OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review


John Siracusa - 2014
    Siracusa's overview, wrap-up, and critique of everything new in OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)


Peachpit Press - 2013
    Scott doesn’t just show you which sliders do what (every Lightroom book will do that). Instead, by using the following three simple, yet brilliant, techniques that make it just an incredible learning tool, this book shows you how to create your own photography workflow using Lightroom: Throughout the book, Scott shares his own personal settings and studiotested techniques. Each year he trains thousands of Lightroom users at his live seminars and through that he’s learned what really works, what doesn’t, and he tells you flat out which techniques work best, which to avoid, and why. The entire book is laid out in a real workflow order with everything step by step, so you can begin using Lightroom like a pro from the start. What really sets this book apart is the last chapter. This is where Scott dramatically answers his #1 most-asked Lightroom question, which is: “Exactly what order am I supposed to do things in, and where does Photoshop fit in?” You’ll see Scott’s entire start-to-finish Lightroom 5 workflow and learn how to incorporate it into your own workflow. Plus, this book includes a downloadable collection of some of the hottest Lightroom Develop module presets to give you a bunch of amazing effects with just one click! Scott knows first-hand the challenges today’s digital photographers are facing, and what they want to learn next to make their workflow faster, easier, and more fun. He has incorporated all of that into this major update for Lightroom 5. It’s the first and only book to bring the whole process together in such a clear, concise, and visual way. Plus, the book includes a special chapter on integrating Adobe Photoshop seamlessly right into your workflow, and you’ll also learn some of Scott’s latest Photoshop portrait retouching techniques and special effects, which take this book to a whole new level. There is no faster, more straight-to-the-point, or more fun way to learn Lightroom than with this groundbreaking book.

Landing Eagle: Inside the Cockpit During the First Moon Landing


Michael Engle - 2019
    It was a sea in name only. It was actually a bone dry, ancient dusty basin pockmarked with craters and littered with rocks and boulders. Somewhere in that 500 mile diameter basin, the astronauts would attempt to make Mankind’s first landing on the Moon. Neil Armstrong would pilot the Lunar Module “Eagle” during its twelve minute descent from orbit down to a landing. Col. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin would assist him. On the way down they would encounter a host of problems, any one of which could have potentially caused them to have to call off the landing, or, even worse, die making the attempt. The problems were all technical-communications problems, computer problems, guidance problems, sensor problems. Armstrong and Aldrin faced the very real risk of dying by the very same technical sword that they had to live by in order to accomplish the enormous task of landing on the Moon for the first time. Yet the human skills Armstrong and Aldrin employed would be more than equal to the task. Armstrong’s formidable skills as an aviator, honed from the time he was a young boy, would serve him well as he piloted Eagle down amidst a continuing series of systems problems that might have fatally distracted a lesser aviator. Armstrong’s brilliant piloting was complemented by Aldrin’s equally remarkable discipline and calmness as he stoically provided a running commentary on altitude and descent rate while handling systems problems that threatened the landing. Finally, after a harrowing twelve and a half minutes, Armstrong gently landed Eagle at “Tranquility Base”, a name he had personally chosen to denote the location of the first Moon landing. In “Landing Eagle-Inside the Cockpit During the First Moon Landing”, author Mike Engle gives a minute by minute account of the events that occurred throughout Eagle’s descent and landing on the Moon. Engle, a retired NASA engineer and Mission Control flight controller, uses NASA audio files of actual voice recordings made inside Eagle’s cockpit during landing to give the reader an “inside the cockpit” perspective on the first Moon landing. Engle’s transcripts of these recordings, along with background material on the history and technical details behind the enormous effort to accomplish the first Moon landing, give a new and fascinating insight into the events that occurred on that remarkable day fifty years ago.

Nikon D3100 for Dummies


Julie Adair King - 2010
    Say you?re already an experienced photographer? The helpful tips and tricks in this friendly book will get you quickly up to speed on the D3100's new 14-megapixel sensor, continous video/live focus, full HD video, expanded autofocus, and more. As a seasoned instructor at the Palm Beach Photographic Center, Julie anticipates all questions, whether you?re a beginner or digital camera pro, and offers pages of easy-to-follow advice.Helps you get every bit of functionality out of the new Nikon D3100 camera Walks you through its exciting new features, including the 14-megapixel sensor, continous video/live focus, full HD video, expanded autofocus, and the updated in-camera menu Explores shooting in Auto mode, managing playback options, and basic troubleshooting Explains how to adjust the camera's manual settings for your own preferred exposure, lighting, focus, and color style Covers digital photo housekeeping tips?how to organize, edit, and share your files Tap all the tools in this hot new DSLR camera and start taking some great pix with Nikon D3100 For Dummies.

