Sat, 31 Mar 2007
When Sysadmins Ruled the World - Like that'll Happen!
There is something immensely isolating about working alone in a very
secure, huge data centre, at 4am on a Sunday morning in an isolated
"business park" in rural Scotland that only a few people will ever
understand.
The mind wanders, your ears strain to hear things over the quite loud air conditioning and just five minutes in daylight with a can of diet coke and someone to talk to would make the last 48 hours seem tolerable. It's hard to describe and even harder to capture but When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth makes a decent go of it.
Here is to everyone who has played "hunt the vending machine" while swapping hard drives.
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Posted: 2007/03/31 23:57 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Wed, 28 Mar 2007
Marooned In Realtime - Short Review
Marooned In
Realtime was the first Vinge book I read and it has prompted me to
start looking for all his others.
A small number of time travellers (that can only go forward) awaken to find out humanity is gone. Amid a plan to gather all the other travellers together and kick start the human race one of the more powerful techs dies in odd circumstances, a 9000 year old traveller returns, aliens might be waiting to finish us off and an ex-detective is ordered to lead a manhunt to find out just what happened to the projects architect and biggest supporter (who may have been murdered by old age). Oh and people of different backgrounds don't get on. So some of it is familiar :)
It's also worth noting that this is actually a sequel to The Peace War (which I've yet to read) but it stands alone as a riveting read. The combination of sci-fi and detective story is a favourite of mine and this one is a top notch example of how to do it right.
Summary: humanity is almost finished, a few of the survivors have all too powerful technology, a possible murder might have been committed and one of the lo-techs is roped in to find it. If I had a checklist this book would tick most of them. 7/10.
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Posted: 2007/03/28 23:32 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
True Names - Short Review
This is more like it, True
Names by Vernor Vinge is a great mix of sci-fi and fantasy.
Technical wizards join forces in cyberspace to oppose the "Great Adversary". When one of them is compromised and turned in the real world a hunt for the most dangerous of the online personas is launched, leading to a great chase and some nicely described online battled. I'm not doing it justice, just click the above link dammit.
Summary: an enjoyable, expertly paced story that was one of the first to introduce some of the most common themes in modern sci-fi. It has aged surprisingly well and is more than worth a read. 7/10.
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Posted: 2007/03/28 23:08 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Blood Music - Short Review
I've been on a sci-fi novel kick again recently and despite its short page
count Blood Music by
Greg Bear was the one I found slowest to finish from my first batch.
A rogue biotechnologist starts his own experiments in to biological computers based on his own lymphocytes while on the company clock. He gets caught, ignores all precautions and injects himself with them. They then become intelligent and start spreading. If you're interested in the genre it's nothing you haven't seen before. Just (probably) slower moving and with less interesting characters. Blood music just never grabbed me.
Summary: an OK story of an Earth changing grey goo incident. Not very exciting, dull characters and the pacing felt very slow. 3/10
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Posted: 2007/03/28 22:53 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Mon, 01 Jan 2007
Short Reviews: Cisco Routers for the Desperate and Using Moodle
Cisco Routers for the Desperate (No Starch Press): If you've tech savvy but Cisco
challenged then this books for you. It's not a one stop shop but it covers
almost everything you need to get started. We've just bought an office copy
so I can have mine back. 8/10
-- Cisco Routers for the
Desperate book review
Using Moodle (O'Reilly): Don't bother, read the online docs or the application help pages instead, they contain pretty much the same amount of information.
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Posted: 2007/01/01 11:08 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sun, 24 Sep 2006
Building Scalable Web Sites - Short Review
I really liked Building
Scalable Web Sites, its topic coverage is impressive - the author
obviously knows what he's doing - it's written in a practical, easy to
follow style and the text explains the theory while remaining pragmatic.
There are few books on the market that contain this much useful
information in what has always been an under-documented "niche" and it's
sure to save every admin at least a few scalability related headaches.
If you manage publicly facing web sites, web applications or even an internal site for a large corporation this book is well worth the time. Score: 8/10
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Posted: 2006/09/24 18:35 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sat, 23 Sep 2006
Time Management for System Administrators - Short Review
"What do you think of the Getting Things Done book?"
"I'll worry about time management when a tech publisher has a book on it."
"Have you seen Time Management for System Administrators?"
Queue the sound of Amazon.co.uk being loading in FireFox
I'm happiest when I'm bouncing between lots of different tasks - whether they're all independent or part of a larger project. This is great in an emergency or when I'm working in a small team with a decent workload but not so good when it comes to simultaneously juggling small, quick turn around requests with longer, concentration demanding projects. I need a certain amount of time to pick up where I was - not just to ensure I don't skip a step or make a mistake. Time Management for System Administrators understands why many sysadmins suffer from this and how to remedy (no pun intended) it and some related topics.
