ViNull, Off the Record : books

XNA 3D Primer Published – Get a free copy!

Michael C. Neel — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:57:00 GMT

In June of 2006 I officially became a professional author when ASP.NET Pro published my article “Google Can You Hear Me?”. (So eager was I to be published I submitted my code in VB!). Now I’m proud to announce Wrox has published “XNA 3D Primer” as a Wrox Blox (aka eBook).

Why did I write this book? Truth be told, I’ve always admired technical book authors that can teach not only the how, but the why of a subject. It’s no secret I’m a fan of Charles Petzold; ever since I read “Programming Windows 95” (my first Windows version that I wrote applications for) I’ve wanted to join the ranks of great technical authors. I of course am not there yet – this is my first book and I kept it simple by writing a 40 page ebook.

Who did I write this book for? A book is nothing without an audience. This book is written for the line-of-business application developer who is curious about writing 3D games using XNA. XNA is Microsoft’s platform for game development and includes a .Net based managed framework that can be run on Windows PCs and the Xbox 360. You can even sell your games over Xbox Live Indie Games. Some experience with XNA is expected, but not more than working though the getting started beginner’s guides.

What does this book cover? The book is a surface tour of 3D programming. When I first started 3D programming I felt like all the documentation was in Latin. None of the lingo made sense, and I had trouble just figuring out what I needed to search on. The book covers the basics of 3D space and the core math you’ll use over and over again. It then moves on to handling the camera, working with 3D models, collision detection, and ends with methods to animate 3D models. None of these topics are covered in great depth, but I found touching each one gives the “full picture” to the parts of a 3D game. Think of this book more as a guided safari instead of a full expedition into the jungles of XNA 3D.

You said free copy? Yes, though this free copy isn’t without cost.

First, you can buy XNA 3D Primer from Wrox for $6.99 (this is cheaper than my “free” offer below).

Since this is my first published book I wanted to do something special. Initially I was going to donate the money I earned from the book (which isn’t much – this was written for pleasure not profit) to Child’s Play. What is Child’s Play? In their own words:

Since 2003, over 100,000 gamers worldwide have banded together through Child’s Play, a community based charity grown and nurtured from the game culture and industry. Over 5 million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception.

This year, we have continued expanding across the country and the globe. With almost 70 partner hospitals and more arriving every month, you can be sure to find one from the map above that needs your help! You can choose to purchase requested items from their online retailer wish lists, or make a cash donation that helps out Child’s Play hospitals everywhere. Any items purchased through Amazon will be shipped directly to your hospital of choice, so please be sure to select their shipping address rather than your own.

When gamers give back, it makes a difference!

Then I stole got an idea from Seth. Instead of giving the money outright, I offer to anyone interested to make a $30.00 (or more) donation to Child’s Play. Then email me the receipt and I’ll send you a free copy of XNA 3D Primer. You’re making the donation, so you get to take the tax deduction and you get the good feeling that comes when giving a donation.

When I explained the idea to my publisher, Wrox, not only did they love it, they offered to pitch in. On my own I would have been able to give away 50 copies of my book; Wrox has doubled this so I can give away 100!

~~So, the steps are:~~

~~Go to~~ ~~http://www.childsplaycharity.org/~~ ~~and click the PayPal donate link (just under the map)~~
~~Donate $30 (or more)~~
~~Email the PayPal reciept to~~ ~~michael.neel+xna@gmail.com~~ ~~(yes, there is a plus sign in the email)~~
~~I will email you a (DRM-free) PDF of XNA 3D Primer (please give me a day or so, the process is manual)~~

~~Once these 100 copies are gone, that’s it – I’ll update this post with the remaining copies and the total raised for Child’s Play.~~

Update: The giveaway has ended. I had two people take up the offer, thus proving I’m no Seth Godin!

Review: The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold

Michael C. Neel — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:46:56 GMT

Let me start by saying while reading The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine I encountered two other reviews worth note. The first review by Jeff Atwood focused on Alan Turing's personal life as a gay man in the first half of the 1900's and is light on reviewing the actual text of Turing. The second review is by Deirdre Sinnott and does cover the text in depth, but one must carry a certain level skepticism (however undue) toward Deirdre given her relationship to Petzold. I must also alert the reader to my own bias, as I have written well of Petzold in the past and was sent a (signed) copy of Turing. I did however purchase the book before I knew a copy was being sent to me.

