And what a accidental revolutionary he is

Posted : 3 months, 1 week ago on 10 July 2008 03:50 (A review of Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary)

If your a technology geek like me you know what Linux is and you know that Linus Torvalds was the programmer behind it. Well Just for Fun tells Linus' whole life story.

The book is split into two parts, the book even says that, with the first part being from his childhood to college and writing Linux and how it changed the computer world and the second part is Linus' thoughts on the computer industry, life, and other philosophy subjects.
As I said before I'm a tech geek and really like hearing about tech and found the first part of the book really enjoyable but the second I didn't fully enjoy but that was because of my personal beliefs but was a good insight to Linus' way of thinking.

And the writing is good for a ghost writer as instead of making the book sound like Linus was writing it and was written more like a interview.

For geeks like me this is a must read into learning how the whole open source movement really started but if your not this books first might be way over your head.

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A look through computer game history

Posted : 4 months, 1 week ago on 8 June 2008 02:49 (A review of Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic)

While I've grown up around computers since before I could remember I never really got into games until around 1999 and reading Dungeons and Dreamers makes me wish I had gotten into them sooner.

The book basically starts with a small story of how the original game that most geeks play, Dungeons and Dragons, and gives the backdrop to Richard Garriott life and how he helped create the first successful RPG, the Ultima series.

Later on in the book, as Garriott was continuing to develop Ultima sequels, starts to shine the light on the guys at Softdisk, which some of them would continue on to start id Software and create DOOM and Quake and shake up the computer gaming culture.

The rest of the book continues with both companies and the community that started around their games and what has happened up until 2001.

The whole book was a good read, giving a glimpe of gaming history and see what I missed years before and seeing how some things started and how they're perceived today. But for me the book wasn't as totally engaging as I hoped for when I first picked up the book but might be because the book is now dated.

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