Jump Start Node.js – A well-written guide for learning Node.js quickly – #programming #bookreview

 Jump Start Node.js
Don Nguyen
(SitePoint – paperback, Kindle)

Don Nguyen’s well-written Node.js book has been in print for a few months and is an excellent text for learning how to put Node.js to work in fast, scalable real-time web applications.

You should have some experience with JavaScript before tackling Node.js. But Nguyen says a “server-side engineer who uses another language such as PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, or .NET” can pick up enough JavaScript from his book to get a good feel for its syntax and idiosyncratic features.

What I like most about the book is how it  jumps right into developing a dynamic working Node.js application that you deploy to a production server. The project is a real-time stock market trading engine that streams live prices into a web browser. Along the way, you learn how to set up and use a NoSQL database (with MongoDB), you learn some functional programming techniques, and you work with Ajax, Express, Mocha, Socket.io, Backbone.js, Twitter Bootstrap, GitHub and Heroku.

The author covers a lot of ground, with clear code examples and good explanations, in just 154 pages. “The main goal of this book,” he notes, “is to transfer the skill set rather than the actual project into the real world. There is a narrow domain of ‘hard’ real-time applications such as a stock exchange where specialized software and hardware are required because microseconds count. However, there is a much larger number of ‘soft’ real-time applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and eBay where microseconds are of small consequence. This is Node.js’s speciality, and you’ll understand how to build these types of applications by the end of this book.”

Note: If you are a Windows user, you will have to install Cygwin before you can start using the Mocha testing framework on page 23. If you use Mac OS X, you will need to have the Xcode Command Line Tools installed. More information related to the book can be found at this SitePoint forum.

– Si Dunn

Kindle Fire HD: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition – Covers new features, how-tos for 7-inch / 8.9-inch tablets – #bookreview

Kindle Fire HD: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition
Peter Meyers
(O’Reilly – paperback, Kindle)

O’Reilly recently has brought out the second edition of Peter Meyers’ popular how-to guide for using the Kindle Fire HD multi-purpose tablet.

The new edition covers the 7-inch and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire models, but does not cover the original, first-generation Kindle Fire that was released in November, 2011. For details of how to use that model, get the first edition of Meyers’ book.

Many of us who own Kindles tend to have more than one version in the family: his, hers, and the kids’, for example. And we tend to use just a few of the features over and over–until we suddenly need or want to try another feature and aren’t sure how it works. So it can be good to have both editions of this book on your reference shelf (or in your Kindles).

The new edition includes how to use the front-facing video camera and microphone that were added to the 7-inch and 8.9-inch Fire HD models for video and audio chat capabilities. An HDMI port also is offered on the HD models, so you can hook up a cable and view a Kindle-stored video on a TV screen.

By  the way, if you enjoy audiobooks, they “are now full-fledged members of Team Sync” in the Kindle Fire HD world, the author notes. For example, if you buy a Kindle book and click the “Add Narration” button, you will also get the synchronized audiobook. (The button appears on your Fire’s screen, and the extra charge ranges from free to $3.95, depending on the book.) You can listen to the audiobook played on your Fire HD while driving to work, and then, when you’re ready to read quietly during your lunch break, you can pick up, in the text, right where you left off. The Kindle Fire HD now includes an Audible.com player, as well, and you can link an existing Audible.com account.

This well-written, richly illustrated Missing Manual definitely covers “the important stuff you need to know,” in a well-organized, easy-to-use format. It can help you get the most–and possibly more than you expected–from your Kindle Fire HD.

– Si Dunn

Hadoop is hot! Three new how-to books for riding the Big Data elephant – #programming #bookreview

In the world of Big Data, Hadoop has become the hard-charging elephant in the room.

Its big-name users now span the alphabet and include such notables as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, the New York Times, and Yahoo. Not bad for software named after a child’s toy elephant.

Computer systems that run Hadoop can store, process, and analyze large amounts of data that have been gathered up in many different formats from many different sources.

According to the Apache Software Foundation’s Hadoop website: “The Apache Hadoop software library is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models. It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage.”

