Tuesday, March 22, 2011

O'Reilly Disaster Relief 50% Special Off E-books

Today O'Reilly had a great 50% sale on all e-books with all revenues going to the Japanese Red Cross for disaster relief after the earth quake + tsunami from about 10 days ago.

I bought the following books for a rainy/sunny day:

High Performance MySQL, Second Edition

I personally prefer Postgres. I think MySQL feels a bit flimsy for some reason I can't articulate. However MySQL is still very widely used and I felt that whatever lessons I learn from this book probably applies to other SQL databases.

Canvas Pocket Reference

I coded a simple clickomania code with a friend at work which uses canvas for drawing so I was interested in learning more about using canvas.

Programming Android

I don't even own a smart phone :( But I'm still interested in learning about programming for Android. I'll probably end up owning one sooner or later. Just not in a hurry to get one.

TCP/IP Network Administration, Third Edition

This is probably a lot of stuff that I already learned in school many years ago. But I feel like I still have some gaps in my understanding. Gaps that don't usually affect my every day work, but gaps that I still want to fill, well just because.

Anyway, this was a great move by O'Reilly. They deserve a lot of credit for putting this special together. The total paid amount is at $70k at the moment. Let's hope it goes even higher and that Japan finally gets the power plant situation under control.