Roo Reynolds - What’s Next?

Recent Reading

Posted by Roo - 11/11/07 at 10:11:42 pm

Back in September, I listed the books I’d been reading recently. Well, here’s the selection for October (and early November).

• ‘Miss Wyoming’, Douglas Coupland - not my favourite Coupland, but enjoyable enough.
• ‘The Xenephobe’s Guide to Icelanders’ - a birthday present, together with The Wisdom of Crowds and EBC&B, from Kaman (thank you!). Very funny, as well as educational. Not as racist as the title would have you believe.
• ‘The Glasshouse’, Charles Stross - a loan from Kyb. Really very good indeed. Better, even, than ‘Singularity Sky’. Stross may be my new favourite scifi author.
• ‘This Wisdom of Crowds’, James Surowiechi - One of the many books I felt I should have read by now. Perhaps a little dry, but informative.
• ‘Egg Bacon Chips & Beans’, Russell Davies - Russell is not only a lovely chap, he writes an excellent book. You know Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down? Imaging something like that, but for EBC&B, and perhaps even more charming.
• ‘The Steep Approach to Garbadale’, Iain Banks - I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. The predictable Banks twist ended up being a little different to what I was expecting.
• ‘The Gum Thief’, Douglas Coupland - multi-layered? A return to form? I’m still not sure. Better than JPod, in any case.
• ‘Love All the People’, Bill Hicks - a collection of shows, letters and writings. If you’re a Bill Hicks fan (isn’t everyone?) then you’ll love being able to see the way his work develops over time.

Writer/Reader Mashup

Posted by Roo - 28/09/07 at 01:09:20 pm

Last night I was at the Writer/Reader Mashup in London. There were five speakers, each of which had ten minutes, and some time for discussion at the end. It was a great event.

Here are my brief notes. The audio was recorded and might be available from Creative Partnerships (in “two to three weeks”). I did record the audio from Guy’s session, which I’ll share if he’s happy for me to do so.

Anyway, my (woefully incomplete) notes…

Continue reading Writer/Reader Mashup…

Recent Reading

Posted by Roo - 19/09/07 at 10:09:52 am

The books I’ve finished in the past couple of months. Kyb lent me the Stross, Hofstadter and both the Lems (thanks!). Andy lent me the Tipping Point (thanks!) but my dog chewed it so I bought him a new one and kept this copy.

• Douglas Hofstadter, ‘I am a Strange Loop’ - Hofstadter revisits Godel, Escher, Bach. Much longer than it needs to be.
• Malcolm Gladwell, ‘The Tipping Point’ - a book which became a buzzword. Good to finally read it. Lots of good stuff in there.
• Irving Welsh, ‘The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs’ - Quite strange. Hatred and retribution. Somewhere between ‘Trainspotting’ and ‘Acid House’, in that it’s gritty but also explores some fantastical (modern fantasy?) territory.
• Douglas Adams, ‘The Salmon of Doubt’ - it took me ages to get round to reading this. The unpublished stuff on DNA’s hard disks after he died, including an unfinished chunk of a Dirk Gently book.
• Charles Stross, ‘Singularity Sky’ - An exploration of post-singularity culture and cultural backwaters. Interesting.
• Stanislav Lem, ‘The Futurological Congress’ - this is more than a little bit strange. Very disappointing ending.
• Tim Harford, ‘The Undercover Economist’ - As someone who hasn’t thought much about economics (past reading ‘The Armchair Economist’ and ‘Freakanomics’) I found this fascinating. I’d love to hear from Richard Brown thinks of it.
• Stansilav Lem, ‘Solaris’ - Slow and ponderous, but fairly beautiful. Not as beautiful as the equally slow and ponderous film though.

I’m currently re-reading ‘Snow Crash’ (yet again) and Coupland’s ‘Miss Wyoming’, as well as nearly finished Bennett’s ‘Untold Stories’.

Bookshelf

Posted by Roo - 31/05/07 at 10:05:38 pm

The few dead-tree books I like to keep close at hand when I’m working.

Nearly, but for some reason not, ordered chronologically. There is a bit of a progression over time, which pretty much goes: general programming, Java, Eclipse, Ruby.

