STG's

I've just finished reading Variable Star today - around 2 AM - I just couldn't stop reading... It is a book by Spider Robinson based on the a recently found outline for a juvenile by Robert A. Heinlein. It is a very good read. The tidbits on the end about how he wrote it in Heinlein's cufflinks and how the first book he ever read was written by Heinlein are quite interesting,too. The ending did feel a bit Deus-Ex machina, though. That said, I'd love to see a sequel! Looking around I found a interview with the author, who said he haven't thought about it. That is a bit hard to believe, given how the sequel was left nicely open AND sounding interesting.

Archivarius is a search system (like Google Desktop or Copernic Desktop Search), but it supports many formats, including The Bat's mail files. I didn't try it (and it's NOT free), but that is interesting. There is also a plug-in for Google Desktop elsewhere, but I use Copernic, myself. The Bat support is almost enough to make me try it again, but not enough. The first version was pretty bad - locking up and wasting resources - and it seems that the options to choose what you want to scan are still shaped presuming you want to scan all your drives, instead of just a few folders, which is what I do. Both options are very easy on Copernic Desktop Search . The only options I'm missing is one to index filenames only - useful for folders with large files you don't want fully indexed but where filenames would be useful.

Find All Domains on Same IP Tool - SEOLogs.com : " 7) ucpco.com" Nice tool. Works ok with some of my domains, but not all. Interesting anyway.

I've recently read Freehold by Michael Z. Williamson. I got it on one of the packages at Webscription . These packages are a great deal all around - the books are very reasonably priced for the reader, and since so many are series every time I buy a package I end getting another to cover the rest of another series. That part is great for the publisher, of course... Freehold was very nice. The Freehold of the title is a planet that has an anarchy based society, in which everything goes great - crime is non-existent (even if everyone is heavily armed), taxes are minimal to none, etc. (I can almost believe that could work - the citizens would need a completely different upbringing than any I've heard of, though) The UN-unified Earth, very incompetent, of course, enters war because they can't tolerate how well they are doing without a heavy-handed government. Now that I can sure believe in... One thing I thought was interesting were the paralels with Net Assets . Net Assets i...

I've read Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master last week. It was pretty good, although if you have a few years of experience and good practices, you should be familiar with most of what it says, even if you don't follow it in practice :-) . Some of their bullet points are: - Don't duplicate - Write flexible code - Use Contracts, assertions and exceptions - Test - Automate where possible - Use a version control system. Obviously, many of these points have a lot to do with refactoring and XP. They also have another neat book on Automation, Pragmatic Project Automation: How to Build, Deploy, and Monitor Java Apps . Obviously that is much less relevant to a Delphi programmer, but you can still learn quite a bit from it. After I started reading it, I automated large sections of my build and release process (in PHP - it's easy to use in the command-line, too, and some parts are re-usable on the site). It saves a lot of time and enables you to stop worrying if you ...

I recently read Working Effectively with Legacy Code . It was an excellent book. It focus on legacy code, defined as code that doesn't use unit testing - yes, it is a narrow definition :-) . It has an excellent range of techniques for refactoring and getting older code under test, as well as adding features without breaking anything. If you have an older program that you are moving under a testing framework, the insights on the book are well worth the price. In particular, the various ways to get objects decoupled so that you can get them tested without creating a lot of support code are very useful.

In his image (Book One of the Christ Clone Trilogy) *Very* good. The basic premise is based on cells being found still alive in the Shroud of Turin. These cells are used to create to a clone. The pace of the book is excelent, although the nuking might have been a bit excessive :-). Lots of questions unanswered on the end. I've already gotten the second one. Crown of Slaves Yet another Honor Harrington book. Honor shows just a bit on this one, just like on Shadow of Saganami. It was pretty good - Victor Cachat (which appeared on several of the short-story Anthologies) makes a great showing as usual, and the trend of making books on the HonorVerse without the focus on Honor seems to be working well.