Understanding Air France 447


Bill Palmer - 2013
    Written by A330 Captain, Bill Palmer, this book opens to understanding the actions of the crew, how they failed to understand and control the problem, and how the airplane works and the part it played. All in easy to understand terms.Addressed are the many contributing aspects of weather, human factors, and airplane system operation and design that the crew could not recover from. How each contributed is covered in detail along with what has been done, and needs to be done in the future to prevent this from happening again.Also see the book's companion website: UnderstandingAF447.com for supplemental materials referred to in the book or to contact the author.

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man


Marshall McLuhan - 1964
    Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.

A History of the World in 100 Objects


Neil MacGregor - 2010
    Encompassing a grand sweep of human history, A History of the World in 100 Objects begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with objects which characterise the world we live in today. Seen through MacGregor's eyes, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. A stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people; Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency; and an early Victorian tea-set speaks to us about the impact of empire. An intellectual and visual feast, this is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years. 'Brilliant, engagingly written, deeply researched' Mary Beard, Guardian 'A triumph: hugely popular, and rightly lauded as one of the most effective and intellectually ambitious initiatives in the making of 'public history' for many decades' Sunday Telegraph 'Highly intelligent, delightfully written and utterly absorbing ' Timothy Clifford, Spectator 'This is a story book, vivid and witty, shining with insights, connections, shocks and delights' Gillian Reynolds Daily Telegraph

The Expected Goals Philosophy: A Game-Changing Way of Analysing Football


James Tippett - 2019
    The metric gives unparalleled insight into which teams and players are performing at the highest level.Professional gamblers have used Expected Goals to make millions through football betting. Club scouts have used Expected Goals to identify hidden gems in the transfer market. And the media have recently started using Expected Goals to offer more profound insight in their broadcasts.Despite this, most ordinary fans still don’t understand what the Expected Goals method is – or appreciate the significant impact that it is set to have on the sport in coming years.Expected Goals (otherwise known as xG) was originally conjured up by a small corner of the online football analytics community. It didn’t take long for professional gamblers to begin using xG to predict match outcomes. These bettors utilised the Expected Goals method to turn over hundreds of millions of pounds from the bookmakers.Before long, football clubs had caught on to the ground-breaking insight given by xG. Brentford FC were leaders in this field, managing to assemble a Play-Off-reaching squad on a shoe-string budget. In the last five years, the small West London side have turned over more than £100m in transfer profit from their use of the Expected Goals method in player recruitment.More recently, the Expected Goals method has been adopted by the media as a form of insight. Fans are finally catching on to the pioneering means of football analysis. Soon enough, anyone who doesn’t understand the Expected Goals philosophy will be left behind.“This book will make you watch football differently” – Tobias Pedersen“Possibly the most ground-breaking football book ever written” – Football Impact“A brilliant account of the history and future of Expected Goals” – StatShot

Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System


Nick Montfort - 2009
    The Atari VCS was affordable and offered the flexibility of changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these were created, the most significant of which established new techniques, mechanics, and even entire genres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential video game console from both computational and cultural perspectives.Studies of digital media have rarely investigated platforms--the systems underlying computing. This book (the first in a series of Platform Studies) does so, developing a critical approach that examines the relationship between platforms and creative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure, for example, was the first game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen (anticipating the boundless virtual spaces of such later games as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto), by allowing the player to walk off one side into another space; and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was an early instance of interaction between media properties and video games. Montfort and Bogost show that the Atari VCS--often considered merely a retro fetish object--is an essential part of the history of video games.

The Interface Effect


Alexander R. Galloway - 2012
    The familiar Socratic conceit from the Phaedrus, of communication as the process of writing directly on the soul of the other, has returned to center stage in today's discussions of culture and media. Indeed Western thought has long construed media as a grand choice between two kinds of interfaces. Following the optimistic path, media seamlessly interface self and other in a transparent and immediate connection. But, following the pessimistic path, media are the obstacles to direct communion, disintegrating self and other into misunderstanding and contradiction. In other words, media interfaces are either clear or complicated, either beautiful or deceptive, either already known or endlessly interpretable.Recognizing the limits of either path, Galloway charts an alternative course by considering the interface as an autonomous zone of aesthetic activity, guided by its own logic and its own ends: the interface effect. Rather than praising user-friendly interfaces that work well, or castigating those that work poorly, this book considers the unworkable nature of all interfaces, from windows and doors to screens and keyboards. Considered allegorically, such thresholds do not so much tell the story of their own operations but beckon outward into the realm of social and political life, and in so doing ask a question to which the political interpretation of interfaces is the only coherent answer.Grounded in philosophy and cultural theory and driven by close readings of video games, software, television, painting, and other images, Galloway seeks to explain the logic of digital culture through an analysis of its most emblematic and ubiquitous manifestation – the interface.