The (well-trained) user defines the Big Data problem that Hadoop will tackle. Then the software handles all aspects of the job completion, including spreading out the problem in small pieces to many different computers, or nodes, in the distributed system for more efficient processing. Hadoop also handles individual node failures, and collects and combines the calculated results from each node.

But you don’t need a collection of hundreds or thousands of computers to run Hadoop. You can learn it, write programs, and do some testing and debugging on a single Linux machine, Windows PC or Mac. The Open Source software can be downloaded here. (Do some research first. You may have use web searches to find detailed installation instructions for your specific system.)

Hadoop is open-source software that is often described as “a Java-based framework for large-scale data processing.” It has a lengthy learning curve that includes getting familiar with Java, if you don’t already know it.

But if you are now ready and eager to take on Hadoop, Packt Publishing recently has unveiled three excellent how-to books that can help you begin and extend your mastery: Hadoop Beginner’s Guide, Hadoop MapReduce Cookbook, and Hadoop Real-World Solutions Cookbook.

Short reviews of each are presented below.

Hadoop Beginner’s Guide
Garry Turkington
(Packt Publishing – paperback, Kindle)

Garry Turkington’s new book is a detailed, well-structured introduction to Hadoop. It covers everything from the software’s three modes–local standalone mode, pseudo-distributed mode, and fully distributed mode–to running basic jobs, developing simple and advanced MapReduce programs, maintaining clusters of computers, and working with Hive, MySQL, and other tools.

“The developer focuses on expressing the transformation between source and result data sets, and the Hadoop framework manages all aspects of job execution, parallelization, and coordination,” the author writes.

He calls this capability “possibly the most important aspect of Hadoop. The platform takes responsibility for every aspect of executing the processing across the data. After the user defines the key criteria for the job, everything else becomes the responsibility of the system.”

The 374-page book is written well and provides numerous code samples and illustrations. But it  has one drawback for some beginners who want to install and  use Hadoop.  Turkington offers step-by-step instructions for how to perform a Linux installation, specifically Ubuntu. However, he refers Windows and Mac users to an Apache site where there is insufficient how-to information. Web searches become necessary to find more installation details.

Hadoop MapReduce Cookbook
Srinath Perera and Thilina Gunarathne
(Packt Publishing – paperback, Kindle)

MapReduce “jobs” are an essential part of  how Hadoop is able to crunch huge chunks of Big Data.  The Hadoop MapReduce Cookbook offers “recipes for analyzing large and complex data sets with Hadoop MapReduce.”

MapReduce is a well-known programming model for processing large sets of data. Typically, MapReduce is used within clusters of computers that are configured to perform distributed computing.

In the “Map” portion of the process, a problem is split into many subtasks that are then assigned by a master computer to individual computers known as nodes. (Nodes also can have sub-nodes). During the “Reduce” part of the task, the master computer gathers up the processed data from the nodes, combines it and outputs a response to the problem that was posed to be solved. (MapReduce libraries are now available for many different computer languages, including Hadoop.)

“Hadoop is the most widely known and widely used implementation of the MapReduce paradigm,” the two authors note.

Their 284-page book initially shows how to run Hadoop in local mode, which “does not start any servers but does all the work within the same JVM [Java Virtual Machine]” on a standalone computer. Then, as you gain more experience with MapReduce and the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), they guide you into using Hadoop in more complex, distributed-computing environments.

Echoing the Hadoop Beginner’s Guide, the authors explain how to install Hadoop on Linux machines only.

Hadoop Real-World Solutions Cookbook
Jonathan R. Owens, Jon Lentz and Brian Femiano
(Packt Publishing – paperback, Kindle)

The Hadoop Real-World Solutions Cookbook assumes you already have some experience with Hadoop. So it jumps straight into helping “developers become more comfortable with, and proficient at solving problems in, the Hadoop space.”

Its goal is to “teach readers how to build solutions using tools such as Apache Hive, Pig, MapReduce, Mahout, Giraph, HDFS, Accumulo, Redis, and Ganglia.”

