If you’re a fan of the “Wicked Cool” books from No Starch Press, you’ll find the format of this book familiar. It’s not a hefty tome complete with syntax and “hello world” introductory lessons, rather it’s almost a recipe book of sorts, divided into sections of problems and chock full of immediately useful Ruby code. This is the “Wicked Cool” book I’ve been waiting for, because although I write PHP and shell scripts (not so much Java and Perl, other topics covered in the series), I’ve always thought Ruby was the coolest of all. Right from the start, you can tell that Steve Pugh agrees with me. His tone throughout the book is that of a friend who has something fun to share, never browbeating or lecturing. He’s not simply writing to show us that he knows how to write Ruby well, he’s really trying to help us out.

Honestly, some of the examples in Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts might leave you wondering why you’d use such a powerful language like Ruby for such seemingly simple things. What Steve Pugh tries (and succeeds!) to show us is that Ruby isn’t just for writing massive web applications, but it can also handle tasks often relegated to the ubiquitous, but cryptic Awk or shell languages. Perhaps you still wonder why you’d want to? “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should”, right? So why bother? Because Ruby is “Wicked Cool”, that’s why.

So what’s cool? How about a simple file alteration monitor to help you see what’s changed on your system? Not cool enough? How about a web based photo gallery in about 50 lines of code? Still not impressed? How about writing a Metasploit module to attack one Windows machine from another? From general purpose utilities to system security and yes, even some games, Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts has enough in it to pique the interest of just about any programmer or sysadmin. I for one am finding it hard to concentrate on this review because I want to get back to writing Ruby. If you’re a programmer waiting for a good excuse to try Ruby, or a Windows sysadmin wondering what an open source programming language can do for you, you’ll find Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts enlightening, inspiring, and of course… cool.

The movie came out in 2002 but, like most movies, I didn’t see it until 4 years later. I was amazed how not-so-cheesy it was. Usually action flicks are just car chases and sweaty dudes saying macho stuff This movie was actually great though. I never expected to get so into it. By the end of the movie I was calling Jason Bourne “Jay”, as in “Go get ‘em Jay! Yeah!” haha And in true culmination.org fashion, that will end the movie review.

The book! Did I say wow yet? Wow! I read this book in a week and it wasn’t exactly short – just a page turner. The one thing about it is that it was so different from the movie. An imdb comment said something like “blah blah blah moaning about the movie and book not being the same” – saying that “too much of the book would be boring or take too much time to explain”. I dunno. I think they did stray pretty far – I mean not a little – Marie had a completely different name and she was a hostage in the book, not some weird random girl in the embassy. But whatever…

In the end, both the book and movie were very enjoyable. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, see the movie first! It will suck afterward haha. I’m so glad I read the book afterward because the movie would have been disappointing to me had I read the book first. And so ends another book/movie review by yours truly. Stay tuned for a review of Bourne Supremacy! (And yes, you can be sure it won’t contain any details about the content of the movie hahahaha )

Wow. This book is one of the best I’ve read in a while. I truly enjoyed it. It left me feeling as if I was walking around in a different world. Philip K. Dick is such an amazing author – He grabbed my mind and took it for a spin. I was laughing with the junkies, I was hurting with them. I felt guilty, I felt sad, I felt happy, I felt high on drugs. I don’t know how he did it, but he did it well.

I recommend this book to anyone who has had experience with drugs. I’m not saying that you have to have used them, but if you were around someone who has – if you’ve seen someone’s life destroyed by drugs – you’ll understand this book too. If you’ve ever done a psychedelic like LSD or even MDMA, you might find yourself thinking “oh my god. that could have been me!” It’s scary and it’s supposed to be. Dick slaps you in the face with the reality of drug use and misuse.

The author’s note at the end really brings the message home. It gives me chills to think about it. I feel like I was just so recently in a different world, and now that the book is over I wonder if the world I’m in now is the world I started in before I fell into the book.

If the movie strays in any way from this book I’m going to be PISSED.

OK – Saw the movie last night….

A nicely done rendition – but it was too quick. Not enough time to really get the whole story. If you haven’t read the book I’m not sure you’ll really “get” it. A few people on the way out were asking each other “did you get it?” I missed the anecdotes, missed the time we get to spend with the characters. But hey, it’s a movie right?

The bottom line – READ THE BOOK. Then see the movie

I’m not going to tell you more, you’ll have to read it yourself. But if you like books set in a dystopia, you’ll probably enjoy this one

Oh, on a scale of “eeew” to “oh yeah!”, this book gets a “yeah, it’s pretty hot”.

This collection of stories was first published in 1966. It contains 16 tales dealing with – you guessed it – space. As with most of my reviews, I won’t tell you much about the content, because that would spoil the fun for most people =) I will, however, give you a bit from the book’s introduction:

“Jules Verne was my father.

H.G. Wells was my wise Uncle

Edgar Allan Poe was the batwinged cousin we kept high in the back attic room.

Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were my brothers and friends.

There you have my ancestry.

Adding, of course, the fact that in all probability Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, was my mother.”

This guy rocks. If you haven’t read any Bradbury, then please do yourself the favor!

What a cool idea! I bought this book because I think Kevin deserves some credit for putting his Zaurus to good use. Basically I had no preconceptions about his writing skills or story telling abilities. I had no idea what the book was about except that it was written on a Zaurus and was about a guy who had a Zaurus. That was enough for me;)

As it turns out, the story is actually quite good. There is a lot of real technology being used throughout (aside from the Zaurus), which keeps it interesting for those of use who know what things like nmap and nessus are. There is also a pinch of love story, and a healthy helping of “oh my god everything I thought I knew is a lie.”

Kevin is from Scotland and you can tell somewhat based on his spelling and grammar. No this is not a critical remark, but if you are American you might find it odd to see words like Kerb and Faeces [which would be curb and feces the way I was taught to spell]. For all I know Kevin might just be a horrible speller, but I don’t really care because the story is good. Honestly though, there were a lot of typos, which was somewhat annoying.

But with that aside, I love this book because Kevin inspired me to write my own on my Zaurus. So thanks a lot Kev! If I ever finish my book I’ll be sure to send you a copy!

I don’t have a rating scale yet, but on a scale of This book sucks ass to yeah it’s worth the few bucks I say this book is totally worth the few bucks! =)