Review: Winning in the API Economy

Winning in the API Economy by Steven Willmott

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I picked this, an executive summary of API possibilities and concerns from 3scale, to research API management tool. While this is much too high level and brief to do more than help a business confirm an API is or is not the right move from them, it did help me see that API Management covers questions such as:

• How should different APIs be exposed and to whom?
• How should those services be secured?
• How should their usage be tracked?
• How are access rights managed?
• How do developers, partners and customers establish
their identity and get provisioned for the rights they need
for the API?
• How does an organization ensure success for the users
of its APIs?

(3scale kindly pushed the sales spiel of to page 60 of 69.)



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Review: APIs: A Strategy Guide

APIs: A Strategy Guide by Daniel Jacobson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This thin volume is targeted toward C-level and lower level product management, etc. The technical level is generally not deep, with the deepest foray into the security area where the authors recommend OAuth and a helpful dive into Pragmatic REST. The authors do a good job at raising the core issues to invoke when planning an API strategy from development to roll out. The API as business strategy, like paint on an aging home, can hide a multitude of sins and refresh an aging interface while largely leaving untouched brittle platforms or provide a new layer for otherwise hard to implement functionality, like UI translation.

This is the first time I noticed in an O'Reilly book a lack of a colophon detailing the cover animal. Boo!



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Review: API Management for the Software- Defined Network

API Management for the Software- Defined Network by Apigee

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I picked this, basically a solution white paper, to research a case example of a specific API management tool. The trend giving rise to this example is:

"Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a shift in network-based computing and
communications based on breaking existing physical boundaries on switches,
routers, and controllers through well-defined APIs."

This qualifies as an API management example as the software abstracts out and allows easier interaction with the hardware APIs:

"OpenFlow is both software and a protocol that specifies an API for programming the flow tables of a network switch. Previously, these flow tables were not programmable remotely or by third parties, as network switches included a proprietary operating system and native programs which controlled the flow tables. With OpenFlow, the switch only manages flow tables, and the OS and programs execute on a different machine. This removes constraints on control software, as it can now be written in any language and run on any operating system and any hardware – including commodity chipsets and virtualized hardware."

It was helpful to see the list of API management features, suggesting some to consider for any API management implementation:

"Apigee’s embedded API management software for SDN controllers features:
›› Caching
›› Security
›› Prepackaged analytics"

I am starting to see that API management is about API transformation.



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Review: Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner

Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a fascinating career memoir from trainee to 2-year veteran medical examiner. Very well narrated by Tanya Eby, the arc of this career goes from Big Apple crime and suicide to being on task for 9/11. There is a lot of autopsy details as well as managing the personal side with co-workers, victim's family, and a wise and witty mentor.



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Review: Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Steven Kotler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Well, this was a hopeful book about the triumphant potential of human technology - it has continually proven the Malthusians wrong. Some of the examples are amazing, like the device that can make pharmaceutical grade water from a dank ditch or chemical run off and a future Tricorder for medical assessment in the field. I found intriguing the proven success of prize motivations as a way to leverage public money, not surprising since the author is one of the people behind the xprize.



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Review: Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels: Science Behind Folk Remedies and Old Wives' Tales

Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical Marvels: Science Behind Folk Remedies and Old Wives' Tales by Robert Root-Bernstein

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a fascinating overview of the scientific basis and potential benefits of such folk remedies as honey-sugar wound bandaging, geophagy, circumcision, maggots, wound licking (even cross-species!), leeches, and more. I wish the section on quackery was more in depth, but the section on how the economics of health care in American means low-cost and proven folk remedies can never be offere on scale as their is not the profit possibility to support approval. One potential example is Dinitrochlorobenzene (DNCB), a chemical used in color photography processing, that could be beneficial to those dealing with AIDS.



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Review: What you should know about Vietnam

What you should know about Vietnam by Richard F Newcomb

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A history of Vietnam from colonial era up to the late 1967 publication this magazine-book. The focus is on then recent events from mention of Eisenhower brining in America to support France, enlargement by JFK and real escalation under LBJ. The first half is mostly year-by-year text, while the later half is mostly graphics, photographs, time lines, and more. This is largely descriptive, not investigative, journalism.



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Review: The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence by Paul Charles William Davies

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was an engaging, enlightening but in the end almost depressing book. Beside the awesome physical impediments of distance and time to preclude meaningful communication with an alien civilization, Davies etches deeps the facet of this issue I have considered before: a civilization possibly a million years older than ours may be so advanced as to be incomprehensible/undetectable. Our radio telescope basis assumes primitive and lossy communications by others. We may as well use smoke signals.