The 299-page book is packed with code examples and short explanations that help solve specific types of problems. A few randomly selected problem headings:

• “Using Apache Pig to filter bot traffic from web server logs.”
• “Using the distributed cache in MapReduce.”
• “Trim Outliers from the Audioscrobbler dataset using Pig and datafu.” 
• “Designing a row key to store geographic events in Accumulo.”
• “Enabling MapReduce jobs to skip bad records.”

The authors use a simple but effective strategy for presenting problems and solutions. First, the problem is clearly described. Then, under a “Getting Ready” heading, they spell out what you need to  solve the problem. That is followed by a “How to do it…” heading where each step is presented and supported by code examples. Then, paragraphs beneath a “How it works…” heading sum up and explain how the problem was solved. Finally, a “There’s more…” heading highlights more explanations and links to additional details.

If you are a Hadoop beginner, consider the first two books reviewed above. If you have some Hadoop experience, you likely can find some useful tips in book number three. 

– Si Dunn

Testing in Scala – How to Test First, Then Develop Effective Code – #programming #bookreview

Testing in Scala
Daniel Hinojosa
(O’Reilly – paperback, Kindle)

In test-driven development (TDD), a software developer first creates some specific tests that are intended to fail and then writes code that is good enough to pass the tests. After that, the code is refactored, improved to make it better and easier to maintain and extend.

A key goal of TDD is to reduce the time and costs required to develop software.

Daniel Hinojosa’s well-written Testing in Scala effectively introduces test-driven development basics to Scala newcomers, as well as to developers already familiar with Scala or other programming languages, including Java, Ruby or Python.

The scala-lang.org website describes Scala as “a general purpose programming language designed to express common programming patterns in a concise, elegant, and type-safe way. It smoothly integrates features of object-oriented and functional languages, enabling Java and other programmers to be more productive. Code sizes are typically reduced by a factor of two to three when compared to an equivalent Java application.”

Both TDD and Scala have been around for a number of years, but each is now gaining new traction with corporations, software companies, and individual developers seeking faster results at lower costs.

One big reason for Scala’s rising popularity, the Scala website proclaims, is Scala’s close ties to Java:

“Existing Java code and programmer skills are fully re-usable. Scala programs run on the Java VM, are byte code compatible with Java so you can make full use of existing Java libraries or existing application code. You can call Scala from Java and you can call Java from Scala; the integration is seamless. Moreover, you will be at home with familiar development tools, Eclipse, NetBeans or IntelliJ for example, all of which support Scala.”

The Spring Tool Suite also can support Scala using the Scala IDE for Eclipse, but there recently were a few “caveats” if you have the Java 7 JDK installed. Meanwhile, the Spring Scala project, announced last October, is underway.

The new book Testing in Scala is structured as six chapters that utilize different testing frameworks while an example application is tested and developed from scratch:

1. Setup
2. Structure and Configuration of Simple Build Tool (SBT)
3. ScalaTest
4. Spec2
5. Mocking
6. ScalaCheck

The book and its code examples, Hinojosa says, are “organized in a TDD fashion: test first, fail; test again, succeed maybe; test again, succeed, and so on.”

If you’ve never tried TDD, Testing in Scala may help you learn how to become a better, more efficient Scala developer.

It also can introduce you to a development style that you may be able to adapt quickly and effectively to other programming languages, as well.

– Si Dunn

Introducing Erlang – A gentle, effective guide to a challenging programming language – #bookreview

Introducing Erlang
Simon St. Laurent
(O’Reilly – paperback, Kindle)

Erlang has come a long way since it began its odd life in the 1980s as a programming language for telephone switching systems, specifically Swedish-made, Ericsson telephone switching systems.

Today, the language and its Open Telecom Platform libraries are gaining new converts among serious practitioners of functional programming. Many of them likewise are drawn to the built-in support for concurrency, distribution and fault tolerance.

“The broad shift from single computers to networked and distributed systems of multiprocessor-based computing gives the Erlang environment a tremendous advantage over practically every other environment out there,” author Simon St. Laurent contends. “More and more of the computing world is starting to face exactly the challenges that Erlang was built to address.” Yet, as he concedes in his preface, “Erlang has long been a mysterious dark corner of the programming universe, visited mostly by developers who need extreme reliability or scalability and people who want to stretch their brains.”

