Languages Books

I've searching for an equal to this book but the closest I've read is the sequel! You've got to read this book! You won't regret it!

This is one great book. This book has some great characters, storylines, and is indeed very intense. The characters are dynamic and the storyline is ever-changing. The sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World answers many questions. If you have a few spare moments a day, you'll make it at least half an hour of spare time a day. You WILL READ THIS BOOK! It's that good.

THE BOOK IS ALWAYS BETTER! I WISH THE MOVIE COULD HAVE DELIVERED THE BACKGROUND INFO. LIKE THE BOOK. JUST LIKE IN JAWS THE BEST PART WAS THE BUILDING OF THE UNKNOWN MAN-EATE

Es un libro de accion trepidante, no vas a poder dejar de leerlo, tiene todo lo necesario para gustarte, ciencia ficcion, accion, etc. Tienes que tenerlo.

He leído este libro dos o tres veces en ingles y es uno de mis libros favoritos. Hay mucha acción, suspenso, personajes muy interesantes, y un argumento inteligente y emocionante con ideas muy originales. Hay algo por todas las personas. Michael Crichton es un autor extraordinario. Cuando lo leo, no puedo pararme hasta lo termino. Porque soy una estudiante de español, decidí leerlo en español también. La traducción de Parque Jurásico es buenísima y el lector no pierde nada de esta adaptación en comparación del original. Yo recomendaría Parque Jurásico a todas las personas. Si usted le gusta la película "Jurassic Park", le gustaría la novela Parque Jurásico muchísima.

One of the most difficult hurdles a QA new to performance testing can go through is shifting their testing methodology from specific to componenents to a balanced environment-wide perspective. This book helps guide the Architect or QA through the process of discovering HOW we look at metrics and WHY we use certain metrics over others. This is much more useful in the long run than rather just looking at WHAT to look at since this can vary depending on your specific infrastructure.

If your reading a RedBook on WebSphere Performance Tuning and you haven't yet figured out what your Peak Average Load is, your performance testing is doomed to fail. This book guides you on the right path to the methodology that will work for your testing. It provides test plan guidelines and even sample scripts. In addition, there are several guidelines for analysis and interpretation.

The book only requires a couple of things to be a truely complete performance testing guide in my opinion: More detailed information and guidelines for Performance Testing Failover situations and slightly more concise guide for scripting. For the type of sites that you'll use this book for, you'll most likely have more complicated scripts and script requirements.

Over all, this book provides a great introduction of the core concepts and outlines quite a few of the more overlooked requirements in this increasingly important field.

This book's title has "Java" in it (and book covers Java performance analysis very well), but large part of it is about web performance analysis approach and methodology that can be applied to non-Java web sites. This is a great resource and a must have for those who deals with performance of web sites. Simply look at the table of contents and you'll love it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0201844540/ref=sib_rdr_toc/104-1411948-5301507?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00H#reader-link

It takes a comprehensive look at the java performance analysis. It is very good at describing common bottlenecks be in architect, hardware (load balancing) , user interface etc.

Ideas are well received by our team and book provide food for thought on diverse topics. We have continuous integration testing and continuous inspection (and adaptation) for performance testing and this book was very helpful.

This is an excellent book, providing thorough coverage of performance analysis. Although this book is aimed at Java based sites, it would serve as a good primer for anyone learning how to tune a website with dynamic content. The authors assume the reader has only basic familiarity with internet technologies, and explains concepts as needed. After providing a basic theoretical grounding, the authors illustrate the concepts with a case study, going from simple to complex.

The book is well-organized and thought out, and presents its information in an understandable, easy to follow fashion. I particularly like the inclusion of the test and capacity planning forms in the appendix. This gives readers the chance to put the information to work, instead of just giving case studies or presenting only theory.

A highly recommended and informational book.

The team of authors who wrote this book have two things going for them - in-depth knowledge of performance analysis, and, most importantly, the ability to impart that knowledge in a crystal clear manner.

I like the way this book starts out, showing the contrast between a bricks & mortar store and its online equivalent. This introduces the basics - throughput, transaction, page and user rates, response times and states. More than an easy to follow introduction, it contains all of the key elements of performance analysis, doled out in easy to understand chunks, and sets the stage for the rest of the book.

