Tag Archives: Books

Talking Guitars – A Masterclass with the World’s Greats

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Talking Guitars : A Masterclass with the World's Greats Over the weekend I picked up Talking Guitars : A Masterclass with the Worlds Greats by David Mead. This book is, essentially, an aggregated set of interviews that David has done over the years working with two guitar magazines in the UK with some of the guitars greatest players. Every base is covered here from rock players (including Frank Zappa, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Eddie Van Halen, and Paul Gilbert), to blues players (Eric Clapton, Leslie West, Robert Cray, and John Lee Hooker), to jazz players (Pat Matheny, John Scofield, and Larry Carlton), to accoustic players (John Williams, Michael Chapman, Bob Brozman).

When you are learning anything, it is really interesting to get the point of view of those who have gotten to where you want to be. In many instances, you find when reading interviews like these that these players, whom you respect for all they have accomplished, were at one time in the same place you were, making you feel like your at least on the right track. For example, in an interview with Paul Gilbert, a guitarist widely respected for his technical abilities, he reveals that it took him “eight years before I could do anything related to fast picking”. This one revelation was completely mind blowing for me, considering his abilities as a guitarist just from a technical perspective today.

Another really interesting piece of the Paul Gilbert interview was when he was asked how much theory one should know. This was a particularly interesting question for me because I started guitar lessons back in November and summarily quit because all the teacher wanted me to learn was theory and couterpoint rules, which I didn’t understand yet. Pauls answer was really cool – so much so that I want to quote it here verbatim:

An analogy that I always make is that it is like taking an English course in school for learning to speak. Before you go to school you can talk, you learn from imitating your parents, watching TV and from example. You do this without even opening a book or learning to read, but by the time you are three years old, you’ve learned a lot of the basics of speech and you can communicate pretty well. From then on you start learning grammar and begin to fine tune what you’ve learned with a set of specific rules; you learn spelling, how to write, how to read, and so on. Applied to music, I think the order that you learn those things is very important: the ears come first, and then after a certain number of years you can start labelling the things you’ve learned. For instance, you learn that this series of notes that you’ve been playing is now called a major scale. Otherwise it makes so little sense, because you’re labelling something that you don’t know how to use yet, and it’s more confusing than anything.

For people who are just learning to play guitar, I think it would be really helpful to read books like this before you start. There is a whole mentality you have to have before even going in so that you understand what your expectations should be in order to not get discouraged. Learning an instrument like guitar can be very fun, but it can also tax your ego. Progress isn’t as quick as you think it is going to be — it isn’t as easy as it looks and it can get very discouraging. Reading this kind of stuff really puts things in perspective for you, especially when all of these magazine interviews have been aggregated in one place for you to take a nice big dose of.

I have to say, out of all of the interviews present in this book, the most enthralling was the first one in the book – Frank Zappa. Listening to Zappa talk about music is like listening to God talk about creation. One of the most interesting things about listening to someone like Frank Zappa talk about their craft is the realization that with all the rules that exist, the music isn’t all about the rules, and the best musicians break them. Take this piece from the Zappa interview:

There was a story about you finding something in a harmony book that conventional wisdom said should never be done and you tried it and liked what you heard …

It wasn’t a harmony textbook, it was a counterpoint book. It was on the first page and what it said was, ‘You may not write the following intervals’. The intervals were F and A, a major third, expanding to E and B, a fifth. It also said you could not write G and B, a major third, expanding to F and C, a fifth. So I played these things on the piano and said ‘Why? Why can’t we do this? This sounds great!

And so you closed the book?

Yeah, I mean, I figured that if on the first page they were telling me that I would have to be going against something my ear immediately liked, then why should I learn this stuff?

The two things I’ve quoted here are just two of a ton of different perspectives you get on the guitar and music in general from reading this book. In total, the book contains interviews with 48 guitarists. As I said earlier, if you are thinking about learning the guitar, or any musical instrument, grab this book before you grab the Mel Bay books. The perspectives of real players who have gone through the same things you are going through now will have a major effect on your perspective and approach to the instrument.

