Book : Data Science by John D Kelleher & Brendan Tierney

I was chatting with Brendan Tierney and the subject of books came up. He mentioned his Data Science book and I figured I would give it a go. I wasn’t sure I would be able to cope with it, as it is not my area of expertise, but he assured me it was more of an introduction to the subject, so one Audible credit later and I was off.

When judging books on Audible there are two criteria. There is the content, and then there is the voice narration.

Having just gone through the Dune series again, and recently doing loads of Larry Niven books, including the Ringworld series and the Fleet of Worlds series, I was a bit spoilt by the voice narration of fiction books.

I struggled at first with the voice narration on this book. It was clear, but the guys accent was grating on me. At one point I stopped listening, then realised I was being a dick and went back to it. I’ve now finished it, and I’ve actually started listening to it again. I’m sure I missed some stuff on my first pass through…

I’m not going to lie, there were some bits that definitely went over my head, but for the most part it was pretty easy to follow. It talks more about the general approaches to data science, rather than focusing on specific bits of technology. This was a good move by the authors because it means the book stays relevant, even as the “what’s cool today?” technologies keep changing…

The sections related to data protection and the ethical issues with data science were cool. I found myself talking over some of these points with myself while I was driving… 🙂

If you are new to Data Science, or just have a passing interest in it like me, I think this book is worth a shot.

Cheers

Tim…

Prize Winners : Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Integration and OA Framework Development and Extension Cookbook

A couple of weeks ago I started a competition to win 2 copies of Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Integration and OA Framework Development and Extension Cookbook by Andy Penver. Thanks to Packt for donating the prizes. The competition closed yesterday and the lucky winners are:

  • Arun
  • Ajay Sharma

I’ve sent your email addresses to my contact at Packt, who will contact you to deliver your e-book.

Cheers

Tim…

Win A free copy of the Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Integration and OA Framework Development and Extension Cookbook

Following on from last weeks book competition, the kind people at Packt have offered another prize. This time 2 e-book copies of
Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Integration and OA Framework Development and Extension Cookbook by Andy Penver.

The competition will run for about two weeks, so I’ll be selecting the winners on 10th May 2013. To enter, comment on this post, telling me why you think you need this book and what you hope to gain from it. The two lucky winners will be selected based on their comments on this post (not Facebook, Google+ or Twitter), so try and be creative or you won’t stand out from the crowd. 🙂 The winners will be contacted via email, so please use your real email address when posting your comment.

You can read more about the contents of the book and the author on the Packt website, but here is a little marketing message about the book.

“Oracle E-Business Suite R12 Integration and OA Framework Development and Extension Cookbook is an
extensive guide for both beginners and intermediate users that describes how to develop extensions in Oracle
E-Business Suite. The book also discusses some of Oracle E-Business Suite’s vital features, such as creating and
distributing BI Publisher template files to the file system, authoring, managing, delivering highly-formatted
documents using BI Publisher and configuring a browser.

This is a practical hands-on guide, designed to demonstrate the newest features in Oracle E-Business Suite
Release 12. With an in-depth knowledge of personalizing OA Framework pages in Oracle E-Business Suite,
readers will not only be able to install JDeveloper with OA Extension and set up a development environment,
but also deploy an OA Framework page within Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.”

Good Luck!

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Connor, death threats will not work this time. 🙂

Real World Book Shops…

I’ve had a Waterstones gift token knocking around since my birthday, so I ventured into town yesterday to see if there were any technical books I could spend my pennies on. There’s a pretty big Waterstones in Birmingham, so I thought I was in with a shot at finding something worthwhile in there. How wrong I was…

The place was full of “… For Dummies”  books for old versions of Windows and Office, along with a vast collection of really old reference books. If anyone needs a “Teach yourself VB 5.0” manual, you know where to go!

When it’s my money I’m spending I almost always buy from Amazon. Part of me wants to support real world book stores, but the truth of the matter is they are really crappy for anything other than the latest bestseller novels, which are still typically more expensive than the equivalent from Amazon.

In the end I bought Ghost Story, the new Jim Butcher book from The Dresden Files series. I’ll see if I can spend the rest of the cash on the Waterstones online store. Must tell family that if they want to waste money on birthday presents for me, they should do it on Amazon gift certificates. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…