The book can be broken up in to three parts, the first, consisting of chapters 1-3, introduces the why of time management, how interruptions play merry hell with our workload and why we devise and stick to routines.
The second chunk of the book, chapters 4-8, explains "The Cycle System" (the capital letters just feel right). This is the authors technique for balancing and controlling your tasks, calendar, priorities and progressing towards your life goals; the last of these is less hokey than it sounds. These chapters were the most interesting part of the book for me and include the topics I'm most likely to dip back in to as I integrate sections of it with my own daily routines.
The closing chapters are a grab-bag of goodies, they cover stress and email management - which may be closely related, eliminating time wasters (unfortunately not a guide to 'removing' your less able co-workers) and the benefits of documentation and automation. This selection of material was the least interesting to me, not just because I'm familiar with the subjects but because they felt a little bolted on. As an example, the sections on using make and processing shell arguments in the automation chapter go on too long in an otherwise technology agnostic book.
Although the title mentions System Administrators there is a lot of useful information in here for other technical staff, developers and QA workers should be able to take a lot away from the book. I found the authors style to be easy going (although I'm not too keen on teaching through repetition in books - if I'm not sure of something I'll reread the paragraph) and the advice seems to make sense. I'm adopting some of the techniques from the book and I'll have to see how they hold up in the field. But that's my part of the deal.
Score: 7/10 - contains some useful techniques, pointers and explanations on why our role has different requirements when it comes to longer term project work and the daily tasks list.
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Posted: 2006/09/23 17:56 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Mon, 18 Sep 2006
Perl Testing Developers Notebook - Short Review
The Perl
Testing Developers Notebook (PTDN) is the first of the O'Reilly
Developers Notebook series I've read. The format's good, a mix of the
cookbook and hacks series, but does the substance match the style?
At nine short chapters this book packs a fair amount in. It starts with how to write, run and read tests in chapters 1 and 2. Moving on to using Devel::Cover (a chunk of chapter 3) and, in chapter 4, introducing Test modules that'll help you cover your bases before releasing a module (or depending on your perspective make you jump through cargo coding hoops.) These early chapters provide a well written, nicely paced, introduction to Perl testing. If this is your first exposure to the Test:: Modules then this section will make your day, otherwise you'll probably skim read it and won't come back to this section, and chapter 4 in particular, after your first time through. The points it makes are sound but it lacks re-read value.
Chapters 5 and 6 cover replacing built-ins, mocking functions and objects and testing databases, both your interactions and the datasets. This is one of the best written examples of mocking using Perl that I've seen (although there isn't exactly a surplus of decent perl mocking documentation, there is a lot of documentation mocking perl but that's slightly different :)) and was the highlight of the book for me.
The book closes with chapters on testing websites (which gives some nice pointers to modules) and Apache modules, using Test::Class and using perl to wrap and test 'other things'. I didn't get a huge amount out of this section, beyond some pointers to modules I wasn't aware of, and it felt like the coverage was quite shallow; it shows you what you can do but seems to stop too early.
In general, the books short size and lots of concise labs fit the "this module does this testing task" format nicely, it's got quite a wide coverage for its page count and gives a number of pointers to modules that can make your testing life a lot easier.
Score: 7/10 if you're just starting out in perl testing. 5/10 if you're not (and most of that is for the mocking chapters).
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Posted: 2006/09/18 21:05 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sun, 17 Sep 2006
The Ten Career Commandments - Short Review
The Ten
Career Commandments isn't my usual kind of book, I got stuck in a
friends office waiting for him to finish up for the day and ended up
reading it because it was the only thing on the desk, and they only had
a 2Mb office 'net connection - the barbarians ;)
The Ten Career Commandments is an easy read that will best serve people just starting out in the world of work. I found that it did prompt me to think about bits of my career wants but it's so generic that it can't really provide any useful push or insights. And if I knew what I wanted I wouldn't be reading this kind of book. If you're new to working it might help you know what the questions are though.
If you do want to read it I'd suggest reading it in an in-store coffee house, the book itself took me no more than 30 minutes to read and if I'd have paid full price then it'd get a much lower score. Score: 4/10
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Posted: 2006/09/17 10:52 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Mon, 11 Sep 2006
Visible Ops - Short Review
When it comes to system administration, the system part can refer to the
paperwork, processes and procedures as much as actual machines. Among
the modern admins worries are such evil beasties as section 404 of
Sarbanes Oxley, the data protection act, log retention for the lovely
police state powers of our government and, in some industries, ISO17799,
BS15000 and other similar standards. One of the topics I've been interested
in recently is the ITIL approach.
