A better reader than writer January 26, 2008

I’ve been a better reader than writer.

After reading about personal essay writing, I still haven’t felt inspired to write. Perhaps I don’t have the inspiration – do I need more drama?

I wish I could write personal narratives about the tech stuff I do. I’m not working on personal products, as much as I want to get back to open source development. I can write my opinion on tech happenings, but I reallly want to write original material.

There is a lot of interesting tech at work, but I won’t say anything about it.
Fortunately, I’m able to share some of the good stuff with PinoyJUG, the Filipino Java Users Group. Perhaps I could develop my posts into articles.

I’ve been reading a lot of tech, blogs and books. The most noteworthy book is O’Reilly’s Beautiful Code. I bought the PDF edition, the only way I can easily get books when I’m working abroad. I was hoping for inspiration. And I got it. It’s among the most artistic books you can get in the field of Computer Science.

I have also been reading books on testing – an important part of software development that I’ve been taking seriously in the past few months.

The paper books I want to read, I just add to my Amazon wishlist, until I either get to buy them from Amazon or find them in the Philippines.

My Reading Habits February 9, 2007

There have been a bunch of reading-related events lately: the Read or Die convention, Powerbooks Sale, the visit of the MV Doulus…

But I don’t actually read much in print. I switched my reading habits to online articles, and now, blogs. I took account of my how much time I’ve spent reading blogs in the past few months and I conclude: too much!

I’m trying to swing my reading back to print. It’s more relaxing, and I could do it anywhere. There’s no opportunity to jump to this site and that.

Reading some tech stuff on paper has helped. I have a couple of more tech books incoming so that should get me reading more.

Fiction is something else. I don’t really read much fiction, as I find facts more entertaining. I spend too much online reading time in Wikipedia. I was a super nerd when I grew up, reading encylopedias, Time-Life books, Time and Newsweek magazines, and newspapers. I took up speedreading. Up to now I can read very fast, which unfortunately makes me impatient when reading fiction.

Let’s see if I’ll read this other book here this weekend…

The Cuckoo’s Egg: Old School Hacking February 3, 2007

I found a copy of the Cuckoo’s Egg at the Chapters and Pages overrun bookstore. PhP 150 only. That’s $3 for a pristine copy of the book – thanks to old school printing and binding.

The events transpired in 1986-1987, and the book was released in 1990. Still, it’s fascinating. It reminds me of my old vintage Unix days, which came much later (1994 onward). In 1986-1987 I was still learning IBM PC DOS 2.0 and WordStar, and online networks were just a bit more real than science fiction to me. (I got to read about Compuserve and the like from magazines.)

I did engage those types of Internet users, especially circa 2000. Hey, some of them might even be reading! But I eventually lost interest. It’s very time consuming in terms of actual work done and keeping up with the knowhow.