Intriguing to me is the author's suggestions to look for alien artefacts, beacons. and extraterrestrial microbes thriving in extremeophile conditions or even common ocean water.



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Review: How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise

How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise by Chris Taylor

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is an excellent book to read as a prelude to embarking on the Disney-produced Star Wars movies coming later this year. The autobiography of the franchise goes from Lucas' youthful fascinations with Flash Gordon and fast cars to the film inspirations of 28-17, Silent Running and more. Political motivations and technological disappointments color the success of the original film trio. The wilderness years of Lucas' personal life, multi-media empire, mixed animation and game success, and declining film popularity mark the long years to the multi-billion sale to Disney giving them the hat trick of Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars.



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Review: Napoleon

Napoleon by Emil Ludwig

My rating: 0 of 5 stars



An interesting quote from Napoleon: "The infamous practice of flogging men to disclose secrets, must come to an end. The only result of torturing people in this way is that the poor wretches is that they say whatever they think will please their captors. I forbid the use of means that are equally repugnant to humanity and reason."



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Review: Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words

Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words by Malka Marom

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a fascinating look at Joni's career over the decades in a series of interviews done by a Canadian musician-journalist who Joni knows and is very comfortable with. Her insights into the music business, the challenges she has encountered, and people she has worked are both entertaining and enlightening. She talks at some length about Tom Scott, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and others. Much is covered about individual albums, their creation, and lyrics from this painter-cum-poet singer. Note this audiobook has no audio from Joni herself.

One thing that really struck me that Joni is quoted on about changing studio technology is how in the '70s the marketing expectation of 10 or so tracks on a vinyl LP and the fact that bass sounds widened LP grooves meant prominent rhythm sections and even some instrumentation had to be foregone in the studio. Engineering limitations intruding on art - very interesting.



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Review: Lafcadio's Adventures

Lafcadio's Adventures by André Gide

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Wow, I really dug this Gide tale. Zany and witty, I think it would make a great screwball comedy movie, I hope someone makes it! Then there is this Avant-garde/Surrealist fascination with unmotivated murder, from the André Breton quip, [b:André Breton: Arbiter of Surrealism|17383628|André Breton Arbiter of Surrealism|Clifford Browder|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|24181640] ("“The simplest Surrealist act,” wrote André Breton, founder of Surrealism, “consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.”) to the Surrealist Anti-Novel innovator Camus and [b:The Stranger|49552|The Stranger|Albert Camus|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349927872s/49552.jpg|3324344] ... all these random acts of violence and the dwelling on the psyche that leads to a random killing. It all seems motivated by a modernistic ennui and chilling when artfully done so...



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Review: Lafcadio's Adventures

Lafcadio's Adventures by André Gide

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Wow, I really dug this Gide tale. Zany and witty, I think it would make a great screwball comedy movie, I hope someone makes it! Then there is this Avant-garde/Surrealist fascination with unmotivated murder, from the André Breton quip, [b:André Breton: Arbiter of Surrealism|17383628|André Breton Arbiter of Surrealism|Clifford Browder|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|24181640] ("“The simplest Surrealist act,” wrote André Breton, founder of Surrealism, “consists of dashing down into the street, pistol in hand and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.”) to the Surrealist Anti-Novel innovator Camus and [b:The Stranger|49552|The Stranger|Albert Camus|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349927872s/49552.jpg|3324344] ... all these random acts of violence and the dwelling on the psyche that leads to a random killing. It all seems motivated by a modernistic ennui and chilling when artfully done so...



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Review: Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words

Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words by Malka Marom

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a fascinating look at Joni's career over the decades in a series of interviews done by a Canadian musician-journalist who Joni knows and is very comfortable with. Her insights into the music business, the challenges she has encountered, and people she has worked are both entertaining and enlightening. She talks at some length about Tom Scott, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and others. Much is covered about individual albums, their creation, and lyrics from this painter-cum-poet singer. Note this audiobook has no audio from Joni herself.



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Review: Great Pearl Heist, The: London's Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard's Hunt for the World's Most Valuable Necklace

Great Pearl Heist, The: London's Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard's Hunt for the World's Most Valuable Necklace by Molly Caldwell Crosby

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a tautly-paced fascinating investigation of an international jewel heist on the eve of WWI. Rather like Dr. Crippen's tale, for which there is some character overlap, form Erik Larson's 2006 book Thunderstruck, this is a crime in context, chronological and technological as well as a period pre-cultured pearls when those objects were rarer and more fascinating.



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