Every facet of a typical environment is covered, including Java server performance factors, external and internal factors related to networking, load balancers, protocol behavior, and Java internals. The chapter on performance profiles of common web sites is especially useful. Different site types are characterized in a set format that shows caching potential (of the site type), any special considerations, and specific performance testing considerations. This allows you to go directly to the type of site you are going to test, get the relevant information, then proceed to conduct the testing, which is covered in subsequent chapters.

The chapters on testing begin by showing how to develop the test plan, associated test scripts, and select the right tools to support the testing. The areas covered in these chapters are comprehensive. Actual test execution and results analysis are covered in equal detail, using examples and scenarios. One especially useful chapter is 13, Common Bottleneck Symptoms, which is useful to track the cause of observed results that do not match expected ones during testing.

This book goes beyond testing, though - it also covers capacity and performance planning, which is normally a discipline onto itself. Again, excellent advice and coverage of key points. The appendices are an invaluable collection of templates, worksheets and checklists.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It exemplifies top notch writing, is well illustrated, and is technically accurate, and based on proven approaches.

When a newspaper goes out of business, it's sometimes as if it never existed and everything it did is buried, rarely to be exhumed again unless it is some researcher.

Wire service people have labored in obscurity for decades and only in recent decades have credit lines become common for photos in newspapers or other print sources. Even Magazine credits were sometimes astonishingly small.

There is a UPI still in business, but it is unrelated to the great wire service that competed with the powerful Associated Press. But the photographs made by UPI photographers and others for UPI will live on in the Corbis library, much of it buried in cold underground storage.

What this book has done is to reach down into that vault and pull out some of the more memorable pictures from the UPI days when it covered the world. The names of the photographers may not be familiar except to those in the trade, but they are among the best as these images demonstrate.

An excellent book, well-written and well-edited. More please.

If you like pictures - news pictures that tell a story even after 70 years - you'll love "Picture This! The Inside Story and Classic Photos of UPI Newspictures." If you like good captions that flesh out the images with background information, you'll love Picture This!. The book of 238 black-and-white photographs, written and compiled by Gary Haynes with a foreword by Walter Cronkite, showcases the work of UPI's band of aggressive, talented and serious photojournalists who chronicled the life of the world in images that resonate even after 70 years.

You'll recognize the world-famous photograph of a saluting John-John Kennedy following the funeral of his father and discover the photo of the Dionne quintuplets and the image of George H.W. Bush campaigning in a Chicago suburb.

I have no vested interest in whether you buy Picture This! and never met Gary Hayes. But, I was a newsman with United Press International for 18 years in four states and I am, obviously, partial to UPI and have a sense of the toil and trouble UPI photographers encountered in chronicling news events.

A word of warning, however. When you try leafing through this book with the intention of spending only a few minutes, you will find yourself stopping to peruse an image, reading a caption and re-discovering, and perhaps discovering, forgotten events. Invariably, you will ask yourself: What was I doing at that moment in time, captured by a UPI photojournalist.

Unfortunately, Picture This! does not have the glitz and glitter of a huge table top book. Perhaps, however, that is the charm of a wire service book that underscores the art of black-and-white photographs and the talents of UPI photographers worldwide. These pictures and these photographers never tried to be pretty or charming, only tell a true, accurate story.

PICTURE THIS! THE INSIDE STORY AND CLASSIC PHOTOS OF UPI NEWSPICTURES comes from a veteran syndicate editor and photographer who pairs the best of UPI news photos with an insider's account of the stories behind them. But it's more than just a gathering of key photos linked to major news stories: it follows the wire service industry as a whole, providing a history of its development and evolution, competition with other news services, and how its library ended up in a Pennsylvania cave. An outstanding survey essential for any student of journalism.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

We all take the camera for granted ;but someone having a camera availible at the right time and place;has meant that memorable moments and events have been recorded for posterity.There are many books that have tried to sum up the best photographs of the Century;some are very average,some are very good,and some are excellent;this one is that type.
I often wondered which I would choose if I had to pick 3 favorite photographs.It is very difficult;but three that come to mind immediately,and I don't really know why,are;

The Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima ,as the best photograph from
the Second World War.

Oswald being shot in Dallas,probably since iI saw it "live" on TV.

and,

Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to President Kennedy,again
watched "live" on TV.

