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Linux in a Nutshell is considered a classic by anyone's standards, so it's expected to review well. In fact, the prior editions have reviewed extremely well so, in this case, turning in a bad review on the latest edition would mean that the authors and publisher must have completely rewritten the book and done a poor job of it. Fortunately, that's not the case here. Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition is a worthy successor to those editions that have come before it.

I just wrote a review for Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition and commented that it seemed as if each successive edition acquired more pages. In the Linux book's case, it isn't true, but it is true in the case of Lutz's book. In fact, between the 3rd and current edition, the book has expanded some 466 pages. Good grief, what accounts for such growth?

I think this bundle (the book and DVD) was a limited offer and unfortunately, it's taken me just a bit too long get to my review to take advantage of the package. Nevertheless, the products are still available individually, and are both written and presented by Barrie North. But let's back up a bit.

In just about any class or set of tutorials involving beginning programming, there's usually a problem or set of problems having to do with converting temperatures. Just about everyone has had to write a wee bit of code to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius or vice versa. That's not much of a chore. However, there are eight major temperature scales available (though some are around now only for their historical value), according to wikipedia. What if you had to write a program that let a user convert a temperature from any of these scales to any of these scales?

This is a "newbie" mistake, but these little details do tend to get in the way, which is why I'm posting my wee Python tutorial. If you know Python or programming, even reasonably well, this will probably seem way too simple to you. Just giving you a "heads up" so you don't waste your time. I encountered a lesson that teaches storing conditionals using booleans. The code was presented like this:..

Frankly, I'd prefer to work with a book or in a classroom setting. I can read faster than a person can speak in a video. OK, that contradicts my preference for the classroom, but in a class context, I can also directly interact with the instructor and the students. I can't exactly do that using a video. I know I keep telling everyone that I'm a visual learner, so you'd think that a DVD would be just about perfect, but I've always found them something of a problem. This isn't to say that video learning is bad in general or that this product is bad in particular. I'm just expressing my personal opinion before I move on.

I previously reviewed the 2nd edition of this book, so I was interested in what was changed and/or added in its current incarnation. Of course, the release of Firefox 3 and IE 8 are enough to warrant an updating of "tips and tricks" relative to CSS and web design, but was there more? The back cover blurb didn't indicate such, but I looked further.

Unless you've been hiding in a cave for the past ten years or so, you know that it takes more than a bit of HTML slight-of-hand to make a modern, dynamic website. The (so-called) Web 2.0 is constructed of a mix of technologies, creatively applied to allow the interactivity we have become accustomed to when surfing the web. Just looking at the front and back covers of Robin Nixon's book, he (and O'Reilly) promises to teach the reader all of the technologies (though I see no mention of CSS) required to bring your Web 2.0 creation to life, and send it out on the Internet. The best bit of news is that, according to the back cover blurb, "No previous programming experience is required." Really? We'll see.

I've had this book for almost a month, but have waited to write this review until I could give it the attention it deserves. I'm a fan of The Official Ubuntu Book (now in it's 4th edition), so I eagerly approached Rankin and Hill's production, anticipating the same quality product the desktop Ubuntu book has consistently provided (and no, I didn't think the desktop book was "perfect"). Would this server book be equal to the task?

Head First Networking, eh? I'm familiar with the Head First series, having reviewed a number of such books before. Head First books are generally successful at teaching a technical topic to a moderately to severely distractable person. I was curious how teaching networking would fit the bill, particularly since "networking" as a technology, is so vast. Head First books tend to be beginners books, so I wasn't expecting a huge amount of detail or advanced knowledge. The typical audience for this series is late high school/early college, so I thought at best, the content would more or less map to CompTIA's Network+ certification.

The key feature of this edition of the reference guide, is the presence of both Python 2.6 and 3.0. If you're savvy enough to be reading a review about a Python reference text, you know that Python 3.0 breaks backwards compatibility. This is a big deal in terms of how Beazley chose to update his book. To quote, "...I have chosen to omit features of Python 2 that have been removed from Python 3". Beazley also doesn't include those features in Python 3 that haven't been back-ported. This approach is the author's attempt to make the book equally serve programmers using 2.x vs. 3.0. Not that this is the only update the text has to offer.

I'm at a slight disadvantage in not having read or reviewed the first edition of this book. Based on the reviews of the first edition though, it seems to have been very successful with its readership. This second edition is touted to have been updated with newer techniques for larger projects. I can only imagine that was some of the feedback from people who liked the previous incarnation, but wanted to apply it to broader contexts. We'll see how this edition presents to the first time reader.

