Safari Books Online

Safari Books Online is a subscription library for computer books and tech training videos, with some additional subjects that also appeal to computer book readers, like digital photography.  They offer individual and corporate subscriptions, and many libraries are subscribers too, so you might check your library first.  Safari Books Online has a 10-day free trial if you just want to get the feel of how it works.  Right now they are offering a 5-Slot Bookshelf for $9.99/month, a 10-Slot Bookshelf for $22.99/month and the unlimited Safari Library for $42.99/month.  You only have access to Video Training and the Rough Cuts (prerelease books) titles with the Safari Library.

I got an offer for the 5-Slot Bookshelf when I registered one of my O’Reilly books to get a 45 day free access to the online edition.  For $10, I figured I’d try it out.  It’s a bit confusing how they work things.  With the 5 and 10 Slot Bookshelves, you can only read the full text of 5 or 10 books at a time, and you must keep your picks on your Bookshelf for at least 30 days.  You can preview all the books, but they only show the top third of each page.

At first I was cautious about filling up my 5 slots, but as I spent time actually studying books, time passed quickly and I usually seem to have 1-2 books ready to be checked back in so I could pick new ones.  I felt for $10 a month, this was a real bargain, but I was disappointed I couldn’t see the Video Training and Rough Cut titles.  Then one day Safari sent me an email offering a 20% discount to the Safari Library subscription, or just $34.99 a month for up to 12 months.  I figured, what the hell, and switched.  I can go back any time to my 5-Slot sub if I want to.

What a Bargain!

One reason Safari Books Online appealed to me was because I was having to switch my entire programming paradigm at work form ASP to PHP and I was about to go out and buy a bunch of new computer books for PHP, jQuery, CSS 2, XHTML 1.1, CodeIgniter and Eclipse.  I tend to buy computer books, use them for awhile, let them sit on the shelf for five years, and then put them out on the free book table at work.  Spending $120 a year and having access up to 60 titles seemed like a real deal.  More than likely I’d probably only read 10-20 books for real, but even that is a huge bargain over buying the books.

Reading Online

Most people don’t like reading books at their computer screen, but if you’re reading computer programming books while programming, ebooks work out great.  At work I have a dual monitor setup and I even turned my left monitor to portrait mode so I can enlarge a full page of a Safari book so I see the entire page at once with about a 50% magnification.  Of course this now makes me want to have a triple monitor setup, with Safari book on left, Eclipse IDE in the middle, and browsers on the right.  But don’t get me wrong. reading a Safari book on the same screen as the editor isn’t bad either.

Books can be viewed in two modes:  page mode and HTML.  I prefer looking at the page mode because it’s just like the printed book, but cutting and pasting is easier from the HTML mode.  However, reading is less pleasant from the HTML model unless I up the browser magnification and narrow the window so the scan line width is reasonable.  In page mode you have nice big margins and the print and fonts are the same as the printed book.  If the original book was hard to read, then page mode is also hard to read.

Slowly I’m learning that hanging on to page mode is limiting.  Once books are freed from the confines of pages, content can be presented in new ways.  I expect Safari to discover this in the future and invent new ways of looking at the material.  Books like the Head First series beg for this kind of treatment.  I also expect in the future there won’t be a division between printed books and video training titles.  If authors start writing titles specifically for Safari Online Books they could teach in new ways.

Selection

As of today, I can select from 9,902 books and 631 videos.  Plus lots of great computer book publishers are a part of Safari Online Books:

  • O’Reilly (Head First, Missing Manual)
  • Sams (Teach Yourself)
  • Packt Publishing
  • Addison-Wesley Professional
  • New Riders
  • Microsoft Press
  • Peachpit Press
  • Manning Publications
  • Adobe
  • Que
  • Apress
  • Sitepoint
  • Sybex
  • John Wiley & Sons
  • Prentice Hall

Most of the titles relate to computers in some way, but there’s lots of books on photography, and occasionally there’s a book that relates to investment or retiring.  I have 80 books flagged that I want to read.