If there is one thing I got out of this book, it’s something my brother Ed has been trying to tell me for years. Music is not supposed to be a source of frustration or stress. It’s supposed to be fun. You do it because you love it, not because you are competing or trying to accomplish something. It’s all about making music and loving what you are doing. Its about being “in the moment”. It doesn’t really matter if you suck or not, its whether you are having fun doing what you are doing.

I think I’m finally starting to get it.

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots

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Why Business People Speak Like Idiots : A Bullfighter's GuideI just finished reading the book Why Business People Speak Like Idiots : A Bullfighter’s Guide by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky.

The book is an entertaining look at the communication styles of what they call “business idiots” and how to recognize them and, most importantly, why you should not use them. Just to give you an idea of the entertaining way in which the book was written, it was actually dedicated to Mr. T. The dedication reads "He said it best: Don’t gimme none of that jibba-jabba!".

While being extremely entertaining to read (unlike most business books), the book is extremely informative. The authors split the book into four parts to address the four “traps” that happen in business communication:

  1. The Obscurity Trap – This trap is explained as those who use a lot of empty words in order to communicate vaguely and avoid accountability. This trap is characterized by a lot of empty phrases like "best of breed", "synergy", "center of excellence", "innovation", "best practices" — all of those phrases that you hear in "kick off meetings" that fail to get to the point of why you are listening to the person you are talking to or cannot be defined as something concrete. The obscurity trap forces the listener to work really, really, hard to figure out exactly what is being talked about. It is also a mechanism that "business idiots" use to avoid accountability, as what they are communicating and whether they are responsible is hidden in the long diatribe you are currently listening to. Surprisingly at the end of the book where they have a glossary of these phrases, the phrase "go live" – a popular term in the SAP world – is defined as well. The meaning of " go live" as described in this glossary is "Captures the intense drama of using a new computer system on Monday. Also says a lot about whoever thinks this is an exciting event". This section is all about the disease in business today of indirect and obscure communication.
  2. The Anonymity Trap – This trap is all about being templatized. In the business world it is quite common to be "coached" around appearance and communication, so that you look and communicate like everyone else — you know, so you are "playing the game". The communication coaching usually centers around communicating in the way outlined in the obscurity trap which automatically ensures you are not committing to anything. It is frowned upon to speak your mind, as you have to blend in with the rest of the company — you know, be a "team player". This trap focuses around the sad use of Powerpoint and templates these days and the use of these communication tools and how they have effected both the vaguety (is that a word?) of communication and make you, well, forgettable.
  3. The Hard-Sell Trap – I’ve said for years that the best way to sell someone something is to let them decide without pressuring them. I’ve even written about my ideas of a good salesmen and the way I dispise the “hard sell” and will normally walk out of places without buying anything when people attempt to sell me something this way. This chapter confirms (to me anyway) that my ideas were valid. Enough said. Good chapter to read and digest.
  4. The Tedium Trap – This trap is all about conforming to the culture so much that you lose yourself in the process. Once you’ve hit the tedium trap, you might as well hang it up, because anything uniquely you is gone in your communication. This chapter explains the Tedium Trap and gives some good ideas as to how to get out of it and start bringing yourself back into your communication.

In the last chapter of the book, there is a paragraph that sticks out as why you should read it. I’ll quote it here:

“If you’ve made it this far, you probably don’t want to check your soul at the door. If you take anything away from this book, it should be that you don’t have to check anything at the door but the four traps. There is an amazing opportunity for you to rise above your peers, further your career, sell your ideas, and get what you want just by being yourself.”

That sums it up. I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot about why I have, in the past, gotten frustrated in business, especially when I have been told that my communication is "too direct".

I highly recommend reading this one if you are just starting out in the business world (although it’s not too late for those who are already up to their ears in it) so that you can see how important it is not to get caught up in trying to be "like everyone else" and that the unique thing you bring to business is — well — YOU.

It Takes A Lot More Than Attitude … To Lead a Stellar Organization

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It Takes a Lot More Than Attitude... To Lead a Stellar Organization I just finished reading It Takes a Lot More Than Attitude… To Lead a Stellar Organization by Stever Robbins.

