Chris’ Blog

I recently finished reading Les Misérables. From the time I started reading until I finished, it was difficult to put this book down. Delving into several aspects of society’s value for people and Christian ideals, this was an amazing book that gave me pause several times to re-examine my own values, motives, and behaviour.

You can see this book in my library here.

★★★★★

I finished reading “The Measure of All Things” by Ken Alder, the story of the origins of the metric system. We follow Pierre Méchain and Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre as they endeaver to measure the Paris meridian across the entire span of France and into Spain in ordere to determine the distance from the pole to the equator and thus set the length for the metre which they had defined as one ten-millionth of that distance. By basing the metre on the size of the Earth, the metric system would be “for all people, for all time.”

Their seven year journey took them across France and through the French Revolution. The book was a reminder of the great cost of scientific advancement and the determination and discipline required by her adherants. It makes me glad to be an engineer.

I must say that the book was quite long and took a considerable amount of effort to read. However, despite the somewhat long-winded style, the information was very interesting and opened my eyes to the history buried within the things we use every day. If something as seemingly mundane as the metric system could have such a colourful and scandalous origin, what about milk cartons or yield signs?

You can see this book in my library here.

★★★☆☆

“That’s Me in the Middle” by Donald Jack is the second book of the Bandy Papers series. Continuing Bartholomew Bandy’s misadventures during World War I the book is equally enjoyable as the first. Donald Jack has a similar writing style to Douglas Adams, although unlike “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, this second installment has me looking forward to the next book in the series.

See this book in my library here.

★★★★★

by Michael Adams

This book was a Christmas gift from my wife as a book I would like to read. It turns out she was right. In “Fire and Ice” Michael Adams compares values held within and between Canadians and Americans and maps out where those values are headed.

See my full review here.

★★★★☆

This book was quite good, very thorough. Jared Diamond explores mostly the effect of geography on cultures since the beginning of civilization and theorises why some cultures excelled and came to rule while others were conquered and disappeared from history or lingered into modern times.

See my review here.

★★★★☆

This book was a Christmas gift and I recently finished reading it. I had fairly low expectations going in, but my interest was held all the way through. Mr. Herman does indeed make a strong case for Scots leading the way in many aspects of modern society, although I would say that declaring that Scots invented the modern world is rather speculative. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book and was especially interested in how Scots helped shape the United States and Canada with highlanders generally siding with the monarchy and migrating to Canada as Loyalists after the War of Independence and lowlanders siding with the revolutionaries. An excellent read if you are interested in Scottish or New World history.

See this book in my library here.

★★★★☆

I have to say I was quite disappointed with this book. After reading through it I was not equipped to write php scripts. It is missing many features that should be present in PHP 4 like constants and objects. There is already a third edition out; hopefully it is more complete and up to date.

★★☆☆☆

This book was also required reading for the engineering professional practice exam. The highlights of this book were the case studies of historical catastrophic engineering failures. All I can say is that I’m glad I’m not a civil engineer. The rest was useful but boring.

★★★☆☆

This book was required reading for the engineering professional practice exam. I read it over the course of a week and found that despite being exceedingly boring, there was a fair amount of useful information. The sections dealing with contracts, negligence, and liability were the highlights while the chapter on aboriginal law was the low point. It was a good book; I’m glad I read it. I hope I never have to read it again.

★★★☆☆

This is the final book of the Bronze Canticles trilogy. Since I read it immediately following the second book I didn’t have the problem of not knowing what was going on at the beginning. Overall the book was good, slightly better than the second, but still not great.

★★★☆☆