What We See When We Read


Peter Mendelsund - 2014
    A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.What do we see when we read? Did Tolstoy really describe Anna Karenina? Did Melville ever really tell us what, exactly, Ishmael looked like? The collection of fragmented images on a page - a graceful ear there, a stray curl, a hat positioned just so - and other clues and signifiers helps us to create an image of a character. But in fact our sense that we know a character intimately has little to do with our ability to concretely picture our beloved - or reviled - literary figures.In this remarkable work of nonfiction, Knopf's Associate Art Director Peter Mendelsund combines his profession, as an award-winning designer; his first career, as a classically trained pianist; and his first love, literature - he thinks of himself first, and foremost, as a reader - into what is sure to be one of the most provocative and unusual investigations into how we understand the act of reading.

Re:cyclists: 200 Years on Two Wheels


Michael Hutchinson - 2017
    The calls to ban it were more or less instant.Re:cyclists is the tale of what happened next, of how we have spent two centuries wheeling our way about town and country on bikes--or on two-wheeled things that vaguely resembled what we now call bikes. Michael Hutchinson picks his way through those 200 years, discovering how cycling became a kinky vaudeville act for Parisians, how it became an American business empire, and how it went on to find a unique home in the British Isles. He considers the penny-farthing riders exploring the abandoned and lonely coaching roads during the railway era, and the Victorian high-society cyclists of the 1890s bicycle craze--a time when no aristocratic house party was without bicycles and when the Prince of Wales used to give himself an illicit thrill on a weekday afternoon by watching the women's riding-school in the Royal Albert Hall.Re:cyclists looks at how cycling became the sport, the pastime and the social life of millions of ordinary people, how it grew and how it suffered through the 1960s and '70s, and how at the dawn of the twenty-first century it rose again, much changed but still ultimately just someone careering along on two wheels.

Arduino Projects Book


Scott Fitzgerald - 2012
    Whether you're a rocket scientist or a poet, whether you're ten years old or ninety, we want to make it possible for you to build great projects using computers and electronics.The parts in this kit and the projects explained here form the skeleton of your projects. Arduino can make your projects responsive. It's up to you to make them beautiful.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future: A 29-Minute Summary.


Bern Bolo - 2015
     This summary will let you taste on “how and what” Elon musk struggles to show his “SPARKS” in levels, Why his capable and legendary “like “ the famous Edison, Ford and Jobs. Based from the original book of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance, tell you his experience in conversation with Musk. Important Lessons in this Elon Musk Summary • How to get the most out of people who work for you. • How to understand the value of making your own stuff, than buying them. • How to be brave in going out from your comfort zone. • How to treat challenges that comes your way as an opportunity. • How to believe in your dreams, and then make others believe after. • How to spot an opportunity when it comes your way. • How to keep yourself open to achieve bigger and greater things, and ultimately, your fullest potential. • How to dream big and then chase it. • How to give the value your family deserves. • How to appreciate the value of caring for Mother Earth and exercise ways to protect her and lessen the damage she has to take. • How to address issues and conflicts. • How to be persistent in your endeavors. More inside in this Biographies & Memoirs Summary • A brief yet accurate summary on the life of Elon Musk, detailed out in individual chapters. • Correct and concise synopsis of the various chapters of the book. • Silly and charming quotes that will tickle your fancy at the start of each chapters. • Personal and professional lessons from the life of Elon Musk on how to dare dream big and conquer your fears. Why you musy by this summary My team and I will let you sift through Elon’s captivating world in 29 minutes by reading this synopsis. “I like to be involved in things that change the world.” – Elon Reeve Musk. Surely, what Elon Musk had been doing in his companies have changed the world in so many ways. He has broken through the norm and boring routine practices to come up with technologies that has never before been seen by anyone. This summary show many things on how Elon Musk proved that he did changed the world. From his ancestors to his early life in Africa, to his great migrations, to the funding of his first start-up businesses and to his eventually discovery of his vision and mission in life, this book will satiate your curiosity as to who Musk really is and what he is capable of doing. PLEASE NOTE: This is a 29-minute summary of Elon Musk and NOT the original book. Bern Bolo "The Bathroom Genius”

Zentangle 3: With Rubber Stamps


Suzanne McNeill - 2010
    If you are new to the Zentangle process, you will enjoy other books in this series: 'Zentangle Basics', 'Zentangle 2', and 'Totally Tangled'. These intriguing patterns all begin by following the Zen of tangle basics - start with simple lines and fill in the spaces, one step at a time. There are no mistakes, only opportunities. Like life, the designs develop into something unique and beautiful as they grow. This inspiring book is packed with plenty of ideas for combining tangles to create rich and delightful graphics.