Recently I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts on my phone through the gReader app. Even in short journeys I can knock off a couple of posts, and it feels like I’m actually participating in things as they happen. (I’m aware that this is an illusion, but it is one that I’m happy to maintain.)

So the phone screen is a good place for short form essays and journalism, and at fist blush it seems that it works for long form too. I’ve been reading Gulliver’s travels through the Kindle app, which has actually been surprisingly easy. The screen makes the columns a good width for reading fast, and the page turns are easier than turning an actual page. This means that I can put the phone on a table, hold my head in one hand, a cup of tea in the other, and read.

The ability to condense a library of books into one small space is pretty cool, as is the ability to look stuff up in a dictionary or on Wikipedia. I’m not wild about having to buy books that I already own so that I can read them this way, it seems that the payment for the IP has already been made, and that the actual cost of providing the content must tend towards zero. However there are so many free classics available that it will probably be a while before I’m hooked enough to fork over any actual money.

I’ll update in a while about what I thought of the experience, but I don’t think that it’ll be too much of a competitor to ‘real’ books in the near future, but in the longer term, probably!

I don’t smoke, but I do read, and I’m going to go all Philip Morris on some books by telling people of my intention to read more of them.

if you are reading this on facebook, follow this link to read it in glorious technicolour.

To start with, the book I’m reading now, ‘The Black Swan’. This is a bit ranty, but it goes through a few biases with an interesting slant. My favorite bit so far has been ‘given that a coin lands 98 times in a row on heads, and it is a fair coin, what is the likelihood of it landing tails the next time?’ and then it gives two answers
1) 50:50, it has the same chance it had the first time you flipped it.
2) >1% if you say 50:50 you are a mug, if it has landed that many times on heads it must be rigged.
It is a good warning against taking too computational approach to things. (although, I fear that this isn’t the central message of the book).
So far, it’s an enjoyable read, so you might as well have a crack at it.

Next up is Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. This comes highly recommended by both Erika, and the author of Irrationality, so it gets on the list. My mathematical abilities have atrophied beyond recognition, so I need to get on top of them quick smart!

This book is more specifically related to my major study topic (which will be revealed in the next couple of weeks). It’s another collection of essays and papers about the issues surrounding human enhancement.

I’ve recommended this to lots of people who have all enjoyed it. It is a really easy read, which is remarkable considering the difficulty of the subject matter – should we allow/endorse human genetic enhancement. I’m going to be controversial and try and make this my text for the ‘texts on trial’ 2^nd year history and theory seminar. I think it’ll get their brains working in a new way and hopefully make them better designers by virtue of being better thinkers.

I’ve been trying to temper my cynicism about ‘green architecture’ with some facts, and this seems like a good place to start! I’ve heard very good things about this book, and it is available as a PDF here.

This is another one directly for my major study. I’ve read about half of it already, but as they are papers, it needs to be read with Google in one hand and the book in the other. There are good videos the accompany the book from the conference here.

This is likely to be the main text for Sophie’s (my housemate) masters thesis, so I’m intrigued to find out what it’s all about. I have to admit that i have a considerable amount of cynicism about it’s main message, but I’ve gleaned most of that from reading posts that reference it on treehugger and inhabitat. It seems to have too large a following to be rubbish, so I’ll read it with an open mind. I’m a big fan of lifecycle design in industrial design, so it’ll be interesting to see how much PLM comes through in here.

I think that’ll do for the moment, I’ll pop up a review when I finish these, and then I’ll post the next list.

I saw this this morning, it looks like an interesting book, which I’ll read when I get a second (more on that later),  but it did remind me how disapointed that the most biting critique of my work was focused on the cover art.

I do feel a tiny bit vindicated that the same technique has made it onto the cover of a published book!

I’m going to start being a bit mercenary these days, and start putting an amazon associates link on here if I mention a book, if you buy it through this link, I get a tiny amount of money to feed my crack book habit.

The book is a great introduction to a lot of the ‘grander’ ideas of computational design too, if you’ve ever wondered what ? syntax, universal Turing machines, or artificial neural networks are, then this will be a great help.
This should be required reading for anyone who thinks that computers have a bigger role to play in design than just checking your email.

You can pre order it from here
http://www.tandfbuiltenvironment.com/books/The-Programming-of-Architecture-isbn9780415451888

I think I might be as allergic to writing as I am to running!

the pdf is here

I’m currently writing a piece about Christopher Alexander’s book Notes on the synthesis of form. I’ve read part one about 4 times now and it’s either warpign my brain, or he had a good point to start with because I’m starting to agree with a lot of what he says (part 2 is a differnt story)
I did a little presentation about it a while ago, it’s here if you want to have a look.

I’ll even post the essay when it’s done! Now don’t you feel lucky

It’s like that moment in sex and the city when Cary does the mental arithmetic about her shoes and realises that’s why she can’t afford a house (shamefully metaphor i know)

If I average my purchases to be ­£10 (a conservative estimate) then that’s £3000 spent over the last 4 years on Amazon. I think that’s enough to get a place at a Betty Ford clinic!