Tutorials Books

Imagine this: you are tasked to be responsible for understanding the PostScript language. Perhaps because you need to troubleshoot printing issues, or because you want to write specialized drivers for a custom system. Where to start?

Many recommend that you can get these sorts of resources on the web for free. That's is true, but I prefer to take into account the true cost of doing so. I can't speak for you, but my time is worth more than trying to save a few bucks downloading and printing my own version.

Most tasked with understanding PostScript are typically given the monolithic PostScript Language Reference Manual and perhaps a supplement. If you lack exposure to PostScript, this is a huge and perhaps impossible leap towards PostScript proficiency.

This book goes a long way towards helping the reader quickly understand the basic foundation of PostScript. The book itself is short, small, and easy to read. In fact, its helpful to imagine it as a "PostScript sing a long."

Most higher end PostScript printers support network socket connections directly to the PostScript interpreter, meaning that you can connect and actually work directly with the PostScript monster. Write me and ask if you want to know how.

I found it helpful to simply sit by a computer with this book, read some pages, then duplicate the programs the book illustrates. If your printer supports the socket connections, great. Connect and enter the code directly. Try creating syntatic errors and watch how the PostScript interpreter responds. Understanding these errors goes a long way towards effectively troubleshooting PostScript.

Alternately, you can enter the PostScript code into files, and download them to the printer. Most printers support a verbose debug mode, enabling you to see why the PostScript programs were rejected by the interpreter. This too is rather helpful, educationally and practically.

If you need to learn PostScript, and lack any exposure, get this book. But it will leave you in PostScript first grade...more resources listed in my other reviews pertaining to PostScript.

This book is a great start to postscript programming, but it leaves out some very important details. I found that if you wanted to include images into your postscript file this book is no help at all. Most of the examples in the book you can find on the web, and if you dig a little you will find this entire book in pdf format on the web. My recommendation is to not spend the money.

This book is good for beginner who are writting some basic program. May not be good for advance programming.

This books gives very good start for the programmer who want to learn postscript.

This book provides a very sound approach to research methods. It covers a lot of ground in depth but takes the difficulty of the material ( fro most undergraduate students) into account.

I decided to adopt this text for my course as it is comprehensive, up-to-date, and includes a wealth of supplementary materials that are web-based, as well as available on the accompanying CD. Recommended highly for undergrad AND graduate students.

First, I want to say that I have NOT read this book; I have some comments based on its table of contents. I teach research methods in education, and have served on over a hundred dissertation committees in education and other fields (including several dissertations in psychology), and I would not use or recommend this book primarily because of its extremely limited treatment of qualitative research. Despite the book cover's claim that the book deals with "the entire range of research methodologies in psychology", the coverage of qualitative methods appears to be limited to one chapter on naturalistic and case-study methods. (A second chapter which deals with field research in fact seems to focus on quasi-experimental and single-subject designs, which are not qualitative.) The rest of the book is heavily quantitative/experimental in its approach (there are three chapters on experimental design alone). It seems revealing that although there are sections on the limitations of naturalistic and case study research and correlational and differential research, there is no explicit section on the limitations of experimental research. There is also no discussion of one of the most common qualitative approaches used in psychology--the qualitative interview study, which is different from a "case study". (For more on this approach, I recommend "Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies", by the psychologist Robert Weiss.)

If you are a student in a very quantitatively-oriented psychology department, this may be a useful book for you. However, at a time when many research methods books are devoting much more space to qualitative methods, Graziano and Raulin's book seems a bit anachronistic. Several highly regarded research methods textbooks that are more even-handed in their coverage are David Krathwohl, Methods of Educational and Social Science Research: An Integrated Approach (second edition, 1998), and Colin Robson, Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers (1993; second edition forthcoming). There is also an enormous literature on qualitative methods specifically; simply search this site under "qualitative research".

As a Ph.D. student that is about to start my dissertation I found this book extremely helpful in wading through the various research and analysis methods. Filled with examples (although principally focused on Psychology), the book has helped me plan my dissertation. A great reference book and in my opinion a must have for those who are about to start their dissertation.

