Tutorials Books

Both the Kirkus and other Amazon review are on the mark with this book. I read this book as a great admirer of the composer and conductor and welcome any further knowledge into his 'larger than life presence' as an artist. The book which is divided into chapters separated by various topics and developed as a Q &A format. Whereas other books on Boulez ("Orientations" or Lev Koblyakov's Analysis of Le Marteau) deal with pitch analysis (almost exclusively in the latter), this book REALLY gives you insight into the inner-workings of the former conductor of the New York Phil and LSO. You become privy to his sense of programming, which of the 'dead' composers work get programmed and why, why the predilection for French composers (berlioz and ravel). Following the interview chapters are a pretty comprehensive list of all of the programs Boulez had done through 1995. It is definitely geared toward those who want to know more about this amazing conductor. You don't need to have a huge music background to understand this book, albeit some of the 'name' references of particular scores may be a bit confusing for the non-musical layman (for ex. referring to the Dance of the Earth, some might not know this as the last movement of Part I of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring) These are minor points but shouldn't discourage possible readers. Thank you Camille Naish for getting it into English for the rest of us!

A man with a formidable intellect as Boulez can discuss musical topics especially the inner depths of orchestral sound like no one else, quite literally. If you happen to be conversant in French and German, as well as English, well there is no shortage of fascinating reflections on the great modernist works of this century: Debussy,Berg,Schoenberg,Varese,Webern,Berio. Boulez knows each with a ferocious intimacy. These interviews are quite old, 1986 .Mr.Vermeil visited Boulez at his state-like home outside Baden-Baden,long a refuge for Boulez from the late Fifties, although now he's a mandarin not a bohemian serialist, as he once arrived. Vermeil is good at tracing many categories, Chapter headings and parts I found fascinating were "Choosing Works", "Rehearsing", "On Gestures", "Colleagues". There's more but it seems Mr.Vermeil never gets down deep into the discourse of the subject. He stays on the surface which is all right with me. We need anything today discussed on modernist music, a dead,dying language yet institutionalized,all which makes historical sense. Well it has been Boulez who has kept it (music)alive, extending its implications, much like Habermas might find agreeable. I guess what I'm looking for is "Boulez in rehearsal" what he focuses upon, his pace, his structure of the rehearsal, what musical problems are attacked first, orchestral balance, tempi,quality of sonority. And we never get that with Vermeil firing the questions. In this English translation however it includes a reprint from a seminar in New York at Carnegie Hall in 1993 with the Cleveland Orchestra,by seasoned new music writer Paul Griffiths. Mr.Griffiths I like very much, for he brings us right through onto to stage, close to the rehearsal proceedings with apprentice conductors. And Boulez has them try out their chops(technique) on "Chronochromie" by Messiaen and "Jeux" by Debussy, two problematic scores. "Jeux" you have a nuanced line o! f changing timbres. Also Boulez never discusses the real live composers who he admires, Ligeti,Berio,Birtwistle, I thought he might discuss their work and bring us up-to-date on the state of aesthetic strategy. I thought the French if nothing else are incestuous on their own cultural products and ideamaker/mongers. Boulez hardly mentions the young composers who have worked with him at IRCAM in Paris, the multimillion dollar center. Composers, Dufourt,Bonnet or Manoury are quite interesting,quite evocative and powerful in their works.Yet Vermeil asks no questions on the Parisian new music scene. I thought that would be a first hit. Still Vermeil did cover soemwhat untrodden ground with Boulez. I would equally thank Amadeus Press who translated it,wrenching it out of French mothballs for eternity.

This book is a good complement to Eric Brown's "Windows Forms Programming with C#". The authors here cover items that Brown didn't or didn't cover as thoroughly. Since their style is different, in some cases, the added depth they provide enhanced my understanding of what was going on. They stayed focussed and covered a lot of ground in a short book. The sections on the Registry, adding Help, and Deployment were helpful as well. I only regret they didn't touch on Drag and Drop for completeness, although that is available elsewhere. Good, useful tutorial book with reference potential. Definitely belongs on my bookshelf, I'll just ahve to make more room.

This book is a good reference for those who need to build and deploy traditional Windows Application under .Net and C#. The authors do a good job of covering aspects of Windows Form programming, including showing you how to design and implement some advanced features that you won't find in any online documentation for C# or .Net. The authors even walk you through several sample applications to show you "hands on" programing with the controls.

Unfortunately, they don't cover all of the Windows Forms controls, and leave out a few of the basics. However, the ones they have left out seem to be the more basic controls that don't require a lot of advanced explanation.

Overall, this book is good material for your bookshelf for those times when you need to verify, or learn, how a control works. They focus on the Visual Studio environment of C#, so there are a few differences that non-VS people will need to make in other to use this book.

I am tempted to give this book a 6, since it is considered the bible of the Orff-Schulwerk approach. Sure enough, it gives complete instructions on how to set up an instrumental ensemble, how to play the instruments, and how to teach the gross motor activity. In fact, it presents some ideas which I put to immediate use in my work as a preschool English teacher in Korea.