Anyway those are my picks,but with a little more thought,I could think of others just as momentous;such as the collasping of the World Trade Center on 9/11;which I watched being built;when I worked in the next block at the corner of Broadway Ave. & Nassau St.
UPI published many of the great photographs of the Century and if you've wondered what happened to all their 11.5 million photographs;they ended up in a cave in Pennsylvania,owned by Bill Gates's Corbus.
Gary Haynes has put together this wonderful collection from these archives ,along with comments on the photographs,circumstances and photographers.
In this large book of 256 pages and 238 B&W photographs, Haynes will enthrall you and bring back many memories. You'll remember seeing many of them,you may have even watched sone take place (live or on TV);and others will be new to you.But one thing is for sure,you'll enjoy this remarkable collection.
Here are some of what is included;

The Hindenbury exploding in 1937.

Barrels of wine being dumped in the gutter in Los Angeles,in the
1920's.

The KKK parade in Long Branch,NJ,on July 4,1924.

Truman holding up the Chicago Times announcing "Dewey Defeats Truman"
November 3,1948.

People viewing John Dillinger on a slab,July,1934.

Rare photograph of JFK in a hat;and not the top hat at the Inaugural.

Hermann Goering ,accustomed to ostentatious luxury,eating from a tin
plate during a break in his Neurenberg tria.

JFK and Sinatra as best of pals.

President Truman playing a tune with Lauren Bacall draped across the
piano.

Louis Armstrong serenading his wife Lillian in front of the Sphinx.

and even some humor ,such as;

Lee Travino ,emerging from a rough ,holding a large snake on the end of
his club.Though it was a prank rubber snake,it always startled the
bystanders.
What a wonderful collection of photographs and many thanks to both Haynes for putting them together and least, but not all,to the photographers who took them.

My husband worked for UPI Newspictures from 1961 to l981 and shared the ups and downs of UPI and Gary Haynes has captured the story of the wonderful photographers and their work who were always out numbered by the AP and were able to compete and win many stories by sheer determination. UPI Newspictures had a great planner,Charley McCarty who out thought the oposition and two fantastic photo editors Ted Majeski and Larry Desantis who could find the best images on the film they edited. This books shows some of the photos they found on the film made by the hardworking photographers who never were willing to let the AP beat them. Thanks to Gary Haynes for putting it all in this book.

My sister and I are making a movie about pirates and this is by far the best book out there to learn the language. It is simple but covers a large amount of information, Including how to pronounce all the words. This is a great book for anyone wanting to learn how to speak pirate.

The book arrived yesterday and I spent hours last night perusing it learning about all things pirate. I'm not a pirate groupie or anything, but I got sucked in. I kept thinking I'd put the book down any minute to go fix dinner . . . watch TV . . . go to bed . . . you get the idea. The book is just fun. There is a hidden treasure quest at the back of the book. Even though the "contest" is officially over, I had fun just messing around with the clues, which would lead me to other discoveries, which would lead to even more cool stuff. Before I knew it, I'd lost the evening just playing with this book. It is certainly not a book you would sit down and read cover to cover, it's in more of a dictionary or encyclopedia format than a book of prose, but its entries are fascinating, and you can quickly while away the hours trying to solve the puzzle, learning the lingo for every situation a pirate might encounter, and learning to insult your friends and enemies in pirate-speak.
If you're even remotely interested in pirates, do yourself a favor and get a copy of this book.

Basicly a text book for pirate wannabes. Everything you wanted to know about pirates and more can be found in this book

Who would ever expect to find such a fun book! My daughter loves Pirates and I had read that Sept. 19 is talk like a Pirate book, she loves it! Only at Amazon would expect such a find!

THE PIRATE PRIMER: MASTERING THE LANGUAGE OF SWASHBUCKLERS AND ROGUES represents the only general reference to examine the language of pirates, offering up a pirate vocabulary complete with pronunciation and grammar. Three centuries of distinctive terms and usages from TV, literature and history blend into entries organized by 'oaths', 'commands', 'retorts' and more. Any writer involved in pirate representation needs thorough knowledge of the lingo, making THE PIRATE PRIMER a pick for any writer's library.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Simple and beautiful. Not a copy of what is "out there". Very authentic. I cried. And to know that this book assists orphans, it really makes a difference.

