The Dude abides.

Long Walk to Freedom

I’ve finished reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography: The Long Walk to Freedom. The book in itself was amazing. The burden he bore, to fight for freedom of all Africans (white or black) was extremely courageous and reminded me to some extent of the conversation of satyagraha in Orson Scott Card’s most excellent Shadow of the Hegemon:
“From [...]

today’s qotd

“The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and therefore should be treated with great caution” - Speaker for the Dead

Tales of Alvin Maker

Whilst working on getting Asterisk working with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (with SIP TCP patch and a minor chap_sip.c patch, it went well enough), I ended up reading the entire Tales of Alvin Maker (excellent Orson Scott Card series on an alternate America in the early 19th century) at the rate of a book [...]

Some excellent books

An excellent books I’ve finished reading in the last month or so:
1. The Omnivore’s Dilemma

2. The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone: India - The Emerging 21st Century Power

3. Sophie’s World

4. User Interface Design for Programmers

Book Review: Banker to the Poor

I finished reading Banker to the Poor (Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty) by Muhammad Yunus (Nobel Peace Prize winner) a couple weeks ago, it makes for fantastic reading primarily because it is told from a first person’s perspective and discusses the initial start of micro-lending (where Yunus was shocked to learn [...]