For the impatient, busy, or otherwise opposed to reading what has become a lengthy review, I will save you the investment of time by saying now I highly enjoyed this book and would strongly recommend it to any programmer, mathematician, or person with an interest for numbers. I will qualify this recommendation with the disclaimer that if you do not have the time to devote to reading the remainder of this review, you may not have the time needed to read and understand the book's content. I found myself only able to read 10-20 pages a night of this scant 359 page book due to the amount of mental engagement demanded by the subject matter; which only worked to increase my enjoyment. Before we get into the content of the book however, let us take a moment to understand the actors involved...

Alan Turing is our hero in this tale, a brilliant young man who leads a troubled life and finds refuge in a love for numbers. Our narrator, Charles Petzold, shares a great many things in common with Turing, including this love of numbers and the mind to process these numbers in complex ways. I have read many of Petzold's books on Microsoft Windows programming and one constant is that his examples often use calculus or trigonometry equations in a way that the example itself teaches as much on mathematics as the API the text covers. Mathematics and computers, I'm learning, are tied much closer together than most would assume. The last character is myself, the reader, who poses only a basic understanding of college level mathematics (enough to meet CS requirements) and who once wrote a two page mathematical paper that was, in the words of the professor, "an amazing level of insight and effort, but 100% flawed and incorrect". I mention this because while I was not able to understand every formula and proof covered in Turning, this did not detract from my understanding of its significance to the material.

The events in Turing surround Turing's paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem." I will probably offend true mathematicians with the following explanation of the Entscheidungsproblem (and again later in this review), but simply put the Entscheidungsproblem asks for a set of steps one can use to determine if a given formula has a solution (but not what that solution might be). Consider A² + B² = C², which we know is true because we can plug in 3, 4, and 5 and see that it works. What about A³ + B³ = C³? Before we start trying some random numbers it would be nice to know if there even is a solution - and this is what the Entscheidungsproblem is all about. (My method would be to try some random numbers, I'm sure a mathematician would start with a much more reasonable and fruitful approach.)

Turing proved that no, there is not a universal method for determining if a given formula has a solution. Turing was not the first to prove this: 6 weeks before Turing's paper was published in 1936, Alonzo Church published a paper that also proved there was no method for the Entscheidungsproblem. Turing's solution was so novel and unique in it's approach however, that it has the rare honor of also being published, and Turning added a proof to his paper that both methods are equivalent.

Truth. To normal folk truth has a somewhat soft definition, but to mathematicians truth has strong and rigid meaning. You may know something to be true simply through common sense, but in the world of mathematics something must be proven in concrete formula before it can be accepted as true; until then it remains unproven and will not even be considered worthy of assumption of truth in all but the most extreme cases.

To tackle the truth of the Entscheidungsproblem, Turning invented (on paper) a machine that could read a sequence of commands that expressed a method to calculate number and print it as the result. This allowed Turing to work with numbers like π without needing to calculate the exact value (something no easier in 2008 than it was in 1936). Further, Turing devised a method to give every possible sequence of commands a unique number, called a Description Number, or DN. The DN for a machine that computed π might be DN 314,257. Last, Turing invented a machine that could be given a DN and generate the sequence of commands that DN represented, then pass this sequence off to another machine to calculate the result. Turing's machines worked in binary, i.e. 0's and 1's only, so Turning then proved it was not possible given a DN to determine if the calculation machine would ever print a 0 as a result of calculation, thus proving there was no universal method to determine if a given formula had a solution.

Just reciting the list of actors and events doesn't convey the story, we must also discuss the meaning and impact. Much of The Annotated Turing is true to the title; Petzold presents the unmodified original Turing paper and provides annotations to help understand the material, while also citing related material and events. In this capacity, Petzold is unsurpassed - the bibliography for Turing cites over 90 books and papers (including a humble citation of Petzold's own Code) and one is given the impression Petzold read many more books not cited. Petzold's greatest contributing to Turing's work comes at the end however, when he explores the impact Turing had on the fields of mathematics, computer science, and philosophy.

Any developer reading above recognized that Turing machines are computers running programs. What may not have been obvious is that Turing's proof also means that no program can be written that will determine the output of another program. That we cannot break this limitation, and our new platforms, languages, and computers will "at best [...] only do jobs faster."

