The book is coming along…
Yesterday, on the AOSA/POSA blog, I wrote: A few weeks ago Greg posted about the next book we’re doing: The Performance of Open Source Applications. Well, we don’t have a book yet, but we’ve made some progress. Earlier this week we had our 15th “yes” from an author, which puts us close to the chapter [...]
The Performance of Open Source Applications
If you’ve spoken to me in the last few weeks you’ve probably heard that I’m co-editing a book on software performance. Well, we’re finally announcing it. From the AOSA blog: We are pleased to announce that we are starting work on a third book in this series, which will be titled The Performance of Open [...]
The Architecture of Open Source Applications, Volume 2
The second volume of The Architecture of Open Source Applications was just released thanks to the hard work of Amy Brown and Greg Wilson. I had the privilege of helping copyedit a few chapters of the book. Here’s the blurb: Architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study critiques of those buildings [...]
NaNoWriMo starts today!
NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month, is a novel-writing ‘contest’ where you write a 50000-word novel in a month. The first and only time I did NaNoWriMo was in grade twelve. I wrote a terrible book, and it was fun. Fast-forward a year, and I wrote another book, but I didn’t do it [...]
Computer Models of Music Creativity
I know what I’m getting next time I’m at the Concordia library.
PressBooks Beta
I just got my private beta invite to PressBooks, a Montreal startup by Hugh McGuire, the guy behind LibriVox. Their product is a book publishing platform built on WordPress. The goal is simple: making ebook publishing easy. Pressbooks solves a pain point I’ve always had: generating basic formatted versions of books I’ve written. I just [...]
Check out this Tolkien sign outside a pub in London
On the way to London Bridge station from our hostel at the London School of Economics, I spotted this sign outside a pub. “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
Practical Cryptography and the Birthday Attack
The other day I took Practical Cryptography out of the library. In this slim book, Bruce Schneier and Niels Ferguson cover what you need to know about cryptography so you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. So far I’ve only read the part on basic cryptographic theory, where they discuss basic functions (authentication, encryption, signing), [...]
Thoughts on Towers of Midnight (spoiler-free)
As exams approach I go to great lengths to avoid the task of sitting down and practising problems, reviewing class notes, and memorizing. Since my computer is still in the shop, instead of reading (or writing) stupid blog posts, I read Towers of Midnight (the latest Wheel of Time book) instead during this exam period. [...]
Review: On Writing Well
I just finished reading William Zinsser’s guide to writing nonfiction, On Writing Well. It’s a warm, friendly book full of great advice from a master of writing. As Zinsser explains in the preface, the book is meant to compliment The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. While Elements is about composition — how to [...]