Book Reviews
These are book reviews. Books are on a variety of topics: technical, business, personal growth, and some are just plain fun.
QBQ
QBQ stands for the question behind the question. This little book is about the questions we ask ourselves in our head and about getting to the question behind the question and taking personal accountability. It’s about changing our inner dialog and asking questions that serve us instead of asking
Corona Virus Reading List
Being self-employed sometimes it is difficult to shut work off. You are very vested in the outcome and there’s always more to do. Working from home makes it especially difficult because there isn’t that physical separation of actually going into the office. Being stuck inside for this Corona
Secrets of Consulting
Consulting is the art of influencing people at their request.
Secrets of Consulting page v
When I first started doing consulting, I thought that most problems were technical. Boy was I wrong! I quickly learned that most problems are not technical, but are people problems. If I had read “ Secrets
Art of Unit Testing 2nd edition
I originally bought this book on Fab’s recommendation. I had read the XUnit Test Patterns book and I liked it, but I thought it was rather large and cumbersome. It was 900 pages, so I was looking for something smaller and lightweight that I could recommend to people. I
Click Here To Kill Everybody
This is the second Bruce Schneier book I have read. It is every bit as good as the first. This book is a commentary on the current state of cybersecurity (and the future) for what Bruce calls the Internet+. The Internet+ includes everything connected to the internet; not just servers,
Ego Is The Enemy And The Obstacle Is The Way
As I wrote in a previous post about philosophy and coding I was not always a big fan of philosophy. I viewed it as an academic pursuit, a bunch of eggheads sitting around thinking about thinking. I never saw the practical value. That is until a read a pair of
Automate the Boring Stuff With Python
* NI recently added Python Integration to both LabVIEW and TestStand.
* Danielle Jobe’s presentation at GDevCon last year and her hands-on at NI week this year were both on integrating LabVIEW and Python.
* I had a job this year where there was potential for more work to be done but
Data And Goliath
Nothing is private on the internet. Most of us understand this idea intellectually. We realize that we are being surveilled at some level, but most of us do not grasp the depth and breadth of that surveillance and what exactly it is used for and the implications. Bruce Schneier does
Outliers
I’ve had several very interesting conversations lately. I had a great conversation with Allen, Shane, Danielle, and Oli after GDevCon2. I had another fascinating conversation with Fab and few others after the CLA Summit. Most recently I had a conversation after Social Media Day Denver.
All these conversations had
Design Patterns - A review
I recently finished reading “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” by Erich Gamm, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissades. Due to its popularity, the length of the title, and the fact that it has 4 authors, it is affectionately known as the “Gang of Four” book or GOF