But theory is important as well as method. Why should certain activities be taught? Why should the instruments be played a certain way? Why is the Orff approach better than the others? Why are certain musical activities and gross motor activities beneficial? If these questions were answered, I would give this book a 6.

I am tempted to give this book a 6, since it is considered the bible of the Orff-Schulwerk approach. Sure enough, it gives complete instructions on how to set up an instrumental ensemble, how to play the instruments, and how to teach the gross motor activity. In fact, it presents some ideas which I put to immediate use in my work as a preschool English teacher in Korea.

But theory is important as well as method. Why should certain activities be taught? Why should the instruments be played a certain way? Why is the Orff approach better than the others? Why are certain musical activities and gross motor activities beneficial? If these questions were answered, I would give this book a 6.

the training disc explains everything you need to get going with garageband, even i understood it

$50 might represent a point of alignment with standard software manuals - though, in many cases, it's actually a little more expensive. But that's OK, right? I mean, this is video training.
The running time across the training material on the DVD is just over the 5 hour mark - 5:25 from memory. And, as each session is the standard voiceover of a screen recording, it's hardly high production values to warrant the cost/duration equation.

That said, the lessons are clear and well presented in a clearly structured approach that makes learning the application simpler than jumping from printed page to application as would normally be the case.

Keep in mind the short duration and the obvious limitations on what can be covered in that time (it's really no more than what you could expect from a half-day in a classroom) and you'll not be disappointed. I was because I had expected more lessons and more for my money. I won't be using this particular group for software learning in the future. Back to the printed page for me.

While this is a decent book for a beginner, there is one major flaw, that being the fact that you have to be able to read music! Unfortunately I dont. Most beginners books are based on tablature, a method that is very easy to master and it allows you to play without knowing how to read music. I did learn a few things from this book and if you're interested in learning how to read music while you learn the basics of the mandolin, then you'll probably enjoy this publication.

I never played anything. With this book, it took only some days to start to play. It's excellent for the beginner.

Thanks to blogging, I've learned the very basics of HTML. However, I wanted to learn more before I tackled Dreamweaver. This is what I learned.

-How to colorize a background without messing with the css file.
-The difference between block and inline tags
-Controlling line breaks and spaces
-Preformatting text
-How to create a variety of lists
-Breaking lines around an image
-How to set up a CSS page
-How to adjust the leading (line height) of a paragraph
-How to format tables
and more.

If you're a rank beginner to website design, you'll learn a lot but not everything. Thankfully, there are many free resources online that will help you. If you're a visual learner and are willing to spend the money, this is a decent investment because you can go back and watch what you didn't catch the first time.

What you get out of this is more than worth the price. It took me from a very rough HTML coder to the level where I know understand the code the Dream weaver places when I do something in the WYSIWYG and has set a good foundation for me to start looking into other aspects of web development (CSS, server-side languages, etc). On thing to note is that if you are going to take this course and never take it again, you can get in on a subscription basis from other vendors and save some $$

This book is an excellent guide to using InstallAnywhere no matter which platform you are running or how much experience you have with the product. This is the kind of documentation that you wish that the company would provide especially when you consider the price of the software. According to the introduction, the book was produced from the handouts that Zero G had produced for their three day InstallAnywhere course.

The book starts with a quick introduction and some screen shots showing what running an installer would look like from a customer's point of view. The authors next show a simple example of building an installer. Unfortunately, and this remains true for the rest of the book, no screen shots are included. This means that you must be running the software to take full advantage of the book. No reading this book in the bathtub. The book works well as both a tutorial and reference guide. The authors take you step by step through an exercise explaining each of the options even if they aren't used in this exercise. The instructions for each exercise are very clear. The use of the product is clearly explained while you are using it, which makes the learning "stick".

The book covers everything from the most basic installer all the way up to writing your own custom plug-ins. If you are interested in taking full advantage of the InstallAnywhere software and don't want to spend the money for three days of training, then this book is for you.

Usually the process of bundling together a software project along with an installation script is hurriedly done at the end of the project. And the scripts might differ for each target operating system. So you might think of InstallAnywhere as a meta-installer. The authors wrote the program to make installers under a gamut of operating systems - linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, XP etc. The hope is to free you from a lot of grungy operating system specific nuances that are probably not even the core expertise of you or anyone on your project.

In practice, even in this book, there are often unavoidable details specific to some operating systems. Like where to put files and resources. You will still have to contend with items like these. Still, the authors offer an intriguing and quite useful investment of your time. To the extent that it can relieve you of even some, if not most, of the installation details, it has merit.

As an added bonus, there is full internationalisation. You can run this program using text resources in many languages. As well as changing any localised text.

The supervisors are just an important link isnide the administrative chain; and the strength of such chain depends on the weakest one.

On the other hand, most of people who conform the Top Mangement pretend very often, to change the environment around them rather than change or even adapting themselves.

