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Books in 2024

Published by Silveira on 2024-02-03

This year, I will try to at least note it down the books I read. Maybe write some brief words and impressions. My main goals are:

  1. To keep track of it. Sometimes I’m not sure if I read a book already or if I read about the book. More than once I read a book again by mistake with the constant company of a feeling of having read that before (“déjà lu”?). I know there are services and social networks dedicated to track and review books but right now I’m much more inclined to use my blog as an informal and quick way to doing that. I’m not planning to write reviews or summaries. I don’t have much to add to everything that has been already said on and about these books. I do plan to write some raw thoughts about what I just read for my own sake.
  2. To recommend when due and perhaps receive recommendations. I’m very grateful for all recommendations I have received over the years. It’s been a great way to add some randomness and sometimes unexpected surprises to my informational intake. I try to be open-minded these suggestions, although it may take years to read them. So by having these notes open here I hope to help recommend some of these books.
  3. To encourage myself and others on reading good books. I dislike when reading books is praised as something good by itself. You have to check the “nutritional” value of what you consume, including media and books.

These were the books I read in 2024 so far:

  1. The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
  2. What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
  3. No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon by Buzz Aldrin

Selected extracts from Socrates defense

Published by Silveira on 2015-12-14

Selected extracts from Socrates defense as described in Apology by Plato.

And I must beg of you to grant me one favor, which is this – If you hear me using the same words in my defense which I have been in the habit of using, and which most of you may have heard in the agora, and at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised at this, and not to interrupt me. For I am more than seventy years of age, and this is the first time that I have ever appeared in a court of law, and I am quite a stranger to the ways of the place; and therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would excuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his country; – that I think is not an unfair request. Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the justice of my cause, and give heed to that: let the judge decide justly and the speaker speak truly.

Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know.

Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, – then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways – I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

The full Apology of Plato can be found here.

Ruby: A Simple Example of Meta Programming

Published by Silveira on 2008-03-26

A really cool piece of code I read today in the book Ruby on Rails: Up and Running.

class Talker
  def method_missing(method)
     if method.to_s =~ /say_/
       puts $'
     end
  end
end

t = Talker.new

t.say_hello
t.say_something
t.say_goodbye

And running

$ ruby Talker.rb
hello
something
goodbye

But why do that when we have parameters? Because you can do some methods really dynamic with a clear semantic, just looking for them you know are they are doing.

More books

Published by Silveira on 2008-02-28

More books to my shelf.

Livros novos

  • Ruby On Rails, Executando. Desenvolvimento Rápido para a Web. Bruce A. Tate & Curt Hibbs.
  • Ruby, conhecendo a linguagem. Eustáqui Rangel de Oliveira Jr.
  • JavaFX Script. Dynamic Java Scripting for Rich Internet/Clien-Side Applications. James L. Weaver.

First I’ll take a look … JavaFX, of course. 🙂

ps: The JavaFX book I win as a prize for naming the SDN Channel podcast, CampusCast. Thanks Edu that bring it to me from USA. 😉