Category Archives: Books

Wining is singularity, whereas losing conforms to a pattern.

from page 16 of the great book uncommon sense, common nonsense. by Jules Goddard and Tony Eccles.

and p. 39: It is better to be first than it is to be better

2 quotes  form czech book on Bata  system :

Taylor, Fayol, Ford, and Baťa put an end to the old type of entrepreneur for good. They argued that profit does not depend on the numerically lowest wages, but on the highest and most efficient work performance, during which the worker works as if he were working for himself.

“Baťa’s factories produced and supplied most of the construction materials themselves. They had their own brickyards, carpentry, joinery, and locksmith workshops, which supplied standardized interior fittings to all homes, produced neon tubes, flooring, in short, almost everything they needed. And if there was something not included in their production program, they purchased it directly from manufacturers (excluding intermediaries).”

Data Visualisation with d3.js Cookbook

bought this great book on  d3.js (Data-Driven documents), written by  Nick Qi Zhu

D3 can plot map in various projections, however do not expect to get same set of (overlapping) functionality as Leaflet or OpenLayers. D3 can extend these mapping frameworks. For OL3 simple  example is here for Leaflet, my favourite is  hexbins or check my own experiment here.

While D3 is kind of ‘base’ charting library (lot of utility functions, helpers) , there is upper , high level library too  that can provide lot of ‘boilerplate’ for common charts. Here comes great news:

Nick Qi Zhu   is also author of the open source javascript  lib dc.js   (Dimensional Charting) library  that is using crossfilter (Fast Multidimensional Filtering for Coordinated Views) . Part of the dc.js lib is set of most common charts and one of them is choropleth map .

Other resources:

D3 Animation : http://blog.visual.ly/creating-animations-and-transitions-with-d3-js/

Design selections: http://www.awwwards.com/fresh-ui-inspiration-in-the-era-of-google-material-and-design-patterns.html

Why you should visit cemeteries

I really like this post from Avdi Grimm called “The Passion Gospel“. This remembers me a first chapter in a book: “The Art Of Thinking Clearly” from Rolf Dobelli:

..”no journalist is interested in failures – with exception of fallen superstars.This makes the cemetery invisible to outsiders. In daily life, because triumph is made more visible than failure, you systematically overestimate your chances of succeeding.”

..”The media is not interested in digging around in the graveyards of the unsuccessful. Nor is this its job.”

I think same  bias applies to blogs, twitters, facebook and press releases of companies or marketing in general. And to this blog too 🙂

…you should recognize that survivorship bias is at work, distorting the probability of success like cut glass..

..Survivorship bias means this: people systematically overestimate their chances of success. Guard against it by frequently visiting the graves of once-promising projects, investments and careers. It is a sad walk, but one that should clear your mind.”

 

 

Programming iOS6 by Matt Neuburg

Programming iOS6I am using this fat book (mine is  iOS5 version ) as my best reference for understanding all behind the iOS concept programming. What makes me really happy is that Matt provides in-deep look into every important aspect of iOS programming in a style that is not just ‘tutorial for monkeys’ but rather ‘full understanding’ .  His book preview can be also found here : http://www.apeth.com/iOSBook/ in fact this was my original source of the book existence that lead me to purchase it in paper form. Thanks for the online version too !

samples are here: https://github.com/mattneub/Programming-iOS-Book-Examples

 

I hope there will be iOS7 version too.

 

right first time vs. wrong first time

” if you cling to ‘ right first time ‘ as your winning formula, and never take the risk of being ‘wrong first time’ , you are taking the greater risk of [ ….what would you fill up here ?]…. and never experiencing true success. ” ( uncommon sense, common nonsense book)

Two great books

Uncommon Sense, Common Nonsense: Why some organisations consistently outperform others

by Jules Goddard, Tony Eccles

The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions

by ROlf Dobelli