The Future of Books

For special purposes, like these technical books, a subscription library really makes sense, and I’m perfectly happy to do without the printed edition.  I expect publishers to even do away with the page mode and eventually optimize everything for HTML mode which also works with mobile devices and ebook readers.  I would even buy a subscription to a science and history book library if I owned something like an iPad.  For fiction I prefer audio books or a device like a Kindle.  I wonder if subscription libraries for other subjects will catch on.

I think the future of books is paperless publishing, and Safari Online Books even hints that rental libraries might become an alternative to owning books.  However, rental libraries are rather specialized.  I’d be interested in a science and history rental library if its selection was as broad as the Safari Books Online is for computer books.  Also, I imagine that a rental library for school textbooks would be appealing to kids if durable iPad like devices caught on.

In my quest to give up paper, I’ve stopped getting magazines and newspapers, and now I have an alternative for technical books.  For fiction I prefer audiobooks.  Before now, I would have said art/photography books could never be replaced by ebooks, but while my second monitor was in portrait mode, my desktop background cycled through some art pieces, and they were very impressive magnified that way.  Freed of the confines of the printed page, art might do very well in ebook editions.  I saw a comic book on the iPad which had a mode of showing the page panel by panel and it was obvious the iPad is now the best way to look at a comic.

JWH – 4/25/10

The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy

If you are the kind of person who believes that science explores reality and would love to catch up on  the latest explorations in cosmology and subatomic particles, then The Edge of Physics (2010) by Anil Anathaswamy is the book for you.  For years I’ve wanted to know where the big experiments are taking place, and even daydreamed of being a science journalist whose nine-to-five job would be to visit them, well Anil Ananthaswamy has my dream job.

The Edge of Physics is mostly a travel book, and Ananthaswamy even has photos for each of the sites he visited at his web site, collected chapter by chapter.  What Anil has done, and I hope he pardons my familiarity, because typing his last name is work, is weave science history in with his travelogue and then explain what each experimental site he visits hopes to achieve. 

To enjoy this book does not require a deep understanding of experimental physics or math, just a sense of wonder.  I’m praying to Einstein that  PBS’s NOVA makes a multipart series based on this book.  The average person is afraid of science, and Anil really goes a long way to making it accessible.  Anyone who hates that we’re spending billions on theoretical science needs to read this book too, because it makes you wish they’d spend billions more, because in the end, Anil helps us understand the mysteries that are remaining to be discovered.  And I hope I live long enough to hear those results reported too.

On the day I started this book I experienced a bit of serendipity.  The first chapter is about Mount Wilson and why the work it did back in the 1910s and 1920s is so important to the work being done today.  While listening to the book on audio I wished I could see pictures of what Anil was writing about.  Well, my wished was grant that very day, because that night NOVA started a two part Hunting the Edge of Space that featured photos and films from the early days of the Mount Wilson Observatory.  This documentary overlapped wonderfully with The Edge of Physics. 

Now, if NOVA would only film the other chapters.  Most people are familiar with visual telescopes but how many have heard of a neutrino telescope?  One of the more adventuresome trips Anil makes is to Lake Baikal, to where scientists brave the Siberian winter to build an underwater telescope beneath the ice of a large freshwater lake.  Anil also visits two sites in Antarctica, Chile, Hawaii, South Africa, deep underground in Northern Minnesota, India, and of course Switzerland where the LHC is located.

I read Sky and Telescope every month but I never knew there was so many big telescopes around the world.  I wish someone would build a web site for telescopes like they have for the Top 500 Supercomputer Sites.  And I also wish someone would build the Top 500 largest science research sites.  And reading The Edge of Physics I could imagine a new tourist industry based on visiting scientific research.  I don’t have the money to take up that hobby right now, but I’m inspired to see if I can find web sites for all the places Anil visited in his book:

All this travel is glamorous but the real value of The Edge of Physics is what Anil reports about the status of all these experiments.  He really is trying to show his readers where the edge of physics lies, and what that means.  I can’t summarize that, you need to read the book, but if you haven’t read any science books in a few years, you’ll be surprised by how far science has gotten to explaining all of reality.  We are far from finished, but wow, scientists are hot on the trail of explaining almost everything.  Research in particle physics, dark matter, dark energy, cosmic background radiation, string theory, multiverses, radio astronomy, neutrino astronomy, are converging towards filling in missing puzzle pieces. 

