What Books Are You Currently Reading? (Part 2)

Finished with the Urban Fantasy trash series I've been on and off reading for over a year - finally.

Now I can start re-reading the novelisations of our favourite Survival Horror Game series, by S.D. Perry (this time in English). This is going to be fun :smile:

latest
 
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Muir's My First Summer in the Sierra has pretty prose and makes for good travel reading. He gets a bit carried away and preachy in certain passages and the description of flora can be boring, but otherwise a sympathetic writer with interesting observations. My favorite quote so far, describing the incense cedar: "I feel strangely attracted to this tree. The brown close-grained wood, as well as the small scale-like leaves, is fragrant, and the flat overlapping plumes make fine beds, and must shed the rain well. It would be delightful to be storm-bound beneath one of these noble, hospitable, inviting old trees, its broad sheltering arms bent down like a tent, incense rising from the fire made from its dry fallen branches, and a hearty wind chanting overhead."
 
Working off my book list. Very much focussed on phase 1 of 6 (this year I may add a 7th). Phase 1 marks the date I joined goodreads and there are still more than a dozen books I had added to the to-read list from that date *to this day. We'll see how long I am in the mood to keep up this mode of procedure. One motivation is that it's on my year's resolution list, another is my liking of the books on the list and books at large.

That being said, I'm rereading the first three books of Paolini's Inheritance cycle to jog my memory in an effort to finish the series. Mind you, it's been quite a few years since I last read them (i.e. iirc, it must have been before the last book was published in 2011).

Yesterday, I finished Eragon and proceeded to Eldest.
 
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"The Stupidity of Experts: How Experts Gaslighted America", by: Raphael Gomez


(One of my friends[ENxP] recently published a book!)
 
Some books I put in my reading list today:

1) "Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions" by: Todd Rose

"...as human beings, we continually act against our own best interests because our brains misunderstand what others believe. A complicated set of illusions driven by conformity bias distorts how we see the world around us. From toilet paper shortages to kidneys that get thrown away rather than used for transplants; from racial segregation to the perceived “electability” of women in politics; from bottled water to “cancel culture,” we routinely copy others, lie about what we believe, cling to tribes, and silence people... Collective Illusions shows us where we get things wrong and, just as important, how we can be authentic in forming opinions while valuing truth. Rose offers a counterintuitive yet empowering explanation for how we can bridge our inference gap, make decisions with a newfound clarity, and achieve fulfillment."
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2) "Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game" by: Andrew R. Gallimore

"Gallimore explains how our reality was constructed using a fundamental code which generated our Universe — and countless others — as a digital device built from pure information with the purpose of enabling conscious intelligences, such as ourselves, to emerge. You will learn how fundamental digital information self-organises and complexifies to generate the myriad complex forms and organisms that fill our world; how your brain constructs your subjective world and how psychedelic drugs alter the structure of this world; how DMT switches the reality channel by allowing the brain to access information from normally hidden orthogonal dimensions of reality. And, finally, you will learn how DMT provides the secret to exiting our Universe permanently — to complete the cosmic game and to become interdimensional citizens of hyperspace."
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3) "FFmpeg Basics: Multimedia handling with a fast audio and video encoder" by: Korbel, Frantisek (finally, I purchased this book. I've been egging to get my hands on it for a few years now)
Goes through detailed explanations and tutorial on the ins-and-outs of media encoding and techniques for the powerful command-line software tool, FFMPEG.
"FFmpeg is a name of a free software project for the multimedia handling licensed under GNU General
Public License. The most popular part of the project is ffmpeg command line tool for video and audio
encoding/decoding and its main features are the high speed, quality of output and small file sizes. "FF"
from FFmpeg means Fast Forward - a control button on media players, and "mpeg" is an abbreviation of
the Moving Pictures Experts Group. The FFmpeg logo contains a zig-zag pattern, that is characteristic for
the entropy coding scheme illustrated with 8x8 block in the picture"
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4) "I Don’t Care What Mom Says, “Life Sucks”" by: Craig A. Brand (probally the most honest book I've come across in a long time.)

"If you bought this book thinking you would read a series of humorous vignettes, guess again. This book is about Life, real life, not those fairy tales our mothers share with us as we grow up. Mommy wants her children happy and visited by Mickey Mouse, not those caped in evil. However, boys and girls, Mickey Mouse only lives in Disney, and we must be prepared for the Big Bad Wolf, who lives in the real world, and all of his huffing and puffing. Hopefully after reading this you will fortify your house with Craig Brands advice and hard learned experiences. This book is about survival in todays world. A rule book, so to speak, about living, and a must read."
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Jexocuha said:
Some books I put in my reading list today:

1) "Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions" by: Todd Rose



2) "Alien Information Theory: Psychedelic Drug Technologies and the Cosmic Game" by: Andrew R. Gallimore



3) "FFmpeg Basics: Multimedia handling with a fast audio and video encoder" by: Korbel, Frantisek (finally, I purchased this book. I've been egging to get my hands on it for a few years now)
Goes through detailed explanations and tutorial on the ins-and-outs of media encoding and techniques for the powerful command-line software tool, FFMPEG.


4) "I Don’t Care What Mom Says, “Life Sucks”" by: Craig A. Brand (probally the most honest book I've come across in a long time.)

