Experiments in Life

I finished cataloging the books in the master bedroom this morning. Here are the current stats:

• 252 books scanned.
• 155 books are mine (61%).
• 97 books are Ashley’s (39%).

The upstairs will be a beast. Two full-sized bookshelves full of books, plus all of Ashley’s textbooks and many of my technical books on the computer desk. As a comparison, neither of our downstairs bookshelves are full-sized — they are only half-height shelves with storage underneath.

Much like Misty, I started cataloging all of Ashley and my books into Delicious Library. So far, I have processed the bookshelf in our dining room. Here is the breakdown so far:

• 170 books scanned.
• 95 books are mine.
• 75 books are Ashley’s.

Today, I did not care to start scanning books again — that is an arduous task. Perhaps later tonight I will start on our bedroom. Instead, I started playing around with the export capabilities of Delicious Library with the ultimate goal of getting our library linked as a page off of the site. Basically, Delicious Library exports the entire library as a tab-separated file with the field names as the first line and each following line containing the information for one scanned in item. While that file could be linked off of the site, it would not be very pretty. So, I wrote a small python script to munge the data into XML so that an XSL file could generate a web page from the data. That is working fairly well so far.

I have also found that Delicious Library stores all of its data as XML. So, I am considering just writing some code to transform that file into one containing only the data I am interested in. Either way, expect a new link off of the sidebar soon containing our library contents.

Well, I did not think that it would happen, but I have hit my limit for books in the past week. Early in the week, I was working my way through two books for work. I read the majority of VHDL : Programming By Example and managed to make it half way through Rapid Development. I read the VHDL book as a refresher for the project I am currently involved with at work. I am reading the book on Rapid Development to gain insight on software project management and to work towards my long-term career goals.

Amazingly, I also managed to finish two fiction books this week. During the first part of the week, I read The Soulforge (Dragonlance: The Raistlin Chronicles, Book 1), which was a paperback I picked up at a used bookstore several months ago. It was so entertaining that I read it through at a break-neck pace just so that I could find out what would happen next to Raistlin. During the latter half of the week, I read Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy, Part 2 (Sword of Truth, Book 10). I have been waiting on this book to come out for the last year and a half, so I am sad that I finished it in two days. Now, there is only one book left in the series and it is probably another year or two away.

Given the size of the books, I estimated that I read somewhere around 1500 pages this week, give or take a few hundred. Now, I am trying to rest for the remainder of the weekend before I try to finish Rapid Development during the next week.

Ok, so I have finally started to slow down in my book reading. Since I finished reading Freakonomics last month, I have not been idly whiling away my time. I have still been reading fiction, finishing up Children of the Mind (CotM), Night Watch (NW), and To Dream in the City of Sorrows (TDitCoS). Below are my brief thoughts on these three, relatively short, books.

CotM is the final book in the Ender’s Game saga. All I can say is that it is finally over. I really enjoyed the first two books in the series (Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead) but after that the series went downhill. Orson Scott Card seemed to get preachy and by the end of Xenocide, I just stopped caring what happened to the characters. However, when I start a series, I feel the need to see it through, so I read CotM anyways. I still did not care what happened, I just wanted the Deus Ex Machina to hurry up and save the day so that I could move on to something new. If I had it to do all over again, I would still have read the book because it did give some really good closure to the series, but it just did not do anything for me.

NW was the first Terry Pratchett book that I have read. It was quite the refreshing change over CotM. The story was funny and I really cared what happened. For the first time in a long time, I found myself staying up as late as I could so that I could read just one more chapter. Sadly, I finished the book in less than a week. Then I remembered that Terry Pratchett is horribly prolific writer, so I have plenty of his books to choose from when I want to read another one, which made me happy again

TDitCoS is set the in Babylon 5 universe so, if you are not a fan of the TV series, you probably will not care for the book. I am a big fan, though, so I thought that the book was quite entertaining. It was well written and seemed to fit in well with the overall story arc of the series. It was not high, classic literature, but it was a fun book to read. Definitely recommended if you want to know more about what happened to Jeffrey Sinclair after he leaves Babylon 5.

That is all that I have managed to make it through in the past month. I have been working through one of my nerd books during my lunchtime at work, but I have only just started chapter 3 since I am trying to work as many of the exercises as I can. Next up on the fiction list: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It has gotten several good reviews so I am excited about reading it. More about this one in a later post…

Don’t you hate it when songs get stuck in your head for no reason whatsoever? It has been around two weeks since I went to go see the musical Evita and all of a sudden, the main song of the performance has jump straight into my head and refuses to leave. It has not been there for the past two weeks, so I do not know what makes today so special. Sometimes, I wonder if songs get stuck in my head because my mind is not working hard enough. I know that when I am really, really busy, my mind stays focused on the task at hand and the radio station that is my brain is quiet for a while. Lately, though, it seems like my brain is working non-stop to keep me entertained with showtunes. “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” is just the latest song to burst onto the scenes.

