Blogcritics Author: Matt Largo

Board Game Review: Jishaku - "The Game of Magnetic Action"

Matt Largo — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:09:18 EDT

Will the Force Be With You?
Combine the simplicity of checkers, the strategy of Othello, and the unpredictable nature of invisible forces and you have the game Jishaku (the Japanese word for magnet). Part of Jishaku's allure is the well-crafted back story, which borrows from ancient legends about samurais, ninjas and high priests who could alter the magnetic fields around...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

DVD Review: Lovedolls Superstar: Fully Realized

Matt Largo — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 16:20:10 EST

Lovedolls Superstar: Fully Realized, the sequel to Desparate Teenage Lovedolls, is a low-budget, post-punk period piece that draws its inspiration from the Los Angeles punk subculture. This film is a tongue-in-cheek stab at the establishment, rock stars, slimy record label types, religious cults, pimps, and 70s cinema. This film leaves no stone unturned in its covertly intelligent commentary of the underground Punk Rock scene, feminism, and drug abuse.As this sequel unfolds we find lead vocalist Kitty Carryall (Jennifer Schwartz) has descended to living a delusional, hazy existence, fueled by alcohol. Alexandria (Cheeta Punkerton) is a skanky, Hollywood Boulevard bangtail, and Patch Kelly (Janet Housden) is now the leader of a troupe of mindless, acid-head, commune misfits and has transformed into a religious cult leader going by the moniker of Patch Christ. Their major objective is to stage a Lovedolls comeback. They don't settle for the usual media blitz methods, but decide to resort to swift and blinding violence, coercion and gang-knifing record company execs.The charm of Lovedolls Superstar: Fully Realized is that director, David Markey, had no grandiose intentions for the film, except to create a lo-fi, satirical, attack on a laundry list of societal issues and pop figures in the spirit of mid-80s, D.I.Y. Post-Punk, underground mindset. One of the more humorous elements was the continous parody of the 1971 film, Billy Jack (that attempted to make a statement about racism as far as pertained to Native Americans in the 1970s) and the hippie movement. Other funny moments include an attack by a possessed Gene Simmons (ala Kiss) doll, a swipe at religious cults and cult leaders (specifically Jim Jones and the People's Temple), and a parody of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In the Dark" video with the chorus lyrics changed to "Somebody just shoot me in the dark" that ends in the assination of Springsteen. Lovedolls Superstar: Fully Realized's primary appeal is in its first-rate list of 80s Alternative/Post-Punk, heavy-hitters including: Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Steve and Jeff McDonald (Redd Kross), the Meat Puppets, Vicki Peterson (The Bangles), Sky Saxon (The Seeds), and Sonic Youth. A nod goes to The Lovedolls performance of "Love Machine", which rocked more than a lot of 'real' bands, who currently try to exist in this musical space. The bottom line is that this film is an enjoyable, albeit goofy, piece of nostalgia from the burgeoning, post-punk, underground music scene of the mid-80s that will is best viewed with a bunch of your Indie music afficianado friends, a couple of cases of cheap beer, while wearing your Black Flag t-shirt. This flick will either make you want to drag all of your vintage, 80s Post-Punk vinyl down from the attic or obsessively search Web for their mp3 equivalents.

Matt Largo is a Philadelphian whose passions include Music Composition/Performance, Technology, Film, Armchair Philosophy, and Creative Writing. He believes in the Holographic Universe, Anthropic Bias, and the Singularity while dispelling the existence of white chocolate and unicorns.