The Positive Child: Ivonne Delaflor has a unique way to touch all our hearts, and it may be through our children; it may be because of our children; or it may be in spite of our children. When you read this book you will find many innovative and powerful ways to connect sweetly with your children's hearts. And since I, too, am a child, I particularly enjoyed learning new ways to allow the natural exuberance of being a child to come out in me. Excellent!

This is another MUST READ book for parents on the quest for positively impacting their children through the language of love. Ms. Delaflor, as usual, imparts great insights and practical tips for parenting. There are numerous and fabulous ideas to incorporate into your own parenting style and philosophy as well. Her personal stories about her own parenting experiences further add to the flavor of this wonderfully written book. Two thumbs up!

I loved it! I am not the spiritual type person. But this book was simple and practical. It moved me; and my children love when I read the poems and affirmations to them. I do not know if they understand what I say, but the words are so conscious and the moment with them so precious that is worth to believe that children understand everything. I am going to buy other books of the author as well.
thank you

THE POSITIVE CHILD IS AN EXTRAORDINARY BOOK. IT IS A CLEAR, COMPLETE AND INSPIRING TOOL FOR PARENTS, TEACHERS, EDUCATORS AND PEOPLE IN GENERAL. IF CHILDREN WOULD BE RAISED AND BROUGHT UP IN A MORE POSITIVE AND CONSCIOUS WAY THE WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE, FOR THE CHILDREN OF TODAY WILL BE THE LEADERS OF TOMORROW. THIS BOOK PROVIDES US WITH THE GUIDELINES TO DO SO.

This is not a review on pragmatics of human communication, it is a review on a book. This might be an imperative read when you're working with human beings and/or when you're a pragmatist, but you'd probably already knew everything in it. This is no book for the communication specialist: it will be too disturbing. There is no 'sender', 'no channel' and 'no reciever' in the bbok. It also has no 'message'. It is also not recommended for people who do not want to change. Finally, it is not for lay people, because it is better to live in ignorance than know that a conversation in basically about nothing.

That human relationships are something mysterious and intriguing is hardly a question. But whether an account of them that is limited by scientific standards can do justice to their complexity and nature is quite another. However, I'm convinced that in this case the subject not only survives the operation - the methodology and presentation don't kill their subject or explain it away - but benefits from it to a rather surprising extent. That is, it achieves the difficult task of being both accurate and rigourous on the one hand and sheading light on the parts of us that have to do with us being human on the other - the thoughts and feelings in our behaviour. This is not only in stark contrast to the behaviorist paradigm dominant at the time this work was written, but marks an equally important departure from the intrapsychic focus of psychoanalysis. Thus the introduction of models based on cybernetic principles, systems theory, game theory, mathematics etc allowed for a completely new dimension in human relations to appear.

The new approaches that made it possible and which found so excellent synthesis in "Pragmatics.." are to a considerable extent traceable back to the works of Gregory Bateson. Indeed, it wasn't untill reading his "Steps to the Ecology of Mind" that I came to realize this. However, the relative lack of originality is compensated by the degree of integration and condensation achieved in "Pragmatics" - perhaps higher than any other single writing in "the Palo Alto framework" before or after has (intended) - which naturally exceeds that of "Steps..." - which is a collection of Bateson's articles dating from 1930s to 1970s. So above anything else, the two make an excellent complementary reading.

The last chapter of this book, which I read over 30 years ago, and still remember to this day, is a true stunner, especially the last sentence. The truth therein is timeless. When I finished it, I remained seated and awestruck for a long time, contemplating a cosmic truth which has never left me to this very day. The specific memory is carved in stone, so to speak.

Ever heard of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig? Well, POHC goes even further - towards a mathematical truth about our very existence. This book is far more than its title suggests. Quite simply it is the second most important book I've EVER read... and Pirsig's is not the first, either.

If you have the intelligence to absorb it, this book will probably change the very foundation of what you call "me"... it will fundamentally challenge your mind. Read it if you have confidence in your OWN intellect.

BTW - for a reference point, I was the only student in my class at Western Michigan University who apparently understood the implications of this book. It was a 400 level Communications course with 28 students, and the course was "built" around the book.

A very intresting book. After I have got this book, I acquired all the other books by the author and found that this book is probably his best one. A must read for those who are interested in knowing the interactions between communication and paradoxical psychotherapy.

