It probably won’t surprise you that this is another Terry Pratchett book. I have read a lot of them lately to fill in the blanks that I had in the Discworld series (I used to buy them printed and here in Israel they are not always available. But now that I am using my Kindle life is soooo much better). But it is not just another Pratchett book…
THIS BOOK IS A MASTERPIECE!
Small Gods is a book about philosophy, theology, sociology and psychology. It shows human nature in a very simple and funny way, how stupid our species is. For anyone who believes in God, this book gives you an interesting picture of how God must feel about you. Om the turtle puts it simply by saying “Humans! They lived in a world where grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanics tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time…”. We are surrounded by miracles but we never see them. The atom is composed of opposing charges (electrons and protons) which somehow stay together against all reason… so why can’t we call this a miracle? being able to explain things does not mean that they are not miracles, it just means that we can explain them. Try creating them yourself to see what happens, even with all the advanced technology we have today we aren’t even able to know what are the exact components of a particle!
So if you are into theology, sociology or just plainly like Pratchett books, go and read this one. I am already putting it in the list of books to read again. And if you want to support these book reviews you can buy this book from amazon through the link and I will receive a small percentage of the sale, and the gratification that someone does read what I write (not that I won’t do them but I’ll be happier doing them).
After a few months of reading books in their natural form (you know… paper. Remember?), my pad (an Archos 10.1, pretty cheap stuff, not fancy like an IPad but OK and a third of the cost), or through my car’s speakers, my Kindle was revived by an amazon gift certificate that a friend gave me for my birthday (thanks!). It was the perfect occasion to read all of the Discworld books missing in the list (You CAN read them in disorder, but sometimes this will cause you to miss good jokes). After reading in some books in my pad and going back to the Kindle, you feel how much more comfortable it is to read on it. Anyway, let’s talk about the book.
Well, actually there is not much to say about the book. It is fun but not that great. None of my loved characters are there (Death, Carrot or Vetinari to name a few). And none of the jokes are very strong. So in a scale of 1 to 5 I would give it a 2 or 3. Still, and enjoyable book.
And if you want to buy this book (even after my review), you can do it from amazon, and at the same time give something back to your humble servant .
A friend of mine gave me Rework
two weeks ago after a talk we had over my post on how finishing things helps you finish more, and how overwork starts creeping up on you and causes you to make mistakes (my friend was in one of those one-week deadlines, working 18 hours a day minimum and it was showing). The book is about how to do things in the modern internet-services economy. I think there are many lessons that can also be learned by other fields but not all of them are applicable (for example, in the internet you can have beta versions of a product and the customers will agree to this, but I don’t think I would like to have a beta dishwasher in my house, regardless of how much this can improve the final product).
Bottom line – EXCELLENT BOOK!. It has very short chapters, each having one thing to learn. They tell us that long-term planning is just a different name for guessing, and a good excuse for delaying decisions. Products should be shown to the world as soon as they are useful so that the customers can provide feedback. Things should be simple – if you do a simple thing and you do it right, why get complicated? being simple is not BAD. The bottom line of a business is not size nor number of products, but its efficiency (money per effort). You should have “alone time” to work without interruptions – without having meetings every other hour. And more and more stuff that you can take into practice to make your work, your product and your life better.
You can also go to the author’s site for more information on what they do and their “philosophy”. Great work guys!!!
So go ahead, buy this book from amazon.com, and in the way also contribute to these nice book reviews.
Yesterday I upgraded my Linux box from Ubuntu 10.04 (or something like that) to 11.10, and my the build-in vncserver (vino) stopped working. My client received “connection refused” and nothing happened in the Linux box. As usual I asked Google how to solve the problem, and then I found this interesting solution: just uninstall and re-install the application.
Is it just me or is this the typical Windows solution to problems? Soon we’ll be getting answers in Linux forums like “Oh, this is known problem, just reboot the computer and everything will be OK”… What is happening here??? Is complexity catching up on us?
Ever happens to you that you close a tab in your browser by mistake and then you have to go to the history to search for it? or open some other strange add-on? Well chrome has a highly useful shortcut for this case – Crtl+Shift+T. I love it!!!
(not that I won’t do them but I’ll be happier doing them).
, and at the same time give something back to your humble servant 
