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Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

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171–180 of 219 posts

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#171
post #56

Machinists handbook from the 60's era. I value it for the pre computer ways of thinking. Lots of gold in that one. MOS 6502 series data book. Moto 6809 Programmers Reference. I actually had someone take me to the local Motorola office to get the 6809 book. Docs were free for the asking, and a kid asking was quite the event. Aspects of that conversation were important to my life. I still have occasion to do paid work,…

Correction to the above:

Engineering Handbook from the 60's era. Just glanced at it, and realized I had the title wrong.

Man, there are so many great references in this thread. I've made a short list, and will enjoy my next trip to Powell's books.

Thanks all.

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#173

A thick catalogue (ELFA Distrelec 'Elektronik och Automatisering' 2013-2014) on which I placed a stationary laptop hooked up to a 24" monitor. On that monitor I have access to more or less all the books in the world in one way or another so I don't bother with paper versions anymore. I actually just made an engine [1] for the Searx [2] meta-search engine to allow it to search through a local library using the Recoll…

> I keep my own 'cloud', have my own (meta-)search engine, my own mail/web/etc server, etc. What software do you use for this, and how much time does it take for you to keep it running?

The 'cloud' (...which is a silly word...) runs on Nextcloud. Keeping it up doesn't cost much time at all, updates are close to painless for recent releases. I made a few apps related to library maintenance (OPDS Catalog) and reading (Reader, an epub/PDF/CBx reader)

Mail: Exim/Dovecot/Spamassassin/greylistd. Roundcube as a stand-alone web mail interface, not used much since Nextcloud gained a usable mail client. About 8 hrs per year of upkeep.

Web: nginx (used to use lighttpd) as frontend to a host of different applications and services running on two ancient Intel SS4200 servers. I'm about to move the whole bunch to a somewhat more upscale server (building a rack now to contain it plus some assorted network bits, disk cabinets and one of those SS4200's, the bottom bit of which will be used as a fruit/herbs drier so that heat won't go to waste...)

X2go to run X11 apps on remote locations

Searx for search, now also local search using Recoll and the mentioned plugin

GOGS for code hosting

I'm still running Trovebox as an image server, currently working on a media server to combine video, image and audio.

Subsonic/Madsonic for remote audio and limited video service, the same library is served by mpd on several machines in the network.

Some long-running experiments with XMPP (using Prosody) to use next to (and eventually replace) Telegram. If Telegram opens their server code this might not be necessary but I'm not holding my breath.

Eventually I'd like to end up with a plug-in replacement 'box' for many 'essential' network services, something which can run on modest hardware and does not take much upkeep so it can be used by as wide a range of people as possible. I'm not the first one, nor the only one to come up with this idea but as I've been doing this for more than 22 years now for personal and family use I do have some experience with the matter.

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#174
post #73
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is he has "Algorithmic Trading & DMA" and "Trading and Exchanges". Both are excellent.

I have the Ernest Chan books. "Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives (10th Edition)" and a few other Economics and Finance books. Happy to share a complete list if anyone really wants it.

yes can you share the complete list for finance and math books?

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#176
It's dusty, but I can't throw it away.

Effective Perl Programming.*

A long time ago, when I was a college kid with tons of free time, I'd sit for hours at Borders* or Barnes & Noble and just read computer books. God bless those employees for never kicking a 20-something poor kid out who lived on free coffee refills, yet never bought books.

At the time, Perl was more significant. Something about its syntax made sense, even though nowadays I cringe at it. Though Python is worse, in a different way...

A decade later, and I still sometimes need to spit out the results of a bunch of commands, iterate through them with some regex, format it, etc. Perl became the internet's 'duct-tape' for a reason.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Perl-Programming-Idiomatic-...

[2] https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/borders-files-for-ba...

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#178

"The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg.....I have other good books too but this one is an asset...Every desk should have it

Interesting, that's on the Army Advanced Situational Awareness reading list ( http://www.benning.army.mil/armor/316thCav/ASA/ReadingList.h... ).

Trying to access this from China using VPN, it is blocked by "DoD" filters. As if it was top secret. A quick google search finds a cached pic of the webpage. FTW! And I am a liberal arts major ;-)

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#179

A few immediately come to mind: - Garner's Modern American Usage - The Hardware Hacker (I am a huge fan of bunnie) - The Art of Electronics (Horowitz and Hill) I don't really have "reference" books on my desk. Most rotate out quite frequently depending on what I'm researching and writing about. These can range from Raizman's History of Modern Design to Lewis Carroll's Symbolic Logic . In addition I make plenty use of…

Interesting to see 2 books on electronics. May I ask the nature of your work?

Re: Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?

#180
post #73
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is he has "Algorithmic Trading & DMA" and "Trading and Exchanges". Both are excellent.

I have the Ernest Chan books. "Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives (10th Edition)" and a few other Economics and Finance books. Happy to share a complete list if anyone really wants it.

I would like to hear the complete list :)
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