I Hate the AI Robo Teacher
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Showing posts with label Nonfiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nonfiction. Show all posts
Monday, May 21, 2012
Teardrops and Tiny Trailers (Douglas Keister)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 2008
Genre: Nonfiction / Travel
Read again? yes
I've been wanting to build a little teardrop camper for years, partly out of a desire to see forts I've never been to without having to pay for motels, but also because one just needs to get away from time to time.
These hip-pocket homes on wheels date back to the 1930s and are typically built around a standard 4 x 8 foot sheet of plywood. The smaller ones are roomy enough for two friendly people and are light enough to be towed by almost any car. It's a step up from lying in a tent, but still more rough-and-ready (and far cheaper) than a bus-sized RV.
Keister's book is both an attractive guide to the possibilities for designing, outfitting and decorating trailers and a display of their tow vehicles, from Plain Jane to radical; boring to beautiful; wood, fiberglass, and aluminum.
There are plenty of photos of gorgeous old cars and trailers, some of which were built from plans like these from Mechanix Illustrated in 1947.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Pocket Ref (Glover, Thomas J)
Rating: 5
Year: 1989/20006 (3rd Ed.)
Genre: Technical
Read again? all the time.
Maybe it's a little too big for a pocket, but this hefty little book is incredibly useful.
Do you need to know the hand signals for guiding a crane or hoist operator? Page 105.
Wiring diagrams for common trailer wiring harnesses? Page 41.
Perpetual calendar? Page 737.
Airport 3-letter codes? 290.
...for Frankfurt, Germany? 301.
If you look on page 384, you'll note that rabbit skin glue can be used for bonding wood but is mainly used in gilding, artwork and furniture repair.
Page 537 starts a section on knots.
This little book seemingly has it all--mathematical formulae, physics and chemistry, masonry, military ranks, automotive, carpentry & construction, first aid, surveying and mapping, tools, weather, welding, and conversion tables packed into nearly 800 pages.
Year: 1989/20006 (3rd Ed.)
Genre: Technical
Read again? all the time.
Maybe it's a little too big for a pocket, but this hefty little book is incredibly useful.
Do you need to know the hand signals for guiding a crane or hoist operator? Page 105.
Wiring diagrams for common trailer wiring harnesses? Page 41.
Perpetual calendar? Page 737.
Airport 3-letter codes? 290.
...for Frankfurt, Germany? 301.
If you look on page 384, you'll note that rabbit skin glue can be used for bonding wood but is mainly used in gilding, artwork and furniture repair.
Page 537 starts a section on knots.
This little book seemingly has it all--mathematical formulae, physics and chemistry, masonry, military ranks, automotive, carpentry & construction, first aid, surveying and mapping, tools, weather, welding, and conversion tables packed into nearly 800 pages.
Getting Great Guitar Sounds (Ross, Michael)
Rating: 5
Year: 1988/1998
Genre: Music/Technical
Read again? Yup.
One thing a serious musician will spend endless hours and wallet-loads of cash on is getting good tone, whether it's from a guitar or a trumpet. It starts with an instrument that will play in tune--and stay that way. It needs to be comfortable, too--if you're fighting the thing, you're not going to play it well.
Michael Ross starts us out with the instrument itself. The sound you get from an electric guitar depends on more than just plugging it into an amp. The big factor is wood. What's it made from (alder? Ash? Maple?) ? How is the neck attached (bolted on? Glued on? Neck-through-body?)? What's the neck material (maple is typical)? Is it a hollow-body? Solid? Semi-hollow?
From there, you get into string size, scale length, and hardware, all of which contribute to how the guitar itself sounds both before it's plugged in and to the overall sound. Then you've got pickups and controls, on-board electronics...
Lots of choices, there; to the non-musician they might all sound the same. But to a tone junkie, there's a huge difference between the sounds of classic Van Halen, Angus Young, Alex Lifeson, Joe Satriani, Billy Gibbons, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Keith Richards, and James Hetfield. Each has a distinctive sound that begins with his guitar.
Ross doesn't overdo it; he keeps his descriptions clear and non-technical, discussing how each component will affect the overall sound of a guitar.
That's just Chapter One.
With the second, Ross guides us through pickup choices (single-coil, humbucker, active) and location (bridge, neck, middle), wiring, controls (active, passive), and then finally to amplifiers. The amp itself will affect your sound--it doesn't just make the guitar louder, it colors the tone depending on how you play through it.
In Part Two, Ross discusses effects pedals, the tools a guitarist can use to further affect his tone: compression, distortion, preamps, delay, reverb, chorus, flange, and pitch shifters, all available as stand-alone "stomp boxes" or in all-in-one multieffects units.
Part Three sees us putting all this stuff to work; many of the effects sound better when they're arranged in a certain order, but there will be songs when you want a clean sound, your guitar's natural voice, without all the extra trimmings. From here, he looks at "live" vs. "studio" sound and the give and take of using vintage instruments, amps and effects.
His final note is about musicianship: none of these things matters if you don't have the chops. Alex Lifeson will sound like Alex Lifeson no matter what guitar/amp/effects he's using--the instrument's tone is important, but not nearly as important as what Lifeson does with it. The single most important part of your sound is...you.
Ross' advice:
--Play with authority. Play each note like you mean it--even if you screw up. Screw up like you mean it.
--Make your sound and playing fit the song! If you're going to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan, you have to lay into it with both hands. Stevie played hard, till his fingers were bleeding--and he meant it. But you can't play like that if you're supposed to be subtle and romantic.
--Listen. Pay attention to your favorites and try to figure out how they got that sound.
The closer is a rundown of some guitar greats and how they got their sounds: Jeff Beck, Clapton, Van Halen, Hendrix, David Gilmour, Andy Summers, The Edge, and Kurt Cobain, to name a few.
The book is a little more than 70 pages and sized to match standard music books. Pics are in black and white. Ross discusses various brands without pushing any of them in a sales pitch, making it clear that the thing that matters in any of this is that you pick what you like to get the sound you want.
Year: 1988/1998
Genre: Music/Technical
Read again? Yup.
One thing a serious musician will spend endless hours and wallet-loads of cash on is getting good tone, whether it's from a guitar or a trumpet. It starts with an instrument that will play in tune--and stay that way. It needs to be comfortable, too--if you're fighting the thing, you're not going to play it well.
Michael Ross starts us out with the instrument itself. The sound you get from an electric guitar depends on more than just plugging it into an amp. The big factor is wood. What's it made from (alder? Ash? Maple?) ? How is the neck attached (bolted on? Glued on? Neck-through-body?)? What's the neck material (maple is typical)? Is it a hollow-body? Solid? Semi-hollow?
From there, you get into string size, scale length, and hardware, all of which contribute to how the guitar itself sounds both before it's plugged in and to the overall sound. Then you've got pickups and controls, on-board electronics...
Lots of choices, there; to the non-musician they might all sound the same. But to a tone junkie, there's a huge difference between the sounds of classic Van Halen, Angus Young, Alex Lifeson, Joe Satriani, Billy Gibbons, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Keith Richards, and James Hetfield. Each has a distinctive sound that begins with his guitar.
Ross doesn't overdo it; he keeps his descriptions clear and non-technical, discussing how each component will affect the overall sound of a guitar.
That's just Chapter One.
With the second, Ross guides us through pickup choices (single-coil, humbucker, active) and location (bridge, neck, middle), wiring, controls (active, passive), and then finally to amplifiers. The amp itself will affect your sound--it doesn't just make the guitar louder, it colors the tone depending on how you play through it.
In Part Two, Ross discusses effects pedals, the tools a guitarist can use to further affect his tone: compression, distortion, preamps, delay, reverb, chorus, flange, and pitch shifters, all available as stand-alone "stomp boxes" or in all-in-one multieffects units.
Part Three sees us putting all this stuff to work; many of the effects sound better when they're arranged in a certain order, but there will be songs when you want a clean sound, your guitar's natural voice, without all the extra trimmings. From here, he looks at "live" vs. "studio" sound and the give and take of using vintage instruments, amps and effects.
His final note is about musicianship: none of these things matters if you don't have the chops. Alex Lifeson will sound like Alex Lifeson no matter what guitar/amp/effects he's using--the instrument's tone is important, but not nearly as important as what Lifeson does with it. The single most important part of your sound is...you.
