Ian Thurston

...yeah, but, Sep 25 2011

I really expected to like this more than I do. The author is a geek, big time, has a degree in psychology, and has won awards for designing board games. His interests range from I Ching to Esperanto, juggling, and if I understand his home page right, he's a bisexual married zen buddhist ...

Sounds "interesting". And the O'Reilly "Hack" series of which this is a part IS a phenomenal resource for computer geeks. The book covers ground from meditation through mind mapping to mnemonic systems. Should be great, right?

But as I read it, I realized I'd already read most of it before, somewhere else. I guess I was expecting new stuff, but the book is, to a large extent, a… Read more

Get it from the horse's mouth, Sep 25 2011

Since Barrie North wrote the sample documentation that comes with Joomla itself, you might expect that he would know something about the product.

Since he is a teacher by trade, you might expect that he could show you how to use it.

And you'd be right.

The book and DVD together will allow you to get a professional-quality Joomla site up and running very quickly, and to maintain a Joomla site even if it was created by someone else.

I know this, because I used the book to put together a site, design a custom template, and add special-purpose plugins to display forms and capture date.

I loaned the book to others who were tasked with… Read more

Worthwhile even if you're not a beginner, Sep 25 2011

I have been playing with Linux since it first hit the scene, and have bought a LOT of thoroughly geeked books in my time. Most of them care abou the guts of the operating system. But occasionally, you might want to actually do something with the computer once you've got Linux up and running. That's why I enjoyed this book. I didn't have to think about what I was doing ... and things worked out.

The Linux Manual does have a fair bit about how to get Linux working as you want it ... but much more important for an end user (especially if they are a beginning end user - oops) is how to do stuff. Like music, writing, videos, photos, recording, and getting new applications and keeping… Read more