Posts Tagged ‘books’

Books I would like to read this year (2010)

// January 17th, 2010 // No Comments » // books, e-learning

Some of the books I am planning to read in 2010…this is not a definitive list and is likely to expand. I am putting up some of the names here. If you have already any of the books, do share your comments/reviews/key learning with me please.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner

Winning E-Learning Proposals: The Art of Development and Delivery by Karl M. Kapp

ASTD Handbook for Workplace Learning Professionals by Elaine Biech

Delivering E-Learning: A Complete Strategy for Design, Application and Assessment by Kenneth Fee

Turning Training into Learning: How to Design and Deliver Programs that Get Results by Furjanic & Trotman

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker

A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business by Hartmut Esslinger

Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte

Clean up

// December 5th, 2009 // No Comments » // books

I was tidying up my books yesterday as we have an inspection tomorrow. I had this huge pile of books by the bed and they ended up in a box while we were away. So, now I’m sorting through the box.

Found an old library book that I borrowed ages ago, Kevin Mitnick’s book The Art of Deception is all about Social Engineering — human ways of beating security systems and getting access to things you aren’t supposed to. The book is intriguing as it decribes a series of cons, a series of techniques for getting access and information that you aren’t supposed to get by convincing people to give it to you, or setting up the circumstances around the call or request so people just trust you.

The idea is not to use these techniques to go and con people, but to get an awareness of what is possible and how easy it can be to break security when there is somebody you can call up and convince them to give you the password or something

People implementing any sort of IT systems need to read this. Typically we build IT security without considering the human element much. And people who are interested in cons and tricks will enjoy the descriptions of the techniques involved and the stories.

Choose your own adventure.

// August 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // books, rambling

As a child, I loved to read. Perhaps even more than I do now. In particular, I really loved to read the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books. These books differed from normal fiction in that the reader became the protagonist and was able to determine the outcome of the narrative through a series of decisions.

Each decision would require you to turn to a different page to continue the story. The suspense would build as you would read on and on towards an inevitable ending. In some cases you would die a horrible and untimely death, in others you could be victorious as the hero.

When it came to making decisions, I would often turn ahead to see which path ensured I remain in the story for as long as possible. It was obviously not the way the writers intended for the reader to interact with the book (you could even call it cheating), but I never felt bad about it, nor did I ever feel as though it degraded the experience. Perhaps I was exercising a little greed. These books had given me a choice in the outcome, but I wanted to play God and determine the length of my interaction as well.