The initial hurdle was actually finding out where to start, and so for my first step I picked up (well, my employer bought) Visible Ops. This slim volume (98 pages) packs a lot of common sense. Most of the points it raises, including - the need for change control, inventory management, measuring and that your staff should look at what happened recently before they start tweaking things in an attempt to stumble across a fix - are all insights that most admins pick up over time. But to have them written down in one place, and in such an accessible style, is a great asset.
Although I'm not sure how useful this book will be on my ITIL road trip (I've got the BS15000 standards to read next) I can happily recommend it to everyone running an IT department who feels that things are slipping or that too much time is spent fighting fires. And let's be honest, 98 pages is about all we've got time to read these days :)
Score: 4/5
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Posted: 2006/09/11 21:23 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Tue, 05 Sep 2006
Perl Debugger Pocket Reference - Short Review
A book about a debugging program is never going to be that exciting. At
best it'll be both comprehensive and concise, two things that don't have
to be mutually exclusive, at worst it'll be a dull rehash of the perldoc.
Which type is this one?
The Perl Debugger
Pocket Reference (PDRB) starts with some basic practises to help you avoid
debugging (the usual use strict and use warnings)
before walking through two very basic debugger sessions and then on to
the bulk of the book, the command reference.
It's hard to judge this section of the book, most people will only read through it once (if that) and will probably just dip in when they need to look something up. The commands are broken up by function, not listed alphabetically, which can be annoying but does let you look for better ways to do tasks. The explanations are clear and the examples are mostly useful so it's functional if dull.
PDRB then finishes up with a short introduction to the DB and Devel namespaces, what they do and how you can use them to write your own debugging modules. The coverage of this last bit is well written but very light weight - it shows you what's there, not how to make the most of it.
Down-sides? The biggest example in the book (the linecounter.pl script) is off by two lines in all the examples I tried; which is annoying when you're trying something for the first time and have no idea why it isn't working. I'd also like to see a couple of longer debugging sessions, a couple of pages each, with some of the more advanced functions illustrated.
Score: 6/10. Nicer than the docs but an occasional dip in to rather than an actual read.
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Posted: 2006/09/05 21:11 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sat, 17 Sep 2005
Reading List - 2005/09/17
I always seem to have a huge pile of books to read and an inability to
actually read them in any order. This months pile includes:
Behind
Closed Doors.
I'm a big fan of the Pragmatic Programmers books and this
one is no different. It covers the things that we're thankful good managers
already know and gives us something to throw at^Wto the bad ones. I'm most
of the way through it and it's a 7/10.
My
Job Went to India.
Another PragProg book, this one's interesting both because of the topic (I
have my own Pragmatic Improvement plan so I'm already quite in to this) and
because Chad Fowlers blog
is a great read. The IT market is changing and this book seems to be one of
the few out that helps you prepare for the "New World Order."
The Art of
Project Management.
An O'Reilly book that had me hooked on a brief flick through, it seems to
cover a lot of valuable experience from the IT industry and how to avoid
making a lot of the comment mistakes in projects.
Using Moodle.
This is both the odd one of the bunch and the weakest. It's a guide to
using moodle but it's very focused on basic users. It walks you through
using the different parts of the interface and doesn't seem to really bring
you anything that the docs don't. Just with better editing. I'm half way
through and I'll put a review up when I've finished but for now have a
careful look before you buy.
Now the real question is how many other books will I read in between finishing these?
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Posted: 2005/09/17 13:02 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
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
Mon, 06 Jun 2005
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding -- Book Review
After the enjoyable and easy to read "22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" (my
review) I decided to give "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding" an
afternoon of my time. This book is very similar in presentation, format
and even writing style to the "Laws of Marketing". It's an accessible,
easy read in which each law is broken down in to a very short chapter
that makes it as enjoyable to dip in to while on the go as it does to
read cover to cover.
As you'd expect from the title, this book focuses on branding. Using brands that were current at the time, it presents the authors thoughts on how a brand should be maintained, why tightening your focus is always better than line extension and why a number of the less successful brands suffer their fates. Using a number of (mostly) anecdotal examples the essential points of what not to do with your brand are conveyed in an easy to following and occasionally light-hearted tone.
Although the "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding" contains nothing as profound as the "Laws of Marketing" it does provide some valuable insights on how the big players of the time, some smart and some not so, approached their brands and tried to exploit them. Summary: 6/10.
I've also filed this under 22 Immutable Laws of Branding book review.
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Posted: 2005/06/06 22:19 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Thu, 02 Jun 2005
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing -- Book Review
While marketing books ain't my usual bedtime reading material but as the
Open Source movement continues to forge ever onwards the softer skills are
going to become every bit as useful as writing code or documentation. While
looking for an accessible book on these dark arts I stumbled on Eric Sinks
take on the The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing and just had to read the
original.