Ross' advice:
--Play with authority. Play each note like you mean it--even if you screw up. Screw up like you mean it.
--Make your sound and playing fit the song! If you're going to play like Stevie Ray Vaughan, you have to lay into it with both hands. Stevie played hard, till his fingers were bleeding--and he meant it. But you can't play like that if you're supposed to be subtle and romantic.
--Listen. Pay attention to your favorites and try to figure out how they got that sound.
The closer is a rundown of some guitar greats and how they got their sounds: Jeff Beck, Clapton, Van Halen, Hendrix, David Gilmour, Andy Summers, The Edge, and Kurt Cobain, to name a few.
The book is a little more than 70 pages and sized to match standard music books. Pics are in black and white. Ross discusses various brands without pushing any of them in a sales pitch, making it clear that the thing that matters in any of this is that you pick what you like to get the sound you want.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Rush Complete (2 volumes) and Deluxe Anthology
Rating: 3
Date: 1986
Genre: Music
Read Again? Yes
Gotta say first off, by "Complete" all the author(s) meant was "We did arrangements of all their albums through Power Windows," not "Every song in its completion."
Keep in mind that Rush is a "power trio"--drums, bass, and guitar.
Now consider that the books are arranged for vocal and piano, with chord symbols for guitar. Heh.
There's no TAB, so I was at a big disadvantage when I started learning songs from these books. I can read music notation...very slowly. I suck at it. Fortunately, those chord symbols are there and they helped a lot.
The arrangements themselves are best treated as sketches of the actual songs; they're heavily simplified and edited, with no solos or any of the badassery a Rush fan would be looking for. I knew this when I bought them, though--they're Rush memorabilia--and they were all there was in 1990, as far as I knew. While I learned by ear most of what I can play, I had the books just in case there was a phrase or chord I couldn't quite figure out (assuming it was in one of the books).
Another fun thing to do would be to program each song as written into Cakewalk or a similar music-writing program, just for something to do, and for something to laugh at. I wish I could rate these books higher, but they just don't make the cut, especially when compared to the arrangements in Guitar Magazine or some of the newer music books on today's shelves.
Volume 1:
Rush
Fly By Night
Caress of Steel
2112
A Farewell to Kings
Hemispheres
Volume 2:
Permanent Waves
Moving Pictures
Exit...Stage Left
Signals
Grace Under Pressure
Power Windows
The Deluxe Anthology is just 27 songs culled from the two-volume set. Same arrangements, so the same comments. My copy's pretty heavily annotated, which tells me that I depended more on this book than on the other two.
Date: 1986
Genre: Music
Read Again? Yes
Gotta say first off, by "Complete" all the author(s) meant was "We did arrangements of all their albums through Power Windows," not "Every song in its completion."
Keep in mind that Rush is a "power trio"--drums, bass, and guitar.
Now consider that the books are arranged for vocal and piano, with chord symbols for guitar. Heh.
There's no TAB, so I was at a big disadvantage when I started learning songs from these books. I can read music notation...very slowly. I suck at it. Fortunately, those chord symbols are there and they helped a lot.
The arrangements themselves are best treated as sketches of the actual songs; they're heavily simplified and edited, with no solos or any of the badassery a Rush fan would be looking for. I knew this when I bought them, though--they're Rush memorabilia--and they were all there was in 1990, as far as I knew. While I learned by ear most of what I can play, I had the books just in case there was a phrase or chord I couldn't quite figure out (assuming it was in one of the books).
Another fun thing to do would be to program each song as written into Cakewalk or a similar music-writing program, just for something to do, and for something to laugh at. I wish I could rate these books higher, but they just don't make the cut, especially when compared to the arrangements in Guitar Magazine or some of the newer music books on today's shelves.
Volume 1:
Rush
Fly By Night
Caress of Steel
2112
A Farewell to Kings
Hemispheres
Volume 2:
Permanent Waves
Moving Pictures
Exit...Stage Left
Signals
Grace Under Pressure
Power Windows
The Deluxe Anthology is just 27 songs culled from the two-volume set. Same arrangements, so the same comments. My copy's pretty heavily annotated, which tells me that I depended more on this book than on the other two.
Rush (Guitar Superstar Series) (Donato, Ray)
Rating: 4
Year: 1986
Genre: Music
Read again? Yes
I re-named this "Rush for Sissies" on the inside front cover. Donato's arrangements aren't as bad as those in the "Rush Complete" or "Deluxe Anthology" books, but there was a lot of correcting to be done, once I knew enough to know the difference.
The book's arranged specifically for vocal and guitar, with both standard staff and TAB notation. The main thing missing in every song is chord notation. Donato simply notes the generic chord name--"Bb sus 2." It's not a terrible omission, given that you can look at the TAB notation to see which fingering of a B-flat suspended-second chord Alex Lifeson was using for that song.
The actual mistakes aren't glaring, but they irritated me 20 years ago, when I was trying to learn to play like my guitar idol. Things like having the guitar silent when it's not, entire sections of a song omitted (done deliberately, without a good reason) or shortened, solos omitted (but included in other songs?). Knowing how hot-headed I was in 1989 or so, I'd have been pretty pissed off at shelling out $20 I could barely afford only to find that the arrangement for "Tom Sawyer" was as sucky as this one. One thing he does do well is keeping up with the insane meter-changing of certain songs.
Still, figuring it out by myself and going back to fix Donato's omissions and errors made me learn the songs and made me more confident in my own ability to listen and understand Lifeson's note choices. I wouldn't have gotten that if Donato had been note-for-note accurate, so I'll only take one point off.
The songs:
New World Man
The Spirit of Radio (w/solo)
Jacob's Ladder (solos omitted)
Between the Wheels (solo omitted; has guitar echoing synth; choruses wrong; ending wrong)
Tom Sawyer (solo omitted; main intro riff wrong;)
Free Will (solo omitted)
La Villa Strangiato (solos omitted)
Red Barchetta (intro wrong; solo omitted)
Distant Early Warning (sketchy solo?)
Year: 1986
Genre: Music
Read again? Yes
I re-named this "Rush for Sissies" on the inside front cover. Donato's arrangements aren't as bad as those in the "Rush Complete" or "Deluxe Anthology" books, but there was a lot of correcting to be done, once I knew enough to know the difference.
The book's arranged specifically for vocal and guitar, with both standard staff and TAB notation. The main thing missing in every song is chord notation. Donato simply notes the generic chord name--"Bb sus 2." It's not a terrible omission, given that you can look at the TAB notation to see which fingering of a B-flat suspended-second chord Alex Lifeson was using for that song.
The actual mistakes aren't glaring, but they irritated me 20 years ago, when I was trying to learn to play like my guitar idol. Things like having the guitar silent when it's not, entire sections of a song omitted (done deliberately, without a good reason) or shortened, solos omitted (but included in other songs?). Knowing how hot-headed I was in 1989 or so, I'd have been pretty pissed off at shelling out $20 I could barely afford only to find that the arrangement for "Tom Sawyer" was as sucky as this one. One thing he does do well is keeping up with the insane meter-changing of certain songs.
Still, figuring it out by myself and going back to fix Donato's omissions and errors made me learn the songs and made me more confident in my own ability to listen and understand Lifeson's note choices. I wouldn't have gotten that if Donato had been note-for-note accurate, so I'll only take one point off.
The songs:
New World Man
The Spirit of Radio (w/solo)
Jacob's Ladder (solos omitted)
Between the Wheels (solo omitted; has guitar echoing synth; choruses wrong; ending wrong)
Tom Sawyer (solo omitted; main intro riff wrong;)
Free Will (solo omitted)
La Villa Strangiato (solos omitted)
Red Barchetta (intro wrong; solo omitted)
Distant Early Warning (sketchy solo?)
Projects for Guitarists (Anderton, Craig)
Rating: 5
Year: 1995
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of my three project books, this is the one I never really cracked open. By the time I got this one, my interest in building my own guitar effects--and my interest in electronics--went on a back shelf in favor of other things.