This is a very straight ahead and easy to understand book that covers all of the key areas of leadership. I like to compare this book to other leadership books the way Total Cereal is compared to other cereals. You need at least 20 other books to get all of the information in this one book on leadership.

Some of the concepts I found most useful:

  • Defining the role of a CEO
  • Creating a Compelling Vision
  • Corporate Culture – Things both visible and invisible that define it (much having to do with the leaders behavior)
  • Differences between Management and Leadership
  • The Leaders Responsibility to Take Responsibility
  • The concept of Leadership as seduction – a pull vs. push model
  • Time Management

Chapter 24 was particularly interesting. It is subtitled “How Every Day Business Language Lets Us Engage in Deception”. The basic premise is that the way people in the business community communicate is many times a way of avoiding responsibility. Oddly enough, the next book my reading queue is one called Why Business People Speak Like Idiots : A Bullfighter’s Guide, which deals with the same subject. As I said, Stever covers a ton of information that you can find piecemeal in multiple books.

This is a great book to pick up and read to get a handle on the essentials of leadership and some practical (and doable) advice for handling situations you may run into. For those who do not have a lot of time to sit and read — don’t worry. This book moves very quickly due to Stevers great conversational writing style and short, succinct examples. There’s no long stories in here. Stever is very good at getting to the point and illustrating what he is trying to communicate.

Stever also writes the The Leadership Workshop, a column on the Harvard Business School site.

Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup At A Time

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Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time The last post talked about my opinion of the three things I find extremely important for a company to do in order to succeed. It was initiated by the treatment that I had received the previous day at Starbucks and a posting by Jason Kottke. The timing could not have been better for Tom The Architect to recommend I read the book Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, the inspring story by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on how he built the Starbucks brand and business on – you guessed it – the three things mentioned in my previous posting.

The book begins talking about Howards childhood and the origins of his drive to succeed being based on his fathers unhappiness and hardships supporting his family. We go through college with Howard and his first job, as a salesman, on to his first exposure to Starbucks corporation, a coffee roasting company dedicated to bringing fine coffees to its customers. Howard is completely caught up in the passion that the company owners have, and persue them to hire him as an employee. Finally, after a lot of convincing on Howards part, they hired him.

We then go to Milan, where Howard is first exposed to the espresso bar. He is captivated by the environment which these bars create and takes an idea back to the Starbucks owners to begin opening espresso bars in the Seattle area to recreate the environment he encountered in Milan. The owners of the company are resistant to the idea, fearing it will comprimise the standards they have set for themselves in being the finest coffee roasters in the Seattle area.

Finally, Howard decides to leave Starbucks and start his own company running his own authentic espresso bars in the Seattle area. His Il Giornale stores are highly successful. By the time Howard has 3 stores (to Starbucks 6), the owners of Starbucks decide to put the company up for sale and Il Giornale buys the company, changing it’s name to Starbucks.

The remainder of the book chronicles the building of the Starbucks we know today and the journey from small entrepreneurial company to a large, multi-national, professionally managed one. The most amazing thing about the story was the adherance to the core values that the company was founded on and the unwavering belief that customers and the employees drive business success. The company is living proof that success (financial and otherwise) is a by-product of doing the right things for your customers. It is also is a very good example of how valueable a mission statement that articulates the values of the company can be as a “measuring stick” to help you make decisions.

Reading this book was a breath of fresh air for me. I highly recommend it as not only a fascinating story in general, but for the lessons in leadership that it offers. Howard Schultz is very honest about both the things he feels he did right and mistakes he thinks he’s made. He shares the heartbreak of being turned down for venture capitol, and the elation of succeeding in the business of his dreams. He explains some of the real challenging times he has had as CEO of Starbucks, the issues encountered when a company grows really quickly and the ways in which these issues were handled. He outlines his creation of a “leadership pipeline” and his long journey towards being able to let go of the details and finding people he trusted to take care of them as the company grew. Finally, he talks about the delicate balance between values and Wall Street, and the stress that the shareholders can bring to a business.

This is probably the best “business” book I’ve read in quite a while. It has everything you could possibly want in a book about leadership, vision, and values. I highly recommend it if you are looking for a truly inspiring story.