The "22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" is an extremely accessible book that details, as you'd guess from the title, 22 common elements of marketing that the authors consider to be (near) immutable laws. While some of the laws are a little shaky most of them present interesting concepts and some candid real life examples.
Although some of the cases examined (BurgerKing and Pepsi come under repeated scrutiny) are great examples of where things went right (or wrong!) some of the brands mentioned were never successful or even launched in the UK so they lose some of their impact.
Summary: 7/10 Good introduction to a number of interesting ideas. The examples could do with an update and a retrospective about their judgements would warrant another point or two.
I've also filed this under 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing book review.
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Posted: 2005/06/02 19:41 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sun, 24 Apr 2005
Little Red Book of Selling -- Short Review
I always feel both a little guilty and odd when discussing books about
sales people and selling. While you need money to survive in any
business the IT people are normally quite removed from the processes of
bringing it in (technical pre-sales is one notable exception). Like most
techs I'm not a natural sales person, add to this my intense dislike of
pushy sales reps, both in my personal shopping and professionally (cold
call me on the phone and I'll NEVER buy your product) and I'm probably not
the ideal audience for this kind of book.
The Little Red Book of Selling is part good advice, part common sense and part pure ego. The author comes across as a very dedicated, driven salesman who focuses more on the long term relationship than the short term sale. Large parts of the (pleasantly small) book cover the essentials such as preparation, why selling based on price is a bad move and other little nuggets of what should be common sense.
Although the text also has (what I've always considered) a slightly American slant with more than the occasional paragraph on positive thinking and motivation the author is refreshingly blunt and honest about where the blame sits when you're unable to sell.
Amusingly the most successful bit of selling advice I picked up from this book was principle 3, "Personal Branding." I now fully appreciate how important this is, the entire book is an excellent example of shameless self-promotion that actually does work both in raising your opinion of a man you've probably never met while still being informative enough to warrant finishing. Summary: 6/10.
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Posted: 2005/04/24 16:00 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
The Tipping Point -- Short Review
I enjoyed the entertaining, if not exactly revolutionary, Blink and went
looking for anything else by the same author. The Tipping Point is very
similar in style and outcome to Blink; it delves in to an interesting
subject in an entertaining way but leaves you feeling a little empty.
The book itself is well written and has a pretty wide appeal, the subjects examined and ideas presented cover such a wide range of examples that there is something in it for almost everyone. The basic premise is that there is a "Tipping Point" where interesting things happen, whether it's moving a product from niche to mainstream using intelligent marketing, treating HIV infection or the prevention of crime in New York certain aspects and people can convert a flash of something in to an epidemic.
The author explains how he sees this happening and shows a number of examples that help reinforce his ideas. While there are a couple of "Yeah, and?" moments there are also some "So that's how it..." which makes it a decent enough read for the price of the paperback. What made it an interesting read for me is that with a greater understanding of some of the principles presented some of the online projects and communities I'm involved in should be able to kick start some more growth, and anything that helps us do that is worth some investigation. Summary: 6/10.
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Posted: 2005/04/24 14:41 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sun, 17 Apr 2005
Seven-Second Marketing -- Short Review.
Ivan Misner has a remarkable reputation in business referral circles as a
master networker and a talented author. Unfortunately Seven-Second
Marketing: How to Use Memory Hooks to Make You Instantly Stand Out in a
Crowd doesn't seem to reflect this.
This slender volume explains the value of a memory hook (or tag-line as some of us know them) before delving in to the different types, such as playing on your name, the nature of your work or using humour and rhyme. Unfortunately after the very brief intro as to the why the bulk of the already small book is spent showing examples and little personal anecdotes from the people that created them.
If you have NO imagination then the samples provided here maybe enough to kick-start your own ideas but they give nothing a couple of hours searching on the web won't match. All in all a great disappointment. 2/10.
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Posted: 2005/04/17 14:10 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Sun, 20 Mar 2005
Danger - Quicksand -- Short Review
I stumbled on to the site for Danger
- Quicksand - Have A Nice Day through one of the other blogs I read and
after reading the first couple of pages was sucked in.
The book doesn't cover anything really ground breaking but where it caught me was pointing out scenarios that I've been in and showing that I'm not the insane one for thinking they were odd or out of place. The author then tries to point out some of the available options. It's not a life changing book (well, not for me as I've lived through a lot of the topics it covers) but it is an interesting read; and there is a free pdf version for you to sample use to get your friends to buy a full paperback copy.
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Posted: 2005/03/20 23:57 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
