25 Wednesday Jan 2012
Tags
Today I did something stupid. I tried to cast a base class into a derived class. Not my best moment. I really need to get more sleep.
On the plus side, it looks like I will be getting a 3rd monitor at work.
24 Tuesday Jan 2012
Posted in Opinion
THREE NON-FICTION BOOKS EVERYONE SHOULD READ
There are tons of books out there I could recommend. I will not list the Bible or the Catechism or any other official church document/book since EVERYONE should be reading those anyways. Most of the non-fiction books I read happen to be religious, and my choice therefore will be my top 3 religious non fiction books!
THREE BOOKS OF FICTION EVERYONE SHOULD READ.
THREE AUTHORS EVERYONE SHOULD READ
THREE BOOKS NO ONE SHOULD READ
20 Friday Jan 2012
Posted in Book Reviews
Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau by Jean Bernard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
From the first page I was captivated by the simplicity of the writing and the horror of the story. The book recounts the time that Fr. Bernard spent in the concentration camp of Dachau.
It is a beautiful account of humanity, humility and the best and worst of what we can do to each other. The horrors portrayed in this book had a deep impact on me. I always knew that life in a concentration camp was horrible but to actually read a first person account of the day-to-day life with all its moments was very eye opening.
The incredible hardship these men endured, and the constant ridicule and hunger they lived with is hard to imagine. Yet these men still managed to find Christ in all this mess. Some of the most amazing moments in the book come when these starved and barely alive men get to sneak in a small piece of the Eucharist, and are overfilled with joy that they can have their Lord with them in this suffering.
This book is incredibly important. It reminds us how the Nazis treated those who believed in Christ. The book is very graphic and truthful. I highly recommend it to everyone.
19 Thursday Jan 2012
Posted in Catholic, On the web
Tags
Best response video so far for the Why I hate Religion Video
19 Thursday Jan 2012
Posted in Book Reviews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Dresden Files are my guilty pleasure. I love these books. They are like McDonald’s of books. Really yummy and addictive.
Our favourite wizard gets himself stuck between fighting Faeries this time. As always with Dresden things just go from bad to worse to super horrible. The guy just doesn’t get any breaks.
This is my favourite entry in the series so far and I will be enjoying more of this reading junk food soon!
15 Sunday Jan 2012
Posted in Book Reviews
Tags
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
How in the world did I not know about this fabulous book before. I loved every thing about it.
The story of three kids traveling to different planets in order to save their father from the evil IT.
It’s a coming of age story about love and good vs evil. It is a story where we find out what happens when we realize that our parents are not infallible heroes we set them up to be. It is a story about a love between siblings. It is a story about being different. It is presented in such a brilliant way that I can’t recommend it enough.
I will definitively be checking out the rest of the series.
13 Friday Jan 2012
Posted in Book Reviews
Tags
Count to a Trillion by John C. Wright
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
There is a lot to love about “Count to a Trillion”. It’s a great SF space opera. It is full of things that you would want to see in a space opera. It has dueling lawyers. It has a princess! It has anti matter weapons. It has a giant diamond star with a message from an alien race. In fact it has so many great ideas that at times you want the author to stop and dwell a bit more on some of them.
I am a big fan of John C. Wright other space novels “The Golden Age” trilogy. This book reminded me a lot why I loved that series so much. Even though at times the dialog is a bit dry and the SF and math techno babble is incomprehensible to me, I greatly enjoyed this book.
The book ended with a cliffhanger and I can’t wait for the next installment in this series.
13 Friday Jan 2012
Posted in On the web
Tags
Poor misguided man. A lot of what he says is fine but vast majority is just insane. Where does he think he got the book he loves so much from? How does he even know about Jesus? Religion perhaps? People that think like him make me sad. It is Christianity light. Picking and choosing the Jesus that best suits us. But it makes him feel good so I guess that’s all that matters.
You can find a fine rebuttal to the video here.
Update:
12 Thursday Jan 2012
Posted in Book Reviews, Web Development
Adaptive Web Design: Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement by Aaron Gustafson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not a bad book, listing various techniques in web development that accomplish “Progressive Enhancement” design pattern. Most of the suggestions and techniques for the HTML and CSS sections are pretty straight forward so I didn’t pick up anything new there. I was happy that the author included microformats since they are hardly ever used yet with wider adoption could be quite useful.
The JavaScript section was more helpful and the final chapter on accessibility was very good.
Overall a good book to pick up to learn about Progressive Enhancement. I find that a lot of developers don’t know about these techniques and as a result the web suffers.
11 Wednesday Jan 2012
Posted in On the web
Awesome. I love these guys. Every week I look forward to their new video.