CD Review: Stephen Fretwell - Magpie

Matt Largo — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 14:52:52 EST

magpie n 1: long-tailed black-and-white bird that utters a chattering call 2: someone who collects things that have been discarded by others [syn: scavenger, pack rat] 3: an obnoxious and foolish and loquacious talker [syn: chatterer, babbler, prater, chatterbox, spouter]Magpie, is an endearing mellow, acoustic, folk diary from Manchester-based, Stephen Fretwell. Each track possesses a pure lyrical and melodic strength, showing maturity beyond Fretwell's 23 years. Magpie seems to contain the life experience of someone twice his age. Fretwell effortlessly imparts genuine longing, introspection, and hope through mellow vocals and simple arrangements that will unwittingly send you on an introspective emotional journey. The power in this album is that each song offers the listener an opportunity to be emotionally invested in some way, shape, or form. Fretwell's laid-back, folk-acoustic musical style is reminiscent of musicians like Bob Dylan, Nick Drake, Grant Lee Phillips (Grant Lee Buffalo), and Neil Young, but is undeniably fresh and unique. While many of the tunes on this disk are fraught with a good dose of melancholy, they are balanced with an equal shot of attitude. "Bad Bad You, Bad Bad Me" is a narrative that peels back the layers of a complicated relationship to reveal its innate simplicity: So come on over darlin' and bring those magazines and show me which one's your favourite floor and bad bad you, bad bad me is all we'll be left with, anyway "Emily", is a scornful ode in which Fretwell pulls no punches: You never were going to change your mind, were you, Emily? You just sat back, took it all for you, there was nothing for me; I didn't mean to prove that all I can do is lose Next time that you need me, don't call me up, Emily; I'm tired of your lies and your cheating ways with me; And every time you go, please don't let me know Other favorites include: "What's That You Say Little Girl", "New York" (gotta love tasteful use of the word 'fuck' in the chorus - a radio edit would ruin this song), "Lost Without You", a shook down, Coldplay-esque song that's pretty self-explanatory. After listening to this album for a while and getting a feel for Fretwell's tone and persona, I surmised that Fretwell must envision himself as a magpie of sorts. Much like the magpie found in folklore (it is said that the magpie refused to enter Noah's ark, instead sitting on the roof and swearing for the duration of the deluge), Fretwell's 12-track missive, Magpie, is a musical chronicle of emotional setbacks and oft-misplaced affections with occasional glimmers of optimism. Artistically, Fretwell prefers to stand exposed to the emotional mire armed with lyrical munitions culled from pathos and guarded optimism. I consider Magpie a new-found musical treasure, earning a home between Nick Drake's Pink Moon and Grant Lee Buffalo's Jubilee. It's only a matter of time before the world catches on to Fretwell's brilliance. Highly Recommended.

CD/DVD Review: Blondie - Greatest Hits - Sound & Vision

Matt Largo — Thu, 9 Mar 2006 03:42:11 EST

Blondie's Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision (CD+DVD) is a choice sampling of what makes Blondie one of modern Rock & Roll's seminal bands. The total package consists of a generous 20-track CD and 16-video DVD spanning Blondie's entire career. The CD opens with a chronological salvo of single mixes of U.S. and U.K. #1 hits including "Heart of Glass", "Sunday Girl", "Atomic", "Call Me", "The Tide is High", "Rapture", and "Maria". The CD has a few moments of experimentation beginning with the "In the Flesh (Remix)," which I thought was all right, but not an improvement over the original track from their debut album, Blondie. The "In the Flesh (Remix)" kind of left me flat because the variations on the melody fricasseed and drained the original beauty of the melody in places, adding 24 seconds to the track for the sake of experimentation. In my opinion, "If it ain't broke don't fix it" applies here. The CD also includes classics like "Union City Blue", "Dreaming", "One Way or Another", and "Island of Lost Souls" that were US top 40 singles. Plus for the first time on a U.S. CD, the full promo (only available before now on 12" vinyl) "Blow-Up Mix" that Sanctuary Records issued for "Good Boys". For all of you collectors out there, this is a relatively rare track because it was just available as a Promo Only to DJs. One of the most interesting items included in Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision (CD+DVD) is the bonus track and video of "Rapture Riders". This is an eerie but brilliant mash-up remix of Blondie's "Rapture" and the Doors' "Riders on the Storm", courtesy of Mash-up Remix Wonderkind Mark Vidler (creator of other notable mash-ups including: "A Slim McShady" (fusing Eminem and Wings) and "Genie's Revenge" (a hybrid of Christina Aguilera and The Strokes) and the infamous "Ray of Gob," an enjoyably sinister fusion of Madonna with the Sex Pistols.The DVD delivers Blondie classics like "Denis", "Picture This", "Dreaming", "The Hardest Part", and "Atomic", some of which I haven't seen since Blondie hosted The Midnight Special back in 1979 (rubbing shoulders with the likes of Robert Fripp, Supertramp, Bram Tchaikovsky, and Rick James). I also noticed that the video for "The Tide Is High" is the US VH1 Classic version (video/photo montage) and not the original 1981 version, which was a slight disappointment. Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision (CD+DVD) is a piece of Rock and Roll history that showcases Blondie's perfectly-crafted pop songs and first-rate musicianship. After watching and listening to Blondie's Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision (CD+DVD), there is little doubt that Blondie paved the way for many contemporary acts like Madonna, Gwen Stefani (and No Doubt), Garbage, The Donnas, Hole, Luscious Jackson, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to name a few. The Bottom Line: Blondie's Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision (CD+DVD) is essential to every Blondie fan's music collection. Buy it. Own it. Highly Recommended.