The philosophic impact is far greater, for we humans qualify as Turing machines. Other philosophers and mathematicians have come very close to a proof that the universe is fundamentally digital, can be expressed as 0's and 1's, and qualifies as a Turing machine. If true, this abandons our romantic notions of free will, for as a Turing machine in a digital universe our actions are calculable. Our perception of free will is merely the misunderstanding of the inability to predict the output of our own Turing machine, the mind.

I do not assert I've laid out a solid argument in the above paragraph - for that you'll need to read Turing and possibly the references cited by Petzold. Having just finished Turing hours before writing this review, and being a person who has rejected the idea of fate, I'm still a little uneasy myself. It's as if Alan Turing sat next to me on the airplane and said, "Oh fate? It exists, I have a mathematical proof here somewhere in my backpack I did last summer when I had some spare time." At least I don't have to tell the major religions of the world I was wrong about them too...

Last, I'd like to mention that in planning for CodeSock this summer, we were able to get Wiley Publishing (publisher of Turing) as a supporter. I requested and was granted 5 copies of The Annotated Turing to give away at the end of the conference.

Developer's Non-Development Book List

Michael C. Neel — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:24:27 GMT

I've been slack lately on posting, mostly because I'm still running around speaking and working on the details of CodeStock. So I figure a "must read book list" is great filler until I finish up that SilverLight 2.0 series of posts. Instead of the normal development and programming books though, I'm going to list the books outside of development I think developers should read.

	Charles Petzold's Code is a book I've recommended before, but no less relevant today than it was when it was first published. In these days of frameworks and garbage collectors it's easy to loose sight of how a computer really works. Why is it binary based? What does a logic gate really look like at the circuit level? What are MSB and LSB and how did they cause the PC/MAC software divide for so long? Petzold is a wonderful storyteller and he is at the height of his craft in these pages.
	Waiting for You Cat to Bark? by the Eisenberg brothers is aimed at marketers struggling to adapt to the information age, but reading through this book you'll start to see how software UI - or the user experience - is fundamental to a successful application and required for a website. Yes, you're the developer - but you're the one who knows the technology and should be in the marketing meeting designing the new site that will increase sales for the company (you and the marketing department are paid from the same source, after all). Also, if you've been tasked with or looking to start writing user and use case stories, this is a far better place to start than most agile books - how better to get a non-IT perspective than from a non-IT book?
	The A-Z of Creative Photography by Lee Frost is what we developers would call a "cookbook" - a list of common problems and their solutions. Now why am I pushing a book on photography to developers? Photography is a great way to learn design basics - and let's face it, you suck at PhotoShop. Just because you own a digital camera doesn't mean you know how to take photos any more than downloading an IDE means you know how to write software. After reading this book, I no longer take those boring family photos people avoid looking at - I'm no professional, but I no longer feel the need to fork over a few hundred bucks to some guy a Sears once a year for family portraits. I also understand how to apply the "rule of thirds" in design.
	Eric Raymond's classic The Cathedral & the Bazaar is a must read for every developer, manager, and person involved in software at any level. The essays in this book are all available online, but they are worth having in printed form. The title essay is a look at how linux bucked the system and released a better products with very little control and it's interesting to read this again now that we have something called agile that's getting popular. Long before it was cool to speak of continuous integration, linux was doing it. Also in the book is an essay on "How to be a Hacker" which, aside from answering the question, has help me in the bigger question - how do I identify and hire a hacker (aka passionate software developer).
	I'm listing Beyond the Bullet Points (Cliff Atkinson) and Presentation Zen (Garr Reyonlds) together because I really don't care which book you choose or if you read both - but you need to read at least one. These books are very well known in the "speaker's circle," but even if you have no plans to become a conference junkie like myself these books are of interest to you. At some point you will be tasked to give a presentation on your (or your team's) software - status, features, etc - and these are the moments that will lead to career boosts. Effective presentations skills are not only about communicating the subject matter, they show how competent at understanding and communicating you are. To be honest, we developers suck worse at communicating than we do at Photoshop - and there is no reason we have to.
	The last book on the list is Seth Godin's The Dip. We all know life is a series of ups and downs; consider this book a manual to handling the downs. Only you truly care about your career and you need to be able to decide if the current "dip" (a temporary setback) you face is one to push through or is really a path to a dead end career and it's time to quit and move on. You could read that other "win-win" book, but Seth is a master of communication and a much more enjoyable author, and I highly recommend subscribing to Seth's Blog.

I'm always interested in non-development titles that help me as a developer; feel free to add recommendations in the comments.