Colin Charles Agenda

A new way to teach your child to get potty trained. Comes in both a boy or a girl version. Correct potty usage of course, gives you a sticker as a reward. I don’t recall reading about (and getting rewarded) for using the potty. Is this Parenting 1.5?

I for one, welcome that O’Reilly will soon be offering books for the Kindle, and as DRM-free digital bundles.

There’s a reason why I have a Safari subscription: I like reading technical books on my laptop (because I can search through it), and more importantly, because recently I have in my possession, an eBook reader (from Sony).

There is no mention if Safari subscribers get access to the eBook bundles (currently, I already am at the most expensive Safari subscription you can get). My current method is downloading chapter by chapter, but I’m only given 5 download tokens a month, for free.

James Webster posts a comment on the blog, asking if this will be available for Safari users… Andrew Savikas replies saying they’re working on it.

Today, each PDF chapter I get off Safari, is DRM-free (its just a PDF, no need to input password, etc.). It’d be nice if I could just download the entire book (with one download token), and read it on my eBook reader, as is…

O’Reilly, if you’re reading, it’d be the smartest thing you’d do. Again, you will then lead the pack, from Apress or Packt.

Not strictly read this month, but here are my quick reviews of these three books:

• The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything – a great book by Guy Kawasaki, you can only imagine how dog-eared my copy of the book is. There can be no summaries, as the whole contents of the book is worth reading. If you’re thinking of the start up world, or running your own company, this book is a must read. Guy has also linked to a talk he gave on this topic.

  Disappointed I was, when I found out guy was recently at a satellite event (NetBash @ WCIT), something I could have definitely attended had I known about it (I was at WCIT, the expo hall though) – Guy Kawasaki: 45 hours in KL.

• The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World – always interested in economics, this is the second book by Tim Harford, and its fabulous. He touches on game theory, talks about the teenage oral sex craze, crime, and lots of other illogical behaviours. Highly recommended, especially, if you’ve read his previous book, The Undercover Economist.
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking – yet another book by Malcolm Gladwell (if you’ve read The Tipping Point, this is a must read follow-up), its a very quick read (pretty thin book), and it covers the two seconds or so that we take to make snap judgements. Should we trust our snap judgements? Generally yes. I tend to agree with the book, especially when it comes to reading strangers (and sizing people down, for example). There are of course, caveats about jumping to conclusions when you’re in a business that focuses on dealing with people, and its covered too. Anyone can definitely learn a thing or two about trusting our subconscious from the book.

Written Saturday, January 20, 2008, probably in Los Angeles (LAX)

I got The 4-Hour Workweek on Wednesday, and while finding out the company I work for had been acquired for a billion dollars, I proceeded to read this book to see what all the hype was about. Despite the busy schedule at the meeting, I managed to finish reading all 300 pages using in-between toilet breaks, and airport layovers. Its Saturday now, and am I any wiser?

Tim’s book is great if you’re interested in starting an online retail business. Its interesting if you get turned on by the word drop-shipping. Its definitely interesting if you’re into hiring virtual assistants in 3rd world countries.

The whole mantra that is sold in the book is to outsource your life. Hardly applicable to the career path I (or most of my open source loving hippie counterparts) can apply.

Sure, there are some good general tips on reducing information overload. Reading less email. Becoming more efficient. However, its nothing new, per se.

Would I recommend it? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean you can’t buy The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.

Some select quotes follow.

‘What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attnetion of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.’ – Herbert Simon, recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, and the A.M. Turing Award

A great example of perseverance: when Tim was in college, if he received less than an A in anything, he’d spend about 3 hours asking questions of his lecturers, to ensure that he understood his class, and to discourage the lecturer to ever want to provide him with a lesser grade, unless there was real reason to do so.

‘The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.’ – Bill Gates

‘If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.’ – chinese proverb

‘I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.’ – Woodrow Wilson

Technorati Tags: books, quotes, 4-hour workweek, tim ferriss

Recently I read:

• An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi – I picked this up during my trip to India in early 2007, and finally got around to reading it. Highly interesting reading, his experiments and his teachings and thought process, plain simply rock. Documenting his strategies, etc. great reading.
• The Five-Dollar Smile: An Other Stories by Shashi Tharoor – he’s a bit wordy in his fiction, and his plays aren’t fabulous (I think reading script like that is best left to Shakespearean works), but its a very compelling book with some of his earliest writings. Joining the UN at 22? Makes me feel old. I like the fact that each story has a note pre-pending it – its important to know what were thoughts in those times. I still prefer his non-fiction, so far.
• Creating Wealth: Retire in Ten Years Using Allen’s Seven Principles of Wealth by Robert G. Allen – interested in purchasing real estate and turning it around? Want to know more about good debt? Realising that you really don’t need the latest whizzbang gizmo that is a depreciating asset? Most interesting reading, especially if you’re into the real estate market or planning on getting into it. Read this on my Vietnam trip mostly.
• Lonely Planet Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos & the Greater Mekong – used this extensively to plan my trip to Hanoi. So much more to see, obviously. I also read the Cambodia section to see if it tallied with my previous trip (it did), and the Laos section, mainly because I had initially planned to go there, but forked the plans to go to Hanoi instead. No regrets, Laos can wait.

I have been reading quite a bit recently. Quite a number of them are being read online, in sporadic bits, via my O’Reilly Safari subscription, so at some stage maybe I’ll list them when I complete them. However, in a non-technical sense, here are a bunch of books I’ve read recently:

• Sperm Are from Men, Eggs Are from Women: The Real Reason Men and Women are Different by Joe Quirk – arguably, a complete waste of time, but you might just read it for humour sake. However, I’m wondering if his thoughts on sexual evolutionary biology holds weight – what he says, is actually, at many instances, quite true. Its an extremely easy read, he likes pointing out that he isn’t an expert in any field he talks about (good, I like his honesty), and if you’re a man (or woman), you’ll find out a little more about the other sex. With a surname like Quirk, this doesn’t get any quirkier.
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins – if I were loaded, I would buy this for every evangelical Christian with a brain, that I know. And there are a lot of them (those that don’t just listen to what the pastor says and takes it for gold). Giuseppe bought this for me as a gift in Heidelberg, and its truly a great read. Of course, there’s also a book titled the Dawkins Delusion, and at some stage I’ll find that and read it. However, if you’re of the thinking that religion is one of the major causes of problem in this world, read this book.
• The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone: The Emerging 21st Century Power by Shashi Tharoor - Amazing book. This is highly recommended, do read it, if you want to learn more about India. Shashi Tharoor himself was the youngest under-secretary general at the United Nations, and his writing quality is just amazing. He might be a bit wordy, he is originally a Keralite, but living overseas, but his perspectives are just amazing. I really enjoy the way the stories are presented, as they’re all independent from another.

Seeing that I’m in India now, I picked up all the rest of Shashi Tharoor’s books from the bookstore the other day. You might want to do that too.