Dave Nelson

I received this book while attending a workshop with Whitney Quesenbery and Steve Krug. It was a great seminar with lots of hands-on training in a two-day format.

If you read a lot of books on design and usability there may not be much in this book you have not read before, even so it can be a great resource for sharing with others and as a meta-reference for looking up more information on studies, experiments, and papers.

I also think this is a great book to thumb through while working on a design, maybe picking a random number from 1 to 100, reading that chapter, and then thinking about how it may apply to your design.

From the Susan Weinschenk’s web site:

You design to elicit a response. You want your target audience to buy, read, register — to take action of some kind. Designing without understanding about people is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People covers the psychology research that you need to know in order to design intuitive and engaging websites, software and products that match the way people think, work, and relate.

I rate this book an 8 out of 10 as a reference and as a source of inspiration.

I read this book as an ebook on an iPhone using eReader Pro.

In the second book of the series we get some more time with Thaddeus, Gloria and the new magician nicknamed Houdini.

My favorite part of this story is when Ahazuerus, talking about himself and Thaddeus, explains to Houdini “We are two sides of a coin. He lacks empathy and tact, although he is slowly acquiring both. I lack drive and ambition, though I too am learning. We complement each other perfectly.” This really speaks to me; the two of them are growing together as a team and as individuals. It increases my desire to learn more about both characters and the characters that surround them.

From the authors web site:

The carnival is traveling among the stars, and finding all kinds of problems that Thaddeus Flint and his crew didn’t anticipate. What use is a wild animal tamer when the audience looks more like the animals than the trainer. Who would pay to watch Butterfly Delight perform her striptease when to many of them it seems like an unappetizing snake shedding its skin? One by one, Flint and his alien partner, Mr. Ahazuerus, must tackle each problem before the show goes broke.

I rate this book a 7 out of 10 and the complete series as a 9 out of 10.

Like the first book of the series I read this book on a Kindle and listened to it on an iPhone switching back and forth as needed.

Wow, these books are long. It took me a few weeks to make it through this one. But it was a great ride.

The story goes on and on with no end in sight. The characters are holding my attention and I look forward to reading the third book, although that will have to wait until June or so as I am in non-fiction book mode now.

I am still surprised by how much I am enjoying these books, especially given their length and relatively slow pace. I was able to sum up most of the various plot lines from the book to my wife in less than an hour, I left out some of the good bits so she will still have some surprises left when we watch the TV show.

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clash_of_Kings):

A Clash of Kings picks up where A Game of Thrones ended. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are plagued by civil war, while the Night’s Watch mounts a reconnaissance force north of the Wall to investigate the mysterious people, known as wildlings, who live there. Meanwhile, in the distant east, Daenerys Targaryen continues her quest to return to and conquer the Seven Kingdoms. All signs are foreshadowing the terrible disaster that is to come.

I rate this book a 9 out of 10, it is even better then the first book.

This story is a first for me; I both listened to the audiobook and read the ebook interchangeably.

The audiobook is narrated by Roy Dotrice who does an amazing job performing all of the characters in this novel.

This is not normally a book I would read; I consider this to be ‘hard fantasy’ and my tastes lean more towards ‘humorous fantasy’ or ‘light fantasy,’ I think the last hard fantasy book I read was a Terry Brooks something or other back when I went to a friends house every weekend to play Dungeons and Dragons (actually that sounds kind of fun, hmmm.)

But, I enjoyed the HBO series on TV, so much so that I subscribed to HBO just to watch it, so I decided to give the book a try. I expected the book to differ greatly from the TV show, or vice versa, but I am amazed at how closely the two followed each other. The audiobook is almost 34 hours long and the TV series is less than 10 hours long but somehow they have fit everything that I consider significant into the show.

It was very interesting to go from listening to the book to reading the book. The transition was not always smooth. It was not easy to find my place when going from one format to the other, but the audiobook is truly unabridged so I was always able to find my spot and continue the story. I find that it is not always polite to wear headphones, but reading from an ereader is understandable, while at times reading from an eraeder is not appropriate but headphones are fine. By switching back and forth I was able to listen and read while driving, at the grocery store, in restaurants, at friends houses, while shopping, in bed, in a bathtub, in an airport, and on airplanes. How else am I to get all of these books read?

