The latest story collection from Beth and Emily. The stories are lovely, with fantasy and animal themes set in two separate worlds.

Absolutely wonderful book. The author examines the American Constitution and the set of unwritten rules, precedents, and conventions without which we could not make sense of the literal text, but which do not supplant the text itself. Reading this book is a serene joy.

A short but pretty decent introduction to the Raspberry Pi. The book is best suited for complete beginners, but there are still some helpful tips for those with plenty of software experience. I got a free Raspberry Pi at both PyCon and the Erlang Factory.

I also attended a great workshop run by Omer Kilic of Embedded Erlang that included a free expansion board with LEDs, buttons, switches, and a temperature sensor. They are about to release an Erlang-based embedded development environment.

Whoah! I knew it was going to be weird, but I had no idea just how weird, and disturbing, it was going to get. Fascinating and thoroughly researched.

Wonderfully stimulating and entertaining. Taleb brings a unique perspective on the problems of randomness and our exposure to the unexpected. He also doesn’t pull his punches. A great read.

Another book on design, but this one emphasizes the actual practice of design and how to make it better. The first two-thirds or so is just excellent. Brooks’s contention is that the best designs always come from either a single designer or (at most) two designers working very closely together. The reason is that the quality most important to a great design is conceptual integrity, an attribute that “design by committee” can never achieve. But design reviews are best done by multitudes, bringing many different perspectives to bear.

The last third of the book is a compendium of case studies. A few, like the design of IBM’s S/360 mainframe computer, are interesting to a computer geek like myself for their historical value. But others, like the design of the Brooks family beach house, are quite frankly boring. But no matter, the good parts are well worth the price.

Winslow can sure write a gripping novel. I liked The Power of the Dog and The Winter of Frankie Machine better, but this was still very good.