Brain-stretching indeed is one reason why Erlang has stayed in that dark corner for more than two decades.

The language’s learning curve, St. Laurent notes, “starts gently for a while, then it gets much steeper as you realize the discipline involved, and then goes nearly vertical for a little while as you try to figure out how that discipline affects getting work done—and then it’s suddenly calm and peaceful with a gentle grade for a long time as you reapply what you’ve learned in different contexts.”

In a world where everything seemingly must be done in a hurry, you won’t learn Erlang in a hurry. But the payoff for learning it can be rewarding. Erlang, it seems, now is on a roll and experiencing growing demand. The language has been showing up in many different places, from Facebook to CouchDB to the Costa Rican Institute of Technology, to name just a few. Numerous package managers, such as Debian, MacPorts, and Ubuntu, also include a version of Erlang in their default installation.

I run Windows machines, and getting Erlang onto them has proved pleasingly easy. Indeed, Windows users apparently have some of the easiest times getting started with Erlang. Just go to http://erlang.org/download.html and click on the correct link – 32-bit or 64-bit – for your PC.

The book’s code samples can be downloaded from a link provided in the book. And it’s easy to work with the Erlang shell, its command-line interface. The newest version now provides numbered lines.

But, if you’ve worked with other programming languages, Erlang’s syntax likely will seem awkward and strange for a while.

“Punctuation is different and capitalization matters,” the author emphasizes. “Periods even get used as conclusions rather than connectors!”

To display the current working directory in the shell, for instance, you type pwd(). And do not forget to include the period.

To move up a directory, you type cd(“..”). And do not forget to include both the quotation marks and the concluding period.

Indeed, almost everything you enter in Erlang seemingly must end with a period.

Also: “Forget classes, forget variables that change values—even forget the conventions of variable assignment,” the author cautions. “Instead, you’re going to have to think about pattern matching, message passing, and establishing pathways for data rather than telling it where to go.”

Introducing Erlang takes a slow and gentle but effective approach to learning this powerful and difficult language. Simon St. Laurent spends a lot of time trying to help readers “get comfortable in the sunny meadows at the bottom of the learning curve.” Still, his well-written book effectively and efficiently meets its stated goal of helping you “learn to write simple Erlang programs.” It likewise shows and explains how to get started working with the OTP, the Open Telecom Platform’s libraries.

The book and its numerous code examples offer a solid grounding in the basics that you can then use to “understand why Erlang makes it easier to build resilient programs that can scale up or down with ease.” And, if you decide to continue learning, Simon St. Laurent’s new book can make it easier for you to move on to the really brain-stretching, and shadowy, inner workings of Erlang.

– Si Dunn

iPod: The Missing Manual, 11th Edition – A clear, concise keeper for your reference needs – #bookreview

iPod: The Missing Manual, 11th Edition
J.D. Biersdorfer, with David Pogue
(O’Reilly - paperback, Kindle)

I own and use a small collection of old iPods, including a Shuffle and a Classic. I play them when I exercise and when I work at my computer in a coffee shop and don’t want to listen to the piped-in music or the surgical nurse at the next table talking too loudly into her smartphone. When she starts started telling someone the gory details of a rare procedure recently performed inside a patient’s skull, I just crank up Adele and drown it all out.

The new 11th edition of iPod: The Missing Manual is a perfect reference book for me. It reminds me how to do certain tasks on my older devices. It shows me how to use features I still haven’t tried but might after the next song ends. The book also has information I could use to help a granddaughter with her brand-new iPod Touch — but somehow I doubt she’ll ever let me touch it.

Anyway, J.D. Biersdorfer has been writing a technology column for the New York Times since 1998, and this is her 11th iPod book. So she knows her stuff. And, of course, fellow New York Times writer and co-author David Pogue invented the Missing Manual series and has authored or co-written some 55 books, including 28 Missing Manuals.