This isn't a re-packaging of Anderton's "Electronic Projects for Musicians"; he does give some basics in the first couple of chapters, but the 35 projects in this book are all new, many gathered from Anderton's columns in Guitar Player Magazine):
Wall-wart tamer (mini extension cord with switch)
AC adapter hum-buster
Making crossfade & pan-pot pedals
Effects-order switcher
Power/Status indicator monitor
Stereo/Mono breakout box
Buffer Board
"Clarifier" On-board preamp/EQ
Beat the DI blues with IGGY (direct-injection box)
Frequency Booster
Phase switcher
AC power supply/battery eliminator
AC-powered practice amp
Signal switcher
Volume pedal de-scratcher
Cheap & Cheerful (Guitar) tone mods
Humbucking Pickup Tricks
Pots & Pans (pan-pot add-on to guitars)
Telecaster Rewiring
Balanced/Unbalanced Adapter
Direct Injector
Tape Recorder to Echo-unit conversion
Building a Better Bypass
Restoring Vintage Effects
Vintage Effects de-hisser
Adding Presets to Vintage Effects
Go/No-Go Cord Tester
Testing Impedance
LED Level Meter
"Tri-Test" Cord Checker
Designing an on-board (in-guitar) pre-amp
Octave-doubling fuzz
Quadrafuzz
Rocktave Divider
"Stack in a Box" tube preamp
One very helpful section helps you translate between American and International capacitor values (this information would have been useful in Penfold's book).
Well-written, with plenty of drawings and parts lists. There's no "sound page" as with Anderton's other book, but I won't quibble over something like that.
Year: 1995
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of my three project books, this is the one I never really cracked open. By the time I got this one, my interest in building my own guitar effects--and my interest in electronics--went on a back shelf in favor of other things.
This isn't a re-packaging of Anderton's "Electronic Projects for Musicians"; he does give some basics in the first couple of chapters, but the 35 projects in this book are all new, many gathered from Anderton's columns in Guitar Player Magazine):
Wall-wart tamer (mini extension cord with switch)
AC adapter hum-buster
Making crossfade & pan-pot pedals
Effects-order switcher
Power/Status indicator monitor
Stereo/Mono breakout box
Buffer Board
"Clarifier" On-board preamp/EQ
Beat the DI blues with IGGY (direct-injection box)
Frequency Booster
Phase switcher
AC power supply/battery eliminator
AC-powered practice amp
Signal switcher
Volume pedal de-scratcher
Cheap & Cheerful (Guitar) tone mods
Humbucking Pickup Tricks
Pots & Pans (pan-pot add-on to guitars)
Telecaster Rewiring
Balanced/Unbalanced Adapter
Direct Injector
Tape Recorder to Echo-unit conversion
Building a Better Bypass
Restoring Vintage Effects
Vintage Effects de-hisser
Adding Presets to Vintage Effects
Go/No-Go Cord Tester
Testing Impedance
LED Level Meter
"Tri-Test" Cord Checker
Designing an on-board (in-guitar) pre-amp
Octave-doubling fuzz
Quadrafuzz
Rocktave Divider
"Stack in a Box" tube preamp
One very helpful section helps you translate between American and International capacitor values (this information would have been useful in Penfold's book).
Well-written, with plenty of drawings and parts lists. There's no "sound page" as with Anderton's other book, but I won't quibble over something like that.
Electronic Projects for Guitar (Penfold, RA)
Rating: 4
Year: 1992
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of the three musical electronics project books, this one was the most difficult to understand, since the author uses British (or European? Metric?) notation on some components. Once I got used to that, though, everything fell into place.
Not that I ever built any of the projects. I got some ideas from Penfold's book, all of them added to a big folder with all my other electronics/music stuff, but nothing ever seemed to get built. I was always working on something else--fixing a car, learning a song, playing along with Rush tapes (NEVER the LP's!), stripping electronic components from broken TV's, radios, or whatever. I've got a sizable collection of resistors, capacitors, and all that...in storage.
Penfold gives us 16 projects after a cursory course in soldering, assembly, and testing:
Guitar preamp
Headphone amp
Soft distortion
Compressor
Auto-Wah (he spells it "Waa")
Wah-wah pedal
Phaser
Dual Tracking effects unit
Expander
Treble booster
Dynamic treble booster
Dynamic tremolo
Direct-injection box
Improved distortion box
Thin distortion unit
Guitar tuner
The schematics, assembly drawings, and parts lists are well-done; the projects are built up on simple breadboard with point-to-point wiring, but since there doesn't seem to be anything critical you could probably get away with the "dead bug" assembly method to make things take up even less space.
Some of the schematic symbols and part numbers didn't match anything I'd seen before, but that was before the Internet and Google, so sourcing most of the active components (transistors, integrated circuits) or equivalents shouldn't be too hard.
Year: 1992
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Of the three musical electronics project books, this one was the most difficult to understand, since the author uses British (or European? Metric?) notation on some components. Once I got used to that, though, everything fell into place.
Not that I ever built any of the projects. I got some ideas from Penfold's book, all of them added to a big folder with all my other electronics/music stuff, but nothing ever seemed to get built. I was always working on something else--fixing a car, learning a song, playing along with Rush tapes (NEVER the LP's!), stripping electronic components from broken TV's, radios, or whatever. I've got a sizable collection of resistors, capacitors, and all that...in storage.
Penfold gives us 16 projects after a cursory course in soldering, assembly, and testing:
Guitar preamp
Headphone amp
Soft distortion
Compressor
Auto-Wah (he spells it "Waa")
Wah-wah pedal
Phaser
Dual Tracking effects unit
Expander
Treble booster
Dynamic treble booster
Dynamic tremolo
Direct-injection box
Improved distortion box
Thin distortion unit
Guitar tuner
The schematics, assembly drawings, and parts lists are well-done; the projects are built up on simple breadboard with point-to-point wiring, but since there doesn't seem to be anything critical you could probably get away with the "dead bug" assembly method to make things take up even less space.
Some of the schematic symbols and part numbers didn't match anything I'd seen before, but that was before the Internet and Google, so sourcing most of the active components (transistors, integrated circuits) or equivalents shouldn't be too hard.
Electronic Projects for Musicians (Anderton, Craig)
Rating: 5
Year: 1975, 1980
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Around the same time I was learning to play guitar--late '80s, early '90s--I was also into electronics.
I figured it'd be fun to build my own guitar effects and such...but I never built anything. I studied, planned, tinkered with stomp boxes I already had, but to this day I've yet to start or finish any of Anderton's example projects.
It's not him. It's me. Always wanted to say that.
The book's a reasonably comprehensive mini electronics course. In the first four chapters, Anderton introduces various electronic components and where to source them, what sort of tools you'll need, and assembly techniques, enclosures, soldering, testing, and the all-important "smoke test" when the project either catches fire or works like it's supposed to.
Chapter 5 introduces the books' 27 projects, including a simple pre-amp, headphone amp, tone controls, distortion, an 8-input mixer, phaser, talk box (think Joe Walsh or Peter Frampton), and a noise gate...hell, here's the list:
Preamp
Metronome
Passive tone control
Headphone amp
Mini-amp
Ultra-fuzz
Bass fuzz
Compressor/Limiter
Ring Modulator
Dual-filter voicing unit
Adding bypass switches to effects
Guitar rewiring
Bipolar AC adaptor
Treble booster
Electronic footswitch
Tuning standard
Super Tone Control
8-in, 1-out mixer
Using a volt-ohm-millammeter
Practice play-along
Phase shifter
Making patch cords
Talk box
Tube-sound fuzz
Envelope Follower
Spluffer
Noise gate
Chapter 6 discusses different ways of patching the effects together, since your overall sound will be affected by the order in which effects are connected.
As a bonus, my copy of the book came with a flimsy record page with examples of many of the effects in action.
Looking over the list, I can't see me building a Tuning Standard because in the past 20 years small tuners have become cheap and small enough to fit in your guitar case. Most of the rest might bear revisiting, though--I'll need to dig out my big folder full of scribbled notes and schematics. It's always more fun to just look at the stuff, try to figure out how it works.
Overall, the book's well-written and illustrated, with parts lists for each project and plenty of assembly photos. Of the three books like this in my collection, this is the best.
Year: 1975, 1980
Genre: Music, Electronics
Read again? Yes
Around the same time I was learning to play guitar--late '80s, early '90s--I was also into electronics.
I figured it'd be fun to build my own guitar effects and such...but I never built anything. I studied, planned, tinkered with stomp boxes I already had, but to this day I've yet to start or finish any of Anderton's example projects.
It's not him. It's me. Always wanted to say that.