I bought the book wanting to know something more about the world of communication and was delighted to find references to my youth interests: logics and mathematic and to my more recent one: spirituality. What was of a particular interest, even if it might be considered a bit partial, was the importance the authors put on paradoxes both as the root for patology and cure. In this latter respect references are given to zen sayings and their relationships to actual therapeuthical episodes.
A problem stemming for the emphasis put on the interrelated cause of neurosis is that individuals tend to be quite neglected: so giving the feeling that people having no stable relationships with other people must be either totally healty or... incurable.
Already bought two other books from the same author.

Most of the RAC books focus only on RAC. This one covers ALL the aspects from network, server (CPU, memory, IO interface, NIC ...), storage, OS, Oracle and beyond. THE book you need for deploy Oracle and/or RAC.

Many books around Oracle's advanced topics simply parrot the manuals. Julian avoids that. Instead, he describes Real Application Cluster technology from the ground concepts up to full implementation, with practical notes and tips. He gets into topics that the manuals never touch, and much of what he writes can be useful in any RAC environment, not just Linux.

I whole-heartedly recommend this book and own both the paper and eBook version which I often reference.

This book delivers what it promises. It contains a great balance of technical detail,examples and theory. It encompasses all aspects of implementing/maintaing 10g RAC on Linux.

Very well written. No mater you are a Pro or a newbie, it will be helpful. A very well written book.


Highly recommended.

This book can easily be used as a college textbook on Oracle RAC. I am studying for the Oracle Certified Master exam and this is possibly the most high level book on Oracle I have read.

It has 3 major strengths which I found to be superior to any Oracle RAC books I have read (including the manual from Oracle).

1)Technical Depth
2)Comprehensive Overview and instructions
3)Quality of writing


1)Technical Depth
The authors write about Linux and Oracle and are high level experts in the subjects. For example, the authors have a very detailed description of how Oracle Cache Fusion handles locking across all the nodes in a RAC environment (probably the crown jewel of RAC technology). They also discuss, in detail, different types of CPU, memory, and storage and contains detailed description of each architecture. Lastly, it contains vast number of "how to" install, configure, change, analyze, backup/restore, and utilize Oracle RAC and Linux.

2)Comprehensive Coverage and Instructions
No small amount of detail has been skipped. The book contains every utility (there are many) provided by Oracle to implement RAC. It provides a good step-by-step coverage of Linux and Oracle RAC installation as well what each step is adding to the RAC environment. To top it off, it adds how to performance tune, administer, troubleshoot, backup/restore, and use Dataguard in a RAC environment. I can't think of a subject on RAC which the authors did not cover.

3)Quality of Writing
I was pleasantly surprised how well written this book is. Although far from a Pulitzer Prize material, it certainly belongs in that category amongst the Oracle books. Every praragraph has been well organized and written. The proofreader of this book deserves major praise for their work.

What can I add to the previous reviews praising for this book?
I wonder nothing... or little...

But lets list some important issues about "Processing", at least for me. (1) The errata shown in the processing site (www.processing.org) is already corrected in the current printing. (2) My goal in reading this book is to learn enough Processing to be able to give an impulse to my child -- which loves arts, and spends much of hers Net-surfing time in deviantART -- to learn and develop programming skills. (3) The book is itself a piece of art. (4) It has a nice and beautiful hardcover package. (5) Greetings to MIT Press and the editor(s) of the book for achieving such a nice product. (6) Although having about 700 pages, the book nevertheless has a size which allows one to read it at bed, before going to sleep. (7) In a few weeks, interspersed with the many other readings I have to do each day, I managed to read already almost 1/3 of the book and plan to go till the end. (8) Finally, Processing is a Java/C/C++/C#/Python/Perl... kind of language, what makes the absorption of the language semantics and syntax very easy for a veteran like me.

And perhaps one of these days I become a digital artist :-)

This is a great text, from the authors of the software itself. I'm only through the first hundred pages or so, but it's a fairly well-presented volume of information split into easily digested chapters, on everything from the command structure for creating graphics to the math that governs such efforts. The authors cover not only the rationale behind their own programming language, but also touch on the thinking behind digital graphic and artworks as a whole...