This is probably the best book for writing Shaders in DirectX 9.0. It starts off with the basic concepts of the language and builds up slowly to very advanced concepts. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants some learn and practice some serious Shader programming.
A note for newbies though. This is a book for advanced readers. People who already have a decent knowledge of DirectX 9.0. This book WILL NOT teach you the basics of DirectX 9.0. It is meant for Shader programming and it does that with great elegance. However, if you are looking for a beginner level book then look for some other book about general DX programming.

So let's focus on the good.

First, it gives a fair intro to HLSL and shader assembly language. That seems hard to come by. Microsoft's documentation, in web-entangled form, is hardly a tutorial. Vendor documentation mostly points to MS standards, but those are hard for us mere peons to acquire in any intelligible form. This isn't a langauge ref book, but will do until I see a real one.

Second, it gives a good bunch of tips'n'tricks, with lots of listings for illumination models, shadows, and fog. The careful reader will look into the references, the places where new knowledge makes its debut, and will be stronger for it. There's also a chapter that devotes itself to v1 vs. v2. vs v3 compatibility and more. Compatibility is the pits - if you've never dealt with it, your career is probably happy and probably very young.

I was looking for something a little different, though. I just wanted the HLSL and assembly references, with versions, with complete syntax and semantics. This gives enough info for me to guess my way through a lot of it, but really does leave me guessing. For example, p.47 talks about the "_bx2" modifier. It shows three different ways to coax the compiler into emitting that suffix. After about ten minutes of looking at source and asm code, I finally figured out what _bx2 meant - something the authors neglected to tell me.

Shader programming is still a [forgive the phrase] dark art. This book offers a few chants and incantations, but does not make it a science. Still, it's the most coherent reference I've seen, and I'm sticking with it.

If you know nothing about the High-Level Shader Language (HLSL), then the information you need is in this book. Unfortunately, it's not a particularly well-written book. It's not horrible either, but it could have used better organization and clearer writing. For example, the "Introduction to the DirectX HLSL" chapter never gives an overall picture of how vertex and pixel shaders interact, and how data flows between them and the hardware. The author jumps right into to discussing shader syntax. Then, when he's barely explained enough to see what's going on, he jumps into a section on optimization, then a section on compatibility details between various shader levels, then he abruptly starts talking about code sequences that generate "_bx2" modifiers, without any set-up or real explanation of why. I realize that each chapter is written by a different person, but all of this random gear-shifting is in the same chapter.

As in any book with many contributors, the quality varies. The chapter on shadow volumes is detailed and useful. But overall I wish there had been emphasis on clear and succinct presentation, and not just what seems to be a stream-of-consciousness approach to covering a huge amount of information.

ShaderX2 is broken in to two volumes, with this volume intended as an introduction to shader related topics to prepare the reader for the other volume, or for other shader books. It fills that role fairly well, though it does have a few shortcomings that keep it from being a great book.

The book starts off with an extensive, well-written introduction to HLSL that most beginners to the language will find quite helpful. This is followed by a handy introduction to Shader Model 3.0, which explains the changes that have been made since 2.0, and the practical applications of these changes and additions.

The next several chapters are devoted to implementing "foundational" techniques using shaders. The first covers several lighting and shading techniques, providing sample shader implementations in HLSL and assembly. Most of the shaders come in multiple versions for the various shader models, which is useful for supporting these techniques on a wide range of platforms, as well as in understanding the capability differences between each model.

The next chapter covers five different fog effects using HLSL shaders. Then there are two chapters on shadows, one on shadow mapping and the other on shadow volumes. The latter weighs in at over 80 pages, providing in-depth coverage of the theory behind the technique.

Next up is a tutorial for using the shader development environment RenderMonkey. The usefulness of this chapter is marred by the fact that the current version of RenderMonkey has undergone some interface changes such that the text is now out of synch with the tool, making it a bit more difficult to follow along. Still, if you can work through this, the chapter will help you quickly get up and running with RenderMonkey.

The last chapter of the book is about creating shader-friendly models. This chapter seems out of place since it's written more for artists than programmers (who are clearly the audience for the rest of the book), and the chapter is too brief and vague to be of much value.

If you're new to shaders and HLSL, you'll likely find this book useful, though it's a little expensive for a small book (I imagine the color plates contribute to this). If the shadow and fog chapters had been moved to the other ShaderX2 book, and the final chapter had been dropped, I think that they could have reduced the price considerably and made the book more focused, turning it into a great value. As it is, though, it's still a good book that many people will benefit from.

