I finished the lastest WordPress upgrade. It was a bit of a pain because I had to update MySQL before I could upgrade WordPress. But, now everything is up to date.

Finished Once a Runner: A Novel by John L. Parker. Once a Runner tells the tale of Quenton Cassidy, a runner at Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He’s less than a second away when the political and cultural turmoil of the Vietnam War leaks into the school’s athletic department. Cassidy is suspended after getting involved in a protest within the athletic department. Coached by Bruce Denton a graduate student and former Olympic gold medalist, Quenton gives up his scholarship, girlfriend, and his future to train for a head-to-head match with the greatest miler in history.

Once a Runner captures the essence of what it takes to be a competitive runner, devoting your life to the love of racing. I found the book extremely entertaining and accurate. The training that Quenton Cassidy performs in Once a Runner is similar to the training I used to do when I was racing years ago. Runners, ex-runners, or anyone interested in competitive running will find this book enjoyable.

Finished reading Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) by Steven Levitt. Levitt argue that many seemingly mysterious events of everyday life aren’t mysteries at all. The events can be examined and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals. Levitt believes the Roe v. Wade decision preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. In a section that may scare or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that most parenting methods don’t really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun.

Freakonomics is an easy quick read. Levitt turns an otherwise boring topic of economics into a fascinating book. I’m looking forward to reading the next book SuperFreakonomics.

Finished reading The Copper Bracelet By Jeffery Deaver. The Copper Bracelet is the sequel to The Chopin Manuscript. The book continues with Harold Middleton as he’s drawn into a terrorist plot to engage India and Pakistan in nuclear war. Travelling between Nice, London, Moscow, and Kashmir to avert a nuclear disaster, Middleton is unaware his target has changed and the terrorist plan is far more diabolical than he believes. Harold must discover the identity of the Scorpion in time to halt an event that could start World War III.

The Copper Bracelet is a collaboration of 16 writers. Jeffery Deaver started the story and allowed the other writers to create a chapter and affect the books plot. I was amazed the book was just as good, if not better than, The Chopin Manuscript. If you liked The Chopin Manuscript you will love The Copper Bracelet.

Finished reading Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy. The book asserts that execution is a discipline integral to a successful strategy. Bossidy states it is the business leaders’ responsibility to make execution part of the corporate culture. It contains details of both successful and unsuccessful executions at corporations such as Dell, Johnson & Johnson, and Xerox. The examples support not only their how-to method for bringing execution to the forefront but also the need for it.

At first glimpse execution is a duh topic, we know you need execution to get something done, but this book sums up that topic and illustrates concrete methods to improve your teams execution. This is a solid book with great information written by industry leaders. The authors don’t bring anything new or ground breaking to light in Execution. With that said, new isn’t always better. Old tested ways can be better than a new theoretical idea. It’s good to get a reminder of solid time test concepts.

Finished reading The Chopin Manuscript by Jeffery Deaver. Former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton has a previously unknown score by Frederic Chopin. But he is unaware that, locked within its handwritten notes, lies a secret that threatens the lives of thousands of Americans. Accused of murder, pursued by federal agents, and targeted by assassins Middleton races from Poland to America to uncover the mystery of the manuscript. The largest threat will come from a man known as Faust, a sinister figure out of Harold’s past.

The Chopin Manuscript is a collaboration of 15 writers. Jeffery Deaver conceived the characters and started the plot with the first chapter. The other authors each wrote a chapter building off the previous chapters. Deaver completed what he started, bringing The Chopin Manuscript to its conclusion. The Chopin Manuscript is an immensely engaging book. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys thrillers.

The popularity of short URL services, like tinyurl.com and bit.ly, has grown due to the character limits of Twitter. These services pose a security risk because they could be used to conceal the addresses malicious sites. Users are being taught to trust all URLs and just blindly click. Sites like Twitter should offer users the ability to expand these short URLs so the user can quickly verify the trust worthiness.

Below is a sample php function that expands URLs. As you can see the function is extremely simple and only takes two lines of code (the rest of the code is a use example). I hope large sites will adopt similar functionality before novice users become accustomed to blindly clicking obfuscated links.

<?php
       $url = “http://bit.ly/4t9IYV”;
       $fullURL = expandURL($url);
       echo “Short URL: $url”;
       echo “Original URL:”.$fullURL;

       function expandURL( $url )
       {
                 $fullURL = get_headers($url,1);
                 return $fullURL['Location'];
       }
?>

Finished reading Brain Rules by John Medina. Brain Rules focuses on the contemporary business buzzword multitasking. In a chapter on attention Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, shows how the brain can really only focus on one thing at a time. Medina presents reputable principles on how the brain works and what we can do to benefit our home and work life. He shows how our visual sense trumps all other senses. John Medina says that we don’t sleep to give our brain a rest. He highlights studies that show our neurons furiously firing while we sleep. Although we indeed lose brain cells as we age, our brain compensates so we can keep learning as we age.

John Medina employs an engaging style of writing and excellent suggestions on how to apply his principles. I enjoyed Brain Rules; I’m fascinated by cognitive psychology. I would recommend Brain Rules to anyone interested in neural development.

Finished reading The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich. The Accidental Billionaires is about the founding of Facebook and centers on the founders Mark Zuckerberg’s and Eduardo Saverin’s friendship as Harvard undergrads. They each shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women. Eduardo struggles for acceptance and finds himself joining one of the university’s Final Clubs, elite societies that have groomed generations of powerful men. Mark is less interested in campus life and college acceptance. One night Mark hacks into the university’s computers and begins to compile a database of all the female students on campus. This stunt crashed Harvard servers and nearly got Mark kicked out of school. From that project the framework for Facebook was born.

The Accidental Billionaires is an entertaining book, but you have to take the story with a grain of salt. Mezrich highly dramatized the story in the hopes to gain another movie deal. The main details of the story are accurate and true, but the majority of the book is drama and filler to jazz up a normally boring story about a website. Overall I found the book entertaining and a nice glimpse at the founding of Facebook.