While the chapters are a little scattered for the linear reader (e.g., certain of the mathematical function chapters are broken and split into chapters that would flow a little better with no break between them), the authors are fairly clear in their intro and table of contents that the text is meant to be read and digested in a variety of ways, linear being only one method.

There are a few problems with the explanations of some of the syntax and command structure, but overall, the book is a sound investment for a newby like myself, who hasn't visited programming in a number of years, and needs a primer/refresher, as well as a source for the more advanced coding artist. I recommend the book without reservation.

This book is, quite simply, a godsend. If you are an artist that enjoys tinkering with all things technological (especially an artist that enjoyed mathematics or beating up your computer in high school lab class) than it's certainly for you. If, on the other hand, you are the type of person that hopes to breeze though this and start applying "techie things" to your video art, then you are in for a let-down...it IS a bit tough for someone that has never played with a computer programming language. No way around it, you're going to have to WORK!!

But, that's the thing. You're supposed to work, massage, twist, graft, apply, subtract and otherwise mangle these functions and commands until they do some (random, unexpected) beautiful thing. This is exactly what the authors want you to do. Take their simple equations and use your imagination to change them up a bit and make your own.

And, a big plus is how the whole book is structured. It starts with simple enough topics and progressively increases in difficulty, BUT, and here is the stroke of genius for artsy types, it does so by switching the topics here and there from shapes, to type, to math, to random, to trig, to type again, back to shapes...etc. So, you see, it's structured (if you read from cover to cover in a linear fashion) in a way that will NOT bore the reader in any way. It's as if Reas and Fry knew that most of us artsy types were (completely and hopelessly) ADHD and needed this kind of variety to keep our interest (lord knows they probably wish they did, coming from artistic backgrounds before entering MIT as grads). And, as an added bonus, if you are the kind of person that likes the topics all neatly together, there is a second topical index behind the main index so you can jump through the book by topic.

In closing, Reas and Fry have done us "new media" types a great service by developing a trimmed-down form of Java programming so that we don't have to do the heavy work and learn full-blown Java or C++ on our own (though, after using this language, the hope is that it WILL get us "artsies" to learn those higher level languages and make genre-smashing art). So, get going!

P.S. The only thing I wish this book had were MORE Exercises at the end of each topic. Or, a workbook that had more problems to solve, like my old Calculus text that had 30 problems after each section. Guys, could we, just maybe, extend the problem sets in a future edition, from three to maybe 10? It would be much appreciated! :)

So far (hey!, its a big book, and dense material) this is an excellent book covering the basics of processing. I plan on spending some quality time with this on my vacation.

I hope to post some video on it later, as well as some examples of programs I make on my blog.

Tim

I have been watching the development of processing and the processing community for a few years but until now haven't explored it much.
I create live visuals for musical performances - mostly within the chiptunes music scene (people using game console hardware to create new music). Originally I did all of my work with PureData, GEM and other libraries but then decided to move to performing with handhelds, writing code for the GP2X and Gameboy Advance (because unlike newer machines, the GBA has video out).

For an upcoming project, I decided that I wanted to create a web "playable" version of the software that I have created for the gp2x (where the visuals react to the joystick, button presses, etc) - enter Processing!
I decided that Processing would be the best tool for this job because it is easy to deliver on the web, has functions for interactivity (key presses, mouse actions, etc), and is open source which is important to me.

After looking at the Processing.org website, I decided that while there is a good reference there, a book might be nice. I was pleased to find the book "Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists" written by the creators of Processing, Casey Reas and Ben Fry and thought that no matter how useful it would be, it was good to support the developers of the project.

The pleasant surprise was that book is great!
I was expecting something like an extended reference book but it is much more than that. For one, this is a book that teaches programming concepts regardless of the language used to implement them. Although I have previous programming experience, I know that I could give this book to someone with no previous experience and they would be able to follow along and not only learn Processing, but learn programming. Sure, you can learn programming by reading C (or name your favorite language here) tutorials, writing text to the screen, reading and writing to files, etc. but ... I think that for some people it's much more exciting and motivating to see cool things happen, shapes moving, colors changing, etc. when they type in commands, learn about functions, conditionals, objects and so on. This book does that.

