Wed, 08 Jun 2005
Dive Into Greasemonkey -- Book Review
Q: What is Greasemonkey?
A: Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to write scripts
that alter the web pages you visit. You can use it to make a web site more
readable or more usable. You can fix rendering bugs that the site owner
can't be bothered to fix themselves. You can alter pages so they work
better with assistive technologies that speak a web page out loud or
convert it to Braille. You can even automatically retrieve data from other
sites to make two sites more interconnected. From the opening
chapter of Dive
Into Greasemonkey.
It is often said that OpenSource projects have a lack of documentation and a major lack of good documentation, well Mark Pilgrim is fixing that one freely available (and GPL'd) guide at a time. In Dive Into Greasemonkey Mark takes the reader through the basic concepts of Greasemonkey, demonstrates how to get up and running with an example install, and out in to the land of custom user scripts. The whole book is written in an accessible, easy to follow way that takes the user through all the required stages but without the unnecessary padding that plagues too many commercial books.
After introducing Greasemonkey, showing how a basic script is constructed and how it can be debugged the book reaches its most useful sections. Chapter 4 contains a number of short snippets of reusable code and explanations on what each of them does. The presentation of the snippets is a basic Greasemonkey cookbook and makes the chapter a very useful reference you'll find yourself occasionally dipping in to.
Chapter 5 continues this approach but takes the reader through some fully developed scripts which get longer and more featureful as the chapter progresses. While snippets are useful I always like to see a couple of full examples and this chapter provides some varied ones that expose the reader to some of the more common itches they'll want to scratch.
So what else is there to mention? The book comes with a small number of videos that show the some of the tasks step by step for the more basic users. It provides enough further reading to be your first stop even when looking for tricks and tactics beyond what the book covers and even provides short, but informative introductions to the DOM Inspector included in FireFox and a short tangent in to Jesse Rudderman's JavaScript Shell.
Summary: So how good is the book? Well after reading through it once I'm writing my own basic scripts and consulting chapters 4 and 5 for code snippets I can use immediately; what else could you ask for? 8/10.
I've also filed this under Dive Into Greasemonkey book review.
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Posted: 2005/06/08 21:01 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Selling With NLP -- Book Review
When it comes to sales people there are two main types, those that
believe in win/win selling and the ones who don't get my money; and
hopefully have bad things happen to them.
"Selling with NLP" (Neuro- Linguistic Programming) aims to provide salespeople with the skills required to increase rapport with their clients and help them understand the customers needs rather than just the wants. It does this by presenting a number of practical examples and anecdotes from within the sales process.
It's coverage spans from the basics, working out your customers preference for having information presented in an visual, audio or kinesthetic style through to the different closing styles. I was quite surprised to find that this book provides a better introduction to NLP than most of the NLP books I've read do. While most books on NLP are too academic, this one provides enough real world relevance, especially if you are actually in sales, to keep the reader interested.
Unfortunately any tool can be used for either good or evil and so I approached this book from a different angle to most readers. After one too many meetings with salespeople from enterprise software companies who all used the same tired hooks and had been through the same basic training I decided to broaden my understanding of NLP when used in sales and ended up inadvertently enjoying this book. While it's not the most interesting of reads it is well paced and clearly written. Although the tone of the text is a little too American it does present the principles of NLP and how they can improve your sales performance in an easy to digest way./p>
Summary: A decent book and a good, concise, introduction to some of the more important parts of NLP. 6/10
I've also filed this under Selling With NLP book review.
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Posted: 2005/06/08 14:58 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sith and Sin -- My Views and No Spoilers
I ended up seeing two films in the cinema yesterday, and for the record
going to the cinema during "working hours" doesn't make it any less busy
dammit! After watching both Sin City and Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith I
have only a few comments to make.
Firstly I enjoyed Sin City more, Sith seemed to be about 45 minutes too long and, despite the gorgeous backdrops and neat fight scenes I found myself clock watching. Sin on the other hand was better paced but more disjointed. You follow different characters, in unrelated stories, through the film, which helped keep my attention. Sin had some great acting, Marv and Hartigan spring to mind, while watching any scenes with both Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen in were just painful. They were wooden, motionless and completely free of chemistry.
Overall they are both worth a watch, seeing Yoda in action is always worth a cheap ticket but Sin City gets the thumbs up. Now roll on Serenity!
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Posted: 2005/06/08 13:57 | /geekstuff | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
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