It’s like doing a Sudoku puzzle.  Finding any one number can solve problems in all nine quadrants.  Breakthroughs at any one of these sites Anil visits means more evidence for the other sites.  Everything is interrelated.  I’d love to be able to list all the areas of research covered in this book with hyperlinks and explanations, but I’d have to write a book and Anil Ananthaswamy has already done that for us.  Be sure an visit Anil’s blog for newer reports.

JWH – 4/24/10

The Conservatives Are Confusing Me

Usually it’s wise not to argue politics or religion, but things are getting weird, and I’m having trouble keeping score on which team is pursuing which ideals.  The Republicans claim to be pro God, and swear the Democrats are godless, and at first glance this seems so because conservatives go to church.  But yesterday I saw a car driving in stop and go traffic with a huge sign that totally confused me.  It said to the best of my recollection:

The government is not God,

Obama is not Christ,

Democrats are Satan,

America is going to Hell 

What’s with the conservatives and their Biblical slogans? 

Since I have a tendency to rewrite everything to be more logical, I thought about offering to rewrite their slogan, which is absurd too, since I’m a godless liberal.

How could they improve their metaphors.  What if we replaced the first line with “The government is not Moses.”  Think about it, conservatives demand fewer laws and Moses only provided ten. 

But wait, if you’re read The Old Testament, you’ll know it’s not about spiritual development but God relentless nagging the chosen people to build a great nation.  The book is bursting its binding with laws and more laws.  If conservatives are worried about federal government making too many laws they ought to read the Old Testament, God was far more demanding.  The New Testament is more libertarian, it gets down to just one law, the Golden Rule.

Maybe these guys are mad because the federal government is making as many laws as God, butting into God’s territory?  Could the original line really be far more subtle than I think.  So are these guys really saying the federal government should not be like God, and make fewer laws?

Obama is not Christ?  Ummm?  Jesus was big on healing people and Obama is big on healthcare reform.  I do see the connection they are making, but what are they protesting?  Wouldn’t Jesus want universal healthcare?  Wasn’t healing his profession?   Are they wanting a President that doesn’t act like Christ?  Wouldn’t that be the anti-Christ?

Dealing with negative implications are hard.  Luckily, the next line is straight forward, Democrats are Satan.  Satan is the bad guy, so obviously they mean the Democrats are the bad guys.  But the Democrats are for healing people, helping the downtrodden, aiding the poor, just like Jesus taught.  And, the democrats love the meek.  Jesus also wanted to see the good in criminals and prostitutes, which sounds more liberal than conservative to me.  So why is the party trying to do what Jesus taught called Satanic?  I’m confused again.

And why is America going to hell?  The satanic democratic party wants healthcare for all, to clean up the environment, educate children and make them wise, become less gluttonous with natural resources, share the wealth, and so on.  And most of all, they want to end global warming!  Which sounds like an anti-hell agenda to me.  The democrats seem to be seeking the same goals preached in the New Testament.  Well, I’m just an ignorant heathen, who does not understand the subtle wisdom of the righteous.

I know the guys in the car are pro Republicans, and they want to tie their cause to Christianity.  But the Republicans are pro money, pro war, pro guns, pro greed, pro waste, pro destroy the Earth, hell bent to make all animals extinct, and they absolutely, positively, hate the meek.  This really doesn’t compute.  It doesn’t seem to be what I learned in Sunday School before I dropped out to become a heretic.  Did they change lessons plans after I left?

Some conservatives see a new Jesus that will return to kill off the unbelieving like a rampaging Rambo holding two machine guns.  But wouldn’t that be the anti-Christ they keep talking about?

I am reminded of an old short story by Robert Sheckley about Armageddon.  The world is ending, and two great armies are fighting the war of Armageddon, but it’s all fought with machines and robots, and when God opens the sky, its the robots that rise up to heaven.  Wouldn’t it be strange if the rapture arrives and God takes up all the Democrats and leaves all the Republicans?   