The book's a reasonably comprehensive mini electronics course. In the first four chapters, Anderton introduces various electronic components and where to source them, what sort of tools you'll need, and assembly techniques, enclosures, soldering, testing, and the all-important "smoke test" when the project either catches fire or works like it's supposed to.
Chapter 5 introduces the books' 27 projects, including a simple pre-amp, headphone amp, tone controls, distortion, an 8-input mixer, phaser, talk box (think Joe Walsh or Peter Frampton), and a noise gate...hell, here's the list:
Preamp
Metronome
Passive tone control
Headphone amp
Mini-amp
Ultra-fuzz
Bass fuzz
Compressor/Limiter
Ring Modulator
Dual-filter voicing unit
Adding bypass switches to effects
Guitar rewiring
Bipolar AC adaptor
Treble booster
Electronic footswitch
Tuning standard
Super Tone Control
8-in, 1-out mixer
Using a volt-ohm-millammeter
Practice play-along
Phase shifter
Making patch cords
Talk box
Tube-sound fuzz
Envelope Follower
Spluffer
Noise gate
Chapter 6 discusses different ways of patching the effects together, since your overall sound will be affected by the order in which effects are connected.
As a bonus, my copy of the book came with a flimsy record page with examples of many of the effects in action.
Looking over the list, I can't see me building a Tuning Standard because in the past 20 years small tuners have become cheap and small enough to fit in your guitar case. Most of the rest might bear revisiting, though--I'll need to dig out my big folder full of scribbled notes and schematics. It's always more fun to just look at the stuff, try to figure out how it works.
Overall, the book's well-written and illustrated, with parts lists for each project and plenty of assembly photos. Of the three books like this in my collection, this is the best.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Pearl Harbor: America's Darkest Day (Susan Wels, 2001)
Rating: 3
Year: 2001
Genre: Nonfiction/History
Read again? Maybe
First off...printed in Hong Kong?! Really? I'm bombing two points for that. Having a Foreword by WW2 vet Senator Daniel Inouye doesn't make up for it.
This isn't much of a reading book. It's not an in-depth scholarly work. There's just enough information to keep the narrative moving and hopefully enough to make the reader want to know more.
The book's strength is in the pictures. It's lavishly illustrated from cover to cover with period photos and beautifully-rendered paintings.
Year: 2001
Genre: Nonfiction/History
Read again? Maybe
First off...printed in Hong Kong?! Really? I'm bombing two points for that. Having a Foreword by WW2 vet Senator Daniel Inouye doesn't make up for it.
This isn't much of a reading book. It's not an in-depth scholarly work. There's just enough information to keep the narrative moving and hopefully enough to make the reader want to know more.
The book's strength is in the pictures. It's lavishly illustrated from cover to cover with period photos and beautifully-rendered paintings.
Why Buildings Fall Down (Matthys Levy & Mario Salvadori)
Rating: 5
Year: 1992
Genre: Architecture
Read again? Yup.
I don't remember why I started reading this little book back in May; I must have been tired from the Dresden books and looking for anything that wasn't a series. Whatever the cause, this is a neat book, a series of short investigations into some notable architectural failures.
They tells us about pyramids, bridge collapses, a WW2 bomber running into the Empire State Building, stadium roof failures, and how one little old lady making tea caused the failure of an apartment building in Britain.
There's just enough detail to sketch out each situation without burying the reader in formulae and technical terms. It's not exactly light reading, but it's something different to read.
Year: 1992
Genre: Architecture
Read again? Yup.
I don't remember why I started reading this little book back in May; I must have been tired from the Dresden books and looking for anything that wasn't a series. Whatever the cause, this is a neat book, a series of short investigations into some notable architectural failures.
They tells us about pyramids, bridge collapses, a WW2 bomber running into the Empire State Building, stadium roof failures, and how one little old lady making tea caused the failure of an apartment building in Britain.
There's just enough detail to sketch out each situation without burying the reader in formulae and technical terms. It's not exactly light reading, but it's something different to read.
No Country for Old Men (McCarthy, Cormac)
Rating: 4
Year: 2005
Genre: Drama
Read again? Maybe
McCarthy's got an unorthodox writing style. No quotes on dialog. Likes to chain things together with "and." That being said, once you get used to McCarthy's style, it's still a good story.
Llewellyn Moss is a former Vietnam War sniper. It's the late '70s, somewhere along the Texas-Mexico border. He's hunting antelope.
He thinks he's made a kill, but the wounded animal was still up on its feet, so Moss has some hiking to do if he's going to get it.
Instead of his prize, he comes across a miniature war zone: dead men lying on the ground, trucks riddled with bullet holes, and one pickup truck loaded with heroin. He does some math, figures that there's a guy missing, and follows his tracks out of the area and into the hills. The dead man's propped up under a tree with a case loaded with more than two million bucks.
He knows he's making a mistake in grabbing the money, but he grabs it and gets the hell out of the area.
He's soon being looked for by a principled killer who won't settle for simply getting his employers' money back. Moss has to die. Nothing personal. It's about the principle and the inconvenience.
On Moss' side is a sheriff who's trying to protect him and an ex-Special Forces guy who can't protect him but is hoping to stop the killings.
If you've seen the movie, you won't miss anything in the book. The screenwriters stayed very close to it.
Year: 2005
Genre: Drama
Read again? Maybe
McCarthy's got an unorthodox writing style. No quotes on dialog. Likes to chain things together with "and." That being said, once you get used to McCarthy's style, it's still a good story.
Llewellyn Moss is a former Vietnam War sniper. It's the late '70s, somewhere along the Texas-Mexico border. He's hunting antelope.
He thinks he's made a kill, but the wounded animal was still up on its feet, so Moss has some hiking to do if he's going to get it.
Instead of his prize, he comes across a miniature war zone: dead men lying on the ground, trucks riddled with bullet holes, and one pickup truck loaded with heroin. He does some math, figures that there's a guy missing, and follows his tracks out of the area and into the hills. The dead man's propped up under a tree with a case loaded with more than two million bucks.
He knows he's making a mistake in grabbing the money, but he grabs it and gets the hell out of the area.
He's soon being looked for by a principled killer who won't settle for simply getting his employers' money back. Moss has to die. Nothing personal. It's about the principle and the inconvenience.
On Moss' side is a sheriff who's trying to protect him and an ex-Special Forces guy who can't protect him but is hoping to stop the killings.
If you've seen the movie, you won't miss anything in the book. The screenwriters stayed very close to it.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Demon-Haunted World, The (Sagan, Carl)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 1995
Genre: Nonfiction / Science
Read again? Yes.
It took 3-1/2 weeks to get through this one; it's not a quick read, but it's a damn good one. After four crappy B-grade sci-fi books masquerading as readable fiction, I needed something solid. I didn't roll my eyes once or wonder _why_ Sagan would write _this_ this way. His writing is friendly, approachable, every bit like his presentation in "Cosmos."
"World" is an indictment of the state of scientific literacy and critical thinking in the United States and (to a lesser extent) the rest of the world. It should be required reading for any teacher or administrator--but for that to happen we'd have to clear the anti-science kooks out of the system.
His prose is eminently quotable:
Given that a hefty percentage of people in this country believe we were magicked into being just a few thousand years ago; given that a hefty percentage of people in this country claim that the moon landings were faked; given that medical quackery such as accupuncture, chiropractic, and homeopathy are taken seriously...alien abduction...demonic possession...psychic phenomena...ghosts...crop circles...even when the science is THERE and showing these things to be wrong...even then, people buy into it whole-hog.
Why?
It has to start with education. Sagan voices concern that this country will become an information economy, with its industries moved offshore--the things we need if we are to prosper, let alone survive, as a scientific power, whilst the navel-gazers sit and watch Oprah, letting their critical faculties wither and die.
[I think we've long since been headed in that direction. Our politicians and their corporate pals have been selling off chunks of our industrial base for decades: home electronics in the 1970's and '80s, the clothing industry in the '90s. Did you know the VCR was developed by an American company? Did you know that they didn't see how to make a quick profit, so they sold it to Japanese interest? Did you notice that no American company ever manufactured a VCR? How much of the clothing you buy is even made in America?
For all their talk about buying American, conservatives never did anything to bring that industry back home, did they? No, they waved their flags and proclaimed their devotion to them--without checking to see whether those flags were Made in Taiwan. --J.]