Pragmatic Version Control with Subversion

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Pragmatic Version Control Using SubversionLast week I received my copy of Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion, which I had preordered from Amazon.com.

As I’ve written before, I’ve been a big fan of the Pragmatic Programmer series of books for a while and when Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS came out a while back I was hoping that it was just a matter of time before a version of the book focused on Subversion would be released.

This is a good practical reference book for people just starting out with version control and Subversion. Chapter 2 is where the fun really starts, with an explanation of version control and it’s basic concepts, from the repository, through working copies, tags, branching and merging. There is also a very good explanation of locking models present in different tools and when and why you would use them. The use of scenarios to illustrate the point makes the concepts easy to understand, even for a beginner.

Chapter 3 is the ‘Getting Started’ chapter. This chapter covers installation and all the basics needed to get started including creating your first project, committing to the repository, resolving conflict — at a high level. The installation section basically covers checking your machine to see if you already have the tool installed. If it doesn’t there is a whole Appendix on installation, securing the server and administration that you are referred to.

Chapters 4-10 gets into the nitty gritty of using Subversion and covers everything from the basic commands to repository organization, vendor branches, tagging and branching. These chapters are very good for the beginner.

In the beginning of Chapter 4, the author articulates the philosophy of the book. An excerpt follows:

We think version control is one of the three essential technical practices; every team needs to be proficient in all three (the others are Pragmatic Unit Testing and Pragmatic Project Automation). Every team should be using version control — all the time, and for everything they produce. So we have to make it simple, obvious, and lightweight (because if we don’t people will eventually stop doing it).

The book I have in front of me definitely holds to the philosophy. It is a very well written book that, as all books in the Pragmatic series do, gives extremely practical advice on using version control, and making it simple enough that it looks like it is something you can sustain.

I would recommend this book for those who are just starting out and want to get something up and running quickly. One of the most important things in implementing version control, from my experience, is not learning the tool but absorbing the concepts. If you do not understand the basic concepts, the process can be quite difficult. Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion does a really good job of explaining the base concepts in a simple to understand manner while also giving you the step by step of how to perform tasks that you will use in every day life.

If you are looking for really advanced topics such as development with the Subversion libraries, this is not the book to pick up. This is strictly for those who want to use version control for their projects and want to get it going quickly.

For the more advanced, I would highly recommend Version Control with Subversion, written by the Subversion development team, or Practical Subversion by Garrett Rooney (also a Subversion contributor).

Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide by Craig Larman

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Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's GuideI just finished reading Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager’s Guide by Craig Larson. I am extremely impressed with the amount of meat in the book on Agile methods and how succinctly this information is expressed.

Normally when you look for books on these kinds of subjects for managers, you find a lot of fluff and no real information. Not true with this one. The book starts out with a chapter talking about how software development over the years has been treated much like a factory production line, where everything can be predictably planned, rather than being treated as it should be — as new product development. New product development differs in that you are creating something brand new and do not quite have all the answers yet, so you plan differently than you do making a widget. The process isn’t predictable, because it hasn’t been done before. Now, this is a no brainer to anyone who has actually played a design or development role on a project, but it is traditionally very hard to explain why you can’t quite tell someone how long a feature will take to code because we haven’t done it before. The first chapter of the book covers this subject very well.

Chapter 2 explains a lot of detail on what iterative and evolutionary development are, in ways that a manager can udnerstand it and see the financial benefits (and the people benefits if he is looking for it!). It talks about the evolutionary requirements gathering, evolutionary and adaptive planning, and gives an overview of the few agile methods explained in the book.

Chapter 2 ends with Craigs opinion of what the most common mistake is in application of agile methods to software development, which is one I’m sure we’ve all seen. Changing the names of the waterfall approach to your favorite “agile” name and doing the same thing we’ve always done, with a full blown project plan that details each iteration and everything. . He talks briefly about it here but covers it quite a bit later in the book. If you have tried to implement the UP in organizations before this will bring a smile to your face, as you will have seen Inception turn into requirements gathering, elaboration turn into design, construction turn into, well, constructions (development), and transition turn into deployment to a production environment. Its something most people who try to implement agile methodologies have seen at least once in an organization.

