I was chatting with Mark Imbriaco the other day and he mentioned that there were reports that the older MacBook Pro’s could handle 6GB of RAM, and since I recently had one of my 2GB chips go bad so I figured why not and ordered a 4GB chip. I bought my MBP about 15 months ago, the Model Identifier is MacBookPro3,1.  I was going to order from NewEgg but since they were sold out I ended up ordering from MemoryC.

The chip arrived today, I installed it, and everything seems to be working perfectly. The About This Mac windows shows 6GB:

And between a 3GB VM, a bunch of applications, and some large Ruby strings I managed to show that it was using all the memory:

6GB!

-James

I have been busy pushing out features for 22books and I wanted to talk about a couple of them. I don’t want to just pimp my projects on this blog, I want to talk about why I did certain things and the rational behind the decisions and features.

The first new feature that I think is pretty interesting is that we are now allowing users to enter their own Amazon Associates ID and have that ID used on their lists. Any books bought through Amazon from your lists will credit your Amazon account and not ours. The idea for this came from Kevin Fricovsky and when he first suggested it to me I thought it was crazy. My only source of revenue for 22books is through Amazon Associates and this feature seems to short circuit that source of revenue. Then I started to think about it. The people who normally have Amazon Associates IDs are the influentials and bloggers whose support could help 22books tremendously. I know that the majority of 22books users probably won’t enter an associates ID, and I am perfectly willing to trade the revenue of the lists created by those influentials for their work and support. I think this is similar to the approach Jason Calacanis takes, reward your top contributors and they will reward you.

The second big feature is the ability to easily share a list on your blog or site. This is a feature that I have high hopes for as I feel it really increases the usefulness of 22books and should also help to lead more people to 22books. While developing this feature I wanted to make it as easy as possible to share a list, so I ripped off the site that did it the best in my opinion: youtube. Youtube took off because it was so easy to take a video and embed it with your site or blog and I wanted to make it just as easy to embed a book list (although I don’t have any delusions that people will want to share book lists as much as youtube videos). Here is the simple UI I went with:

A user can copy and paste the code from the embed textbox and be ready to go. Users can also click customize and change some settings and see a live preview. I was also on the fence on how to do the actual sharing, I decided to go with javascript but I might re-visit that in the future and offer a flash version as well. Here is a small sample of an embedded list (the books I have read so far this year):

I have also deployed a new 22books blog (using simplelog!) that includes an rss feed where I will blog about interesting new lists and new site features. Check it out here.

-James

I launched 22books six days ago now and wanted to blog a brief update. So far I have been pretty happy with the response, most people have complimented the UI, and most importantly lots of people have told how easy it is use. I submitted the site to a handful of web application directory style sites and blogs and that has driven a little bit of traffic, right around 2,500 visits. I plan on doing a post about what has worked and what hasn’t from the promotion stand-point.

I just pushed out an update to the site that allows you to assign a category to your list (like favorites, author list, etc). One of the categories was inspired by Ben Carey who created a list called “Books that changed my life”. Another user followed his example and I really liked the idea so I wanted to encourage more people to do it.

I have a many more features planned (and need to update the site to Rails 2.0), but I am going to take some time off for the holidays (although I might work some after Christmas).

-James

If you have known me for very long you probably realized at some point that I have a ton of ideas and crazy plans, but I usually have a pretty hard time following through. This is most evident in the number of domain names and half-written projects I have laying around. Well, I think I may have finally broken myself of this habit. I followed through and got AutoTest.NET out, even if it still needs lots of work. I took over The Lounge, even though that was kind of cheating since I just had to install and configure existing code.

Now I am ready to launch 22books, the rails side project I have been working on for a couple months. It’s a pretty simple site that is centered around the creating and sharing of book lists. There are plenty of book sites out there, but 22books is different than most because I focused more on just book lists and less about cataloging all of your books.

I approached this project with a couple goals. The first goal was to give people a place to easily create book lists, but the second goal was to create a large set of standard lists. Standard lists would be things like a complete list of Kurt Vonneguts works, or Booker Prize winnders, etc.