He delves into the similarities between today's "alien abductions" and tales of demonic interference in human lives from centuries past:
He discusses education and how the simple act of reading led a slave named Frederick Bailey into freedom. He changed his name, then: Frederick Douglass became one of the greatest political leaders, writers and speakers in American history. He was an advisor to President Lincoln. How cool is that?
Sagan details the _need_ for critical thought--and then he takes us to a principal cause for the lack of it: the schools. He reprints letters, some barely literate, in which he is criticized for "bashing" America. There's no problem! We need gawd in the schools! The ACLU is the problem! Socialism!
Sagan wonders why excelling in science is "elitist"...yet varsity sports--the "best of the best"--is not.
And there's more, so much more to "The Demon-Haunted World." Hypnosis, religious whack-jobs, crop-circle kooks, psychics, ghosts, witch-hunts.
As I said before, this is not a fast read; there's a density to his narrative that makes me want to read "Contact" (also by Sagan) to see how his fiction works. Sagan doesn't swamp the reader with science and equations, nor does he hold your hand and condescend.
Year: 1995
Genre: Nonfiction / Science
Read again? Yes.
It took 3-1/2 weeks to get through this one; it's not a quick read, but it's a damn good one. After four crappy B-grade sci-fi books masquerading as readable fiction, I needed something solid. I didn't roll my eyes once or wonder _why_ Sagan would write _this_ this way. His writing is friendly, approachable, every bit like his presentation in "Cosmos."
"World" is an indictment of the state of scientific literacy and critical thinking in the United States and (to a lesser extent) the rest of the world. It should be required reading for any teacher or administrator--but for that to happen we'd have to clear the anti-science kooks out of the system.
His prose is eminently quotable:
If we teach only the findings and products of science...without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?
Given that a hefty percentage of people in this country believe we were magicked into being just a few thousand years ago; given that a hefty percentage of people in this country claim that the moon landings were faked; given that medical quackery such as accupuncture, chiropractic, and homeopathy are taken seriously...alien abduction...demonic possession...psychic phenomena...ghosts...crop circles...even when the science is THERE and showing these things to be wrong...even then, people buy into it whole-hog.
Why?
It has to start with education. Sagan voices concern that this country will become an information economy, with its industries moved offshore--the things we need if we are to prosper, let alone survive, as a scientific power, whilst the navel-gazers sit and watch Oprah, letting their critical faculties wither and die.
[I think we've long since been headed in that direction. Our politicians and their corporate pals have been selling off chunks of our industrial base for decades: home electronics in the 1970's and '80s, the clothing industry in the '90s. Did you know the VCR was developed by an American company? Did you know that they didn't see how to make a quick profit, so they sold it to Japanese interest? Did you notice that no American company ever manufactured a VCR? How much of the clothing you buy is even made in America?
For all their talk about buying American, conservatives never did anything to bring that industry back home, did they? No, they waved their flags and proclaimed their devotion to them--without checking to see whether those flags were Made in Taiwan. --J.]
He delves into the similarities between today's "alien abductions" and tales of demonic interference in human lives from centuries past:
...sexually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls, communicate telepathically, and perform breeding experiments on the human species."
He discusses education and how the simple act of reading led a slave named Frederick Bailey into freedom. He changed his name, then: Frederick Douglass became one of the greatest political leaders, writers and speakers in American history. He was an advisor to President Lincoln. How cool is that?
Sagan details the _need_ for critical thought--and then he takes us to a principal cause for the lack of it: the schools. He reprints letters, some barely literate, in which he is criticized for "bashing" America. There's no problem! We need gawd in the schools! The ACLU is the problem! Socialism!
Sagan wonders why excelling in science is "elitist"...yet varsity sports--the "best of the best"--is not.
And there's more, so much more to "The Demon-Haunted World." Hypnosis, religious whack-jobs, crop-circle kooks, psychics, ghosts, witch-hunts.
As I said before, this is not a fast read; there's a density to his narrative that makes me want to read "Contact" (also by Sagan) to see how his fiction works. Sagan doesn't swamp the reader with science and equations, nor does he hold your hand and condescend.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Forbidden Fighting Techniques of the Ninja (Kim, Ashida)
Rating: 3
Year: 1984
Genre: Martial Arts, Nonfiction
Read Again? Heh.
Okay, unless you want guys in black pajamas attacking you, don't read this review.
No, not really. They'll get me first.
This is an assemblage of badly-lit black & white photos with poor contrast and sketchy text descriptions of those "forbidden" fighting techniques. Took a point off for the pics. They're not uniformly bad, mind you, but I'd like to see a reissue with some attempt at better lighting and background choice.
I picked it up at a used book store for maybe five bucks. Much of the "forbidden" stuff is the same karate I studied for two years back in the early '90s--the same blocks, punches and kicks in the same forms as those of the Shotokan style. I got a good laugh from that! I guess the "forbidden" part is that they wear black pajamas and ski masks?
There's also some stuff about throwing and falling and warmups, but this isn't really a "reading" book. I think I've tried a half-dozen times to read the introductory chapter and some of the rest of the book and failed from boredom. I'll have to yawn another point off there.
There are short descriptions of various weapons--swords, kama, nunckaku, bo or jo staff, shuriken, throwing knives, crowbars, chains, ropes, sai daggers, and all those other things you'd see in a standard mid-'80s ninja movie, any samurai flick from Japan, or any kung-fu flick out of China. It seems like there's just enough in this book to whet a serious student's appetite, but there's also just enough to get an idiot in trouble.
If you REALLY want to learn a martial art, you need a teacher. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but after looking at some of the sword work, I cringe at how amateurish the attacks look. I wonder what the serious-student-to-idiot ratio was for book sales?
Year: 1984
Genre: Martial Arts, Nonfiction
Read Again? Heh.
Okay, unless you want guys in black pajamas attacking you, don't read this review.
No, not really. They'll get me first.
This is an assemblage of badly-lit black & white photos with poor contrast and sketchy text descriptions of those "forbidden" fighting techniques. Took a point off for the pics. They're not uniformly bad, mind you, but I'd like to see a reissue with some attempt at better lighting and background choice.
I picked it up at a used book store for maybe five bucks. Much of the "forbidden" stuff is the same karate I studied for two years back in the early '90s--the same blocks, punches and kicks in the same forms as those of the Shotokan style. I got a good laugh from that! I guess the "forbidden" part is that they wear black pajamas and ski masks?
There's also some stuff about throwing and falling and warmups, but this isn't really a "reading" book. I think I've tried a half-dozen times to read the introductory chapter and some of the rest of the book and failed from boredom. I'll have to yawn another point off there.
There are short descriptions of various weapons--swords, kama, nunckaku, bo or jo staff, shuriken, throwing knives, crowbars, chains, ropes, sai daggers, and all those other things you'd see in a standard mid-'80s ninja movie, any samurai flick from Japan, or any kung-fu flick out of China. It seems like there's just enough in this book to whet a serious student's appetite, but there's also just enough to get an idiot in trouble.
If you REALLY want to learn a martial art, you need a teacher. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but after looking at some of the sword work, I cringe at how amateurish the attacks look. I wonder what the serious-student-to-idiot ratio was for book sales?
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Feynman, Richard & Leighton, Ralph)
Rating: 5
Year: 1985
Genre: Nonfiction / Autobiography
Read again? Eventually
Time for a Lackey-free break again--and a break from science fiction and fantasy. What better than a biography of one of the great minds of physics in the mid-to-late 20th Century? The title comes from a "social error," as he puts it. It was his first tea-time at Princeton and he was asked whether he wanted cream or lemon in his tea. When he asked for both, the hostess corrected him: "Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman."
The book's done as a series of short stories from Feynman's past, as told to Leighton. It's clear from the first that Feynman had an insatiable curiosity about everything around him, and anything that caught his attention was studied with a rigor, intensity, and span of attention that makes me feel like I'm wasting time just sitting and reading, let alone writing a freaking blog! Fenyman was repairing radios at an age when I was just tearing them apart to see what was inside:
He met or worked with the giants--Einstein. Fermi, the list is a roll call of physics.