Chapter 3 explains the values built into most agile processes and gives an overview of the methods he will be covering through the rest of the book. The methods covered include:

  • Scrum
  • Extreme Programming
  • The Unified Process
  • Evo

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 cover the motivations and evidence for why agile methods exist and why they work better than the traditional waterfall method. Some of the most interesting things in these chapters are the references to government standards that originally started out supporting the waterfall method that later were revised to agile type methods. There is also some history in this section on the waterfall method and it’s “accidental” endorsement as the “right way to do things”. The interesting part about this one is that the definitive paper that describes the waterfall method was actually written to describe an iterative method that had only one iteration. From one misphrasing, the whole software development industry was thrown on it’s ear for decades!

The evidence chapter is also quite interesting, using project failures as the main driving measurement for why agile methods work and predictive methods do not. The chapter goes into a lot of detail here from a measurement perspective and when you are done reading it you never want to plan a 15 month project in detail in the first two weeks again.

Chapters 7-10 cover, in detail, the four agile methods listed above. These chapters are really good explanations of each method, the values that each methods hold, how they mesh with other methods, and the history of their development. These chapters are really interesting reading. For each method, the author goes through value differences with other methods and how each method may clash or be merged with others.

Finally, we get to Chapter 11, Practice Tips. The book goes through some implementation tips in the area of Project Management, Environment, Requirements Gathering, and Testing. The chapter takes common misconceptions and tries to give advice as to how to deael with them.

This book is an invaluable resource for those who need to explain why a move to an agile method of development is needed in an organization. The Evidence chapter in and of itself is worth the price of the book. The added benefit of having the definitions and practices of the individual methods in one book is also great. I highly recommend grabbing this book if you are trying to move your organization to agile development.

Along with being a great resource for helping you explain your position, there are things that are just funny. A lot of us have dealt with many of the arguments outlined in this book, and I know that I have thought that some of the conversations I’ve had could never happen anywhere else. It’s really affirming to know that they do and that the conversations you have about agile development are the same ones had all over the development world. The same goofy mistakes are made and the same misconceptions about what the process should or shouldn’t be are common across this industry.

If you get nothing else out of the book, you will get a sense of comfort knowing that you are not alone. All of the problems you are experiencing right now explaining why agile development is valid, and all of the problems you are having in the way it is applied happens everywhere.

Now you have a reference to help with those conversations that put it in terms even your manager can understand.

Getting Things Done

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Tom the Architect recommended that I read the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. I’m not sure if there is a hidden reason why he recommended it, but rather than waste time trying to figure it out I picked it up. I’ve tried over the last week to get through it, but I’ve made only minimal progress. For some reason its not really one of those books that I feel compelled to complete. Its not “grabbing me”.

So this morning, I figured, “Hey, why don’t I do a search on the web and see if I can get a synopsis of the book”?

Yeah right.

As I went through the Google results I came upon this Joel on Software article called "Getting Things Done When You’re only a Grunt" from December of 2001. I thought it was a great article on how to make things happen from the bottom up.

I really have to buy the Joel on Software book. There is not one article that this guy has written that I haven’t enjoyed reading and completely agreed with. But I digress. Ugh, another distraction.

Back to the Getting Things Done book, it looks like I will have to try to struggle through it. What I did find in my search results were a lot of positive feedback on the book, and a lot of sites dedicated to how they are implementing it. Here’s a few of them:

This is just from a quick 15 minutes with Google. It looks like GTD is the “latest thing”. Now I have to just get interested in the book …

Pragmatic Version Control with Subversion Book Released

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Pragmatic Version Control Using SubversionAn annoucement went to the Subversion mailing list yesterday that the new book in the Pragmatic Programmer Series, Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion is now available.
I’ll definitely be picking this one up, as I am a big fan of the “pragmatic” series of books. Once I receive it and read it, I will post my impressions of the book.

More information is available at pragmaticprogrammer.com. As an FYI Amazon has this available, currently, for preorder only.