I am also very new to parametric design using SolidWork. This is my first year in teaching and working with the software. The tutorial helps and guides me through this book in a step-by-step process. Great examples and layout. I would HIGHLY recommend this book for all teachers. Your student will love it.

This is, easily, the single most useless how-to book I have ever encountered. It is merely a walk-through of a single, trivial example of one model construction. There are no in-depth analysis, no "why", and no mention of at least 75% of the features of the software...

I am very new to this parametric design in SolidWork. This tutorial helps and guide you through step by step to build a model.

I would recommend this book to any beginner at SolidWorks

I am reviewing this book after having completed working through all its excercises. It took me five days, working 4 to 5 hours a day. I am completely satisfied. This is the best tutorial that I have seen for ANY CAD program, let alone for solid modelling.

This was one of two assigned texts for a CAD Solids class that I took. The first text was more of a reference dictionary for the various commands and features- I didn't use it more than once or twice. On the other hand, this book is more of a programmed learning course and I read every page. In fact, I found myself refering back to this book for reference, since I now had hands-on experience now in actually applying the commands (as opposed to merely reading an obtuse, poorly written definition.) The authors of this book literally spell out every single mouse click and keyboard stroke step-by-step as you work through a fairly complex real life project.

As for the project, it is a fully solid modelled electric lantern. You build every single component in the assembly, both fabricated and purchased. Then, you unite them into subassemblies and assemblies. Finally, you are shown how to generate working shop drawings (details and assembly) from your models.

I have used 3-D and solid modelling programs from competitors. This book, and Solid Works itself, is far superior to anything else out there. This is the practical parametric and solids modelling program that the industry has been promising for the last 12 years or so.

Moreover, if you have this book and access to the program, then you don't really need an instructor.

One doesn't have to be a songwriter to appreciate Will Hodgkinson's odyssey. He does an admirable job of summing up the highs and lows of the creative process, regardless of genre. I thought _Song Man_ was particularly skilled at presenting the challenges of writing music in a way that doesn't require four years at a conservatory to appreciate.

The interviews with a diverse range of musicians are amazing. It's not a surprise that most of their advice conflicts -- that seems to be one of the book's central themes -- but I heard plenty of observations by artists that were nothing like what I would have expected.

And it's hilarious. I laughed out loud so often while reading _Song Man_ that people would stop me in public and ask about it. What a treat!

As a fan of Hodgkinsons excellent first book about learning the guitar, I was glad to find he'd lost none of his insight when graduating to something much tougher - writing a song that really touches people. On the way, he finds some of the funniest and most tragic people in the music industry. I thought the scene from Narcotics Anonymous with failed and desperate songwriter Lawrence (who I assume is an ex-star under a false name). Keef Richards agrees to help out as well, and you can't say fairer than that. Where Guitar Man was funny and self depreciating, Song Man is more about talent than skill - the mystery of what makes someone creative and how destructive that can be. Its made me listen to my favourite tunes in a compeletely different way.

Will Hodgkinson writes with a good sense of humor. Just like in his book, Guitar Man, he tells the story from the point-of-view of an ordinary guy trying to do something extraordinary for him. Great fun!

Will Hodgkinson is an utterly charming guy - a first rate raconteur and a delight to hang with through this entertaining book.
What first appears to be naught but a first person account of someone with little talent for and less of a clue to song writing, is actually a vessel for interviews with some of the best songwriters of the mid-late 20th Century. Some of the interviews are more revealing than others; some are revealing only of interviewee (Keith Richards, Ray Davies), some also of the songwriting craft (Andy Partridge, Andrew Lloyd Webber).
That such luminaries agreed to meet and open up to Hodgkinson is evidence enough of his charm, but he charms us too, with a breezy, conversational style but also with his gall, naïveté (we don't even care if its put on or not), and affection for his friends and family (liberally laced throughout the book).
I'm inspired to return the affection - in thanks for a couple of very pleasant evenings (the perfect book for a cross country or trans-Atlantic flight!) and surprising amount - albeit mostly superficially but, so what! - of insight into the craft of songwriting (a craft I've practiced myself). A most creative approach to the subject. Hodgkinson may not be able to write a song, but he most certainly can write a book!