From the publisher:

In a time long forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons off balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. As the cold returns, sinister forces are massing beyond the protective wall of the kingdom of Winterfell. To the south, the king’s powers are failing, with his most trusted advisor mysteriously dead and enemies emerging from the throne’s shadow. At the center of the conflict, the Starks of Winterfell hold the key: a reluctant Lord Eddard is summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder both family and kingdom. In this land of extremes, plots and counterplots, soldiers and sorcerers, each side fights to win the deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

©1996 George R.R. Martin, (P)2003 Books On Tape, Inc., published in arrangement with Random House Audio Group,a division of Random House, Inc.

I rate this book, both audiobook and ebook an 8 out of 10. If I could only have one version I would choose the audiobook and the wonderful narration of Roy Dotrice.

I listened to this as an audiobook. Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner the unabridged book is a glorious 38 hours and 34 minutes. I have read many of Neal Stephenson’s books and have liked them all, a few of them I have really loved, and this is one of the best.

The story is full of characters, but the time is taken with each one in turn to make them memorable and to draw you into their lives. By then end of the book I cared about the fate of each and every one of them. But this is not some slow moving drama, it is a rip-roaring fast paced action adventure that takes you around the world.

From the author’s website:

Neal Stephenson, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Anathem, returns to the terrain of his groundbreaking novels Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon to deliver a high-intensity, highstakes, action-packed adventure thriller in which a tech entrepreneur gets caught in the very real crossfire of his own online war game.

In 1972, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, fled to the mountains of British Columbia to avoid the draft. A skilled hunting guide, he eventually amassed a fortune by smuggling marijuana across the border between Canada and Idaho. As the years passed, Richard went straight and returned to the States after the U.S. government granted amnesty to draft dodgers. He parlayed his wealth into an empire and developed a remote resort in which he lives. He also created T’Rain, a multibillion-dollar, massively multiplayer online roleplaying game with millions of fans around the world. But T’Rain’s success has also made it a target. Hackers have struck gold by unleashing REAMDE, a virus that encrypts all of a player’s electronic files and holds them for ransom. They have also unwittingly triggered a deadly war beyond the boundaries of the game’s virtual universe—and Richard is at ground zero.

Racing around the globe from the Pacific Northwest to China to the wilds of northern Idaho and points in between, Reamde is a swift-paced thriller that traverses worlds virtual and real. Filled with unexpected twists and turns in which unforgettable villains and unlikely heroes face off in a battle for survival, it is a brilliant refraction of the twenty-first century, from the global war on terror to social media, computer hackers to mobsters, entrepreneurs to religious fundamentalists. Above all, Reamde is an enthralling human story—an entertaining and epic page—turner from the extraordinary Neal Stephenson.

I rate this book a 10 out of 10. I highly recommend it for any fan of action, cyberpunk, or thriller genres.

I bought the entire Galactic Midway series many years ago to read on my PalmPilot. This is probably my 5th time reading them.

Sideshow is the first book in a series of 4 novels following a most unusual carnival.

From Mike Resnick’s web site:

Carny owner Thaddeus Flint kidnaps a rival carnival’ freak show, only to learn that the “freaks” are alien tourists visiting Earth in the one disguise they thought was safe from discovery. As they fall sick and go into fits of depression, Flint must work to keep them healthy and on display, which leads to a most unlilkely bond between captor and captives.

I rate this book a 7 out of 10 by itself and the “Tales of the Galactic Midway” series as whole a 9 out of 10.

I bought this audiobook from Audible.com.

Boy-oh-boy do I love me some Mike Resnick space bounty hunter goodness and this one does not disappoint. It is the fourth book in the Widowmaker trilogy, which is kind of stretching the bounds of the meaning of trilogy, but it has happened before and will again.

This audio book was created as a part of the Audible Frontiers program and I want to thank them from the depths of my geeky little sci-fi loving heart for creating such great productions.

The narrator Stefan Rudnicki voice requires me to turn the bass down on my car stereo so that I can clearly hear him, but his acting abilities are wonderful creating real depth and breadth to the characters that he portrays.

From the publisher:

There is only one thing that Jefferson Nighthawk, the original Widowmaker, really wanted to do, and that was retire on a far-away planet and raise a garden. There were still two clones of him to keep the peace and carry on his legend. Unfortunately for him, his two clones have come to a disagreement. When a widowmaker takes on a widowmaker, everyone runs for cover. There is only one man who can stand up to the clones of the Widowmaker… the Widowmaker himself.