One sobering topic he discusses is the state of school text books and how they're chosen. This was in the early 1960's in California. He was asked to sit in on the State Curriculum Commission, who would supposedly read the textbook offerings and render opinions on them. Feynman was chosen because he worked with math, and math books were the Commission's current project. He quickly found that the publishers were guiding the Commission members; apparently Fenyman was the only person who actually read any of them. He read all of them. Three hundred pounds of books. Seventeen feet of books, and they were almost all crap from a mathematics standpoint. One book got rave reviews from all the other Commission members, who had obviously never even opened the damn thing: because of printing problems, placeholder copies were sent out with blank pages.
The sad thing is, to this day, the publishers have the run of the organizations that pick out school books, and they're still crap. Back in April of '09 there was a good rant about this subject at Pharyngula (most of the ranting is in the Comments, and there are plenty of good links therein as well).
Overall, this is an entertaining read, but I doubt I'll go back to it anytime soon, if only because there's so much more to read in my pile of stuff, and the Lackey Train is leaving the station.
Year: 1985
Genre: Nonfiction / Autobiography
Read again? Eventually
Time for a Lackey-free break again--and a break from science fiction and fantasy. What better than a biography of one of the great minds of physics in the mid-to-late 20th Century? The title comes from a "social error," as he puts it. It was his first tea-time at Princeton and he was asked whether he wanted cream or lemon in his tea. When he asked for both, the hostess corrected him: "Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman."
The book's done as a series of short stories from Feynman's past, as told to Leighton. It's clear from the first that Feynman had an insatiable curiosity about everything around him, and anything that caught his attention was studied with a rigor, intensity, and span of attention that makes me feel like I'm wasting time just sitting and reading, let alone writing a freaking blog! Fenyman was repairing radios at an age when I was just tearing them apart to see what was inside:
How cool is that? A little kid fixing radios, treating each one as a puzzle to solve, thinking his way to a conclusion (I think at his age I learned about electricity by sticking a house key in an electrical outlet), and this was his approach to everything. Learning for the joy of learning, the satisfaction of solving a puzzle. And nearly everything was a puzzle for this man! Physics, the behavior of ants, biology, chemistry, locks (both key and combination).
One day I got a telephone call: "Mister, are you Richard Feynman ?"
"Yes."
"This is a hotel. We have a radio that doesn't work, and would like it repaired. We understand you might be able to do something about it."
"But I'm only a little boy," I said. "I don't know how--"
"Yes, we know that, but we'd like you to come over anyway."
It was a hotel that my aunt was running, but I didn't know that. I went over there with--they still tell the story--a big screwdriver in my back pocket. Well, I was small, so any screwdriver looked big in my back pocket.
He met or worked with the giants--Einstein. Fermi, the list is a roll call of physics.
One sobering topic he discusses is the state of school text books and how they're chosen. This was in the early 1960's in California. He was asked to sit in on the State Curriculum Commission, who would supposedly read the textbook offerings and render opinions on them. Feynman was chosen because he worked with math, and math books were the Commission's current project. He quickly found that the publishers were guiding the Commission members; apparently Fenyman was the only person who actually read any of them. He read all of them. Three hundred pounds of books. Seventeen feet of books, and they were almost all crap from a mathematics standpoint. One book got rave reviews from all the other Commission members, who had obviously never even opened the damn thing: because of printing problems, placeholder copies were sent out with blank pages.
The sad thing is, to this day, the publishers have the run of the organizations that pick out school books, and they're still crap. Back in April of '09 there was a good rant about this subject at Pharyngula (most of the ranting is in the Comments, and there are plenty of good links therein as well).
Overall, this is an entertaining read, but I doubt I'll go back to it anytime soon, if only because there's so much more to read in my pile of stuff, and the Lackey Train is leaving the station.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
World's Most Evil Men, The (Blandford, Neil & Jones, Bruce)
Rating: 4
Year: 1990
Genre: Non-fiction
Read again? Maybe
For such an all-encompassing title, this is an amazingly thin book, given all the evil men History has known, but it does make for good reading. Each evil man is given at least a page, just room for the highlights without making a list of every evil deed. Think of it as "entry-level" evil--you read this, you're interested and want to learn more, but if you're not you're only out the cost of one book. Since this is supposed to be the "most" evil men, you won't find lesser evils.
"Most Evil" is broken down into 6 chapters, each telling of a different class of evil:
Twentieth Century Tyrants. Your basic tin-pot dictators, gunboat diplomats, and megalomaniacal emperors for life--Idi Amin, Pol Pot, "Emperor" Bokassa, Papa Doc Duvalier, Joe Stalin.
Merciless Despots--Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane the Great, Ivan the Terrible, the Ottoman Sultans.
For God, King & Country--the Borgias, the Conquistadores, the Buccaneers (English pirates Morgan & Kidd), Marat & Robespierre of the French Revolution, Jim Jones of Jonestown
The Nazis--Hitler's rise, the SS & Himmler in the Ghettoes, Heydrich and his camps, Eichmann, Klaus Barbie.
Evil is Big Business--the Mafia, Jimmy Hoffa, Gambino, Galante, Murder Incorporated, Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel
Blood Lust--Caligula, Vlad the Impaler, Gilles de Rais, the Beane cannibal family, German vampires Kurten & Haarman, Chicago's Torture Castle, Marquis de Sade.
Given that evil men seem to ooze out of various worldly orificies (orifi?) at odd times, there is ample room for a second edition--I note that George Luca$ apprently wasn't evil enough for the first edition.
Year: 1990
Genre: Non-fiction
Read again? Maybe
For such an all-encompassing title, this is an amazingly thin book, given all the evil men History has known, but it does make for good reading. Each evil man is given at least a page, just room for the highlights without making a list of every evil deed. Think of it as "entry-level" evil--you read this, you're interested and want to learn more, but if you're not you're only out the cost of one book. Since this is supposed to be the "most" evil men, you won't find lesser evils.
"Most Evil" is broken down into 6 chapters, each telling of a different class of evil:
Twentieth Century Tyrants. Your basic tin-pot dictators, gunboat diplomats, and megalomaniacal emperors for life--Idi Amin, Pol Pot, "Emperor" Bokassa, Papa Doc Duvalier, Joe Stalin.
Merciless Despots--Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane the Great, Ivan the Terrible, the Ottoman Sultans.
For God, King & Country--the Borgias, the Conquistadores, the Buccaneers (English pirates Morgan & Kidd), Marat & Robespierre of the French Revolution, Jim Jones of Jonestown
The Nazis--Hitler's rise, the SS & Himmler in the Ghettoes, Heydrich and his camps, Eichmann, Klaus Barbie.
Evil is Big Business--the Mafia, Jimmy Hoffa, Gambino, Galante, Murder Incorporated, Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel
Blood Lust--Caligula, Vlad the Impaler, Gilles de Rais, the Beane cannibal family, German vampires Kurten & Haarman, Chicago's Torture Castle, Marquis de Sade.
Given that evil men seem to ooze out of various worldly orificies (orifi?) at odd times, there is ample room for a second edition--I note that George Luca$ apprently wasn't evil enough for the first edition.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Complete Introduction to Drawing, The (Barber, Barrington)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 2007
Genre: Nonfiction/Art
Read again? Yes
I stumbled upon this at Barnes & Nobles' bargain bin. Ten bucks!
What sold me on it was something different from many of the beginning drawing books: Barber takes us through some basic line and shape exercises, things that are very important to overall technique, but don't seem to get much coverage. Or at least they didn't get covered in a way that turned on that little light bulb in my head.
This is a satisfyingly heavy paperback, about 300 pages, and well-illustrated with sample drawings.
The first forty pages are basics--lines and shapes, posture, materials, composition, shading, all the things I never quite "got" in that 10th-Grade Art class.
From there, we go to still life and object drawings, beginning with basic shapes and working up in complexity. Everyday items such as trees and binoculars, books and sneakers are shown first as very simple line drawings, then as completed illustrations--and it's done in such a way that you can see the process and the progress.
Each chapter builds upon the previous ones, of course, with chapters on lighting & perspective (including an eye-popping metal saucepan that almost looks real!); nature (waterfalls, trees, oyster shells, landscapes, and animals); human figures (basic shapes & proportions, poses, skeletal and muscular forms, shading of skin, and foreshortening); and composition.
The final third of the book has chapters on setting up landscapes, still life, portraits, and figure drawing; developing a style; and learning from all those old guys like Rembrandt, the cubists, abstracts, and more.
