Category: Books

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Books

Handcrafted CSS

Just finished up reading Handcrafted CSS by Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte. I’ve read two of Dan’s previous books, and thought that they were great. So I was looking forward to reading this very much.

More so than in his previous books, this one really pushes the envelop of CSS and urges the act of rewarding browsers that support the latest CSS features. This is a stance that I’ve always agreed with, but can be hard to get a client to follow. Not all parts of a site have to look the same across all browsers.

My  favorite sections were regarding rounded corners with border-radius and flexible color with RGBA. His examples really sold me that it is now a good time to begin implementing these features for browsers that take advantage of them.

An extremely well written book, that’s also designed very well too. Highly recommended for anyone looking to push CSS boundaries, and pick up a few tricks along the way.

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Books

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

Just got done reading Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. It had zombies in the title and was in the best seller rack at Borders so I figured I’d give it a shot. It was ok, it started off super slow for me, but towards the end it picked up a bit.

I’m guessing I would’ve hated the original Pride & Prejudice, as the only parts I really enjoyed involved the fighting of zombies. It was kinda funny how it’s taking a well regarded literary piece, and throwing in zombies to the mix.

It did work however. But the whole sisters stuff was rather boring to me. If I didn’t have a rule that I really should finish whatever I start reading I’m not sure I’d of made it through the first few chapters.

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Books

Dead Until Dark

Upstairs at work we’ve started a little unofficial book club. Apparently the first book that are super cool club (though I may’ve been kicked out already) is reading is Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. This book is the basis of the True Blood series on HBO.

I’ve seen a couple of the episodes so most of the characters were familiar to me already. The book was very well written but I think it was a bit too girly for me. I don’t exactly fantasize about being swept off my feet by some vampire dude, so wasn’t really relating to many parts. But I did manage to read through it in just 2 or 3 days.

I’m pretty sure that the rest of the book club plans to read the additional books in this series, but I’m not sure if I will be. Hence why I think I may’ve been thrown out after our inaugural meeting.

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Books

Percy Jackson & the Olympians

Just finished reading the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. It was some of the finer reading I’ve done it quite some time. It pretty much is Greek mythology taking place in present day. I’ve always been kinda into the whole mythology thing, especially growing up (some cool monsters there) and always been a sucker for the whole good vs evil fight.

The series spans 5 action packed books, with my favorite being the final book The Last Olympian. It was pretty much some non-stop against impossible odds fighting for the world going on stuff. Much sacrifices made for the noble cause, some fine demi-gods were lost in the epic battle.

The books are geared toward a younger crowd, probably on par with the Harry Potter series. They’re also coming out with films, so I’ll have to show up opening night dressed as a minotaur or Ares or something like that.

Excellent series and highly recommended.

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Books

Marvel 70th Anniversary Collection

While on lunch break with NGM I noticed the Marvel 70th Anniversary Collection at Borders. It’s a reprint of several comics over the 70 years that Marvel has been putting stuff out. I didn’t buy it that day, but a few days later I found myself picking up a copy to read over.

Growing up I was a huge comic book reader, especially anything being put out by Marvel. So I was excited to see that the following were reprinted in full color in this collection:

  • Marvel Comics #1 1939
  • Captain America Comics #2 1941
  • Captain America Comics #3 1941
  • Journey into Mystery #6 1953
  • Tales to Astonish #13 1960
  • Amazing Adult Fantasy #10 1962
  • Fantastic Four #13 1963
  • Strange Tales # 115 1963
  • Amazing Spider-Man #50 1967
  • Avengers #93 1971
  • Iron Man #128 1979
  • Uncanny X-Men #128 1980
  • Daredevil #168 1981
  • Incredible Hulk #340 1987
  • Marvels #0 1994
  • Avengers #4 1998
  • Ultimate Spider-Man #13 2001
  • New Avengers: Illuminati #1 2007
  • Captain America #25 2007

The only story that I had read previously was Uncanny X-Men 128, with the Hellfire Club. It was one of my favorites anyway so I was glad to read it again. Actually issue 129 which isn’t included was one of my all-time favorites. It’s when Wolverine pretty much becomes a major character in comics in my opinion.

The early Namor story was extremely violent. I’m was surprised to see such violence in a book published  back in 1939. Once I got the the Fantastic Four #13 in April of 1963 I started to enjoy reading these much more. At that point that’s where all the characters I’d grown up reading about started to make their early appearances.

The “Elektra!” Daredevil #168 was a very good read even though I was very familiar with the story by now. I also enjoyed New Avengers: Illuminati #1 a lot. It was cool to read something very recent that was still pretty cool to read.

At $25 I think this was quite the bargain for all these great stories.

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Books

The Twitter Book

Just finished reading The Twitter Book app for my iPhone. This was the first book that I had ever read on my iPhone, and overall I was very much impressed with it.

The book itself was great, and more than up to the high standards I expect from an O’Reilly book. It does an excellent job of detailing what Twitter is, why it’s grown so much in such a short period of time, and most importantly how best to make it work for you. Very easy to read, with many examples which conveniently are linked to the web since this version is digital and an app on my iPhone.

The app itself was very easy to use and reading on it was rather natural. I figured the screen might be too small or too dim, but it really wasn’t that much different than reading from print. Navigation was easy and natural. A bug plus for me was that I was able to just read at times I didn’t expect I’d be able to since my iPhone is always with me.

My only complaints with reading on my iPhone vs a traditional book were that it was a little tricky to jump around the book when compared to dealing with paper. Also, many of the illustrations were difficult to read as well.

Overall this was a great read and reading it on the iPhone turned out to be better than I had expected and would read more books this way. If you’re looking to learn more about Twitter I highly recommend, and if you have an iPhone you might want to give the app version a try too.