I got tagged by
brainsnorkel. I am thus obliged to carry the torch for the next bit of distance. I must also carry forth the complaints. As Chris is disturbed by the exponential distribution necessary to sustain the meme, I'm more worried about the pull mechanism. You see, it involves the five people you nominate actually read your blog, and can be arsed... er... being obligated by your obligation which, I guess, is only obligatory, especially whilst drinking obligatorade. Hmm... it looks like the joke's as weak as the drink...
Total number of books owned:
I own eleventy billion books, which is far in excess of your mere 100 or 1,000 books. It's a number so large that only fictional characters know about it, and keep it a secret from prying eyes. The most brilliant part is, my entire book collection is portable and fits under my fingernail, because they're... nanobooks. YEAH! EAT THAT!!!
Most of the "total number of books owned" paragraphs read to me like the above paragraph must read to you, the reader, who is reading this article, and therefore the previous paragraph. In reality, I own so few books, that a mere call of 100 books seems like an awful lot. Most of what I've read I've borrowed from the library, and only recently have I been able to afford actual books. This number totals close to, but not exceeding 10 books. However, what lacks in quantity, I have in quality.
Last book bought:
I bought
Modern Cryptography, by Wenbo Mao. It was pretty cheap ($30) at the Dymocks sale at Macquarie Centre. Still haven't really read it, but it looks interesting. I had to work hard to stop myself from getting
Inside Maya 5. I mean, I've never used Maya, even though I've been meaning to. It'd be a waste. I really don't need that book. really...
Last book read:
Smithereens by Shaun Micallef. I guess this is actually really where awesome of the week comes from. I like how it really treads the line between prose and a random series of words. I would put it almost on par with Alice's adventures in wonderland, but still doesn't compare to the man himself. Having said that, I tend to read books in tandem, or "interleaved" if you will. I feel in decreases my CAS times. Therefore, I've also been reading
The art of Electronics, which will probably take my entire life to actually finish. That thing is written like a novel, but you can't read it like one.
Five books that mean a lot to you:
Since I've already covered fiction in
another post, I'm going to move to non fiction, which I find rather more pleasant.
- The art of Electronics: Already mentioned. This is a book I probably get more from owning than reading. Even if I manage to read and understand it's encyclopaedic knowledge, I still question whether it's enormous mass would be more useful to me (not because it's a bad book, but it's just that heavy).
- The C Programming Language: This is the K&R. All those technical questions that pop up about C are all answered here. I don't need to refer to it much anymore, but I remember how useful this thing was at uni. There was tons of useful stuff in there.
- Microelectronic Circuits: I must admit, I also haven't read this cover to cover, but it's one of those "Oh yeah, I know this stuff" books. Something that I almost didn't like at uni was that the double degree was organised so as to be separate. As such, I spent the first three years learning electronics, the fourth forgetting it all and doing computing instead, and finally being plunged back into electronics, where I realised I had forgotten huge chunks of the stuff.
- The Science of Sound: My thesis was in this area, and audio's basically my thing. Let's never speak of my thesis again, because of how badly it turned out, but audio's still my thing. There's still a huge chunk on percussion and wind instruments I still haven't covered. This thing is quite good if you're making synthesisers and stuff, but it's not too technical. It can be picked up by physics people, sound people, and Engineers, and it still reads OK.
- Field and wave Electromagnetics: Out of all the books (except maybe Art of Electronics, because it's just so freaking big), this is a book I understand the least, and it's something I really want to make myself learn... one day. The truth is, I don't usually stick to my comfort zone, and electronics was one of those things I wasn't comfortable with, especially the analog, aerial kind. Digital I could handle, analog wasn't too bad, but this was just... I dunno. Anyway, I could almost blame the lecturer, because he always makes things seem harder than they are (he says things that are interesting to him, and therefore more complicated to us).
From this, you should be able to tell not what I know, but what I want to know. That's what books are about, after all. I don't have a bunch of computing books, or books in fields that I know I'm comfortable in. I have books in fields that I'm unsure about. In any subject where I knew I'd have trouble, I got myself the book, not because it'd help me then, but it'd help me later on in life. I still wish I got a decent DSP book, though, because I'm really forgetting that stuff...
Tag five people to continue this meme:
In a move to try and encourage people other than me and nathan to write on this blog, I'm going to nominate other members, That's right folks, I nominate Harpreet, tim, Paulo, Michael, and Moh. Now you are a bee!!!