Books

Nostalgia in a startup vs. Anu Aunty book

In a long bus ride, I read How I braved Anu Aunty and made a million-dollar company and I loved the book. The stories in the book are especially familiar to those who have faced the ire of family and sometimes friends at wanting to do a startup. In the

Review of Cal Newport’s So Good book

Last weekend, I read Cal Newport’s latest book – “So Good They Can’t Ignore  You” and was very happy that I read it – it was just the sort of book that helps a person who is a few years into his/her career and is beginning to question many

Book review: Thoughts from Jaya, a retelling of Mahabharata

The world around me is very unsettling. First, we have the incompetence of the governments of the day, and then the startling realities highlighted by Satyamev Jayate show, even if it is not the whole truth, and so on. And these strange behavior of man to hurt and not help

Book Review : Focus Manifesto

I was struggling with focus in the past week, and I needed a refresher of the basics. So I was looking for reading a new book that I haven’t read before, and luckily there was a free one – the Focus Manifesto by Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.com fame. The

Book Review : Start-up Nation (story of Israel)

I read the "Start-up Nation" book last week. This book was so engrossing that I read it within 2 days, keeping aside everything else. After reading this book, I started seeing the patterns about Israel being high tech hotspot, for example consider just two pieces of news in the last

Passionate Programmer book review

Every once in a while I get an email like this: Sir, I am a beginner to python and programming. I started with the C++ and found it hard so one day via google I found your perfect tutorial “A byte of Python”. I read the whole tutorial in one

Book Review: The Checklist Manifesto

I recently read the book The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande – a respected surgeon, noted author, MacArthur fellow, New Yorker staff writer, and a professor at Harvard Medical School. The premise of the entire book is the author’s dive into the concept of a checklist and how they have

isbn.net.in updates

A while back, I released a side-project called http://isbn.net.in – a simple tool for comparing book prices in India. I received lots of feedback, suggestions and praise. I have updated it with fixes for the bugs reported and implemented most of the suggestions. It was interesting to see

Duathlon and Murakami

Last weekend, I participated in the BSA Hercules Duathlon organized by RFL. I did the 10 km running + 20 km cycling thing. I was the last-but-one guy to finish and I did take twice the amount of time as the first guy to finish. But I didn’t care about

Ideas are Cheap : IMDB of Music, Books?

What is it that I like about IMDB? * Shows me what are the movies that are popular in theatres right now * Shows what new movies are releasing this week * The first item on every movie page is the average user rating * It links to every individual artiste involved (actor, director,

Idli, Orchid and Will Power

I just finished reading “Idli, Orchid and Will Power”, the autobiography of Vithal Venkatesh Kamat. Just a few days back, a friend was telling me that the famous Utility building Kamat restaurant in Bangalore no longer has quality food and hence no longer a popular place. I read this book

Outliers : What leads to Success

I read Outliers, The STORY of SUCCESS by Malcolm Gladwell last week and found it fascinating. Here’s an excerpt: Cultural legacies *matter*, and once we’ve seen the surprising effects of such things as power distance and numbers that can be said in a quarter as opposed to a

Why use Creative Commons license?

Many people have asked me on why I released my Vim book under a Creative Commons license instead of getting it published. (1) First of all, I did try to talk to publishers, hoping that I would convince them to release the book simultaneously under a free license as well

What product creation should be about

I just finished reading “Subject To Change: creating great products and services for an uncertain world”. This book is written by Adaptive Path, the same guys who invented the words “blog” and “ajax”, as well as creators of the Aurora browser concept. It has been a revelatory book for me,

A principled life according to Steve Pavlina

Ever since college days where I got hooked onto the Internet, I have been an avid reader of self-improvement websites and books. I used to prowl for content, before the advent of lifehacking and productivity websites. I eventually stumbled upon good websites like 43Folders.com, and my friend Pradeep cajoled

A Byte of Python in hard copy

If you’re the kind of person who prefers to read a physical book vs. online books, then you’ll be happy to know that the A Byte of Python book is now available as a printed hard copy. The best part is that the hard-working translators can also publish

Book updated for Python 3.0

After a gap of 3.5 years, I’ve finally updated the ‘A Byte of Python’ book. The interesting news is that it is updated for the upcoming Python 3.0 language making it probably the first book to be released for Python 3.0. The book is now a

Super Crunchers

Today, I re-read a book called Super Crunchers: How Anything Can Be Predicted by Ian Ayres. So what is supercrunching? Now something is changing. Business and government professionals are relying more and more on databases to guide their decisions. The story of hedge funds is really the story of a

Hitting the books

It was Day 2 of my trip (Dec 23 Sun). My plan was to go in the DHL balloon so that I can get a good view of Singapore. When I reached the MRT station, I suddenly got interested in randomly walking around. I really wanted to see the place.

Big Bazaar, India Central, Future Dreams

I recently read the “It Happened in India” book. It is the story of Kishore Biyani, the man who created Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Bangalore/Hyderabad Central, EZone, and much much more – effectively, the one person who made retailing a roaring success in India and who had envisioned it much before

Why iCon

I read the iCon book recently and have been wondering what makes people (like me) so fascinated about Steve Jobs? * He didn’t create any great technology or product, it was people who worked with him who did all that, for example, Steve Wozniak and John Lasseter. * He was a

Bangalore Book Festival

I managed to catch the last day of the Bangalore Book Festival 2006 – I was surprised to see the number of people thronging the fair! It was truly a family affair – and we bought nearly a dozen books ranging from spiritual to tech to comics to Sherlock Holmes :). I’m

Internet Business Models

A while ago, I was trying to explain internet business models to a couple of friends of mine, who are part of the brick-and-mortar business world. Some of the points I tried conveying are: What makes internet business models work is economy of scale – the more customers you have, the

The Vortal

Ashok Banker has started a new novel called The Vortal that’ll be released online in episodes format. The blurbs remind me of Jumanji, but knowing Banker’s writing style, he will have some fast-paced stories ready. There are already 4 parts posted.

