Category Archives: Bibliography

A list of books, periodical articles or other materials, compiled on a specific topic, authors, or some element common to the entries which are systematically arranged.

More Ruby Books in My Queue

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After several months of quietness, I’m gearing up for a burst of new book reviews.

Here’s a brief summary of some tasty new treats in the Ruby lineup:

  1. Learning Rails (Rails from the Outside In) by Simon St. Laurent and Edd Dumbill, published by O’Reilly Media (See Learning Rails book cover and O’Reilly catalog description here.)
  2. Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts (Useful Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems) by Steve Pugh, published by No Starch Press (the Finest in Geek Entertainment). You can download a PDF of chapter 1, “General Purpose Utilities”.
  3. Enterprise Recipes with Ruby and Rails by Maik Schmidt, published by Pragmatic Programmers
  4. Programming Ruby 1.9 (The newly updated Pragmatic Programmers Guide, aka the Pick-Axe book), by Dave Thomas with Chad Fowler and Andy Hunt, published by The Pragmatic Programmers
  5. Agile Web Development With Rails (Third Edition) by Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hansson with Leon Breedt, Mike Clark, Justin Gehtland, James Duncan Davidson, and Andreas Schwarz

I hope you are enjoying your summer reading as much as I am.  What new books are you reading?

Beautiful Birds – Their Natural History – Rediscovered

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Beautiful Bird

Beautiful Bird

From the book entitled: “Beautiful Birds: Their Natural History — Including an account of their Structure, Habits,  Nidification, etc., etc.   Vol. II”

Published in 1855, from the manuscript of the late John Cotton,  author of:

  • Flowers from Foreign Lands
  • Flowers from the Holy Land
  • Flowers and Heraldry
  • Favorite Field Flowers

Etc., etc.

With twelve coloured plates, drawn and coloured by James Andrews.

Inside the front cover appears this adverstisement for the book:

The first volume of this work comprised an outline history of the Raptorial Birds, together with that of the Dentirostral tribe of the Insessorial Order. In the present we lay before our readers the remainder of the Insessorial Order, comprising the several Tribes, Fissirostres, Scansores, Tenuirostres, and Conirostres. The whole work will be completed by the publication of the third volume, which will comprehend the Orders Rasores, Grallatores, and Natatores: orders in which are placed several domestic and wild families well known and valued in this country. We, therefore, confidently expect that it will possess, for the majority of our readers, greater interest than the portions already published.

Confessions of St. Augustine

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St. Augustine of Hippo

St. Augustine of Hippo

St. Augustine was born on this day, November 13th, in the year 354 AD.  Augustine wrote many great writings (including City of God), but most revealing of his personal views (his blog about life), is his Confessions, which is an  account of his earlier life.

There are many online editions of Augustine’s Confessions, including the versions offered by Bartleby,  CCEL, Fordham University, and Google books. What follows is a brief excerpt from St. Augustine’s Confessions, the second book.

I WILL now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God. For love of Thy love I do it; reviewing my most wicked ways in the very bitterness of my remembrance, that Thou mayest grow sweet unto me (Thou sweetness never failing, Thou blissful and assured sweetness); and gathering me again out of that my dissipation, wherein I was torn piecemeal, while turned from Thee, the One Good, I lost myself among a multiplicity of things. For I even burnt in my youth heretofore, to be satiated in things below; and I dared to grow wild again, with these various and shadowy loves; my beauty consumed away, and I stank in Thine eyes; pleasing myself, and desirous to please in the eyes of men.

And what was it that I delighted in, but to love, and be beloved? but I kept not the measure of love, of mind to mind, friendship’s bright boundary: but out of the muddy concupiscene of the flesh, and the bubblings of youth, mists fumed up which beclouded and overcast my heart, that I could not discern the clear brightness of love from the fog of lustfulness. Both did confusedly boil in me, and hurried my unstayed youth over the precipice of unholy desires, and sunk me in a gulf of flagitiousness. Thy wrath had gathered over me, and I knew it not. I was grown deaf by the clanking of the chain of my mortality, the punishment of the pride of my soul, and I strayed further from Thee, and Thou lettest me alone, and I was tossed about, and wasted, and dissipated, and I boiled over in my fornications, and Thou heldest Thy peace, O Thou my tardy joy! Thou then heldest Thy peace, and I wandered further and further from Thee, into more and more fruitless seed-plots of sorrows, with a proud dejectedness, and a restless weariness.

Review: MySQL in a Nutshell

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Book Review: MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition, by Russell J.T. Dyer, published by O’Reilly Media, April 2008, 545 pages, ISBN:0-596-51433-6, price: US $34.99 (Reviewed by Daniel Vos)

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd ed.

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd ed.

Behind virtually every web application, there’s a database management system.

Ever used Facebook? Guess what? It runs on a (huge!) database. What about your favorite discussion forum? Are you into auto maintenance, fly fishing, or (if you’re like my wife) do you like to swap recipes, trade amusing anecdotes about your kids, or post blog articles? All database-driven.

Many of the most popular, thriving websites are database driven. Behind the scenes many Web 2.0 websites are running MySQL, Sun Microsystem‘s open source database. (There are other popular databases from Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM — but that’s another story.)

MySQL is the M in LAMP — the very popular Open Source web site platform/framework (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, PHP, Python). MySQL is the database used with WordPress (the software that runs this VVN blog). MySQL is the default database server used with Ruby on Rails.

If MySQL is the world’s most popular open-source database, then MySQL in a Nutshell (2nd ed.) by Russell J. T. Dyer is the Encyclopedia Britannica of MySQL. Weighing in at 545 pages, the book is divided into five parts:

  1. Tutorial – A brief tutorial on installing MySQL and performing basic database management tasks (35 pages).
  2. Statement and Function Reference – A comprehensive reference to SQL statements, clauses, and functions implemented by MySQL. (SQL is the standard language implemented by all major database management systems, but MySQL, Oracle, MS SQLServer, and the rest all have their own quirks.) This section weighs in at nearly 300 pages, and covers database user administration, data manipulation, and database replication, and more. String function, date and time functions, mathematical functions, and flow control functions are described here, too.
  3. Client and Server Administration – A guide to MySQL server and client configuration and administration (90 pages). This is where you will learn the difference between mysqld (the database server) and mysql (the command-line client), and the configuration options of each. A reference to command-line utilities such as mysqladmin, mysqlcheck and mysqldump is also included.
  4. Programming APIs – A 100-page guide to three popular programming language APIs – C, Perl, and PHP – which websites or programs use to interface with MySQL.
  5. Quick Reference – A 15-page set of appendices with a quick reference to the data types, operators (arithmetic, relational, and logical), and environment variables used by MySQL.

If you are an absolute beginner to MySQL and database management systems, this book might not be the best first choice for you. A good place to start instead might be here. But if you know that MySQL is in your software development or web site development future, MySQL in a Nutshell deserves a place on your bookshelf.