I tried to make the site as simple and easy to use as possible, I will add more features in future releases, but I hope to keep the simplicity.

Check it out and let me know what you think. I am going to blog this weekend about what tools/plugins I used to build it.

-James

Sitepoint is giving away electronic copies of Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications. I am currently reading through the new edition of Agile Web Development with Rails, but I went ahead and downloaded just to check it out.

-James

Ok, I have been trying to write something up here about the books I have been reading. But I am way too far behind, so I am going to get a bunch out of the way in one post. I have also decided that in the future I am not going to review books I don’t like, I will just pretend like I never read them. I might make a post like this a running story like “Books of 2007″ instead of posting them to the main feed… not sure yet.

“The Winds of War” (Herman Wouk) – This was an incredible book and I can’t wait to start War and Remembrance. Its an amazing epic story set in the years before the United States joined World War II. The story centers around a naval officer who ends up in the middle of a plethora of historic events.

“The Second World War: A Complete History” (Martin Gilbert) – I have read a number of books about specific parts of WWII, but I have never read a good overall book about the war and had to put the specific books in context based on my public school education. This book was exactly what I was looking for. The book covers the war from beginning to end with a large focus on the innocent lives taken during the war and a slight british slant.

3 Augusten Burroughs books (“Running with Scissors: A Memoir”, “Dry: A Memoir” , “Sellevision: A Novel” )- I enjoyed Running with Scissors when I read it, but after reading some of the doubts about its accuracy I have kind of soured on it a little bit. I know a memoir doesn’t have to be pure fact, but its hard not to feel duped when presented with the idea that much of it could be false. The other two were readable but nothing special.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)” (J. K. Rowling) – Of course I read this one, who hasn’t? It was excellent and I can’t think of anyway she could have possibly ended the series in a better way.

“The Last True Story I’ll Every Tell: An Accidental Soldier’s Account of the War in Iraq” (John Crawford) – This book was a great account of a reservist’s time in the war. It really gives you a feeling for what it must be like fighting over there and the end is heartbreaking.

“A Dirty Job: A Novel” (Christopher Moore) – This was a fun beach read for the summer. Very funny but gets a little lost at the end.

All caught up!

-James

I ran across this book in Borders and was instantly intrigued. I have heard of some of the recent praise for Ellis’s work so the idea of reading his first book, written when he was 19, was a compelling one.

This book gives the reader a feel for a group of people in a certain place at a certain time. It doesn’t have a wealth of character development, or a traditional plot, but rather immerses the reader in this environment. The environment in this case is filled with drugs, bisexual encounters, pimps, dead bodies, snuff films, and worse. You get the impression that the people in this environment don’t even realize the absurdity of what they are doing, or really have any feelings at all. The protagonist is the one person who starts to realize the insanity of what is going on, as each encounter gets darker and worse. Throughout the story the protagonist is also trying to work out his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, but this part of the plot is more symbolic about the protagonist’s reluctance to go back to this city and lifestyle, and less about an actual human relationship.

Overall I enjoyed the book as much as you can enjoy a book about such dark things. This book doesn’t try to answer the question of whether humans do evil things because of internal evil (original sin) or because of the influences of soceity (naturalism) but rather just shows how messed up things can be and sometimes are.

-James

I recently finished a couple of different books by Nick Hornby and have come to the conclusion that Nick Hornby is our greatest living critic. I am not sure who beat him for the National Book Critics Circle Award, but they shouldn’t have.

The first book was Songbook, I actually started reading this book a couple months back but finally got around to finishing it. In this book Hornby talks about 31 different songs that mean something to him. I tried my best to find each song and listen to it while reading the essay about it, but couldn’t find them all. Hornby shows such a passion and love for songs, but is also willing to look at the work in context and from a critics perspective. My favorite song from the pack is definitly “Your Love is the place that I Come From” by Teenage Fanclub.

The second book was Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt which is the second installment of columns written by Hornby for The Believer. In each of the columns Hornby details the books he has bought and read for the month. I loved his previous collection of the columns, and this one was even better. I am very much like Hornby in that I often buy books that I don’t read for months (or years!) but still go out every weekend and buy a couple more, it is great to find someone else with the sickness. 

