I, overall, I have to say that I have been very impressed.
Design: 5/5
You don’t need me to tell you that the iPad is really a piece of art.
Quality of built: 2/5
Not great. I display issues with the first device, returned it after a few months (as it was getting worse); the replacement unit only lasted one week and I’m now on the 3rd device. I guess they need to spend more time on QC.
Apple Customer Service: 5/5
GREAT! I had no problems returning the faulty units. During these unit swaps, I lost a few videos that I had bought from iTunes. You are only officially allowed to download movies once. I contacted the iTunes helpdesk and I was allowed to download the videos I had lost.
Apple App Store: 4/5
It’s really a piece of cake to buy apps. I know that many have complained about the way Apple keep under tight control the apps that get published and we are not allowed to access alternative app markets (unless the iPad is jailbroken of course). I don’t agree with them. I actually like the fact that I can buy a £0.59 app (or even download a free one) without having to worry about possible viruses, exploits and other nasty things.
Apple iBooks: 4/5
The app is great but the selection of books is not as good as I’d expect. On the bright side, I love the fact that I can buy books on pdf from oReilly and Apress and read them on iBooks. I even got a Safari Online subscription, something I hadn’t done before as I didn’t like the idea of reading textbooks on my laptop.
Apple iTunes: 3/5
I love the on-demand service, but I’m not very happy with the frequency TV episodes are added and the fact that you are not allowed to download twice something you’ve already paid for. This is for me a major flaw in the iTunes business model and the only thing that stops me from buying an Apple TV.
Overall, I’m very happy with the device, the apps and the service I have received from Apple. I wished the built quality was better, but I wouldn’t consider getting a different tablet.