Together, in this new edition, they have prepared an excellent, 331-page guide for how to get the most out of your iPod, whether it is really old, slightly old, or fresh out of the box.

For example, you may want to know how to play slideshows on your TV using your Touch or your Classic. The steps are in there. Want to know how to hook up a Touch or Nano to your car’s stereo? It’s in there. Have you ever tried using the iTunes graphic equalizer (EQ) “to improve the way your songs sound…”? Just follow five well-described steps.

Forgotten how to autofill or manually fill your Shuffle with new songs? When’s the last time you added or deleted a playlist on your Classic or Nano? Ready to edit some photos on your Touch or set it up with an iCloud account ? Don’t remember how to get to iTunesU? Just follow the book’s clear steps and color screenshots.

With several different iPods to care for and optimize, iPod: The Missing Manual, 11th Edition quickly has proven its worth for me. It definitely will be a keeper on my reference shelf.

– Si Dunn

Mastering the Fujifilm X-Pro1 – Practical tips & tricks for better use of the camera’s features – #photography #bookreview

Mastering the Fujifilm X-Pro1
Rico Pfirstinger
(Rocky Nook - paperback, Kindle)

The X-Pro1, Fujifilm’s first mirrorless camera with an APS-C sensor, is popular with many photographers who like its smooth blending of retro, minimalist exterior and top-notch digital technology inside.

Also, if the available Fujinon interchangeable lenses are not enough for you, the X-Pro1 also can be used with adapter rings that accept lenses made by Canon, Nikon, Contax, Leica, and others.

The camera comes with a user manual that includes brief descriptions of every feature. But, notes Rico Pfirstinger in his new book, Mastering the Fujifilm X-Pro1, “What’s missing are background information and practical tips based on experience. What’s the best way to activate a function? Which settings should you use in different circumstances? Why is the camera exhibiting a certain behavior? And, most important, which functions don’t work the way you would expect them to and how should you handle them?”

His well-written, 266-page book answers these questions and more. And it provides numerous photographs and illustrations to emphasize his points and how-to tips.

The X-Pro1 is not intended to be a beginner’s camera. It does not, for example, include a built-in flash unit. So Pfirstinger’s book likewise is not intended to be a beginner’s how-to manual.

He assumes that this is not your first digital camera, and you possess a reasonably good understanding of aperture, shutter speed, and other matters associated with photography and lighting. Still, his explanations of  features, capabilities, and quirks are clear and concise enough that technically proficient beginners can learn from them.

Bottom line: Yes, keep and refer to the X-Pro1′s standard user guide. But definitely have Mastering the Fujifilm X-Pro1 in your camera bag, as well. Rico Pfirstinger provides the tips, tricks, in-depth information, and lessons from experience you will  need to really get the best photos with your Fujifilm X-Pro1.

– Si Dunn

HDRI, Digital Zone System, Canon EOS 5D Mark III – 3 new #photography books – #bookreview

Rocky Nook, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., recently has released three handsome new how-to works focused on digital photography and image processing.

The books are: The HDRI Handbook 2.0, The Digital Zone System, and Canon EOS 5D Mark III.

The HDRI Handbook 2.0
Christian Bloch
(Rocky Nook – paperback, Kindle)

Every chapter has been significantly updated in this new edition showing how to use high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) “to digitally capture, store, and edit the full luminosity range of a scene.”

Author Christian Bloch notes: “We’re talking about all visible light there, from direct sunlight down to the finest shadow detail.” Using HDRI, “[t]he old problem of over- and underexposure—which is never fully solved in analog photography—is elegantly bypassed.”

This is not a quick guide. Its 659 pages (in print format) cover everything from “the ideas and concepts behind HDR imaging” to tone mapping (“where you learn to create superior prints from HDR images”) to using HDR images in 3D rendering.

If you are ready to learn how to use HDRI in photographs or computer graphics projects, definitely get this well-written book. It is packed with tips, tricks, step-by-step tutorials, stunning images, and other useful information. Even if you already have some experience with HDRI, you can learn new things and improve current skills using this updated guide.

