References and Standards Books

I already own AIA's Architectural Graphics Standards for Residential Construction, which is an excellent reference book for use in designing, planning, and building a new house or remodeling an existing one. Wanting more information for interior design of a house, I reviewed a copy of this book at the library. The book is primarily targeted to those persons doing interior design work on commercial projects. If you're looking for interior design help for a house, I would recommend buying AIA's Architectural Graphics Standards for Residential Construction to use as a reference and look for other books targeted specifically at residential interior design.

...I think this book is overpriced for what you get. It is fairly basic and a bit light on information. At the same time, it contains quite useful information in an easy to lookup format. For example: How to program panning and dynamics in MIDI (based on your chosen instrument and band); The layout and composition of various orchestra and bands; The range and other lookup information for a wide range of GM instruments.

The "Midi Orchestrator's Handbook" is a good companion to "Arranging Techniques for Synthesists" by Eric Turkel - which is a much beefier book.

The NASB Visual Reference Bible carries the name 'World' as the publishing house; but, surprise, surprise! World was bought out by the country's leading supplier of cheap, inferior-quality Bibles, the one and only Thomas Nelson. Not that World Bibles were that great to begin with. Anyway, this is a glue-bound product, so it won't last very long. The print is large and fairly dark, with World's visual reference system---consisting of four symbols representing what area the verse could represent: i.e., Messianic prophecy; a verse relating to the Second Coming; Miracles; or Prophecy. There is a 60-odd page concordance, and in-verse references. Unfortunately, this has words of Christ in red---actually, it's words of Christ in brown, which vary in shade from page to page sometimes. There are also Book Intros and Themes. This is a nice edition of the NASB, especially because of the print size. It's better than some and worse than others. I have the burgundy bonded leather edition; but it comes in hardback and paperback as well.

First lets talk about the good in this particular NRSV. The overall dimensions are 9.25" x 6.75" x 1.40" slightly bigger than "personal size" but handy enough to tote around just about anywhere. The typesetting looks to be about 10 point with 1 point line spacing, it is very readable. The paper is a pleasant off-white color and thick enough to resist tears and folds. The body text is set in two columns to further ease reading. The Anglicized text (e.g. "colour" vs. "color" et al) is largely transparent. The main feature of this Bible is the 100,000+ cross references set on the outside of each column adjacent to the subject text (left column references on left, right column references on right). The first 26 references in a chapter are labeled "a" to "z", the next 26 references (27->52) re-use "a" to "z" and so on. The "a->z" labels flow from page to page throughout the chapter. This system works quite well. You can always easily find the reference related to a particular call-out. This is a much better system than the "center" references found in most reference Bibles. I frequently use NKJV, NASB, and NIV reference editions side by side with this NRSV. I find the NRSV's cross references to be thorough and of high quality. There are also frequent and incisive titles throughout the text just above the opening verse for that subject (e.g. Mat 1:18 "The Birth of Jesus the Messiah"). This is a much better system than the "top of page" titles found in some Bibles. Now for the bad news. 1) The cover is an avant-garde orange color with a tan and black band at the bottom. The title is set about 1/3 the way down the cover and centered. It simply reads "the Bible". Continuing with this "modern" theme the remaining text on the cover is in lower case except the "NRSV" logo. This cover may get an "A" in art class but it gets an "F" in respect for the word of God. This cover should be deposited in the nearest trash bin on the next printing and replaced with something more respectful of the Holy Scriptures. 2) Page top titles are comprised of three part split-text with starting verse on left, chapter title in center, and ending verse on right. This system is not useable in Bible study because as you scroll the pages (left or right) seeking a different chapter you have to open each scrolled page all the way to its center point to see the chapter title (a royal pain in the neck!). The conventional method of having chapter titles "outside" (chapter title right on odd pages, left on even pages) should be adopted on the next printing. 3) In the New Testament textual back-references to Old Testament verses are poorly distinguished from the surrounding text (see Mat 1:23, 2:6). This Bible does provide a line break before and after the back-reference but sets the back-reference text in the same font as the surrounding verses. At minimum the back-reference text should be set in italic. 4) Words of Jesus are poorly distinguished from the surrounding text (see Mat 3:15). This Bible does put Jesus' words in single quotes but sets the text in the same font as the surrounding text. At minimum Jesus' words should be set in italic, bold, or the more costly "red-letter" method. If the publisher fixes the problems noted above in the next printing, this Bible will become a "5 Star". All of that said, the main functional benefit of this particular NRSV is its excellent set of cross-references.

Although this version is dated, it serves as a handly resourse guide to a variety of legal issues. Well layed out and serves as a jumping off point if you don't know where to begin.

Paper and image quality was not up to the mark for such a high cost book considering the fact that size and number of pages are too low

Only the publisher could call this book the "standard" of die-cast vehicle price guides, since it only covers 16 of the nearly 800 documented brands of die-cast vehicles produced in the last century. What it does cover is comprehensive - 624 pages devoted to an extensive listing of automotive as well as aviation toys and models from Corgi, Dinky, Eagle, Ertl, Exact Detail, GMP, Hot Wheels, Husky, Johnny Lightning (Topper and Playing Mantis), Kyosho, Lledo, Maisto, Matchbox, Minichamps (Paul's Model Art), Racing Champions/NASCAR, and Tootsietoys.

Among the missing are such well-known diecast brands as Anson, Bburago, Majorette, Siku, Solido, Tomica and Vitesse.
The most glaring error is the connection the author makes between Zee Toys and Maisto, an affiliation that never existed. It was M C Toys (May Cheong) that eventually became Maisto, not Zee Toys.

Zee Toys / Zylmex, originally a product of Zyll Enterprise, was eventually purchased by Red Box International. Latest Red Box offerings are now designated as Motormax, yet another brand neglected by this book.

Still, this book manages to provide a wealth of information, enhanced by a 32-page center section of color plates. The rest is in black and white.

To its credit, it is also the first commercially-published price guide that provides a detailed accounting of the complete NASCAR line from Racing Champions.

An additional bonus is an index of models by automotive brand, from Acura to Zephyr.

My own "Toy Car Collector's Guide" remains the real standard for collectors.

I like the book, it doesn't give a lot of information, just the basics which is what it is. The only thing I didn't like is that the "values" of the firearms aren't realistically real world prices, and that it doesn't differentiate between rearsenalled firearms and originals. But for what it does, it's simple and easy to use.

before reading/reviewing the book i can only say one thing that by the name itself looks like it has all the necessary contents.

While this book was quite up to date when it was published in 2002, the advances in the understanding of Web Services since then suggest that you consider a more recent text.

Specifically, there has been a buildout of Service Oriented Architecture, due to significant interest by many developers. Also, a new language has emerged - Business Process Execution Language. This was in response to people using WSDL and finding that while it adequately described a given Web Service, it had a harder time with more involved business logic. And with trying to aggregate multiple Web Services into a larger, dispersed entity. While one method might have been to upgrade WSDL, instead, BPEL was chosen. Starting afresh. But using WSDL and the ideas learnt from it.