I think this, along with the urges to stay up late at night reading, must be signs that I am not being challenged enough. Well, since the books that I have been waiting for have finally come in, I have started trying to rectify (insert obligatory EE joke here) my boredom. I started on Essentials of Programming Languages during lunch today. This, along with the slew of novels I am slowly working my way through, ought to occupy my mind for a while once I get into it. Until then “Don’t cry for me Argentina…”

As I am sitting at computer in my office, I cannot help but to look at the books that are sitting on my corner computer desk, just waiting for me to dive into them. The only problem is, I am not sure which subject I want to study first. I have an interest in all of the subjects — otherwise I would not have gotten the books. Here is what I am considering:

1. Math Books
• Introduction to Topology
• Algebraic Structures
• The Theory of Groups
2. Robotics Books
• Robot Builder’s Bonanza
• Build Your Own Robot!
• Sensors for Mobile Robots
3. Computer Science Books
• The Art of Computer Programming: Funamental Algorithms
• Lisp In Small Pieces (coming soon)
• Essentials of Programming Languages (coming soon)
4. Any of my electronics books (at work)

I picked most of these up when I found them on sale at Barnes and Noble. To be honest, I will probably start in on EoPL or LiSP when they come in — I have been fairly excited about getting them. However, I have really started to notice how many of my E.E. skills have fallen off through disuse, so I may start up a side project to try and brush up on Basic Circuit Analysis and Electronic Circuit Analysis before I try to move into teaching myself anything new (in the field that I just received a Master’s degree in… and I need to brush up on the basics).

– Disclaimer –

These are not the only books that I read, in case anyone gets too worried about me. I do read novels (in the middle of one now) and other non-fiction books beside nerd-books.

I finally finished reading Freakonomics during lunch today. Of course, I could have finished it Monday if I had realized that the epilogue, the only part I had yet to read, was three pages long. Freakonomics is about applying economic theory to everyday life. While the book was interesting to read, it did not have a lot of meat to it. It told some interesting stories and provided several conjectures; however, it completely glossed over how the Levitt came to his conclusions. I would recommend it for some light reading but if you are looking for something with a little oomph to it, you might want to try elsewhere.

Sometimes I wonder why I do not sleep at night. Some nights the reason is blazingly obvious — thoughts like the following take root in my mind and will not let go. Recently, I finished reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. I enjoyed it so such that I plan on reading The Third Chimpanzee : The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, also by Jared Diamond. Looking at the book on our bookshelf has started me thinking about how humans evolved — specifically, how humans evolved binocular vision with eyes in the front of the head like predators have instead of on the side of the head like most prey animals have. Now, I should state that I accept that chimpanzees are the species that is genetically closest to humans. However, I do not necessarily consider chimpanzees to be predators — although I admit that this subject is not something that I have studied extensively.

Based on these beliefs, I began to wonder where the primate line came from if:

1. primates truely are not predators and
2. primates have eyes in a predatory configuration.

I know that, given a DNA sequence of all mammalian species on Earth and enough calculation time, one could determine how closely related any one species is from any other species by comparing the overlap in the DNA sequences. Now, the following is what kept me up half the night:
would it be possible to approximate, within a million years or so, how long ago the species diverged? I think that a model could be devised that takes into account:

1. the percentage of DNA in common between the species,
2. the average amount of radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface,
3. the average number of mutations to DNA
   that occur per unit of radiation,
4. the average number of mutations that are passed on, and
5. the probability that the mutation will be “beneficial.”

This will probably be something that I will mull over in the back of my mind for several days.

Lately, I have gone through a spell where I have not really wanted to read. I managed to make it about half-way through Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid before I wore out. I had also tried to make it through Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies before my reading strength peetered out. Mind you, I have not quit either of these books; I am just taking a small hiatus from the voluminous concepts in each book. I plan on getting back to them soon enough.

Part of the reason I stopped reading is that I was getting overwhelmed. Work and life seemed to be piling up faster and faster and reading for pleasure — something that was low priority in the grand scheme of things — just dropped by the wayside. Deciding to do something about the stress, I picked up a copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity after reading so many good reviews on the Internet. I blazed through the book in a week or two and have been pondering the best way to start implementing the system. Now, I just need to find a weekend that I can use to start implementing the system at home. Getting my home office streamlined will go a long way; I plan on setting something up at work over the Christmas holidays. As I begin implementing the system, I plan on documenting my progress online.

Since A Feast for Crows has finally come out, I have been reading it for pleasure. It is the first novel that I have read in several months, but it feels good to be reading for pleasure again. The going is slow, but I do not want this book to go too fast. I have been waiting for over three years for this book to come out and I am already not looking forward to the wait for the next one.