DVD Review: Prime

Matt Largo — Wed, 8 Mar 2006 12:48:53 EST

Prime is the story (I am reluctant to label it as a romantic comedy) of a 37-year-old, recent divorcee', Rafi Gardet (Uma Thurman) and her struggle with the emotional baggage from her failed marriage, who while in the process of undergoing therapy, falls in love with a man David Bloomberg (Bryan Greenberg) 14 years her junior. Rafi's therapist, Lisa Metzger (Meryl Streep), is privy to all of the intimate details of her relationship with David.During the course of Rafi's therapy, Lisa deduces that Rafi is dating her son, David. After learning that her son is Rafi's romantic interest, Lisa is put in the understandably awkward position of listening to all of Rafi's innermost thoughts and the sordid details of her relationship with him. Upon finding out that her therapist is her lover's mother, Rafi feels that she has been deceived. Her feelings of betrayal by her therapist subsequently start to disintegrate her relationship with David. Prime is replete with scenes that exude insight and undeniable authenticity with respect to familial and romantic relationships. This film would be more accurately described as a "romantic dramady" rather than a romantic comedy. The major strength of this film is that it is admittedly cultivated from Younger's own life experience. An interesting, premise, creative storyline, and believable dialogue, all add up to a thoroughly enjoyable film. Thurman, Greenberg, and Streep all deliver above par performances.Other notable performances include Ato Essandoh, who played the Damien, the stoic concierge at Rafi's apartment building, who had very little dialogue, but had some of the funnier moments in the movie and Naomi Aborn and John Rothman as David's charming grandparents. Labeling Prime as a romantic comedy only serves to undervalue and inaccurately describe the true tone and content of the story. Writer-Director, Ben Younger, pushes the initial premise of Prime to its full comedic potential while artfully infusing the story with a welcome dose of reality and intelligence. Prime is a breath of fresh air among the recent multitude of mindless, vapid, romantic comedies. Recommended.

DVD Review: I'll Bury You Tomorrow

Matt Largo — Sun, 5 Mar 2006 16:47:28 EST

The Beech Funeral Home is the setting for a carnival of weirdness in I'll Bury You Tomorrow. Mr. Beech's employees, Jake (Jerry Murdock) and Corey (played by the director, Alan Rowe Kelly, in drag) are secretly running a black-market organ business. Mrs. Beech, who is gradually losing touch with reality, adds to the insanity of the situation with her hopes that their deaddaughter will come back to her. Meanwhile at the Port Oram train station, Dolores Finley (Zoe Daelman Chlanda) -- left -- arrives sporting a circled 'Help Wanted' newspaper ad for a position at the Beech Funeral Home. At first glance she looks fairly normal, but her arrival scene is spattered with vignettes of carnage and visions of bloody body parts that could possibly be hiding in her luggage. She gets directions from the train station porter and lands on the Beech Funeral Home doorstep. She subsequently impresses Mr. Beech with her knowledge of the funeral business and her expertise with embalming tools. Dolores seems like a perfect fit for the job and is hired on the spot even though her references are lacking. Little does Mr. Beech know, Dolores has a nasty habit of transforming into a mask-wearing (ala Paula Sheppard in Alice, Sweet Alice), slutty, schizophrenic, necrophiliac. This film picked up a total of 6 International Film Festival Awards: Feature Film Winner - Telluride IndieFest 2002 and Key West IndieFest 2003 Best Horror Feature - New York Int'l Independent Film & Video Festival 2002 The GORE-GORE Award - Festival of the Macabre Best Make-up Design - The B Movie Theater Film FestAlthough the premise of I'll Bury You Tomorrow is ideal fodder for a B-movie, horror flick, it fails to provide enough momentum to push this film into the realm of "campy but cool." I wasn't expecting to see Oscar-quality performances or cinematic breakthroughs, but my expectations were set a bit high after reading the laundry list of awards this film garnered during its original theatrical release. Besides a running time one minute shy of two hours, one major problem with this film is that it doesn't effectively capitalize on the basics: fear of abandonment, anxiety of being lost, fear of the unknown, etc. (See The Hills Have Eyes, Evil Dead, and more recently, The Blair Witch Project). The best performances by far were turned in by Chlanda as Dolores and Murdock, who played a dual role as Jake and Sheriff Mitch. I didn't even realize Murdock's dual role until I scrutinized the credits, then went back to view some scenes to verify it. Kudos go to make-up artist Kari Arthurs for helping to pull off Murdock's dual role, Kelly's gender-bending role as Corey, and the realistic look of the stiffs on the mortuary slab. I also think that Chlanda may have a shot at feature films if she can hook up with the likes of Wes Craven, George Romero, or Sam Raimi. The bottom line: I'll Bury You Tomorrow was gory and amusing, but not outright scary. I'll probably make up an I'll Bury You Tomorrow drinking game and add it to the roster of movies I watch the week of Halloween.