In the complex world we live, plentyof opportunities, challenges and fierce competitive status, the role of the supervisor implies by itself, a constant enhancement around all what concern with conceptual and interpersonal abilities, as well to develop the sense of the opportunity, in order to choose the right moment to express the message, how to express it to the right person.

The author remarks the fundamental relevance about the perception, supported by the subjectiveness of the observer respect a fact (Remember Rashomon).

In sum, this text is a sumptuous, illustrative and ambitious journey into the complex, dynamic and ever changing universe ofthe organizations, not only around its iner structures, but besides, respect the outer environment.

Do you have a mentor at work? Does your mentor counsel and support you under every conceivable circumstance? Picture your mentor walking toward you down the hall. It's the end of a typical business day---no earth-shaking crises had to be dealt with, just the normal day-to-day challenges of supervision---

Do you duck into the Ladies' Room to avoid yet another of your mentor's long, boring monologues?

I mean, this guy has really helped your career and you are extremely grateful for his assistance, but the next time he starts to lecture you on how to increase employee productivity, you're going to grab him by the lapels and---

I have very mixed feelings about "The Effective Supervisor's Handbook." On the one hand, it is chock-full of solutions to the everyday challenges of supervision. First-line supervision is not a very glamorous topic and this book fills a definite information gap. I have owned a copy of "The Effective Supervisor's Handbook" for at least five years, and I reference it at least one or two times a month.

On the other hand, its author never overlooks an opportunity to state and restate and re-restate the obvious. Here is a sample from the section, "Self-interest and Work":

"As participants in society, people hold memberships in various organizations. Some memberships are voluntary, whereas others are somewhat involuntary. Except for those activities or organizations where membership and participation are involuntary, people usually have a choice of withdrawing from membership."

The climax to this section is, "No one can force you to stay at a job."

The normal reaction upon completing this section is, 'why did we just spend two pages on something this obvious?'

"The Effective Supervisor's Handbook" is exactly as advertised. It has sensible advice for everything from managing the office grapevine, to the benefits and risks of counseling employees. If you are a first-line supervisor, ignore the truck-loads of trendy books on 'leadership' and 'management.' Buy this book, put your waders on, and fish out the bits that apply to your particular situation.

Just don't attempt to read it from cover to cover.

I've never particularly cared for John Simon's prose. To me, he writes with a poker up his butt. It's a style easily sent up by someone with a thesaurus and a knowledge of English grammar. However, I still enjoyed the book. Its main flaw is also its chief virtue. John Simon is a music-lover, rather than a musician. He has no musical technical expertise (he doesn't even read music) and furthermore doesn't seem to want it. We get a lot of what Mr. Simon does know -- mostly about literature, language, and drama. Thus, a good deal of the book is about vocal music, particularly about opera. You may find yourself wondering why you need to hear him recite the plot of Pelleas et Melisande or of Jenufa, since neither tells you why either of those operas have stuck around. The music gives them their power. I can't think of one opera loved for its plot, unless its Bluebeard's Castle (whose libretto Simon discusses brilliantly, I admit). Nevertheless, Simon is a culture hound of wide range, and the rare insight he gives about music usually relates to other works and other arts -- the kind of insight beyond the experience of most musicians. His discussions of Janacek operatic music are particularly acute and tell you something valuable about its dramatic strengths. Fairly endearing are his enthusiasms for minor composers, something usually missing from his discussions on theater and film, where he usually criticizes from much too safe a position (Bergman a great director? *There's* news). I tend to trust more a critic who occasionally goes off the deep end for some bauble than one who wants to commune only with the Certifiably Great. That's where the "music-lover" comes in and why this trait is so valuable. It means that art actually moves Simon rather than serves as a vehicle of self-congratulation. If Simon would take the trouble to learn a little about the technical side music, he could easily become one of the best music critics of all. It's not necessarily that he would include such things baldly in an essay, but developing the habit of such thinking might give him a different, valuable point of view.

Born in Yugoslavia John Simon is one of the few remaining classical critics. His scope is vast, this book is on music but there are other books on theater and film. His insight into music comes not from his performing ability (he doesn't) but from his love. His comments display his wide knowledge of not only music but the entire range of the performing arts.

The book contains four big sections on Criticism from the 1970s, 80s, 90s and the 2,000s. Within each section there are reviews and essays that are arranged chronologically according to the dates they were originally published in the various magazines or newspapers for which Mr. Simon writes.

You will find Mr. Simon's writing to be erudite and a pleasure to read. His topics are far ranging, and he is able to see connections between his current subject and a wide range of past events.

Very enjoyable reading.

Easy reading. Can go through in couple a days. I would recommend this book as one you should start with. The book covers basic principles of Forms 5.0 . Get your foundations in Oracle 7.x , 8.x before start reading this book.

I notice that the first reviewer thought that this book is about Forms 5.0. No wonder he gave it such a low rating. I would give it Zilch for that product!

But, as for Reports 3.0, which the book is ostensibly and actually about, I would say that it is a good step by step introduction to the five basic types of reports and the interactivity of the Oracle Developer tools which will help to produce them. An excellent hands on intro.