I used this book as a junior-year physics major, while I coached (kinda like TA'd) for the introductory calculus-based mechanics course. Although I'd taken this course myself two years before, I found this book enormously helpful for review, and the students also seemed to learn very well from it, too. It doesn't give you or ask for the answers right away, but leads you through your own intuition to find the correct answer as well as the correct ways of thinking. I wish they had similar books for more advanced courses like quantum mechanics!

These books are a GREAT tool for any physics teacher! It is true that they are very challenging, and sometimes not very pleasurable for the students as they are working through the tutorials, but the reward in the end IS worth it! It is very apparent that the physics education research team at UW spent many semesters putting together these sets of tutorials. I have seen my students retain earlier concepts much better after using the tutorials. This is a must have in any college physics class.
Just a warning... these tutorials are ment to be performed in small groups, and typically need a lot of guidence from an instructor or a lab aid. In a class of 24 studnets, there should be at least 2 "instructors" or an instructor or and a helper that can guide groups through the process.

These are the books I use for my physics lab - I find them very hard/challenging to use. I think the fact that there is no set textbook to refer to makes it difficult. Some of the tutorials & homework are relatively easy and quick, while others are hard and take a long time to complete.

I am a student at the University of Washington, where the tutorial books were developed. Most students naturally have common-sense misconceptions or difficulties in certain areas of introductory physics and the tutorial exercises are specifically designed to focus on these problem areas. They often guide the student by starting out with a simple physical situation and asking the student to predict what will happen, which exposes what biases/beliefs the student already holds. Then, the rest of the tutorial reveals whether these beliefs are mistaken or accurate and why. The tutorial homework provides an opportunity to practice what was learned in the tutorial class-work and solidifies the student's understanding of the material.

The questions are extremely clear, well-written, and unambiguous, in large part because the Physics Education Group constantly revises the tutorials based on how the students respond. They are usually simple and relatively easy if you know what you are doing; the goal of the tutorials is not to be "busy work" but to make sure students truly understand the topic. They are mostly conceptual and qualitative rather than calculation-driven.

Another reviewer said that the tutorials were extremely challenging because there was no textbook to refer to. The thing is, the tutorials aren't meant to stand alone. At the UW, there are three components to the introductory physics courses: lecture, lab, and tutorial. Lecture involves a heavy, "official" physics textbook. Students are supposed to learn the basic material from the textbook, and use the tutorials as a supplementary way to explore the topics and to make sure they really understand the "dry" reading in the textbook. The tutorial books are also definitely not supposed to guide labs, so I'm not surprised the reviewer found them hard to use.

Another important component of tutorials is that the class has about 24 students working in groups of 4. Then there are 2 tutorial instructors per class specifically trained in guiding the students through the work. They are an integral part of the tutorial system, because they are really familiar with the tutorial and are able to talk you through any issue you don't understand. They also help you see the significance of the tutorial. Tutorial class-work isn't meant to be solitary, with one student just trying to flounder their way through the stuff.

In all, the tutorial books are excellent, but they have to be used in the right context. They are really meant to be a supplementary part of the educational process, not a substitute for the textbook. Also, I doubt the books would be as effective without the class structure/tutorial instructors they are used with; they have to be fully integrated into the curriculum for their potential to be realized.

I am happy to have added this book to my collection of art books. I really like the way the author writes, the book is very readable. Although the book was written some time ago, I found the information completely pertinent for today. There is a mixture of color and black and white plates in the book, I find this adds to the character of the book. There is loads of valuable information for the new, or experienced watercolor painter.

Very helpful for me. I am an amateur painter, needed extra guidance even though I have been painting for a number of years. Good discussion on opaque and transparent colors, how to get to a goal, and so many examples.

I bought the book based on the cover I have no where near the watercolor skill as John Pike had. But this book is rather dated from the 70s and has paintings reproduced in black and white! I'm not sure how much you can learn from Black and White paintings that are suppose to be in color.

John Pike was a student of Charles Hawthorne from the "Cape Cod School." Pike spent time in the West Indies, and later did illustrations for magazines such as Colliers, Life, Fortune, and Readers Digest. His paintings, which remind me of a mix of Maxfield Parrish and Winslow Homer, take advantage of that gorgeous light of late afternoon or the weird mist of early morning, especially in New England and New York State. His art is found in many museums and permanent collections. His books sold many copies in the 1960's and inspired a lot of amateurs to try their hand at this expressive medium. This book is one of my favorites. Right from the start, the cover challenges the watercolorist to learn about light, economical use of brush strokes, and a surprisingly limited palette that excludes tricks and gimmicks. If you are serious about watercolor, this book is probably on your shelf or wants to be there. Frankly, I love this book for the cover alone, but the advice is timeless and worth learning.