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Well, solid is as solid does!
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Righteous,
Ian
 
Jexocuha said:
3) "FFmpeg Basics: Multimedia handling with a fast audio and video encoder" by: Korbel, Frantisek (finally, I purchased this book. I've been egging to get my hands on it for a few years now)
Goes through detailed explanations and tutorial on the ins-and-outs of media encoding and techniques for the powerful command-line software tool, FFMPEG.
Click to expand...

Although, not all too important, update on this book: I'm still glad I paid for a hard copy(still waiting for it in the mail). It's a good reference book to keep for long-term(it's better than the FFMPEG official documentation). But I found the PDF version and, it's great. The publishers of the book have a website, ffmpeg.tv, and in the site there's a dedicated FFMPEG forum and forum archive. I geeked through the archives a little today and found an even better FFMPEG book, for free. The forum post was was from 2022,

Am 03.11.2022 um 09:35 schrieb Paul B Mahol:
> On 10/11/20, Michael Koch <astroelectronic at t-online.de> wrote:
>> Am 29.09.2020 um 22:54 schrieb Michael Koch:
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I've programmed a C# workaround for stabilization of 360? videos. The
>>> procedure is as follows:
>>>
>>> 1. FFmpeg: From each frame of the equirectangular input video, extract
>>> two small images which are 90? apart in the input video. I call them A
>>> and B images.
>>>
>>> 2. C# code: Analyze the x and y image shift from subsequent A and B
>>> images. Calculate how the equirectangular frames must be rotated (yaw,
>>> pitch, roll) to compensate the image shifts. This part wasn't easy.
>>> Two rotation matrices and one matrix multiplication are required.
>>> Write the results to a *.cmd file.
>>>
>>> 3. FFmpeg: Read the *.cmd file and apply the rotations with the v360
>>> filter. The output video is stabilized.
>>>
>>> For details and source code please have a look at chapter 2.78 in my
>>> book:
>>> http://www.astro-electronic.de/FFmpeg_Book.pdf
>>>
>>> If anyone wants to implement this in FFmpeg, please feel free to do it.
>> I've written and tested an improved version for 360? stabilization, it's
>> in chapter 2.79.
> Your book is full or factual errors,
>
> Notice to anyone: do not use this thing for anything serious.
Thank you for so much promotion for my book.
Sure, it's likely that in more than 900 pages there are a few errors. We
all make errors. If anyone finds an error, please let me know. You find
my e-mail address on the first page.
http://www.astro-electronic.de/FFmpeg_Book.pdf
Michael
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I checked out Michael's book, "An Introduction to FFmpeg, DaVinci Resolve, Timelapse and Fulldome Video Production, Special Effects, Color Grading, Streaming, Audio Processing,Canon 6D, Canon 5D-MK4, Panasonic LUMIX GH5S,Kodak PIXPRO SP360 4K, Ricoh Theta V, Synthesizers, Image Processing and Astronomy Software"

What can I say? When it comes to Digital media processing software documentation, this is like " a king". 900 pages of "fresh meat", haha, for free. I'm glad now I've found the book and this; I'm glad for both. I mean, Jeezus, the guy has a section for "Preprocessing a flat video for fulldome projection" with code[2.130] .
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Luv'n it.
 
I started reading this book about a week or two ago in-between times, and am almost half-way finished, "Speed-Speed-Speedfreak: A Fast History of Amphetamine". by Mick Farren. It is a very interesting read on the relationships among pharmacological, pscho-social, political, and criminal/subcultural sphere's of influence that have shaped some of the most notorious events and people of history. It very succinctly revels how an accidental chemical discovery, an original failure decongestant test product originally without a seeming purpose, quickly became a "wonder drug" with unpredicted side-effects that have been a source of use/abuse/productive acceleration/temptation/utter destruction from since the early 1900s to the start of the 21st century.
I really appreciate how the author relates known historical events, known to have been highly involved with drugs(e.g. Prohibition, the Great Depression and notorious gangsters like John Dillinger & Al Capone, World War Ii, and the drug fueled Japanese kamikaze pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor in a suicide mission, the amphetamine mandates for Nazi German soldiers to fight like "supersoldiers", Adolf Hitler being a drug addict with his strange injection cocktails which with little doubt may have been the primary cause of his rising insanity exile and eventual suicide. All of the drug-inspired rock and pop music historical insight, US presidents grapple with it, movie stars, outlaws, intellectuals, and even everyday workers, wives, students, and growing adolescent kids regularly taking drugs throughout the Leave it To Beaver 1950s, which remembered as a cultural "Golden Age" to many who forget how much of it was driven by denial/drug use/repressions and underlying oppressions and atomic hidden fears defining what the 1950s Americana was really about...etc.).
I can go on and on, but this is really a great read.
 
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Also, today I picked up my order for the book FFmpeg Basics: Multimedia handling with a fast audio and video encoder by: Korbel, Frantise from the mail. Although I couldn't be more satisfied with it as an alternative to the FFMPEG official docs, after going through it more I realized that I may need to eventually pickup Keith Jack's Video Demystified: A Handbook for the Digital Engineer as a definitive reference on digital encoding tech beyond just learning how to use the FFMPEG software.

(all side-project stuff anyway...)
 
Jexocuha said:
the amphetamine mandates for Nazi German soldiers to fight like "supersoldiers"
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The Axis had dextromethamphetamine hydrochloride.
The Allies had racemic amphetamine sulfate.

IIRC.

I’ve had methamphetamine hcl. Relative to dextroamphetamine sulfate, it’s twice as efficacious per mg. And neurotoxic over time because of the metabolic persistence of the methyl group.

Cheers,
Ian
 
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