JWH – 4/22/10

The Senior Sleuth’s Guide to Technology for Seniors by David Peterka

The common joke is if you need help with technology, find a kid.  Well, David Peterka wants us older folk to be our own tech gurus with his book The Senior Sleuth’s Guide to Technology for Seniors.  His book covers a spectrum of technology, not just computers, like robotic lawn mowers, cell phones, iPod, GPSes, remote controls, medical alert necklaces, home entertainment systems, pill reminders, medical monitoring and so on.  Peterka also covers social networking, texting and all the trendy communication systems kids embrace.  You don’t have to be a senior to find this book useful.

senior-sleuth

I help older people with their computers all the time and I know they often get stressed by technology.  Some just flatly refused to embrace it.  And that’s too bad because technology is enabling by its very nature.  This book is a quick overview for people new to gadgets and computers. 

Recently I help a woman about to retire who likes to do oral history interviews.  For years she had been relying on a cassette recorder and just typing up transcripts, but she wanted to be able to give people MP3s and CDs of edited and cleaned up copies of the original recordings.  For awhile she relied on the kindness of tech strangers to help her, but I’m the kind of person who likes to teach people to fish rather than just giving them away.

So I showed this lady how to install, configure and use Audacity.  At first she was hesitant and afraid to try stuff, but since I wasn’t offering to do the job for her, she stuck with it.  I’d come back every week to see how she was doing.  At one point she explained her interviewee cough frequently.  I showed her how to remove the coughs.  She mentioned some of the tapes had hiss.  I told her Audacity had a noise-reduction feature and sent her a link with instructions.  She figured it out.  She’s learned a lot, and now she’s confidently producing digital recordings of her interviews.

I’m in an online book club for audio books and one of the members is a guy who lives in a retirement home but he has become an Internet expert on MP3 players, helping hordes of online users to play digital audio books, collect music and old time radio, converting and watching movies, and other handy tasks for small players.  He’s in several online groups, include some for the blind.  His knowledge and willingness to help other people, many seniors, is a tremendous resource.  He proves that if you gain a skill, pass it on, and he also proves you don’t need to be a youngster to be a tech whiz.

I’m not sure how big the market is for Mr. Peterka’s book because old people are jumping online fast.  Ronni Bennett after she retired started Times Goes By, a web site for elder bloggers that is a wonderful resource for wise people wanting to share their experiences online.  I wished David Peterka had a supporting website to help his readers once they get beyond the book.  This 2009 book is still current, but technology books age fast, so Mr. Peterka will need to keep coming out with new editions until everyone is up to speed.

The advice in David Peterka book for seniors is quite broad and a good place to start if you’re nervous about gadgets and electronic doodads.  He provides a wealth of URLs to find additional knowledge, plus he teaches about how to find your own solutions online.  The print in the book is nice and large, easy to read. 

At work people are amazed I know so much about technology, but often when I meet a new tech problem, I just search on Google.  So this Senior Sleuth volume will be best for complete newbie’s who haven’t learn that trick.  It nicely distills lots of information in one handbook, and is a good volume for older children helping their aging parents.

It’s a Catch-22 situation.  If you had more knowledge, you’d use it to find the same information online.  So David Peterka book is a stepping stone.  Like I said, I wished he had an web site devoted to the same subject because having all of this information in one convenient location would make a very useful web site.

I’m hoping, as I get older there will be more and more technology solutions for aging.  In fact, I hope by the time I get frail there will be robotic caretakers.

JWH – 4/22/10

He’s No Hitler

I don’t know why some Tea Party protestors want to compare President Obama to Hitler. I never liked it when liberals compared President Bush to Hitler either.  Why do angry, political powerless, protestors feel they are using their trump card when linking their enemies to Hitler?  The protest placards are far more damning to their makers than those they target.  Few leaders in history can be compared to Hitler.  His evil qualities are so extreme that its simple-minded to use Hitler as any kind of measuring stick to gauge the average politician.  It’s like comparing firecrackers to H-bombs.