Given the depth of coverage, this should be a first pick for anyone interested in a do-it-yourself approach to drawing or a full-fledged art class.
Year: 2007
Genre: Nonfiction/Art
Read again? Yes
I stumbled upon this at Barnes & Nobles' bargain bin. Ten bucks!
What sold me on it was something different from many of the beginning drawing books: Barber takes us through some basic line and shape exercises, things that are very important to overall technique, but don't seem to get much coverage. Or at least they didn't get covered in a way that turned on that little light bulb in my head.
This is a satisfyingly heavy paperback, about 300 pages, and well-illustrated with sample drawings.
The first forty pages are basics--lines and shapes, posture, materials, composition, shading, all the things I never quite "got" in that 10th-Grade Art class.
From there, we go to still life and object drawings, beginning with basic shapes and working up in complexity. Everyday items such as trees and binoculars, books and sneakers are shown first as very simple line drawings, then as completed illustrations--and it's done in such a way that you can see the process and the progress.
Each chapter builds upon the previous ones, of course, with chapters on lighting & perspective (including an eye-popping metal saucepan that almost looks real!); nature (waterfalls, trees, oyster shells, landscapes, and animals); human figures (basic shapes & proportions, poses, skeletal and muscular forms, shading of skin, and foreshortening); and composition.
The final third of the book has chapters on setting up landscapes, still life, portraits, and figure drawing; developing a style; and learning from all those old guys like Rembrandt, the cubists, abstracts, and more.
Given the depth of coverage, this should be a first pick for anyone interested in a do-it-yourself approach to drawing or a full-fledged art class.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
How to Shit in the Woods (Meyer, Kathleen)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 1989
Genre: Nonfiction / Outdoors
Read again? Yes, at need
"An environmentally sound approach to a lost art."
This isn't a sit-and-read book so much as a humorous instruction book for hikers, campers--anyone who will be out in the wild. Meyer explains things in a straightforward fashion. Yes, yes, yes, you think you know how to drop one now--it seems as simple as just dropping trou and assuming the position, right? Well, no.
What if you're on a steepish rocky hillside? Do you want 'em rolling down to the camp?
What if you're riding the rapids and there will be others who want to enjoy the place without looking at your poop in the river?
What if you're trying to find drinking water up in the mountains--but someone dropped one too close to the stream you find? Do you want to risk Giardiasis? Cryptosporidium?
Meyer, a former river guide, first takes us through her process of picking the best word for the book. She didn't want to go for the clinical euphemism (eliminate, defecate, stool); or for zoological-sounding terms like scat, chips, and pellets. I like her direct approach of "calling a crap a crap." I wouldn't be surprised that some prissy, over-protective type would want this book banned because their precious snowflake shouldn't be exposed to such vulgarity...but everyone shits, even the tight-assed.
I must admit, I'd never given the process of wilderness-poo much thought (my Boy Scout troop didn't do wilderness). Find some bushes, find a tree, hunker down between the car doors on the side of the highway. But I don't know what poison ivy looks like, and who wants to clean up with that?
Next, she discusses the humble hole. You don't want to just leave it in the open, but you don't want to put it too deep, too shallow, too close to water (this is why you don't want to drink from that clear mountain spring without boiling the water first--and why the Ganges River in India is a festering cesspool). Like housing, it's all about location, location, location, finding a spot where your leavings will decompose without messing things up for other people (or for yourself, should you come back that way again). She also introduces some typical parasites you might encounter; the more people fail to clean up after themselves, the more such critters will be a problem for everyone else.
Can't dig a hole? Hanging off the side of a cliff? Pack your poop and take it with you rather than bombing the folks far below. Meyer recommends a few models of washable, re-usable carry-out containers for those who wish to just buy one (wanna spend $540 for a top-of-the-line model? I don't, but if you're dealing in volume it probably makes sense), but for the more enterprising and creative there's a do-it-yourself item that uses 4-inch PVC pipe and a few fittings to make a 12- to 25-inch personal poop tote.
Next on the tour: how to protect yourself with water filtration/purification systems. You can't assume that that clear mountain stream is clean, anymore. Giardia will break you from both ends, and all the other little parasites and bacteria lurking out of sight will at least make you miserable.
The women's chapter: "How not to pee in your boots." It's a quick lesson in undergarment selection, a little about going standing up, and finding a good spot for the less-adventurous who need to get closer to the ground (either way, it seems that you need some strong leg muscles). It turns out that Tupperware bread-savers are useful for more than bread!
Finally, there's a chapter for cleaning up. You could use toilet paper, but what if you're caught out without? Just remember: the solution grows on trees. Yup: Leaves. Meyer points out that you don't need to take a botany class--but you must learn your bad plants: poison oak, poison ivy, stinging nettles, sumac. I don't remember a damn thing about those plants from my Scouting days--but then, their idea of "wilderness" was a canoe and camp trip on a local river, and we roughed it by digging a hole and hanging a TP roll off a convenient stick next to it. Our 2-week camp at Camp Euchee was even less barbaric than that: each campsite had a latrine shed, complete with plumbing and TP rolls.
It's not just a dry how-to manual; Meyer tells a few tales of people who made a mess--the man who inadvertently pooped in his poncho hood; the miniature rock-slide caused by pooping on a slope (it really does roll downhill!); the woman who went outside in the snow and ended up with "the soggies" because every layer of clothing caught some snow. As long as you're not some Victorian prude, this crass little book is worth the ten bucks.
Year: 1989
Genre: Nonfiction / Outdoors
Read again? Yes, at need
"An environmentally sound approach to a lost art."
This isn't a sit-and-read book so much as a humorous instruction book for hikers, campers--anyone who will be out in the wild. Meyer explains things in a straightforward fashion. Yes, yes, yes, you think you know how to drop one now--it seems as simple as just dropping trou and assuming the position, right? Well, no.
What if you're on a steepish rocky hillside? Do you want 'em rolling down to the camp?
What if you're riding the rapids and there will be others who want to enjoy the place without looking at your poop in the river?
What if you're trying to find drinking water up in the mountains--but someone dropped one too close to the stream you find? Do you want to risk Giardiasis? Cryptosporidium?
Meyer, a former river guide, first takes us through her process of picking the best word for the book. She didn't want to go for the clinical euphemism (eliminate, defecate, stool); or for zoological-sounding terms like scat, chips, and pellets. I like her direct approach of "calling a crap a crap." I wouldn't be surprised that some prissy, over-protective type would want this book banned because their precious snowflake shouldn't be exposed to such vulgarity...but everyone shits, even the tight-assed.
I must admit, I'd never given the process of wilderness-poo much thought (my Boy Scout troop didn't do wilderness). Find some bushes, find a tree, hunker down between the car doors on the side of the highway. But I don't know what poison ivy looks like, and who wants to clean up with that?
Next, she discusses the humble hole. You don't want to just leave it in the open, but you don't want to put it too deep, too shallow, too close to water (this is why you don't want to drink from that clear mountain spring without boiling the water first--and why the Ganges River in India is a festering cesspool). Like housing, it's all about location, location, location, finding a spot where your leavings will decompose without messing things up for other people (or for yourself, should you come back that way again). She also introduces some typical parasites you might encounter; the more people fail to clean up after themselves, the more such critters will be a problem for everyone else.
Can't dig a hole? Hanging off the side of a cliff? Pack your poop and take it with you rather than bombing the folks far below. Meyer recommends a few models of washable, re-usable carry-out containers for those who wish to just buy one (wanna spend $540 for a top-of-the-line model? I don't, but if you're dealing in volume it probably makes sense), but for the more enterprising and creative there's a do-it-yourself item that uses 4-inch PVC pipe and a few fittings to make a 12- to 25-inch personal poop tote.
Next on the tour: how to protect yourself with water filtration/purification systems. You can't assume that that clear mountain stream is clean, anymore. Giardia will break you from both ends, and all the other little parasites and bacteria lurking out of sight will at least make you miserable.
The women's chapter: "How not to pee in your boots." It's a quick lesson in undergarment selection, a little about going standing up, and finding a good spot for the less-adventurous who need to get closer to the ground (either way, it seems that you need some strong leg muscles). It turns out that Tupperware bread-savers are useful for more than bread!
