Charlie Harvey

February 2013 Reading

  • When the Killing’s Done, by T.C. Boyle

    A gift from a friend of mine in Germany. A fast paced thriller. Its kind of fun but I found the animal rights guy a little on the unbelievable side. Nevertheless Boyle writes wonderfully and the story was well told and very engrossing.

    2013-02-20 by Charlie Harvey
  • Haskell and Yesod, by Michael Snoyman

    I have been having a look around at various web frameworks and Yesod has some interesting properties. It is fairly performant, asynchronous and like the Haskell language can catch some common bugs at compile time rather than runtime. Having a type system is important when you are aiming to mitigate XSS attacks, so it seems like a sensible way to proceed. Well written and relatively brief with plenty of example code as you may imagine from an O’Reilly book. I will make something with it and blog that at some point.

    2013-02-20 by Charlie Harvey
  • Mobile First, by Luke Wroblewski

    This is one of the Book Apart series, borrowed from my co-tech at work. It makes the case that we ought to be designing first for mobile devices then working up to tablets, laptops and PCs. Its chief virtues are its brevity — you can read it in an evening — and its straightforwardness. This is not hugely technical, and touches mostly on issues of user experience. There are lots of supporting facts and stats to bolster the argument and its pretty well written and makes the case well.

    2013-02-20 by Charlie Harvey
  • Mr Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore, by Robin Sloan

    Lent to me by a work colleague, this is really good fun. It centre’s round a bookstore in San FRancisco that is not all it seems. Secret codes, typography, Googlers, and the occasional geeky in-joke. Its sharp and witty and lots of fun.

    2013-02-13 by Charlie Harvey
  • All Tomorrow's Parties, by William Gibson

    Gibson writes dystopian cyberpunk like few other writers I can think of and All Tomorrow’s parties is a solid and frankly gripping example of the genre. Despite the VR future Gibson anticipates not quite having arrived as soon as he was imagining in the late nineties, this remains a great piece of gritty near-future sci-fi examining pop culture, mediated realities and late capitalism. With the occasional fight scene to liven things up a bit.

    2013-02-05 by Charlie Harvey


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