The Digital Zone System
Robert Fisher
(Rocky Nook – paperback, Kindle)

In famed photographer Ansel Adams’s Zone System for film cameras (which many people still use), the mantra is: “Expose for the shadows; develop for the highlights.” The goal is to capture more details in the shadow areas without losing too many details in the highlight areas.

Of course, much of the artistry of Ansel Adams resided also in his ability to convert his low-contrast negatives into stunning prints using photographic chemicals in “wet” labs.

The Digital Zone System is a methodology for using Photoshop, Lightroom and other digital photography tools to echo the spirit and goals of Adams’s Zone System (which he used primarily with large-format, black-and-white film).

Much of this book’s focus is on showing how to gain greater control over digital images by isolating and adjusting colors and luminance values within specific areas.

One of the important goals of teaching the Digital Zone System is to help speed up workflow and reduce the tedium caused by using traditional methods (such as layer masks) in Photoshop. Zone masks, Fisher notes, are “self-feathering,” so they can give you “smooth transitions and maintain smooth tonal gradations or transitions in your images.”

While color photography is emphasized, the author also shows how to convert digital color images to black-and-white images and apply the Digital Zone System to enhance tonal separations, sharpness, and other aspects.

“Wet lab” film purists no doubt will disagree. But the Digital Zone System described in Robert Fisher’s book can help open the way to creating and producing stunning photographs in color and black-and-white.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III
James Johnson
(Rocky Nook – paperback, Kindle)

James “Jim” Johnson’s new book is a solid, well-written how-to guide to using “the latest in the famed series of Canon EOS 5D full-frame DSLR cameras.” The book , Johnson states, is aimed squarely at “photographers who are comfortable with basic photography, but who need an understanding of the myriad features, functions, options, and settings available with the EOS 5D Mk III camera.”

The 5D Mark III, photographer Juergen Gulbins writes in the book’s Foreword, “may be used for portrait, landscape, and sports as well as for studio work.” And it offers “dramatic” improvements over the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, he adds.

The 22.3 MP resolution is “sufficient for all kinds of photography,” and it allows for print sizes well beyond 17 inches by 24 inches–”if you have a sharp, well-focused image,” Gulbins emphasizes.

James Johnson’s nicely illustrated text starts with what you’ll get in a Canon EOS 5D Mark III package. Then it moves to showing and explaining the purpose and operation of each of the camera’s buttons, connectors, switches and dials. After that, you get some pointers on digital photography, including focus and exposure, while also learning to use the camera’s rich range of menus. And the camera’s video-shooting capabilities and its in-camera photo processing features are explained, as well.

For example, in the section on Live View, the author hails it as “probably the most straightforward implementation of shooting with the LCD monitor that I’ve come across.” But he also cautions: “The LCD monitor uses a great deal of battery power, so when in Live View, you will want to watch the remaining charge level a bit more closely than usual.”

With this excellent guidebook in hand, you can toss aside the camera’s problematic instruction manual and get some real-world explanations from an experienced photographer who also happens to be an experienced technical writer.

– Si Dunn

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Mac Kung Fu – Kick productivity into higher gear with 400+ tips, tricks – #bookreview

Mac Kung Fu, 2^nd Edition
Kier Thomas
(Pragmatic Bookshelf – Paperback, Kindle)

More than a hundred new tips and tricks have been packed into the new edition of Kier Thomas’s popular how-to guide for OS X Mountain Lion.

His book now offers “Over 400 Tips, Tricks, Hints, and Hacks for Apple OS X.” And it includes tips for some of Mountain Lion’s newest tools, including iCloud, Notifications, Reminders, and Calendar.

Kier Thomas has earned his good reputation the hard way, by writing nearly a dozen computer books, as well as blogging professionally for sites such as Macworld and PC World.

Mac Kung Fu, 2^nd Edition, is structured so you can simply open it, scan the long list of tips, and pick the ones you want to learn and use next. You can use the book in any order you desire.

For example, maybe you’ve grown tired of the “yellow legal paper” color of the Notes app. There’s no way to change the hue in the Preferences dialog box. But if you follow Thomas’s steps in Tip 132, you can change it to white. And Thomas shows you how to change it back to its default color – just in case you decide to sell your Mac to a lawyer.

