• What I read in 2010

    December 31, 2010 / No Comments

    I always feel like I don’t spend enough time reading.  My Amazon wishlists grow much faster than I can read.  I have 18 unread books on my iPad, and 7 or 8 paper books I need to read.

    Looking back on the year I ended up reading 21 books.  Some that have been on my “to read” list for years, and others that just recently came out.  I am not going to give reviews of them because I mostly find reviews worthless.  All the books I read this year were good.  Some were great, others just good, but none of them were bad.  Here is the list in no particular order:

    One of my goals every year it to try and read more.  We will see this time next year if I accomplished that.

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  • Hitch-22

    August 27, 2010 / No Comments

    64408467This month the audiobook I am listening to is Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch-22.  I am only two chapters in, but so far it’s pretty good.  I don’t know if I am going to make it though the whole thing though.  It’s read by Christopher Hitchens himself.  He is a good reader, but he has a heavy accent that I just can’t get use to.  Maybe after a few more chapters I will get use to it.  If not, I will just have to buy it in ebook form.

    I love audiobooks.  I usually listen to one book a month while doing dishes or other household chores.  I actually tell the Wife not to clean up the kitchen just so I can do it listening to a book.

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  • Math is Hard, But Awesome

    July 2, 2009 / No Comments

    I have always liked math. Even when it was way over my head, I liked it. The one area of math that intrigued me the most was probability. Probably because it was useful in everyday activities, and the brain has a hard time understanding probabilities. I have forgotten more math then I know now. I pretty much forgot how to calculate the probability of things. What got me thinking about this is the current audiobook I am listening to, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Yeah, I am listening to a book about math.

    It’s really good. I just finished a chapter about probability. Did you know your chances at winning the lottery are about the same as getting killed driving to buy a ticket? I never heard of Pascal’s Triangle before, but now I am ready more about it. Today I just started a chapter about randomness, and how it’s pretty much impossible to have a truly random number. Math may be hard, but it’s awesome too.

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  • Outliers

    January 19, 2009 / No Comments

    I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I really enjoyed Blink, and The Tipping point, and am currently listening to Outliers on audio book. Malcolm Gladwell is great at getting you to think. Outliers explains how successful people got to where there are. He explains that their success has more to do with their family, their generation, their upbringing, than their actual work. His theory is that if you can do something for 10,000 hours, you will be successful at it.

    Bill Gates grew up in a rich enough family that he went to a private school that actually had a computer club back when computers were fall from common. He spent all his free time programing computers. By the time computer use started to spread, he had is 10,000 hours in and was a computer genius. Most of his sucess is luck. He grew up in the right generation, had parents that were able to send him to private school, and had access to computers when most people didn’t.

    He also mentioned the Beatles. When they first started playing together the got a gig in Germany in which they played for eight hours a night, four to five days a week. They quickly learned how to play well together. They learned what worked and what didn’t. By the time their popularity increased they had their 10,000 hours in. Their success had more to do with the amount they played than anything else.

    I don’t know what it is, but I just love his stuff. Here is an old TED Talk he did back in 2004.

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