{"id":211,"date":"2010-12-20T16:49:15","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T00:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/2010\/12\/20\/what-im-doing-reading\/"},"modified":"2010-12-20T16:49:15","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T00:49:15","slug":"what-im-doing-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/2010\/12\/20\/what-im-doing-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"What I&#8217;m doing &#038; reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='posterous_autopost'>      I thought I&#8217;d post a few updates about what I&#8217;m doing these days. My <a href=\"http:\/\/lenzconsulting.com\">consulting business<\/a> continues to be doing well, and I&#8217;m about to start a new project for a large software company, which will involve lots of heavy XSLT work. In the mean time, I&#8217;ve been learning about how to develop apps for the iPhone and iPad, using a really excellent, free online course from Stanford, <a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/itunes-u\/developing-apps-for-ios-sd\/id395631522\">Developing Apps for iOS, by Paul Hegarty<\/a>. Highly recommended. I&#8217;m also gearing up to go back to school part-time to get an M.A. in Digital Arts through <a href=\"http:\/\/goucher.edu\/madarts\">Goucher College&#8217;s limited-residency\/distance-learning &#8220;MADarts&#8221; program<\/a>. I&#8217;ll be traveling to Baltimore next month for my first residency in this brand-new program and I&#8217;m really looking forward to it.<\/p>\n<p \/>  Here are some of the computer-related books I&#8217;ve been reading lately: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/o\/ASIN\/0596517742\/\">JavaScript: The Good Parts<\/a>, by Douglas Crockford<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/o\/ASIN\/1934356344\/\">The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development<\/a>, by Chad Fowler <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/o\/ASIN\/0814742955\/\">Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide<\/a>, by Henry Jenkins<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> JavaScript is taking over the world, so we might as well make the best of it; Crockford&#8217;s book shows that there&#8217;s a lot to be happy about as long as you take a discriminating approach. Fowler&#8217;s book has lots of nice tidbits and insights on how to be an effective software developer, especially if you&#8217;re working for someone else. And Jenkins&#8217; book is a fascinating study of how the role of media is changing in the age we live in, utilizing concepts such as &#8220;participatory culture&#8221; and &#8220;collective intelligence.&#8221; It&#8217;s obviously the most widely accessible of these books, with chapters about <i>Survivor<\/i>, <i>American Idol<\/i>, <i>The Matrix<\/i>, <i>Star Wars<\/i>, and <i>Harry Potter<\/i>. It&#8217;s a textbook for one of my first classes in the M.A. program, and I&#8217;m likely to blog about it some more in the future.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I&#8217;d post a few updates about what I&#8217;m doing these days. My consulting business continues to be doing well, and I&#8217;m about to start a new project for a large software company, which will involve lots of heavy XSLT work. In the mean time, I&#8217;ve been learning about how to develop apps for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evanlenz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}