There are a few oddities thrown in for good measure, and some I’ve borrowed. These include Darren’s excellent loan of ‘Ants at Work’ (which I read on holiday in Portugal and inspired me to take macro photos of the little buggers hard at work) as well as Andy’s loan of ‘Everyware’ (short story: I liked it a lot).

Friedman’s Earth is Flat. Should I bother?

Posted by Roo - 14/01/07 at 02:01:14 pm

One chapter in, and I am afraid I do not yet find this book enlightening, enriching or enthralling. The sleeve notes should have given my some idea. Martin Wold at the Financial Times says “It will make hundreds of thousands of readers understand a little better at least some of the forces in our world”. A little better? At least some? Sheesh. Noel Malcolm at the Sunday Telegraph describes it as “Colorful anecdotes and wisdom served in bite-sized pieces… He ranges widely, offering vivid accounts of all the new ways things are being done.”. Anecdotes do indeed seem to be the default way for businss books to serve up whatever message they are trying to deliver. ‘Well’ I thought, turning from the back cover to the first page, ‘I’ll try it’.

I reached the end of chapter one and was completely cold. I fear there is little connecting each fresh example of flatness, other than Friedman’s relentless surprise (”But my jaw *really* dropped when…”). Considering that it was only written in 2005, I was surprised to consistently find myself unsurprised. Maybe it’s written for the sort of people who have not noticed globalisation and outsourcing before?

Some choice quotes:

• “‘What is Apache?’ I ask. And he says it’s a shareware program for web server technology. He said it was produced for free by a bunch of geeks just working online in some kind of open-source chat room. … And I said ‘Well, who supports it if something goes wrong?’ And he says ‘I don’t know - it just works!’” That was Ian Cohen, a senior manager at IBM during the 90s, learning about Apache from his development director. Sigh.
• “BitTorrent is a Web site that allows users to upload their own online music libraries and download other people’s at the same time”. Wrong in at least two very important ways. Sigh.
• “It is impossible to imagine what it’s going to be like in ten years when virtually everyone you know has a blog”. Hang on, virtually everyone I know *now* has a blog, including lots of only-just-geeky people.
• “‘I am positive without Google’s services, I never would have found my brother, my husband, or the surprisingly lucrative nature of the male stripping industry in Mexico! Thank you, Google!’ - Testimonial from Google user.” Best. Testimonial. Ever.

I’ve quickly flicked through the rest of the book to see whether a structure emerges later in the book (and was relieved to find that one indeed does). I will probably see it through, and partly because I promised someone I’d read a rebuttal of it too.

Reading list

Posted by Roo - 04/12/06 at 10:12:07 pm

I’ve decided to keep a reading list, by tagging books on del.icio.us as I start reading them (or finish them, can’t decide. Probably some combination of the two). Amazon seemed like a natural choice for the destination web link, but I wondered if there was an alternative. It seems many books have their own website. For the rest of this post, I’m going to try to link to an obvious page, rather than the easy choice, just to see if it can be done.

Some books you just know you’ll go back to again. This list of books to re-read is partly for my own benefit, to remind myself to pick them up again in the new year.

• Getting Things Done by David Allen - changed my life and made me want to be more organised and relaxed, and helped me discover the source of most of my stress.
• Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box - made me think about the nature of selfishness. Not every book does that.
• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki - gave me some ideas, though has very little substance and made me wonder whether Rich Dad ever existed.
• StrengthsFinder, Now, Discover Your Strengths - gave me an another way to think about strengths and team roles (having known about Belbin since starting at IBM).

I finally read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell recently (which he could have compressed into the first chapter. I got what he was trying to say very quickly, and most of the book was repetition), which made me think I should probably also get round to reading his earlier book, The Tipping Point. Also, I’ve never read Friedman’s The World is Flat. Should I?

Oh, and despite all of the above, most of what I read is actually fiction.. (I’m currently reading and enjoying The Life of Pi).

Planet IBM

Posted by Roo - 20/10/06 at 08:10:58 pm

Sam Ruby has thrown up a Planet to aggregate all the posts from IBM’s (opt-in) list of known IBM bloggers. He’s currently having to scrape it because the OPML is currently not well formed.

And like that… probably my most geeky post ever was aggregated, without resorting to a single photograph and with barely a mention of virtual worlds.