Summer reading list

Posted by :chadwick On : June 19, 2008
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Category: Books, Reviews, Software Development, Technology

I just ordered several books from Amazon for work-related reading over the summer. All of these are highly recommended so hopefully they won’t be too boring.

  • Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design – Jenifer Tidwell
  • Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations – Clay Shirky
  • Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter) – Garr Reynolds
  • Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 – Sarah Lacy
  • Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent – Joel Spolsky

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Posted by :chadwick On : June 17, 2008
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Category: Movies, Reviews

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Saturday night we saw the latest Indiana Jones movie. As with most movies I avoided learning anything about it before I saw it just to make sure I didn’t have any preconceived notions.

I had heard how much Harrison Ford had focused on getting into top shape again for this role, although he wasn’t as in good as shape as I would have guessed. But then again, I can only hope I am in that good of shape at 65 years of age.

I heard some rumbling from folks that the whole sci-fi twist at the end wasn’t becoming of an Indy movie, but I found that it fit the series perfectly. There has always been a lot of conjecture that the Nazca lines were made for “aliens” so playing into that storyline doesn’t seem far fetched or out-of-line to me at all.

While Cate Blanchett is always nice to look at, I didn’t quite buy her role as a Soviet scientist. But hey, suspension of disbelief and all that.

Overall I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Under the Wire

Posted by :admin On : June 10, 2008
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Category: Books, Reviews

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This past weekend I finished reading Under the Wire, a book by William Ash that details his travels from an American drifter to a Spitfire pilot in the British Royal Air Force to an eventual prisoner of war in WWII occupied Europe.

Ash was one of the remarkable POWs that spent their entire time in captivity plotting and executing escape attempts for their various camps. These escapades led to the 1963 movie The Great Escape, which details fictional escapes based upon the real escapes from the Stalag Luft III prison camp.

Like any book of the WWII generation, you get a tremendous sense of how ordinary men and women performed extraordinary feats during the circumstances of war. Anytime you are fortunate enough to meet one of rapidly dwindling number of WWII veterans be sure to thank them for their gift to all of us, even if they themselves don’t feel they did anything special.

Overall I’d give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

The Cure

Posted by :chadwick On : June 10, 2008
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Category: Music, Reviews

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Last night my friend Matt and I saw The Cure perform at the Houston Toyota Center. It was a great, and very long, show. They took the stage around 8:30 pm and didn’t finish up until just before midnight after their 3rd encore.

The set list:

  • Out of this World
  • Want
  • Fascination Street
  • A Night Like This
  • The End of the World
  • Lovesong
  • A Boy I Never Knew
  • Pictures of You
  • Lullaby
  • Maybe Someday
  • From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
  • The Perfect Boy
  • The Kyoto Song
  • Hot Hot Hot
  • The Only One
  • The Blood
  • Sleep When I’m Dead
  • Push
  • How Beautiful You Are
  • Inbetween Days
  • Just Like Heaven
  • A Letter to Elise
  • Us or Them
  • One Hundred Years
  • Blood Flowers
    1st Encore

  • Plainsong
  • Disintegration
    2nd Encore

  • Boy’s Don’t Cry
  • Jumping Someone Else’s Train
  • Grinding Halt
  • 10:15 Saturday Night
  • Killing an Arab
    3rd Encore

  • A Forest

I had not seen The Cure in concert before, so I wasn’t sure what the crowd would be like. Not surprisingly, it was almost entirely people who grew up with the band. More surprisingly, to me, was just how much the crowd was into it; several times it seemed the entire hall was singing outloud with some of the songs.

Evan Almighty

Posted by :chadwick On : May 30, 2008
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Category: Movies, Reviews

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Today we watched Evan Almighty. In this movie, God, played again by Morgan Freeman, has Evan Baxter, played by Steve Carell, build a great Ark in the spirit of Noah.

Evan Baxter gets chosen by God to build the Ark after he is elected to the US Congress on a Change the World platform. He’s skeptical of the entire ordeal but eventually enough strange things occur, such as animals coming to him in pairs, that he gives in and builds the Ark.

I’d give it 2.5 out of 5 stars. It was a fun comedy but not worth watching twice. Steve Carell, while funny, seems to be too typecast in the idiot role.