Three portals you should know about…

… in case you already didn’t know: * Project Gutenberg * MIT OpenCourseWare * Wikibooks

Insightful books about Computing

Banker asked me whether “you know of any good IT bios, or books related to gaming or animation or coding that are interesting enough to a layperson”. So, I came up with: * Hackers and Painters * Sampler: Why smart people have bad ideas * Joel on Software, the book * Sampler: Hitting the

Book Tagged

Both Vignesh and JD have book-tagged me, so I am obliged to present to the world my choice of books… hmm… so here goes… Total number of books I own : Around 30 techie books and 10 general books. Most of the time, I borrow books from the Eloor Library, so

The Army is here

It has arrived! ![18542188][Medium][] Ashok Banker has autographed it and has written a brief message for me :mrgreen: Come to think of it… I might be the first person in India (other than Ashok himself) to have this book, since it is slated to be released on 16th June!

The Second coming of Steve Jobs

I had been to the library to look for a copy of Lee Iacocca’s autobiography, but all the copies had gone out. Then, I chanced upon this book called The Second coming of Steve Jobs in the same section. Honestly, how could I resist that? The timing couldn’t

State of Fear

I read Michael Crichton’s State of Fear last week. The story starts regarding George Morton, a millionaire philanthropist who supports the National Environmental Resource Fund and other such organizations … then a series of strange events happen with a racy pace. It even includes a trip to Antarctica. At the

Reason 82 to blog

I’ll soon be getting an autographed copy of ‘Armies of Hanuman’ from Ashok Banker! Woohoo! That book isn’t in available in India yet :D P.S. I’ll write about the other 81 reasons later… ;)

Prince of Reviews

I had written about the book ‘Prince of Ayodhya’ a few months ago.. it turns out that it is the featured review for the official EpicIndia website :-) Ashok Banker has already started to write the 9 books in the Mahabharata series and has an exclusive excerpt on his blog.

Zero Minus Ten

“Zero Minus Ten” is a James Bond novel written by Raymond Benson. The novel is a typical James-Bond story and I expected it to be one. Fancy gadgets from Q? Check. Talk to M? Check. Gorgeous women? Check. Trip round the world? Check.  And so on, but the novel is

Reading H2G2

Yeah,  I’m finally reading Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’m reading the “Four parts of a trilogy” all-in-one book…. finished part 1 and part 2 (“The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”) and now reading part 3 “Life, the Universe and Everything”

Prince of Ayodhya

I just finished reading the book ‘Prince of Ayodhya’, the first volume of a series of books which are a modern re-telling of the great Ramayana by Ashok Banker. The book is simply awesome. I was totally raptured by it and am still in awe of the story. I just

Stories by Sudha Murty

I just read the book ‘How I Taught My Grandmother to Read and Other Stories’, its a splendid collection of short stories by Sudha Murty. She has a very poignant yet subtle way of explaining things and I was smiling throughout each story :) One of my favorite stories is ‘I

The Road to Gandolfo

I just finished reading ‘The Road to Gandolfo’ by Robert Ludlum. As expected, Ludlum writes a brilliant story. Although the first half of the book is not that interesting, the latter half totally changes things around. The story is about General Mackenzie Hawkins, a living military legend and a veteran.

Now Reading: Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono

de Bono has always fascinated me… to write 56 books on ‘thinking’ is certainly no easy feat!! I wanted to read this book for quite some time and had got it yesterday from the Eloor library.. have started to read it…. I especially like the part which says: Being a

Gloomy Weather

It’s such a gloomy weather here in Bangalore… sigh. It’s been raining cats and dogs and as a result I got cold, cough and fever… and I’m just recovering now. However, I did manage to read ‘Ignited Minds’ by Abdul Kalam over the weekend. All I can

Network security is cool

Here’s an excerpt from ‘The Prometheus Deception’ by Robert Ludlum: "Inside the cargo bay of the green forest-service truck, Elena quickly assembled her tools. Her laptop was now connected to the optical repeater by means of a twenty-foot cable that ran undetectably under the truck, concealed by dirt and

The Prometheus Deception

I just finished (yet another) Robert Ludlum’s book ‘The Prometheus Deception’, a good fast-paced thriller. I’d recommend it. It’s not just one of those spy thrillers with conspiracy theories – Robert Ludlum knows how to make the capture the attention of the reader. Sometimes, you just can’t

The Matlock Paper at home

On a friend’s recommendation, I am reading Robert Ludlum’s "The Matlock Paper" – as usual I could put the book down only when I reached 91 pages :-) On another note, it was nice to be just at home and doing nothing. I did play badminton with my 11-year

Bourne Again

I finished reading The Bourne Supremacy. Such an incredibly complex character – this Jason Bourne! There are two parts to this man – the past called Jason Bourne – the vicious assassin and the other, a scholar called David Webbs. This book is all about how he is recruited by the ruthless government

The Samurai Identity

I watched the "The Last Samurai" yesterday – excellent movie. Those Japanese are so disciplined and honourable and spiritual (well, atleast according to the movie). I couldn’t believe it was actually Tom Cruise – this is the first movie of his that I really appreciated. Read "The Bourne Identity" by Robert