Tools Books

I purchased this to use with the forensic theme I use with gifted students I work with. It contains some excellent tools. The children especially enjoyed using the wide selection of facial attributes to put together composites of our "suspects" as well as various members of our school. Fingerprinting and chromatograhpy were also informative and enjoyable activities. This is an excellent kit for schools, clubs, as well as for individual children at home. I admit I was skeptical about purchasing this one online but I am very happy that I did so.

From TARL: "This volume provides the results of an effort to determine the function of Clear Fork tools, a class of prehistoric stone artifact found largely in Texas. The research included an examination of the wear patterns on a selected group of specimens from central and southern Texas, study of the context in which the tools were found, and an experimental archeology program in which replica tools were used to "work" various materials."

In 16 years in the business, this is one of the top two or three how-to books I've read. Hatfield is obviously a skilled teacher as well as a programmer and his books progress logically in regards as to how to develop a PB application. Beyond drily relating steps in a 1,2,3 fashion, he talks about why you as a developer would want to do things in certain ways. Most programmers don't go the extra mile to provide fully robust applications for their users but Hatfield's examples set you along that path. The technique of developing an application and adding features based on the material just covered in the chapter works wonderfully. You have to think before coding the examples, and understand what you have just read. This book and a function reference should be all you need to get a tremendous start on programming in PowerBuilder.

Bought this book for my father, he was impressed with the great illustrations and text. Nuff said.

This is the definitive book on the subject. If you want to know about (the subject) it's all here. The thing it does not cover are the companies. To this book a plane is a plane. If you want to know wether a 1924 sargeant is worth more/better than a 1913 Stanley buy a dealer catalogue. If (on the other hand) you want to know what a wheelright's felloe saw looked looked, this is for you.

Dictionary of Woodworking Tools This book is so well researched, you will never need another. Dip into it; read it to learn how to use a particular tool; just enjoy. Whatever your interest in tools, this book will increase your knowledge and enjoyment.

Great strategies that you can use the next day in your classroom! Helped me with my wide range of 1st and 2nd grade learners!

I'm a very big fan of the "lynda" training titles. I've used many of them, and they've helped me a ton. But since they are done by many many different instructors, their quality does vary from title to title. Well, this one is at the very tip top of the heap. Awesome awesome awesome is all I can say.

He first goes through all the sound basics: phase, frequency, bit depth, data rate, etc. Then he talks about different setups for recording or producing music. He goes into all sorts of things like different hardware, software, and even cables. Then the rest of the training talks about capturing, editing, manipulating, and finally authoring music. Besides just the "basics" he goes into some pretty cool things like applying different common effects and gives you tips on how and when to apply them.

He doesn't assume any familiarity with producing, editing, or performing music, so it's really great for those just starting out. One thing to note is that when he is showing how to do things on the computer, he is always using "Pro Tools" (by Apple) to do them. His lessons he explains in a pretty general way that should be applicable to most toolsets, but for those that use Pro Tools, look at this as an added bonus.

Highly recommended!

Janine Warner's DIGITAL FAMILY ALBUM: SPECIAL OCCASIONS TOOLS FOR MAKING DIGITAL MEMORIES could also have been featured in our Computer area but is reviewed here for its family focus, perfect for any with home and family and ideas for celebrating special holidays. Here are all the tools needed to turn family photos into festive cards, scrapbook pages, cookbooks, websites and more, offering an array of recommended software and tools and teaching how to share projects via the Internet. Color photos throughout pack a guide perfect for any who would put together a home scrapbook of impressive quality based on family photo archives.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

A friend wrote to me: "A couple of months ago, I purchased a book entitled, The Digital Producer, by Curtis Poole and published by Focal Press. It is aimed toward Avid users, in particular, but broadly usable by any non-linear system owner. One of the key features of the book is a system, provided on CD-ROM, for logging, storyboarding, scripting and a wealth of functions in production. It is the most comprehensive system of its kind I have yet seen and its strongest feature is that it works the way we work, not like some computer analyst who thinks he/she knows something about production."

I wrote back: "This program automatically does what I've been asking about (storyboarding). In its storyboarding feature, you can input an image file. I've imported a .bmp and it resizes it for me and places it on the page. Then you select another view of the page and it gives you the same image but larger size with any narration in the column next to it. These can be printed out and pasted around and . . . it's hard to contain my enthusiasm for this thing. Since you have it already you know all of this but, I'm blown away! Blown away!"

I can not say enough about this book/CD/and FileMaker template collection. If you can not organize your production with this package, you can not organize a production. It has shaved months off of my production schedule. Thanks for the great work!