Category: books

The Phoenix Project

I wanted to read this book for some time. I thought it was going to be a technical book but it was a novel and felt like a thriller! and IT thriller if you can believe it. While I was reading it, I felt quite tense at some points, like, “I have been there!”. Although I am not a developer, I felt the pain mentioned in the book. I have been like that I spend many years in a good devops environment. When I started there, I didnt have a clue what devops menat but I learnt on the job training. I wish the networks world could be more “devops” but as we nearly always relay in 3rd party vendors to provide equipment, they always want you to lock in their product. Still, it is possible, but you need to have the drive (and time) and some support from your employer.

One of the things that surprise me from the devops methodology is that is based in manufacturing. I read in the past about Kaizen but now, I can see the connection. One of the main references is the book, The Goal.

And another very important point, nothing of these things work if people are not on board. You can have the smartest people around but if people dont buy in, nothing is accomplished.

So I like the idea of quick iterations (return of investment is received by the company and customer sooner) where you get earlier feedback, interactions and communication between all teams, awareness for the business that IT is everywhere, constant testing/experimentation (chaos monkey, antifragility), kanban boards / flow models to visualize process and constraints (WIP), constant learning, etc.

It was interesting at some point in the book where the main characters where interviewing the top people in the company to gather info about what is important for them and what means successful results and bad days. Then map all that to IT process. From there you can see what is clearly important and what is not. So you can focus in value.

Other things I learned is about the types of work we do:

  • Business projects
  • Internal projects
  • Changes
  • Unplanned work

And that unplanned work is the killer for any attempt to have a process like a manufacturing plant.

As well, based on “The Goal”, there are a lot of mentions about the “Three Ways”:

  • Find your constraint: maximize flow -> reduce batch, reduce intervals, increase quality to detect failures before moving to next steps.
  • Exploit your constraint: fast and constant flow of feedback.
  • Subordinate your constraint: high-trust culture -> dynamic, disciplined and scientific approach to experiment and risks.

In summary, I enjoyed the book. It was engaging, easy to digest and I learned!

Doom

I have never been a hardcore gamer but I remember spending many hours playing DOOM2 in PC. I never played online but I have definitely clear memories of how fast paced was the game and the kind of dark/horror atmosphere. It was quite unique at that time. And to be honest, I didnt feel it was that violent, keeping that I was a teenager and the shooting of Columbine was recent. For the record, I never completed the last phase.

I finish this book about the creators of DOOM and its origins. I had heard about John Carmack from a good friend but I never dag further in the subject so it was interesting to find out about the origins of Carmack and John Romero, how the learned to program and got to create a new culture/wave of games. I like how the games evolved in the book (although it was released in 2004) and nowadays you see how far everything has gone from technology to business size.

I didnt know Carmack was behind all the 3D engines, the evolution of them, the first usage of dedicated 3D graphic cards, etc. I think the last first person shooter I played was “Return to the Castle of Wolfenstein” and it was really good. And this was I managed to finish it. After there was a crazy about playing online that somehow I never got interested. I remember one of the games that hook me at that time was Commandos. What a great series of games was that.

It is interesting how their success was as well later their doom…. they enjoyed working long hours and playing, how the different personalities set them for the stardom. But once money and fame came, things changed and seems all fell apart.

So yes, it was a nice read and good culture fix.

RISC-V

I have been reading this book during my lunch brakes for several month. Most of the times just a couple of pages to be honest as generally my knowledge of CPU architecture is very poor. I really enjoyed this subject in Uni and this book was one of my favourites during that time. It was like a bible of CPU architecture. And Patterson is an author in both books.

I remember that there were too main architectures RISC vs CISC. In a very summarize way, RISC were simple instruction that were easy to parallelized and executed (with more instructions to execute) and CISC were complex instruction (few to execute) but that were difficult to scale. So let’s say simplicity (RISC) “won” the race in CPU architecture.

RISC-V is an open standard so anybody can produce CPUs for executing those instruction. So you can easily get your hands dirty getting a board.

One of the reason of RISC-V is to learn from all the architectures mistakes and provide a design that works for any type of processor (embedded to super-computers), is efficient, modular and stable.