First of all, I like the sax on the cover. I like jazz music and especially tenor sax, so a little cool jazz on a hot summer's day works for me, and keeps me calm as I'm commuting to work, but I digress. The Passionate Programmer isn't exactly about programming. It's about the career of programming. Most Pragmatic books I review in this area, teach some programming language, how to program in general, or "tips and tricks" of some programming method. Chad Fowler's book addresses the larger context of entering into a programming career. More than that, the context can be applied to many other creative careers where the creative person conceptualizes their "product" within his or her thoughts and imagination, and then generates the result. How do you proceed into such a career path? Keep reading and find out.

Reviewing a book in its Fourth Edition is both easy and hard. It's easy in the sense that, unless the book has completely changed, it is still essentially the same as prior editions. If it has done well up until now, chances are it will still do well. Of course the idea for the publisher (assuming the book has done well) is to at least make sure that the book maintains its reputation and hopefully get even better. For me, that translates into, once a good review, always a good review...maybe. The hard part is to pick out the bits that may have changed and evaluate them as part of the current mix. If the book hasn't changed at all and assuming Ubuntu has, then my review changes and not for the better. If the book has changed, how does it stack up to Ubuntu's changes? Does the book still meet the needs of the audience?

Apparently the move from Yahoo! to Google has been good to Souders (as you might expect). Now working for Google on web performance, he's written a sequel to his January 2008 book, High Performance Web Sites (Souders was working for Yahoo! at the time) which I previously reviewed. According to the Product Description, "Souders' previous book, the bestselling High Performance Web Sites, shocked the web development world by revealing that 80% of the time it takes for a web page to load is on the client side". Sounds pretty dramatic, especially for a technical book. I don't know if I was "shocked" when I read Souders' prior book, but I was impressed. How does his follow up effort measure up?

According to wordnetweb.princeton.edu, Computer Science is "the branch of engineering science that studies (with the aid of computers) computable processes and structures". It's the study of computer architectures, languages, and mathematical structures as applied to the process of computing. So what have Campbell, et al produced in this book...a Computer Science textbook that teaches Python? Kind of. Imagine you wanted to learn how the computer is used in the various scientific disciples. Further, you wanted to learn how computer programs and programming is used in this context to construct tools, perform investigations, and to solve problems. You also want to use a single programming language as your example. Welcome to "Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python". Not a book about learning Python as such, but an introduction to the discipline of Computer Science with Python as your guide.

According to Wikipedia, "In computing, regular expressions provide a concise and flexible means for identifying strings of text of interest, such as particular characters, words, or patterns of characters". If you even dabble in open source, shell scripts, and writing code, you are likely at least somewhat aware of regular expressions. Some people are even really good at using regular expressions, but this method can be a struggle for others. O'Reilly's Cookbook series offers over 100 "recipes" using regular expressions to solve common tasks. The question is, will this cookbook help you whip up the dish you need to serve?

The Käfer and Hogbin book isn't just a "how to use Drupal" book. There are a number of books that introduce Drupal in general (I put in the link just in case you need to know what Drupal is), including Using Drupal (O'Reilly) which I previously reviewed. According to this book's back cover blurb, "Drupal is now the world's number one content management system...As Web Designers and developers adopt Drupal, they need ways to quickly customize the visuals and interactivity with their sites." Is Front End Drupal then a book with just a focus on designing and managing themes, or is there more "under the hood"? Let's find out.

This book is marketed to everyone who uses or wants to use twitter with an eye on being popular, either personally or professionally. I don't mean that in a frivolous way. Twitter has become an important tool for self-promotion of individuals and businesses. OK, I doubt that Bill Gates worries that the number of followers he has in any way affects Microsoft's profit margin (actually, I can't find the "real" Bill Gates on twitter, but there are a number of "parody" profiles with his name on them), however there are a number of "big bananas" on Twitter who tweet regularly for more than just a lark (if you'll pardon the "bird" metaphor).

Amazingly, this is a "how to program" book that doesn't use JavaScript as the first programming language the newbie experiences. I'm intrigued. Of course, it's a second edition, so using Ruby isn't exactly new for the new person. I never read the first edition, so I'll have to rely completely on the text I have in my hand (uh...sitting beside me, since I'm keyboarding with my hands). Just looking at the TOC, I already like the book, since the "Getting Started" chapter includes how to get started using Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Truly an equal opportunity author.