Rhonda Tipton's WebLog

I am happy to say that I made it through my first semester back to school after 15+ years. I took Modern Astronomy as I needed a Natural Science credit and made an A … woohoo!

Now I am getting ready for my second semester and plan on taking two classes: Programming in Java and Drawing for the Non-Art Major.  I have realized how expensive the textbooks can get. I paid $110 for my used Astronomy text last semester and sold it back for $57, which I am told is not too shabby. I have just ordered my books for next semester and they came to $131 and that is just for the Java Programming text. The book and supplies for the Art class is still TBD.

I have had a couple of friends suggest some services in which you can rent books or buy them at a lot cheaper rate than the campus bookstore.

BookRenter.com – Textbook rental service
DealOz.com – Site that helps you find the best deals on books

Just by doing a simple Google Search, I see several other textbook rental services.

Chegg.com
CampusBookRentals.com
Skoobit.com

I think I will stick to what my friends are recommending, but if anyone has any opinions, comments or praises for any of the services listed or know of a service that has not been mentioned, feel free to leave me a comment.

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Happy learning.
^..^

Microsoft Visual Studio Tips: 251 Ways to Improve Your Productivity
Author: Sara Ford
Publisher: Microsoft Press
No. Pages: 229

I pre-ordered the this book back in August and I have to say this is the best book on the Visual Studio IDE that I have ever run across.  It is a great collection of tips taken from Sara Ford’s ever-popular Visual Studio Tip of the Day.  I really like the “Sara Aside” sections where extra insight is given about the tip.

There are tips for (but not limited to) the following -

• Dealing with the editor
• Searching files
• Development environment
• Debugging
• Design time tools

If you have to spend any amount of time in Visual Studio then this book is definitely worth the money as I will be referring back to it time and time again. I am also recommending it at my office.  Especially for beginners to .NET.

Happy Reading.

LINQ In Action 
Author: Fabrice Marguerie, Steve Eichert, Jim Wooley
Publisher: Manning
No. Pages: 600

From Amazon

LINQ in Action is a fast-paced, comprehensive tutorial for professional developers. This book explores what can be done with LINQ, shows how it works in an application, and addresses the emerging best practices. It presents the general purpose query facilities offered by LINQ in the upcoming C# 3.0 and VB.NET 9.0 languages. A running example introduces basic LINQ concepts. You’ll then learn to query unstructured data using LINQ to XML and relational data with LINQ to SQL. Finally, you’ll see how to extend LINQ for custom applications. 

I just finished the book LINQ In Action.  All I can say is wow.  There is so much to cover with this technology and this book does a very good job of doing just that.

The book starts off with the origins and goals of LINQ then jumps right in with how to use and extend it.  Most if not all aspects of LINQ to Objects, LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML are all covered very well.  The examples are easy to follow and understand which is important for me as I tend to learn from replicating the samples.  Most of the code snippets are in C#, but there are some VB.NET samples as well (where XML Literals are discussed).

The level of the book ranged from fairly easy to understand to advanced topics.  In my opinion, just about every level of developer should learn something from this book.  The parts I did not understand will come later as I will be referencing this book for the foreseeable future.

C# In Depth
Author: Jon Skeet
Publisher: Manning
No. Pages: 392

Jon Skeet does a great job of demonstrating the differences between the features of C# 1, 2 and 3.  An abundant amount of detail is provided on the history of the features and how they evolved into C# 3.  There are also some great analogies used throughout the book.

In my opinion this book is a perfect size.  It is 392 pages, but really seems like more due to the amount of detail.

Some of the major items this book covers –

• Generics
• Delegates
• Anonymous Methods
• Partial Types
• Expression Trees

In closing, this is a great book for intermediate to advanced developers.  I believe even beginners will pick up some great concepts.

Happy reading…

Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day
Author: Gina Trapani
Publisher: Wiley
No. Pages: 300

This is a great book.  I came away with so many ideas on how to be more productive.  Most of the tricks discussed are cross-platform which means you are shown how to use it in Windows and on the Mac.

Below are some of the hacks that have helped me:

• Hack 18: Automatically backup your files
• Hack 29: Batch resize photos
• Hack 34: Carry your life on a flash drive
• Hack 42: Use GMail as an Internet hard drive
• Hack 52: Organize My Documents
• Hack 61: Setup a morning dash
• Hack 71: Extend your web browser
• Hack 72: Get 10 must have bookmarklets

This book is also a perfect companion to the Lifehacker website.  It will stay on my shelf for a long time to come.

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Happy Reading!!!

Pro C# With .NET 3.0
Author: Andrew Troelsen
Publisher: Apress (January 15, 2007)
No. Pages: 1250

This book is great for just about any level (Junior-Senior). The first couple of chapters are beginner level with a great introduction to the C# language and the .NET 3.0 framework.

The sample code in this book is great and fairly easy to understand.

Below are some of the major items this book covers –

• C# Language in general
• .NET Assemblies and Libraries
• Web Applications and XML Web Services
• Introduction to WPF, WCF and WF
• Introduction to LINQ

Again, this is a great reference book for any level of developer. It was bought for me by my company and I have gone back to it over and over again.

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Happy Reading!!!

This is a list of books that I plan on reading. I am trying to read more, so listing what I plan to read here is my first step toward commitment.

Pro C# with .NET 3.0 – by Andrew Troelsen (Reading now)
A complete A-to-Z reference for using C# with the .NET 2.0 platform and the .NET 3.0 extensions.

Anxious 9 to 5 – by Larina Kase, Joe Vitale, Martin M. Antony (Reading now)
This book offers simple and effective techniques to get your workplace anxiety under control once and for all so you can enjoy work and be more productive.

The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks – by Scott Allen, Jeff Atwood, Wyatt Barnett, Jon Galloway, Phil Haack
An ASP.NET 2.0 book that just helps you get things done! This book contains a collection of 101 best practice, object oriented solutions that you can easily adapt to your own projects.

Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day – by Gina Trapani
The 88 “life hacks” — clever shortcuts and lesser-known, faster ways to complete a task — in this book are some of the best in Lifehacker.com’s online archive.

ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in Action – by Darren Neimke
This book demystifies portal design, development, maintenance, and deployment. In over 400 code-packed pages, ASP.NET expert Darren Neimke shares his deep understanding of the controls and services that make up the portal framework.

.NET Gotchas – by Venkat Subramaniam
The ultimate guide for efficient, pain-free coding, .NET Gotchas from O’Reilly contains 75 common .NET programming pitfalls–and advice on how to work around them.

Dreaming in Code – by Scott Rosenberg
This book documents the state of software, the Internet, and everything circa 2006 through the lens of Chandler, an as-yet-unfinished software application for the management of personal information.

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I’d better get busy reading…

Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in C# 2005: From Novice to Professional
Author: Matthew MacDonald
Publisher: Apress (January 27, 2006)
No. Pages: 1184

This is a great book for someone needing to learn ASP.NET using the C# language. The author goes over everything from building a simple web page to web parts. The examples are easy to follow and understand enabling a beginner to be productive with this book.

Most of the examples in this book build on each other, so by the time you are finished with a chapter, you have a working web application that you can continue to build upon.

Advanced ASP.NET developers will likely not gain as much from this book as beginner to immediate developers. Since this book covers so many aspects of ASP.NET, it is a book that I will reference for some time.

The free ebook version of this book was extremely useful as well.

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Happy Reading!!!