Finally, there's a chapter for cleaning up. You could use toilet paper, but what if you're caught out without? Just remember: the solution grows on trees. Yup: Leaves. Meyer points out that you don't need to take a botany class--but you must learn your bad plants: poison oak, poison ivy, stinging nettles, sumac. I don't remember a damn thing about those plants from my Scouting days--but then, their idea of "wilderness" was a canoe and camp trip on a local river, and we roughed it by digging a hole and hanging a TP roll off a convenient stick next to it. Our 2-week camp at Camp Euchee was even less barbaric than that: each campsite had a latrine shed, complete with plumbing and TP rolls.
It's not just a dry how-to manual; Meyer tells a few tales of people who made a mess--the man who inadvertently pooped in his poncho hood; the miniature rock-slide caused by pooping on a slope (it really does roll downhill!); the woman who went outside in the snow and ended up with "the soggies" because every layer of clothing caught some snow. As long as you're not some Victorian prude, this crass little book is worth the ten bucks.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Quickie: DeLorean: Stainless Steel Illusion (Lamm, John)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 1983
Genre: Nonfiction
Read again? Yes, at 88 miles per hour
My first real look at a DeLorean was in 1985, in a movie theatre, where Marty McFly watched as Doc Brown backed a modified car out of his van. More than 20 years have gone by, and those sleek steel cars still quicken my pulse and awaken the same desire as when I was 18.
The theatre's a megachurch now, the original company is long gone, and John DeLorean himself is dead. But I still want a DeLorean. I bought the "Back To The Future" booklet as soon as I found it--lots of pictures of the people from the movie, yes, but who cares about them (well, aside from Lea Thompson)? The only thing I really cared about were the photos and Ron Cobb's drawings of the car, from which I tried to make my own scale drawings of an unmodified DeLorean. Cobb's drawings weren't accurate, and I was left with working things out as best I could all through 12th Grade. I'm still pretty proud of a 3D-ish technical drawing I made of it--given the lack of accurate source material, I did a good job.
At some point in 1988 (if I remember right), I found an ad for this book and waited impatiently for the thing to arrive. I wasn't disappointed. I'd have to say that having the book is the next best thing to having the car.
You can't tell the story of the car or the company without the story of the man's rise in General Motors and fall in a drug scandal. But I didn't care about that. I was all about the car! I wasn't disappointed there, either. From the earliest stages of design, through the high-tech assembly line, to the disappointing end as the last one rolls out in December of 1983, there's plenty of material.
Photos and illustrations are mostly black & white, but there are some truly stunning color pages featuring aftermarket-painted cars in black, red, and yellow as well as stock stainless-skinned beauties.
A must-have book for a DeLorean fan.
Year: 1983
Genre: Nonfiction
Read again? Yes, at 88 miles per hour
My first real look at a DeLorean was in 1985, in a movie theatre, where Marty McFly watched as Doc Brown backed a modified car out of his van. More than 20 years have gone by, and those sleek steel cars still quicken my pulse and awaken the same desire as when I was 18.
The theatre's a megachurch now, the original company is long gone, and John DeLorean himself is dead. But I still want a DeLorean. I bought the "Back To The Future" booklet as soon as I found it--lots of pictures of the people from the movie, yes, but who cares about them (well, aside from Lea Thompson)? The only thing I really cared about were the photos and Ron Cobb's drawings of the car, from which I tried to make my own scale drawings of an unmodified DeLorean. Cobb's drawings weren't accurate, and I was left with working things out as best I could all through 12th Grade. I'm still pretty proud of a 3D-ish technical drawing I made of it--given the lack of accurate source material, I did a good job.
At some point in 1988 (if I remember right), I found an ad for this book and waited impatiently for the thing to arrive. I wasn't disappointed. I'd have to say that having the book is the next best thing to having the car.
You can't tell the story of the car or the company without the story of the man's rise in General Motors and fall in a drug scandal. But I didn't care about that. I was all about the car! I wasn't disappointed there, either. From the earliest stages of design, through the high-tech assembly line, to the disappointing end as the last one rolls out in December of 1983, there's plenty of material.
Photos and illustrations are mostly black & white, but there are some truly stunning color pages featuring aftermarket-painted cars in black, red, and yellow as well as stock stainless-skinned beauties.
A must-have book for a DeLorean fan.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
51 High-Tech Practical Jokes for the Evil Genius (Graham, Brad & McGowan, Kathy)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 2008
Genre: Nonfiction, tech/electronics
Read again? Yup.
They're baaaaack. I see this as a companion book to Graham & McGowan's "101 Spy Gadgets for the Evil Genius" because many of the the spy toys could easily be re-purposed to serve practical jokes.
This is a book of little mechanical gimmicks that go bump in the night, make random cricket noises, or jump out of a box and scare the living crap out of you. It's good for all year 'round, but what Halloween display is complete without a brain in a jar?
What about a stink machine that can be hidden in a victim's room?
Some of the projects require basic electronics skills; others require some basic woodworking. With some creativity, anything in this book will give you ideas for your own evil projects.
Year: 2008
Genre: Nonfiction, tech/electronics
Read again? Yup.
They're baaaaack. I see this as a companion book to Graham & McGowan's "101 Spy Gadgets for the Evil Genius" because many of the the spy toys could easily be re-purposed to serve practical jokes.
This is a book of little mechanical gimmicks that go bump in the night, make random cricket noises, or jump out of a box and scare the living crap out of you. It's good for all year 'round, but what Halloween display is complete without a brain in a jar?
What about a stink machine that can be hidden in a victim's room?
Some of the projects require basic electronics skills; others require some basic woodworking. With some creativity, anything in this book will give you ideas for your own evil projects.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Roach, Mary)
Rating: 5/5
Year: 2003
Genre: Nonfiction
Read again? Yes.
If you're fascinated by medical shows or just want to know what dead people do when they reach the final lay, this is your book!
Did you know that your plastic or reconstructive surgeon can practice on an unembalmed cadaver head in a roasting pan? It's an excellent way to learn the structures one encounters during surgery.
That's just the first chapter. From there we get glimpses (well, descriptions) of cadavers in the 2004 Gross Anatomy lab at the University of California, where students hold memorial services for the dead people they've dissected during the course. Then it's back some 3,000 years to Egypt and mummification, then the University of Tennessee's Medical Center and its body farm. Think of a sunny hillside, birds calling, lush green grass...and dead people in various stages of decomposition scattered about.
Like maggots? Sloughed-off skin? Bad smells? This is your chapter!
We continue with cadavers-as-targets for new Springfield .30-caliber rifles in 1892 to study the difference between stopping (i.e., making him stop shooting at you) and killing (i.e., making him stop shooting at you) the enemy, and why sheep's brains and bears' knees are used instead of humans' these days.
There's the crucifiction--er, crucifixion--angle, a discussion of the shroud, an entire chapter on knowing whether you're dead or not, one on what happens when a head is guillotined (takes 'em a few minutes to stop rolling their eyes and grinding their teeth) or frozen for posterity.
It's creepy, spooky, fun, funny, disturbing as all hell, and definitely worth a read.
Year: 2003
Genre: Nonfiction
Read again? Yes.
If you're fascinated by medical shows or just want to know what dead people do when they reach the final lay, this is your book!
Did you know that your plastic or reconstructive surgeon can practice on an unembalmed cadaver head in a roasting pan? It's an excellent way to learn the structures one encounters during surgery.
That's just the first chapter. From there we get glimpses (well, descriptions) of cadavers in the 2004 Gross Anatomy lab at the University of California, where students hold memorial services for the dead people they've dissected during the course. Then it's back some 3,000 years to Egypt and mummification, then the University of Tennessee's Medical Center and its body farm. Think of a sunny hillside, birds calling, lush green grass...and dead people in various stages of decomposition scattered about.
Like maggots? Sloughed-off skin? Bad smells? This is your chapter!
We continue with cadavers-as-targets for new Springfield .30-caliber rifles in 1892 to study the difference between stopping (i.e., making him stop shooting at you) and killing (i.e., making him stop shooting at you) the enemy, and why sheep's brains and bears' knees are used instead of humans' these days.
There's the crucifiction--er, crucifixion--angle, a discussion of the shroud, an entire chapter on knowing whether you're dead or not, one on what happens when a head is guillotined (takes 'em a few minutes to stop rolling their eyes and grinding their teeth) or frozen for posterity.
It's creepy, spooky, fun, funny, disturbing as all hell, and definitely worth a read.
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