everburning

Bumped into a great article on learning Cocoa programming today and thought I’d share.

Getting Started with Cocoa: a Friendlier Approach

This is a really great introduction because it doesn’t try to do everything itself. It gives context, it gives an ordering and it gives some hints on more things to try. There are a lot of links to other sites and tutorials.

Very well done. Now, I just need to find time to get through all the linked articles.

After putting up my last post about Cyptonomicon I ran across 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I can’t say as I’m very impressed with the list, a few things aren’t on there that I’d expect. I’ve read about 31 of the books on that list that I noticed.

So, instead of following someone elses list I’m going to make a couple of my own. Feel free to follow along at home, or in your blog, or in the comments.

Away we go. There are three lists, Currently Reading (only one, not really a list, but who’s getting technical?), Top 10 books you’ve read, Top 10 you want to read (no re-reads). Ordering, at least for me, is random. I also list some trilogies as single book sets.

Currently Reading

1. Principia Discordia

Top 10 Books I’ve Read

1. Lord of the Rings — J.R.R Tolkien
2. Ender’s Game — Orson Scott Card
3. Sandman — Neil Gaiman
4. Fionavar Tapestry — Guy Gavriel Kay
5. Microserfs — Douglas Coupland
6. Starship Troopers — Robert A. Heinlein
7. Blindness — Jose Saramago
8. Midsummer Nights Dream — William Shakespeare
9. Fight Club — Chuck Palahniuk
10. Altered Carbon — Richard Morgan

Top 10 Books I Want to Read

1. The Illuminatus! Trilogy — Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
2. Foucault’s Pendulum — Umberto Eco
3. Godel, Escher, Bach — Douglas Hofstadter
4. Spook Country — William Gibson
5. Black Man — Richard Morgan
6. Ulysses — James Joyce
7. Tao Te Ching — Lao Tzu
8. Holy Blood, Holy Grail — Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln
9. The Children of Men — P.D. James
10. Dune — Frank Herbert

Those are my three lists. Now, lets have yours. I’m always looking for new books to add to my shelves. Just don’t tell Stacy I said that.

So, having had some pie on the weekend I figured today I should actually have a birthday treat as well. You know, to mark the day.

Since I actually got invited to Hortons today for the daily coffee break I went up and got myself a small box of Timbits. Sadly, I only got to eat 9 of these tasty morsels. Someone, who we shall call, in order to protect their identity, B. Murphy, no, that’s too obvious, Basil M., yea, that’s good, ate one of them.

I must admit, they were tasty, but sweet hell they’re sugary.

I finished my re-read of Cryptonomicon last night (at about 0200 hrs).

I like all the technical stuff and mathy stuff in this book. Makes it a lot more interesting to read. Also an interesting exercise to figure out what he’s making up and what’s real (if any). It’s certainly worth a read, even if you aren’t into the more geeky details of the book. I got a bit bored in the last 100 pages or so. I’m not sure if this is because I’ve read it before and know how it ends or if the ending is a bit draggy.

So, what’s next? I think I’m going to give the Principia Discordia whirl with the hopes of leading into The Illuminatus! Trilogy which I’ve tried to read before got didn’t make it all the way through.

Maybe if I conqueror the Illuminatus I’ll wade back into the world of Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid where I’ve never made it past Bach.

Stacy made me a pie for my birthday. (It isn’t my birthday yet, but as I previously lamented, she won’t be here for most of that.)

She made the one true type of pie. Lemon Meringue.

Now, I must say I like a good Lemon Meringue pie. But, and this is an earth shattering, birthday distroying, life altering but, it must be lemony enough. How lemony you ask?

Lemony enough to cause a slight curl to your toes when you eat it.

Lemony enough that if you don’t have a beverage on hand while eating it you lose the ability to swallow.

Lemony enough that if you eat 2-3 pieces in one sitting you have an over powering urge to throw up since it’s so bloody lemony.

In my official capacity as Lemon Meringue pie judge, Stacys was pretty close. The birthdays were saved. A small crack appeared in the moon but the earth didn’t shatter. My life was altered, in that I ate two pieces and it probably wasn’t a good waist-line based idea.