Tip 82, “Preview Widgets,” deals with a way around another “feature” that can be irritating. “If you download new Dashboard widgets, you have to install them to your Dashboard before you can run them. This is counterintuitive,” Thomas notes, “because it might transpire that the widget isn’t much use, in which case you have to go through the work of installing it.” With the tips he provides, you can test a widget and simply drag it to Trash if you don’t want to keep it.

OS X does not include a download manager, “a program whose job it is to take care of downloads, including resuming those that stall or fail,” Thomas says. But Tip 173 shows how to use the Terminal window and curl command to efficiently monitor and manage file downloads.

OS X Mountain Lion users likely will find many useful tips and tricks in Kier Thomas’s well-written new book. Just flip it open to the table of contents and start working your way down the long list of new things to try. Or randomly open the book to any page. Either way, you’ll find many new ways to boost your productivity and enhance the pleasures of using OS X Mountain Lion.

– Si Dunn

Make something new, with MakerBot or Raspberry Pi – #bookreview #programming #diy

O’Reilly has released two new books to help you get started with two hot new products: the MakerBot desktop 3D printer and the Raspberry Pi, a tiny, inexpensive computer the size of a credit card.

Here are short reviews of the two how-to guides:

Getting Started with MakerBot
Bre Pettis, Anna Kaziunas France & Jay Shergill
(O’Reilly – paperback, Kindle)

The MakerBot 3D printer has captured worldwide attention for its ability to replicate objects such as game pieces, knobs and other plastic parts no longer available from manufacturers, and its use also to produce small art works.

“In our consumer-focused, disposable world, a MakerBot is a revitalizing force for all your broken things,” the authors state. (One of them, Bre Pettis, is one of MakerBot’s creators.)

The MakerBot machine, however, also can be a revitalizing force for artistic endeavors and, in some cases, dreams of self-employment. It is, after all, essentially a small factory in a box.

Getting Started with MakerBot introduces the machine and things you can make with it from your own designs or from designs downloaded from the web. “Though the underlying engineering principles behind a MakerBot are quite complex, in a nutshell, a MakerBot is a very precise, robotic hot glue gun mounted to a very precise, robotic positioning system,” the three writers point out.

In 213 pages, the book covers the basics, from history to set-up, and then shows you how to “print 10 useful objects right away.” It also introduces how to design your own 3D objects, using SketchUp, Autodesk 123D, OpenSCAD, and some other tools.

Getting Started with MakerBot is well-written, heavily illustrated, and organized to help you advance from unboxing a MakerBot to turning out products and creations and becoming a significant citizen of the “Thingiverse”—where “one must share designs…but all are welcome to reap the bounty of shared digital designs for physical objects.”

***

Getting Started with Raspberry Pi
Matt Richardson & Shawn Wallace
O’Reilly – paperback, Kindle)

The Raspberry Pi “is meant as an educational tool to encourage kids to experiment with computers.” But many adults are latching to the tiny device as well, because it comes preloaded with interpreters and compilers for several programming languages, including Python, Scratch, C, Ruby, Java, and Perl. Its operating system is Linux Raspbian.

The Raspberry Pi is not plug-and-play, but it can be connected to – and control –a number of electronic devices. And the list of uses  for the microcomputer keeps growing.

Some owners have made their Raspberry Pi devices into game machines. Others have connected many of the units together to create low-budget supercomputers. Some are using them as web servers. And still others work at the  “bare metal” of a Raspberry Pi to create and test new operating systems. Intriguing new roles for the Raspberry Pi keep appearing, and the surge will continue as more adults and kids start working with the tiny but powerful device.

Getting Started with Raspberry Pi covers the basics of hooking up, programming and running the device. It also provides several starter projects, including how to use a Raspberry Pi as a web server or in other roles.

Once you know what you’re doing, “You can even create your own JSON API for an electronics project!” the authors promise.

The well-written book packs a lot of how-to information into its 160 pages, including working at the command line in Linux, learning to program the device, and creating simple games in Python and Scratch.

– Si Dunn