The book compares RISC-V with current ISAS from ARM-32, MIPS-32, Intel x86-32, etc. Based on cost, simplicity, performance , isolation from implementation, room for growth, code size and ease of programming.

There were many parts of the book that I couldn’t really understand but I found the chapter 8 quite interesting. This is about how to compute data concurrently. The best know architecture is Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD). The alternative is Vector architecture. And this is used in RISC-V. The implementation details are too our of my league.

In summary, it was a nice read to refresh a bit my CPU architecture knowledge.

The Black Swan

I finished this book a couple of days ago. Very interesting. It is about how not linear or logical are philosophy, economics and life. About how we try to find logic/causality to everything. How history only teaches what we have only discovered. How we can’t predict properly, and much less financial market using Gaussian and Bayeasian models when these are non-linar systems, how we should run away from “experts”, how the academy is built in a status-quo that can’t be refreshed. It is intense, it touches a lot of subjects. And sometimes I feel I get it, and later on I am not sure. Examples like the turkey that is feed for 100 days, and very likely “thinks” that will last forever, until without knowing, Thanksgiving comes, are brilliant. Similar examples for Casanova (who survived any type of incident) and NYC (like Casanova but at city level).

A black swan is considered something very unlikely to happen that actually happens or similarly, that something very likely to happen, it doesnt.

The book was written in 2007 just before the 2008 financial meltdown so its attacks to the “risk” management can’t fit better.

It uses references from Daniel Kahneman who some years later wrote a great book about how we (badly) reason. And won a nobel prize in Economics… funny enough, that’s a prize who Nassim attacks a lot around the book. As well, I enjoyed the part regarding the application of chaos theory/fractals from Benoit Mandelbrot (that I read from his book) in the markets. He mentions many other authors like Karl Popper (whom I have never paid attention), Herni Poincare, etc. As well, he mentions Godel.

The entries about Skepticism and Empiricism are really great. From how started, how it is related to the black swans and how Medicine killed more people than cure them until not long ago. And when I was reading about Sextus Empiricus, I wasnt sure if he was joking, but I was really surprised by the discovery of this philosopher/physician.

I think I need to read it again.

War and Peace

For some time I wanted to read “War and Peace“. It has taken me just over a month although initially I had my doubts about the book. I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy it. Why did I read it? Apart from recommendation from the few people I follow/read in the Internet, it is because I think reading this type of books will make me wiser, smarter, find the solutions to the mysteries of the universe and life (it is not 42), etc etc. It never happens. But at least, I try to learn something new, soaks up new experiences, conversations, etc.

I liked the intro about the book and Tolstoy life. A highlight of that is he tried to remove copyrights of his novels, he belonged to old nobility family and fought in the Crimean war.

The book is focused in the Napaleonic Wars in Russia. I was surprised how strong was the French influence in Russia. The nobility was mainly French educated and there are parts of the book where some characters mention how bad is their Russian.

It is a long book, thought was going to be boring but was engaging. I guess it is an stereotopic: Russian things are boring, grey, dull. It is luck of knowledge of Eastern countries (real) culture. It felt like a “Pillar of the Earth” + a soup-opera. But it wasn’t cheesy at all. So see how deep and different is each character. How they evolve. There is some (life) philosophy (mainly from Pierre during his spell in the front) that really got me. It is something that I really believe in: simple life. And there are a lot pages about (the complexity / meaning) of love.

But mainly the book is about History. I have learnt history mainly based in big characters and actions. But Tolstoy’s point is History is not really that, is not that rational/causistic as we try to believe (and write). He focus several times in Napoleon. How he was a genius in some battles but then how he failed in Russia campaign. Tolstoy argues that is not just Napoleon’s action that produce those outcomes. It was everything around. But we try to focus and justify outcomes in just one fact.

The novel doesnt really have an end. It just ends. It is not made in Holiwood. So it is nice.

Foundation and Empire

I finished yesterday the second book of the Foundation series. It was a short book but quite engaging. I am really impress how Asimov can create so different characters in the book. And really nice twist in the story line. Looking forwards for the next one.