Hornby does an incredible job of being both a critic and a true lover of music and books. The only bad thing is that I have now read all of his books (expect for some sportswriting anthologies that I might have to check out) and have to wait for more.

-James

This book was universally praised when initially released and every trip to the bookstore I would spot it on the shelf and consider taking it home. It wasn’t until I saw the new copy of the book with the movie cover on it that I decided I had to pick it up since there were still a few copies of the book with the original cover left. I detest the movie cover edition of books. It is sacrilege to change the original work based on an adaptation to the screen that usually falls short of the original. I think the only book I own with a movie cover is Fight Club, and that is because I absolutely had to read the book after seeing the movie and it was the only version available. Everything is Illuminated sat on my shelf for a couple months after I brought it home until I again selected it from the stack of books to read next.

Everything Is Illuminated is an excellent book that makes use of some interesting writing techniques to tell a unique and incredible story. The book comes dangerously close to being too clever, but in the end the story and writing won me over. The basic premise of the story is that the main character, who shares the same name as the author, is going to the Ukraine to try and find a woman who saved his Jewish grandfather from the Nazis. Now the clever part is how the story is told. The book consists of a number of different stories being told at the same time in alternating “chapters”. The first story is from a book being written by the fictional main character about his ancestors and the shetl they live in. This story has a supernatural quality and in some places includes what must be intentional historical ignorance (but is often pointed out by Amazon reviewers who just don’t get that these are chapters from a fictional book, a book within a book).

The second story is written by Alex, a young tour guide who was hired to help Jonathan to find what he was looking for in the Ukraine. It details their trip through the Ukraine and everything they encounter. Alex’s grandfather is their driver, and their dog Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. is along for the ride as well.

The third story consists of letters from Alex being written at the present and sent to Jonathan. These letters are often mentioned for Alex’s humorous use of the English language but more importantly are a method of foreshadowing the events in the second story (and in some ways the first story).

Through all three of these narratives a wonderful, sometimes hysterically funny, sometimes heartbreakingly sad, story is woven together.

-James

Simple is the new complex. The goal of software used to be to create the most powerful and complex piece of software possible. Look at Visual Studio and Eclipse. Now compare it to TextMate, the most talked about IDE (if you can even call it an IDE) in recent months. Compare the Yahoo or MSN homepage to the Google homepage. Compare Outlook to Gmail. Compare Yahoo or MSN Messenger to Google Talk. Compare a fancy animated presentation with a Takahashi Method presentation. The goal isn’t to create the largest most complex powerful application anymore, it’s to create the simplest application without sacrificing essential functionality.

Unfortunately it’s not as easy as it sounds. Creating an application that does what you need it to, but remains simple, is incredible difficult and tricky. The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) by John Maeda, an MIT professor,  is a collection of 10 laws about attaining simplicity . The book has large type, in a small binding, and is still only 100 pages long. (It would surely be hypocrisy to write a massive book on simplicity.) Each law makes a simple statement and then discusses how it works and how it is applied often including useful examples.

As I read each of the ten laws I could quickly see how these laws have been used and applied in recent applications. One great example is law number 2 which extols the benefits of organization as a means of making something simpler. The law states:

“Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.”

Office 2007 is an excellent example of this. The new ribbon interface took one of the most complex applications around and tried to simply it by organizing the essential features and hiding the rest. Whether you like the feature or not it is hard to argue that it doesn’t make using Word much simpler.

The line from the book that sticks with me the most is the following:

“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.”

I think this is a great statement that can really be applied to many things in life. In particular it plays a huge role in good writing. Subtracting obvious or meaningless words and adding meaningful words is a sure way to improve your writing. For instance this sentence:

“The fact of the matter is that SubText is a cool blogging engine”

is much better simplified to:

“SubText is a cool blogging engine”

The removed text is just meaningless complexity.

It’s probably needless complexity at this point to say it; but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I encourage all of you to pick it up and spend the couple of hours it will take to read through it.

-James