The Silver Sun by Nancy Springer

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The Silver Sun When I was in 7th or 8th grade I came across a book called The Silver Sun by Nancy Springer. I read the book multiple times and it wound up being one of my favorites of all time. I don’t think there was one day through 7th and 8th grade that I wasn’t carrying it around with me and engrossed in it in study hall.

The Silver Sun is a fantasy novel set in the land of Isle, ruled by the tyrannical King Iscovar. The main characters are Hal, the son of the king, and Alan, his half brother.

Throughout his childhood, Hal was hated by his father and physically tortured and kept in dungeons. He escaped and has a quest to take the throne from his father and rule the land peacefully.

At the beginning of the book, Hal finds Alan, who has been robbed and beaten in the forest. Hal nurses him back to health and they soon become blood brothers and partners in the quest to take the kingdom from the evil King, building alliances with local outlaws and building an army in order to do so.

The book is filled with, and basically built around, a whole mythology. In the land in which the book is set, there are many gods. Hal worships the god called “The One”, which is, in his belief system, the true god. There is a lot of mythology built around The One– and elves, the original peaceful rulers of the earth, who are immortal until they marry or are killed. Elves are not univerally believed to exist, however within the mythology surrounding The One, elves were once believed to rule the earth until humans took over and corrupted it. The elves are peaceful beings and are believed to live in a land without corruption – a perfect world that they created when the humans took over the earth – that is sheltered from the evil of the human blight.

The One also has an appointed “messiah”, who is referrred to as “The Very King”. Throughout the book the prophecies surrounding the coming of “The Very King” and the return of the elves begin to come true and piece by piece you begin to realize that “The One” truly exists and The Very King is soon to appear, as the prophecies laid out in the “Book of Suns” are slowly fulfilled one by one.

The Silver Sun captivated me as a young 13 year old with the detailed world it created and the mythology of hope and peace that slowly builds throughout the book. It is truly my favorite book of all time. While it has been out of print for a while, I have actually bought second copies (used) through amazon in order to make sure I always had a copy that wasn’t falling apart.

Apparently it is back in print, as I have found it again on Amazon (this is the only book that I actually periodically check Amazon for to see if copies are available). So I recommend that you grab it while there are still copies available. The world that Nancy Springer builds is very engaging and inspiring and her stories are just a pure joy to read.

There are four books in the “Book of Isle” series. The White Hart, The Silver Sun, The Sable Moon, and the Black Beast. The Silver Sun makes many references to the White Hart, as it is the story of the first “Very King” to come to the land before evil took over the land. The Sable Moon continues where the Silver Sun left off, which I cannot explain further without giving away the final pieces of the Silver Sun.

I really hope this write up does this book justice and gets people to read it. I know I have tried to get Kelsi to read it a bazillion times to no avail. She’s not a big fantasy book reader.

I’ll definitely keep trying to convince her to take one of my copies though.

Books: Nicholas Pileggi’s Wiseguy

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Wiseguy Last summer while on vacation I was looking for a book to read. I remembered that the movie Goodfellas was based on a book, but couldn’t remember the name of the book so we stopped at Barnes and Noble to look around.

After an online search in the store, I found it. The book is Wiseguy, by Nicholas Pileggi. It took me about 2 days of on and off reading to finish it and I really enjoyed it.

The book chronicles the life of Henry Hill from childhood and his introduction to the Lucchese crime family, to life as a young adult as part of the “crew”, through his turning Federal informant and his eventual enrollment in the Federal Witness Protection program.

To say that the movie was “based” on the book is stating it a little lightly. The movie basically was the book, with a few characters renamed and combined. It was remarkable to me how closely Scorcese and staff followed the book while making the movie. At certain points I had to look at the cover to make sure I wasn’t reading the script!

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love the movie Goodfellas — its actually one of my favorite “mob” type movies. The book was really fun to read, especially as you start to realize that not much was changed, fact wise, in the making of the movie, aside from the usual collapsing of multiple characters and name changes and small embellishments (“Funny How??”).

Additionally, there is a ton of information on the web on the events and people that the book is based around. I’ve included a few here for those buffs who want to know a little something about the real events and people involved.

This book is really great for those of us who like a little reality dose with their mob movies.

The People of Wiseguy

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