Feeding your demons

This is not another cooking recipe. This is a book a finished this week. Initially I was a bit worried that it was going to be a pain. As usual, I dont remember where I got the recommendation for the book. But after starting reading it, I didnt regret it. It hit me. The concept of feeding your demons it based on the teachings of Machig Labdron. She was a Buddhist master that developed a new way of meditation. She faces problems with a different approach, instead of fighting them (very western style) tries to connect, understand, nurture and merge with them.

I remember while doing my headspace meditation some time ago, one week exercise was to focus in somebody you hated and wish then the best. It was hard but I felt at peace after that. This is the “Chod” method in a very simple way. I liked the example of Hercules fighting the Hydra. Whenever he cut a head, another grew and there was an immortal head. So that’s how we normally deal with our problems (internal or external) fighting them, trying to defeat them. But unfortunately, our mental/philosophical/live issues always come back alive like the hydra. So we need a different approach.

The book give you plenty of examples where you can use the Chod method. And explain the different types of demons, finishing with the main one, the ego. At the end of the day, that’s the source of all our problems. And this is something that reminds me too to Stoicism.

From my point of view, my main demon is relationships/feelings. My excuse is I dont want to lose my autonomy/independency. I dont want to get hurt. I dont want to show my weakness. It is fear to be loved and love.

It is something I still need to work on, not fight.

I take this as a new and important skill in my mental toolbox. And I need to practice it. Theory is not enough.

Seneca

I have been read a couple of books about or related to Stoicism in the last couple of years and one the next has been “Letters from a Stoic” of Seneca.

It is a sort book but it is interesting. You have an introduction about Seneca’s life before going through the letters. I liked as it gives some background about the person. As well, I didnt remember/know he was Nero‘s teacher and advisor.

It seems the letter were written during his exile and they cover a lot of aspects of his life and Stoic philosophy. It covers topics like poverty and richness from a Stoic point of view, keeping in mind that he was a rich man can be a bit surprising but it takes his wealth the Stoic way, if it goes, he will be fine. As well, touches a very interesting subject like slavery, that was the base of all Rome economy. He states everybody is a slave of something. The “free” romans were slave of vices: power, money, etc. And clearly says you need to treat a slave like you want to be treated, so it looks like it reduces the slavery to a concept of labor contract, and I think there is touch of “Christianity” in some comments. He was contemporary of Jesus. Maybe a coincidence.

He writes about many subjects like how you need to speak slowly, only mourn/cry the minimum time (very stoic), suicide vs illness (stoic), not taking hot baths, Scipio of Africa, olive trees, Socrates, vegetarianism, excess of alcohol, Socrates, Pythagoras, dont have a night life, negative of having bad companies, etc.

So I liked it, it wasn’t a hardcore book about philosophy so you read it like the memories of an interesting person in history.

Chips Water Innovation

This is a bit old news. But I found interesting the connection between chips manufacturing and water. And this is brilliant.

I want the world to be dependent on me, but I don’t want to be dependent on anybody else.” I don’t think it’s going to happen.

As well, I left for granted that all innovation for COVID vacciones was just miraculous, but it seems it was something feeding from successful innovation strategies.

So moving forwards, and I guess that should be valid to any country, you need to invest in innovation, R&D. It is expensive but it is worth long run. See TSMC.

Prince of Persia

A couple of months ago I was reading about how the game DOOM was ported to a product from a CDN company. I remember I played a bit and brought back good memories when I was playing DOOM2. Even the code was published in github. Somehow I clicked to the book about DOOM and found about a book about Prince of Persia. I bought both at the end.

The book about POP was quick to read. It is “just” the journals of the author across some years. It is interesting how much has changed the industry since late 80s. He though the gaming industry wasn’t going to last long. 30 years later we have even “e-sports”! I didnt know he wrote the whole game. I assumed this kind of projects were managed by big teams. But those times, things were simpler and a good hacker could do those things. And he was super young! And before that he wrote the game “Karateka” that I dont remember. Anyway, Prince of Persia was one of my favourite games! And now you can still play online. I think I played a bit the second part but that was it. I always kept loyal to the first part. As a journal you can read the struggles of the person. He wanted to make movies but then the gaming thing was always calling him. I think it is quite interesting what he did as he was travelling, writing scripts and then video games in the late 80s and 90s.