Andrew "Ender" Wiggin

Books (576)

All books Finished (Newest) Title (A to Z) Title (Z to A) Rating (Highest) Rating (Lowest) Finished (Newest) Finished (Oldest) Published (Newest) Published (Oldest) Added (Newest) Added (Oldest)

The Mythma-
ker
- The Mythmaker (4)
- Paul and the Invention of Christianity
- By Hyam Maccoby
- Reading since 2011
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
- PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites (13)
- Visual QuickPro Guide
- By Larry Ullman
- Reading since 2012
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites

mixed feelings

this book puzzles me.
i don't like its format. i think a lot of space is wasted, having the full code on one side of half a page and a line-by-line commentary of the same code on the other half page.
but ..
it's the first book for beginners that tries to develope the idea of templating from the star ... (continue)

this book puzzles me.
i don't like its format. i think a lot of space is wasted, having the full code on one side of half a page and a line-by-line commentary of the same code on the other half page.
but ..
it's the first book for beginners that tries to develope the idea of templating from the start. and i think this is a very good idea.

Is this helpful?

— Jan 17, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Destroyers (1)
- By Douglas Reeman
- Finished in 2012
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Destroyers

*** This comment contains spoilers! ***
spoled by the end

it's amazing how a bad ending can ruin a book.
this book almost had it all: a plot, characters, even some romantic scenes. not enough for a female audience, i think, but still.
the you get to the end. it's all quite clear: the bad guys are going to be wipe out, the hero will get back save, the love ... (continue)

it's amazing how a bad ending can ruin a book.
this book almost had it all: a plot, characters, even some romantic scenes. not enough for a female audience, i think, but still.
the you get to the end. it's all quite clear: the bad guys are going to be wipe out, the hero will get back save, the love story will have its happy ending and, even if some good one will die, it's a war story, isn't it?
i was also disturbed by some anacronism: conqueror and moltke never fought in WWII, so i didn't like the constant use of these two ships in the story. without the 'stupid' ending, i'd have forgiven it.

Is this helpful?

— Feb 10, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Hornet Flight (86)
- By Ken Follett
- Finished in 2012
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Hawker Sea Fury
- Hawker Sea Fury (1)
- By W.A. Harrison
- Finished in 2012
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Hawker Sea Fury

good pictures and drawings but

that's all that there is. there's not much about the airplane features, and just a short story about its use. a little disappointing

Is this helpful?

— Jan 10, 2012 | Add your feedback

Pro PHP
- Pro PHP (1)
- patterns, frameworks, testing and more
- By Kevin McArthur
- Finished in 2012
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Pro PHP

gems and ...

i'm a little puzzled about how 'advanced' this book really is.
it has 2 real gems in part 2 and 5, i.e. a real introduction with good examples to SPL and soap. but the it has weird things like using plain javascript to do ajax stuff .. who's doing it anymore?
the parts talking about the forecoming P ... (continue)

i'm a little puzzled about how 'advanced' this book really is.
it has 2 real gems in part 2 and 5, i.e. a real introduction with good examples to SPL and soap. but the it has weird things like using plain javascript to do ajax stuff .. who's doing it anymore?
the parts talking about the forecoming PHP 6 are ilarious. PHP 6 is dead, but lots of books talk about it and how it will be. R.I.P. PHP 6.

Is this helpful?

— Jan 8, 2012 | Add your feedback
- Beginning PHP and PostgreSQL 8 (4)
- From Novice to Professional
- By W. Jason Gilmore, Robert H. Treat
- Finished in 2012
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Beginning PHP and PostgreSQL 8

disappointing

usually apress books are good. very good. i love them. this one .. i don't know. there's lot of good stuff, and lame errors. and since these are, mostly, things that an editor or a reviewer should catch, i wonder what happened. this is a book for beginners, supposedly. i'm not, but i think these kin ... (continue)

usually apress books are good. very good. i love them. this one .. i don't know. there's lot of good stuff, and lame errors. and since these are, mostly, things that an editor or a reviewer should catch, i wonder what happened. this is a book for beginners, supposedly. i'm not, but i think these kind of mistakes are hard on beginners.
let me just give you some examples.
1. use of var in OOP
since PHP5, the use of var is deprecated. the only place where you'd find it is in the historical introduction:
"once upon a time PHP4 brought us a lite form of OOP. then came PHP5 and almost made it right. at that time var was used. now it's an alias for public. DON'T USE IT."
that's it. instead, there are lots of examples with var.
this could just be me.
2. mistake with exception
there's a nice explanation (i'm serious) about when and how to use exception. few books have it. then, in just one example, everything is messed up. in this example, the most generic handler comes first in the try-catch, rendering every other kind of exception useless. and, in order not to let beginners understand, both branches of the catch do the same thing (so you don't really see which is being used).
3. getting ridiculous with dates
there's an example about dates, when march is tested for leap year (the code tests if march 29 exists in a particular year: why would it not exists?
4. in postgresql copy command examples
there are 2 example showing the use of the 'delimiter' option, one with the delimiter between hyphens, the other one without.
there's more than this, but the one i wrote about kind of irritate me.
also i don't like when code has errors that make it clearly look wrong even without understanding what the code does (like missing semicolons, missing closing parenthesis or quotes). i found many of these, and again, it could be hard for beginners to spot them.
overall, i would say that the title is misleading. you're not going to go from novice to professional. the book is to big to swallow for a novice, and has bad advice. for instance, in the postgrsql there's a lengthy discussion about building your own 'abstraction' class (ok, like there aren't enough). the reasoning is that if you change the database you're using, you just rework the abstraction class and you're set. right.
and what does he call the class? pgsql. why would you name and abstraction class with the name of the database you're using? call it sql, database, db, mydb, mydatabase, supercalifragilistichespiralidoso, but not pgsql!.
the book is little shy of 800 pages. it covers triggers, rules, functions, but doesn't even mention objects. isn't one of postresql peculiarities? and how about storing arrays?

