Books I've Read This Week

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman is a book I've been meaning to read for a long time. It is considered one of the top books to read for user interface designers. The version I have can be considered to be a bit quaint as it was written and published well before the invention of the cell phone so it can be a bit jarring when read it. However it is filled with a bunch of practical advice and I found it to be quite enlightening.

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin is not exactly a biography of the man as it doesn't cover his full career rather it focuses on his accession into stand up super stardom. It is a funny and poignant look into his early life and career written by Martin himself. I really enjoyed reading it and I understand he reads the audio book version himself.

Books I've Read This Week

The Simpsons And Their Mathematical Secrets by Simon Singh is a fun book combining two of my favourite things, math and The Simpsons. In it Singh goes through a number of Simpson's episodes and explains the mathematical jokes embedded within. A high percentage of the writers on The Simpsons have advanced degrees in math or physics. If you are a fan of this type of humour you probably already read xkcd and SMBC.

The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet by Robb Wolf is a diet book, I mean that's no shock, it's right there in the title. As a man of advancing years (that's not true, I'm not old) I've gained a couple of extra pounds around my midsection (that part is true) and I looked into this Paleo craze a bit. The diet has got a good hook to it, eat like your neanderthal ancestors and the pounds will just fly off and you'll be healthier. Basically, you need to avoid any refined foods so stuff like bread, pasta and boxed foods are out. Considering this is probably where the majority of Americans get their calories from crossing out these foods amounts to a calorie restriction diet. Sure you can eat as much protein and veggies as you want but it is way harder to over eat these foods. Does the diet work? Yes, yes it does. I tried it out myself for two weeks and I found it worked extremely well. I lost 10 pounds over the two week period and these strange things called abdominal muscles started appearing. Did I stick with it? No, I found it way to hard to avoid eating refined carbs. Possibly as life becomes more predictable for me I'll be able to get back into the paleo lifestyle but for now I'm going to drink that beer and eat that morning glory muffin.

Books I've Read This Week

Hilda and the Bird Parade by Luke Pearson is the first Hilda book I've ever read even though it is the third one released. I'd heard great things about the series but they are not exactly easy to pick up. Luckily I was given this one as a Christmas gift and I loved it. Hilda lives in a world that is slightly magical and there is a question of exactly how much folks besides Hilda can see of the magical world. Based on events of the past few books Hilda and her Mom have had to move into the city where Hilda befriends a talking raven who she is helping regain his memory. They have adventures in the city as Hilda discovers more and more of the magical elements of the city. It reminds me quite a bit of Gaiman's Neverwhere in that way. I really enjoyed this book and I'm looking forward to going through it with my daughter as it is perfectly suited for kids of all ages. Just trying to decide if I should track down the first two books before diving into it.

Revival Volume 2: Live Like You Mean It by Tim Seeley and Mike Norton continue their rural noir series. I love the way this creepy mystery is unfolding. To recap live in a rural Wisconsin town is turned upside down when the dead come back to life. Although they are not mindless zombies, rather they can jump right back into their normal lives, or can they. This really is a great book. I'm not a big fan of horror but this book is the right mix of humour, mystery and suspense.

Books I've Read This Week

Batwoman Vol. 3: World's Finest by Hayden Blackman and JH Williams III.  Whelp, this is the last volume of Batwoman I will be buying. Like I said back when I reviewed volume 2 I wasn't super struck on the non-linear story telling in the last volume and a bit of that continues in volume 3. At least we get JH Williams III back on art duties but with both Blackman's and Williams rather public departure from the book this will be the last volume I'll be picking up.

Mind the Gap Volume 3: Out of Bodies story by Jim McCann and art by Rodin Esquejo continues to be one of my favourite books. The trippy super natural murder mystery continues to unfold. Just go buy the first trade.

Books I've Read This Week

Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Nick Bilton. Wow, just wow. I knew that Twitter was pretty tumultuous from the start but I had no idea how deep it went until I read this book. The entire book is a pretty engaging read and I have to say I had no idea who Noah Glass was until I read this book. Spoiler, he was a co-founder of Twitter and you probably didn't know that either. I'd recommend this book to anyone who is getting into business with their friends as a cautionary tale. Besides that is is a pretty good Silicon Valley insider read.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. I've had this book on my stack for quite awhile but never got around to reading it until recently and I loved it. In the book the lead character is a 15 year old autistic boy who discovers the neighbours dog has been killed and he decided to find out who the murderer really is. The book alternates between being a murder mystery, humours and tear jerkingly sad. As Christopher has a hard time dealing with his own emotions and detecting how other people feel we get some very awkward situations. Including Christopher discovering what part he has played in the dissolution of his own parents marriage.

Introducing Comic Cover Muzei

If you own an Android phone you should know about the wonderful new live wallpaper app, Muzei coded by Roman Nurik. I was hooked on it from day one. You see Muzei automatically downloads and sets a new wallpaper image for you every day. By default the app will download art curated by Roman's fiancée. The first image it showed was van Gogh "The Starry Night" which is one of my favourite paintings and I'm getting a chance to see it at MOMA this summer but I digress.

After I downloaded the app I was reminded of a blog post by my buddy Raymond Camden. In the post on the Marvel Comic's API, Ray shows how to query the Marvel database and display covers. So I decided to combine chocolate and peanut butter into one awesome combination.

The Muzei app provides a way to write an extension to provide a new data source. So what I've done is to create an extension that randomly picks a Marvel Comic book cover and sets it as your wallpaper. It's called Comic Cover Muzei.

Select the data source

Set your options

Enjoy your art

Right now you can set an option to only download the images over wifi if you are worried about bandwidth usage and you can set the refresh interval from 3 to 24 hours. I've got plans to add more options to allow you to pick the character or series to pull the images from. 

Also, right now the app only uses Marvel Comic covers but I'd love to add other companies like DC, Image, etc.

Anna Has Been Pulled From the Play Store

Back in September of 2012 I posted up my sample app called Anna which highlighted the power of doing speech recognition on mobile devices using PhoneGap. Today I've had to pull the app from the Play Store because of this infringement notice from Wolfram Alpha.



I don't have the strength, time nor money to fight this so I just going to rolled over pulled the app. I attempted to discuss it with Wolfram Alpha but they insisted I 1) pay for an commercial deployment license, 2) remove the Wolfram Alpha functionality or 3) pull the app. I can't afford the rates they charge for a commercial deployment license. Still they can't do anything about the source code for the app which is still available at: https://github.com/macdonst/anna

I'm not even mad, just a bit puzzled as there is no way my sample app is in any way a threat to the Wolfram Alpha app in the Play Store. I guess they don't want to have a precedent where they don't aggressively enforce their terms of service.

It's rather silly as I don't even ship an API key with the app. If you want to use Anna you have to sign up with Wolfram Alpha so they won't be getting the, albeit small, exposure that my app provides. Also, I doubt I'll ever recommend them to any of my developer friends ever again.