I only wish there were more products like this. While not delving deeply into the syntax of AS2 or the theory of OOP programming (doesn't cover authoring your own classes)it does cover the basics throughly. It walks you step by step through one useful example after another. Have ADD? No problem just load this puppy up plug in you ear phones and you're in the zone.

I'm on my third time with this disc, you'll have to watch it at least that many times just to get clued in. This is basically Joey Lott's love letter to himself. He types and talks, types and talks, etc. He never tells the student what's coming or why. So.. you watch him type not knowing what to look for, where the project is going or how your own approach should be structured. Basically, he goes through the actionscript code lighting fast and the gives a shallow "quickie" summation at the end of each chapter of what you just saw, after you're already past it. Time and time again, chapter after chapter you'll watch Joey type. If you want to educate yourself on the "how" and "why" of actionscript and be able to formulate your own game plan for your Flash Projects, look elsewhere. The main thing you'll come away with in this DVD is the knowledge that the author knows it. (But, he just can't teach it to you.) I gave it a two, because it goes through quite a few chapters.

Honestly, before reviewing this CD, I was a little skeptical about using CDs to learn something like Actionscript. I felt that I would probably need to invest in some good reference books and take a class at a local training center.

I was very surprised how well put together I found the CD. I was familiar with Joey Lott's written work like the Macromedia Flash MX 2004 ActionScript Bible and Complete Flash Remoting MX. However, I had never used any other material from him before.

The CD interface was easy to navigate. You can rewind, fast forward, stop and other features. The most valuable feature I found though, was actually the pause feature.

Once I would watch the instruction, I would pause it, minimize (resize) and try it right then on Flash MX 2004. This helped reinforce my learning, as well as, prove to me I could do it.

Lott's examples and techniques were easy to understand and follow.

If you are not the "book learning-type person," or like me, you just don't always have the time to read a 1,000 page book, try the line of CDs from (...)

Loren is also the Group Manager of D-MAG.org, the Digital Media Artists Group in Lexington, KY.

Although the production techniques (multi-reel, reverse track) may be outdated, this book is a great guide on the interplay between the visual and audible components of films (or TV series). Written by recording mastermind Earle H. Hagen with his half-a-century-old history of scoring TV series and the big picture, Advanced Techniques should be seen as a toolbox that can even tell an experienced composer some tricks about how to treat musically difficult film effects.

This is the follow up, or second volume to "scoring for films" As the first book, this one is full of diagrams, recording techniques and scores. The technical view is like updated now with the advent of computers and the new digital technology, but the score analysis and inter relations with scripts is great. It has, also, a couple of writtened cues from Mephisto Vals (Goldsmith) and The Clan Of The Cave Bear (Silvestry) in musical notation. It comes with a CD that include cues from the TV series "I Spy" which are the highlight of the Book. Don't be confused, this is not a history book or biography book. Is on the technical side of the industry.

I was excited by the description of this book but disappointed by it's contents. The techniques are totally outdated. It goes on at length about analog recording technique which is nearly inapplicable to the beginning composer. Not recommended except as a minor resource for your library. Buy "The Guide to MIDI Orchestration" by Gilreath or the Jeff Rona Film Scoring book and the general orchestraion books by Adler and Blatter first.

If you listen carefully to Chris he provides many shortcuts that aren't in beginners materials. He couldn't do a better presentation. Also, there are few materials out there dealing with Avid and HDV.

This is an excellent introduction to Avid Xpress Pro. The DVD focuses on the basics of using Avid for video editing and provides easy to follow videos and exercise files to use on your own.
The instructor is clear and easy to understand. A great start for anyone who is new to editing or someone who wants to transition from Final Cut or Premiere.

This overpriced video product provides an easy-to-digest walk-through of basic Avid features, most useful for beginners. If you need a visual presentation and don't mind listening to the heavy British accent of the author, this title is something that you can watch at your convenience. It will get you started and give you a good basic understanding of what Avid is all about and how it works.