©2006 Mike Resnick (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

I rate this book a 9 out of 10 and a must read for all Mike Resnick fans.

I read the hard cover version of this book purchased from Amazon.com.

The 39th book in the Discworld series of which I have read them all, most of them multiple times, and loved each and every one. In this novel we follow Commander Vimes on vacation with his wife Lady Sybil in her family’s palatial estate.

Goblin’s, river boats, tobacco, drugs, beautiful music, and a heard of others join together to create a great story as seen from Sam’s hard-boiled point of view as a policeman, as a duke, as a husband, as a father, and as a blackboard monitor.

The words chosen for the telling of this story bothered me a bit though. I do not recall any other Discworld novel having so many “four letter words”. The cussing felt unnecessary and out of place. I consciously now choose to ignore that feature of the book and substitute all of the dialog that I felt objectionable with words and phrases that I find to be more in line with the previous novels of Discworld. And so my review is for my own edited version of this book and not as it was delivered to my door.

I rate this book a 9 out of 10 and highly recommend it to any fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, but this is not the book to begin with. I recommend Guards, Guards or The Color of Magic as your first.

I loved listening to this book. It is a collection of short stories about working in space, on the moon, and what it is like on earth in the far future of the mid 1980’s.

With the stories written in the late 1930’s up through the late 1940’s they are very different from most of the current science fiction I read these days.

This book includes the short stories “Delilah and the Space-Rigger,” “Space-Jockey,” “The Long Watch,” “Gentlemen Be Seated,” “The Black Pits of Luna,” “It’s Great to Be Back,” “We Also Walk Dogs,” “Ordeal in Space,” “The Green Hills of Earth,” and “Logic of Empire.”

From Wikipedia:

The Green Hills of Earth is a collection of science fiction short stories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1951, although it includes short stories published as early as 1941. The stories are part of Heinlein’s Future History. The title story is the tale of an old space mariner reflecting upon his planet of birth. According to an acknowledgement at the beginning of the book, the phrase “the green hills of Earth” is derived from a C.L. Moore story.

I rate this book a 9 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone who loves science fiction and classic stories of space.

I was thinking about it this week and even though I am a casual gamer I have been playing a lot of different games. Between playing Steam games on both Mac and Windows, OnLive games on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad games I realized I have been playing a lot of different games. Here are my thoughts on some of them.

Trine

I bought Trine as a part of the latest Humble Bundle and play it on the Mac through Steam.

This is such a great side-scroller. You play the rolls of a thief with a bow, a fighter with armor and a sword, and a wizard with the ability to create and move objects. You can switch between the three party members at any time, only one character is on the screen at a time, to complete the tasks presented.

The graphics are amazing, the music is mesmerizing, the voice acting sets the mood wonderfully, and the challenges presenting are a lot of fun.

I am not finished with it, only played for 4 hours so far, but am really looking forward to finishing it.

Red Faction: Guerrilla

I bought this game as one of OnLive’s $5 Friday deals and play it on Macs.

I am enjoying this game, it is ok, and it was a good value at $5, but… it is not great. After about 5 hours of gameplay I am getting a bit bored at the repetition of it.

It is a first person shooter (FPS) with drivable vehicles and multiplayer support. I am playing through the single player campaign. The single-player story has you on Mars as a miner turned rebel fighting to free the planet from the rule of the EDF who treat the miners poorly.

For an FPS the plot is ok, the mechanics are ok, the weapons are ok, but I am finding the effort to get new weapons and upgrades tedious.

I am not sure I will finish this game, but I plan on playing it at least another couple of hours before dropping it.

iPhone and iPad

I am playing the usual games of Sol Free, Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Infinity Blade, ReBounce, Rage, and Azkend.

More than any other game though I am playing Zynga Poker. It is ok on the iPhone and very cluttered/confusing in a web browser, but on the iPad it is great.

Trine I rate a 9 out of 10
Red Faction: Guerilla I rate a 5 out of 10
Zynga Poker for the iPad I rate a 9 out of 10, on the iPhone a 7 out of 10, and in a web browser a 4 out of 10.