Blog

The Dalai Lama’s discussion of ethics in the modern age. The writing is clear and accessible and is not suffused with religion or mysticism.

This is an introduction to the XML-based web services framework. Specifically, it discusses XML-RPC, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI.

This is the famous book about managing your time. I know I read it, but I can’t remember a single one of the habits. I think I need The 2 Habits of Marginally Competent People.

This is another personality sorter, one more involved than the Kiersey sorter. This one has 9 categories, but you can be in two categories at once, and each category has 9 levels of development. I found it difficult to place myself in the categories. There is an on-line test available at the Enneagram Institute but it costs $10.

Despite the ridiculous title, this is a fantastic book. This book is the companion to the famous personality sorter which assigns your personality to one of sixteen different categories.

Although the categories are certainly not an exhaustive description of human behavior, I think they provide an illuminating perspective of human nature and of the many different people we meet in our lives.

You can find out more at keirsey.com.

I’m an INFP by the way.

The motto of the *fastread* series is “For Those of Us Who Don’t Have All Day!” While normally I would enjoy spending all day reading a book, in the case of buying a house I needed to get the information fast. This is a good introduction to house-buying.

I enjoyed reading this book. It’s a short little work that distills the main ideas and insights that Proust was trying to convey in In Search of Lost Time (or Volume I: Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove). The book is also a short biography of Proust’s very strange life. The book is often billed as self-help for intellectuals and I think it deserves the title.