If the Tea Party people want to make comparisons they should compare Obama to a previous President they think pursued the same goals they hate.  I would imagine that would be Lyndon Johnson, or even FDR.  Strangely, the reason why I didn’t like President Bush was because his Iraq War was a whole lot like LBJ’s Vietnam War.  Our political landscape needs no comparison to Germany, Russia or China, we’ve been fighting our own unique issues since George Washington became President.  What’s sad is the Tea Party people scream so much about 1776 but they can’t see how we got from then to now and why we can’t go backwards.

The political right’s seeing red over Obama actually has little to with the man, but is just a continuation of a long term Hatfield and McCoy like feud.  Obama is just the liberal figurehead that sits in the Oval Office at the moment.  The righteous indignation of the conservatives always thinks liberal leaders, especially strong ones, are as evil as Hitler or Stalin.  Conversely, extreme liberals compare strong conservatives to Hitler when they are in office.  We need to analyze why?  (And who was the ultimate evil bad guy before WWII used in insults?)

Shouting the name Hitler is about as creative as people who use both phrases: “that’s some good shit” and “that’s some bad shit” in their day-to-day lives.  Comparing people to Hitler is only meaningful is you’re talking about Stalin, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Idi Amin and to a lesser degree, Saddam Hussein.

The Tea Party movement is really just sore losers crying over spilt milk.  Sarah Palin has nothing constructive to say politically.  What Obama has done while he is in office is not significantly different from what a conservative President would have done except for the healthcare bill, and if Republicans won the White House every term even they would have had to passed healthcare reform sooner or later, and it might not have been that much different from what the Democrats created.  The healthcare bill had no public option and is built around private insurance, an idea originating with Republicans.  Changing times force political changes, not ideology.

The momentum of economic reality rolls on no matter which party is in the White House.  So far we’ve been lucky and had no real Hitlers.  If Obama was like Hitler, Fox News would be shut down, and all their commentators dead.  Also, if any of our Presidents had really been like Hitler, the U.S.A. would have collapsed.  Our diversity could not support such extremism.

It’s much too early to tell how good or bad a President Obama will be.  Anyone blaming Obama for our present situation really needs to blame hordes of politicians, from both parties, going back decades.

What we have to worry about is the educational level of people comparing any of our Presidents to Hitler.  In fact, I think we should discount any political protestor or commentator who can’t reference a realistic comparison to past American political leaders and policies, and make reasonable links to previous problems and solutions.   People who use the name Hitler in protest are just people who have forgotten history, or never really knew it in the first place.

Evoking the name of Hitler is a kind of terrorist tactic, or Chicken Little exclaiming that the sky is falling.  It depresses me.  I’ve seen TV coverage where Tea Party people are outrage at the media coverage they get, and are even becoming critical of their own who go to extremes.  They don’t like being call racists or crackpots, and who can blame them, but it’s the extreme protest signs and rhetoric that get them on the news.  I’d take their protests more seriously as a third party if they didn’t make those extreme attacks on President Obama. 

The policies of any President are always open to criticism, but comparing any President to Hitler or Stalin is low IQ.  I’ve always hated Michael Moore political tactics too.  People have really sunk to a low point if they use Sacha Cohen’s tactics to attack one another.  It’s strange when conservatives follow in the footsteps of Abbie Hoffman, but then I’m sure there have always been mean spirited, underhanded, attackers protesting the power holders in Washington.

I guess I’m just overly sensitive to hot blooded, emotionally charged people.  I found it amusing the other day on the news when a roving reporter asked a Tea Party protestor about his sign comparing Obama to Hitler.  The guy said quietly that he meant no disrespect.  I wondered if he was actually embarrassed.  I bet he’d wished he had created a more creative slogan, equal to “Don’t tread on me” or “No taxation without representation.”  I guess the Tea Party has yet to find their Tom Paine or Ben Franklin.  It’s a shame the best they can do is a brunette Ann Coulter.  

JWH – 4/17/10