Is this helpful?

— Nov 17, 2011 | Add your feedback
Nakaji-
ma Ki-84 "Frank-
" Hay…
- Nakajima Ki-84 "Frank" Hayate (1)
- By Shigeru Nohara
- Finished in 2012
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Nakajima Ki-84 "Frank" Hayate

not much to read (again)

pictures are great, but there's nothing at all about its story, development, and so on.

Is this helpful?

— Jan 10, 2012 | Add your feedback
- The Christ Conspiracy (10)
- The Greatest Story Ever Sold
- By Acharya S
- Finished in 2012
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
- Robot 64 (21)
- By Paul Di Filippo, Giuseppe Lippi, Dario Tonani, …
- Finished in 2011
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List

- Lockheed Blackbirds (1)
- By Tony Landis
- Finished in 2011
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Lockheed Blackbirds

interesting history of a spy plane

i've never been very interested in recce and spy planes. i know that intelligence gathering is vital, but i'm more interested in the more 'glamorous' art of dogfigthing or downing bombers.
this book proved to be very interesting, expecially because it covers all the 'blackbird' family, with a-12, yf ... (continue)

i've never been very interested in recce and spy planes. i know that intelligence gathering is vital, but i'm more interested in the more 'glamorous' art of dogfigthing or downing bombers.
this book proved to be very interesting, expecially because it covers all the 'blackbird' family, with a-12, yf-12, sr71 and other names.
anyway, now i want to go back to fighters.

Is this helpful?

— Dec 9, 2011 | Add your feedback
- Hawker Typhoon (1)
- the combat history
- By Richard Townshend Bickers
- Finished in 2011
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Hawker Typhoon

not so exciting

i could be just me, but i didn't like this book that much. i don't know why, because i liked the one about the A10, so i'm not against CAS aircraft.

Is this helpful?

— Dec 6, 2011 | Add your feedback
- Lock On No. 12 - Panavia Tornado IDS (4)
- By Willy Peeters
- Finished in 2011
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Lock On No. 12 - Panavia Tornado IDS

only pictures

there's not much else, and they're not so interesting.

Is this helpful?

— Nov 30, 2011 | Add your feedback
- The Gods Themselves (114)
- By Isaac Asimov
- Finished in 2011
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
The Gods Themselves

doesn't change my point of view

i was curious to read this book, partly because of the title, partly because is Asimov's vintage.
i have a bias against Asimov. I've read the foundation N-logy, and found it tasteless, boring in many cases, ridiculous in other cases.
but that could be translator's fault, at least partly. i read the ... (continue)

i was curious to read this book, partly because of the title, partly because is Asimov's vintage.
i have a bias against Asimov. I've read the foundation N-logy, and found it tasteless, boring in many cases, ridiculous in other cases.
but that could be translator's fault, at least partly. i read the robot stories, and could not like them. i read other novels and yet could not like his work.
so i read this book in English, knowing that i could miss some, being English not my mother tongue.
in my opinion, this book shows that Asimov can write a story without using the foundation material or the robot material.
i think this book shows the good and bad of Asimov. the prose is easy and readable, but the thread is kind of dull.
there's an entire part of the book, part 2, that takes place in the 'para-universe', that could be taken out without affecting the story (so why is there?). at the end, it looks like it's a 3 short novels put together than a whole novel. and like i said, one novel could be dropped without losing much.
being that the book is segmented, and there are different characters in each part, the development of characters is not what you would expect in a novel.
i also think that the story could lend itself to make some good point about man, energy, the exploitation of nature, but there's none. pollution disappears quickly in the book, and even the other problem is solved 'easily' once it is understood. this is Campbell's world, not a story from the 70's.

Is this helpful?

— Nov 13, 2011 | Add your feedback
- Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress (1)
- By Frederick A. Johnsen
- Finished in 2011
  
  Review
- Add...
  - My Shelf
  - Wish List
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

nice but ..

the B17 is probably one of the most 'iconic' airplane of WWII, especially in the ETO. this doesn't mean that it was 'the best', but only that it was popular.
this book lives on the edge, sometimes proving that 'it wasn't that great', but constantly comparing it with the B24, and awarding the win to ... (continue)

the B17 is probably one of the most 'iconic' airplane of WWII, especially in the ETO. this doesn't mean that it was 'the best', but only that it was popular.
this book lives on the edge, sometimes proving that 'it wasn't that great', but constantly comparing it with the B24, and awarding the win to the B17.
i think this is a little biased, and one should explain why, for example, the british never used the B17 as a bomber after the first sad experiences, and why they preferred the B24 as a patrol plane on the ocean. also, if it was 'so much better', why it wasn't used as much as in europe in the pacific war?
another interesting thing is that the B17 was tested with B24 fore and aft turrets, and found to be better with those, but never built as such.

Is this helpful?

— Oct 19, 2011 | Add your feedback