Another interesting thing about the book is that periodically there are interviews with visual artists who create with software - and not all with processing but with various types of software. I liked these and could imagine seeing more (or just new ones) in future editions of the book or online. I'll admit that I only use open source software so I am biased, but could imagine seeing more mention of Pd (Pure Data) as alternative to Max/Jitter.

[...]

Overall, the book is very well written and enjoyable to read even when you aren't in front of a computer (I read much while traveling) - the authors make reference to many pioneers of computing, visualization, motion graphics, film, etc. and I had fun looking up those whose works I wasn't familiar with. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in creating visuals with computers.

This covers C# and the most basic .net pretty well and is easy to understand. I just wish it covered more framework, but I guess its got to stop somewhere.

I have read a few programming books and I can honestly say that no single one has had more positive impact on my level of programming skill and knowledge than this one. Let me preface this by saying that this is not a beginner book. That is, if you have never programmed with C# before, this is not the book for you. However if you have just finished a "beginner" book and are looking for the next step, then I highly recommend this book for you. Whether you are planning on getting into ASP.Net development, WinForms, SOA, or even XNA, this book will provide you with a firm grasp of the language fundamentals that will make jumping into any or all of the above much easier. The book is broken down into several chapters, each one covering different key topics of the C# language such as basic data types (what is boxing? How does the compiler handle value types vs reference types and why should you care?), Generics, Serialization, Reflection, and COM Interop, just to name a few. Mr Balena also maintains an online blog at the Code Architects site and has even been kind enough to personally answer a few of my questions that I had about the topics covered in the book. I can't recommend this book more, it really did make the difference for me between being a C# enthusiast and a professional C# developer.

Francesco Bakena is a well-known author, the book is good.
The themes and the examples are clean. The same line as Visual Basic. I recommend.
Manoel de Assis - Brazil - [...]

Programming Microsoft Visual C# 2005: The Base Class Library (Pro-Developer)

I sought and purchased this book for the purpose of moving to C# 2005 from 2003. I have an extensive library of language and class references, guides and detailed texts for .NET 1.1. Much of that information will, of course, serve me well with the newer language, so what I sought was a good, basic introduction to C# 2005 that covered the important differences in the base classes. This book seems to have been written exactly for me!

Balena has an easy style of writing, also, that just seems to allow the information to jump right into your brain. There are other authors whose technical expertise is obvious to me, and whose books I regularly look to buy, but whose writing have quirks that can distract me at times. Balena is not such an author. Clearly, he knows how to make proper use of the IBrain.InputInformation(T info) method, rather than using the older, weakly-typed IBrain.InputInformation(object info) method. OK. Bad joke. But I hope you got my point!

If you have C# skills of no less then an advanced beginner, and want to find yourself securely in the intermediate range, then you have found the right book. Read it once and you will find your skill set drastically improved. Read it twice and study it thoroughly, and you will find yourself getting turned to for help from your more senior developers. Quite the ego booster.

It's well written, has appropriate examples for the target audience, and doesn't get bogged down in beginning C# material. It has plenty of advanced material, if that is what you are looking for.

Quick-Start Spanish is a fun and interactive resource for learning the Spanish language. It brings the basics of Spanish language alive through stories. As you go through the book, the learning is natural and easy. Arlene Jullie uses teaching strategies that are fresh and effective. You will enjoy this experience.

I am currently a freshman in high School and taking Spanish 3. Quick-Start Spanish has helped me learn Spanish at a faster pace. This is a great book for students to use as a reference along with their school books. The book makes learning Spanish fun.

I found the Quick Start Spanish book to be a very helpful resource before, during and after taking spanish courses. It has a way of giving hints and reminders that stick with you to help you remember important spanish speaking rules. Arlene uses fresh, innovative ideas incorporated into the learning of spanish! Espanol es muy divertido!

This is a fantastic way to learn Spanish. The book is very user-friendly and self-explanatory. Its use of activities, play-on-words and humor help the lessons become easier to commit to memory than the "high school classroom" method. Arlene has a talent for making languages fun and easy to learn. This book is a great tool for beginners, intermediates or those who want a refresher course in the language.

I needed to learn Spanish for a trip to Mexico. I wasn't sure this book would work but a friend of mine said "trust me" so I bought it. I just got back and I had a Great Time! The best part was that people understood me and I understood them!

I can't recommend this book more. It makes learning Spanish fun and easy. Buy it, use it, Love it.