Magazine: Cinefex

If you have never seen an issue of Cinefex, you are really missing out on something special.  It is THE magazine of special effects.  Each issue describes in great detail how the effects of a recent (or old) movie were done.  The writing is great, the photos are great.  Each issue is really art.

I have been receiving the printed magazine since the early 80s. For many years there were not even ads in the magazine!  Now there are ads, but they are actually pretty cool to read too.  I still subscribe but now also get with my subscription a digital version that I can read online.

Anyway, it isn't always on newsstands but you can probably find it at a boutique bookstore.  Buy an issue and I promise if you like movies you will just fall in love with Cinefex.  And check out their web site too.  Go look at the back issue covers - it will remind you of how far effects films have come.

Book Review - "Seven Databases in Seven Weeks"

"Seven Databases in Seven Weeks" by Eric Redmond & Jim R. Wilson is a described as "a tour of some of the hottest open source databases today...".   This is a good description of the contents of this book - a drive-by of seven different databases with enough detail for the technical reader to understand the basic features and operations of each.

The first thing that I noticed (and absolutely loved!) is that there are no instructions in the book on how to install any of these databases.  No instructions on how to use a shell.  And no copies of tables, commands, etc. that I can find on the web.  The book assumes (rightly) that you already have some technical skills and are smart enough to find these things on the web.   If you do not know your way around Linux and cannot find & follow installation instructions, then this is not the right book for you anyway.

I have not read all of the chapters yet.  I have a specific need and have read the chapters on Riak, MondogDB, CouchDB, and Neo4J.  The chapters are good - there is enough information on each database to allow me to explore using curl, javascript, mongo, gremlin, etc.  I found the examples actually useful, not some meaningless drivel.  And great starting points for me to start doing my own explorations.

The chapters are broken up into 3 days of exercises.  It doesn't take three days - you can easily do each chapter in a few hours at most, though I found myself down the rabbit hole several times as I tried various things.  

The content in the chapters I read is to-the-point and useful.  I actually found the chapter on CouchDB more useful to me that the entire "CouchDB - The Definitive Guide" book, which has an "interesting" organization.  The CouchDB chapter - like the others - seems much more organized and follows a sequence of steps that made sense to me.

In summary, I like the book.  I have a few of the "Definitive Guides" and I find some of them just sort of ramble.  If you are technical, comfortable with Linux & using the command line, then "Seven Databases in Seven Weeks" is a great way to quickly get some insight on a few of the large number of NoSQL/open source database available.

Welcome

What does the name "squirrel piles" mean? As my family can tell you, I am the master of little piles - "squirrel piles".  Like the red squirrel who makes little piles of acorns all over my yard, I make little piles of things in my life.

I have physical squirrel piles - like unread mail, sports equipment, unread magazines, computer parts, tools, partially completed models, my entire workshop, papers to scan, etc.

I have digital squirrel piles - things like software I have written, databases of all my books/movies/CDs/whatever, PDF files, unvisited (but bookmarked) URLs, etc.

I have mental squirrel piles - ideas for stories, ideas for products, for companies, things to do, things to say, to-do lists, etc.

So this blog will be yet another variety of squirrel piles - thoughts, comments, ideas, and such - whatever is on my mind.