Pleo: The New Robotic "Designer Life Form"

Matt Largo — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 10:31:27 EST

The next big "must-have" toy this year, may be in the form of a one-week old baby Camarasaurus. One of the co-creators of Furby, Caleb Chung, is putting the finishing touches on a new animatronic dinosaur called Pleo.Eight years ago the Furby doll was all the rage, with sales of over 40 million units. Chung's Emeryville, California-based start-up, Ugobe (a play on words meaning You Go Become), will be manufacturing Pleo, which is scheduled to hit retail shelves in Q3 2006 just in time for the holidays. The 49-year-old Chung, dubbed a 'modern Gepetto' by Wired magazine, chooses to design toys in isolation at his Boise, Idaho home, away from the rest of his Bay Area staff. He envisions Pleo as more than just another robotic toy. The main objective of Pleo is to create an emotional attachment with its owner. Ugobe reps say that if you play with it long enough, Pleo will learn just like a dog, cat or small child. Pleo moves just like you'd expect a baby dinosaur to move, and not a robot (although who really knows how a baby dinosaur moved?). If you think that Furby was 'smart', you'll be impressed (or creeped out) when you hear that Pleo will have seven computer brains that control 14 servos and 38 sensors compared to Furby's two computer brains. This is a quantum leap from the Artificial Intelligence implemented in toys like Furby and Sony's ill-fated Aibo robot dog. Pleo is the first of a line of "designer life forms" that Chung and Ugobe plan to create that combine the latest in artificial intelligence, robotics, mechanical engineering and toy design. Pleo will have "neural network'' software -- a program that behaves in a brain-like way as it processes many pieces of information to determine its actions. Another interesting note: Pleo does not have an on/off switch. All of this cutting-edge technology packed into a 20-inch, Jurassic dinosaur toy seems a great new line of toys or the start of something pretty disturbing. First it's robotic dinosaurs, what next? The next logical step in the progression of this technology will probably be humanoid "designer life forms." The main objective of creating an emotional attachment between owner and robot reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode called "The Lonely." In this particular episode set in the future, Jack Warden stars as Corry, a criminal from the future, who has been sentenced to solitary confinement for fifty years on a penal asteroid (he has the whole barren asteroid to himself). The captain of a passing freighter, who sympathizes with him, leaves him a box containing a female robot named Alicia (played by Jean Marsh). Warden doesn't take to her at first, but soon he grows very fond of her, and eventually falls in love with her (they only showed him playing checkers and eating dinner with her, but do the math). After a few months go by, the captain of the freighter returns bearing good news: Warden's been pardoned and is free to leave. However, weight restrictions do not permit him to take Alicia with him. Warden doesn't want to leave her, because he feels that she really is a woman. The captain takes out a gun and blows Alicia's face off, pointing out to Warden that all he's leaving behind is loneliness. This Twilight Zone episode is an extreme example of the emotional dynamic that can possibly transpire between people and machines. As the level of complexity and sophistication of robots increases, forming emotional attachments to them will become easier. Breaking those attachments will become more difficult because robots will be perceived as being "alive" in some small way. Think about it. What IS the exit strategy to emotionally detach owners from their Pleos? Taking a page from the Twilight Zone book of solutions, there just may be a market for a 5 kg, Cretaceous Period asteroid to put these pesky little Pleos down realistically... a new, functional, 21st century version of the Pet Rock. It's just a thought. Pleo will sport SD memory expansion and will set you back a mere $200.For more information visit: Ugobe.com .

CD Review: Pilotdrift - Water Sphere

Matt Largo — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 03:42:25 EST

Texarkana's latest export, Pilotdrift, has recently released Water Sphere, which runs the gamut of musical styles from cool, rhythmically-driven, Indie Pop to scary, Fellini-esque, Cabaret tunes. Pilotdrift managed to catch the attention of Polyphonic Spree's Tim DeLaughter and Julie Doyle, who own Good Records. They consigned their first self-released CD, Iter Facere (5 of the 13 tracks ended up on Water Sphere) at Good Records and shortly thereafter became the first band to be signed to Good Records Recordings that was not a product of DeLaughter. Upon first listen, I could easily tell that these guys defy simple categorization of their music and that little to none of the creative soundscapes on Water Sphere were accidental or random studio magic. The fact that Pilotdrift calls Texarkana, Texas home, seemed unusual at first, but then again, the Flaming Lips call Norman, Oklahoma home. Pilotdrift (Kelly Carr - lead vocals/piano/acoustic guitar, Jay Budzilowski - bass, Ben Rice - drums, Eric Russell - electronics/guitar, and John David Blagg - electric guitar) slides comfortably between several musical genres while showcasing their vast lexicon of musical styles and influences.I have to admit, when I first popped this CD into my car stereo and cranked the volume to get the total effect, a few of the songs ("Late Night in a Wax Museum" and "Jekyll & Hyde Suite") initially gave me the heebie-jeebies just by virtue of their dynamic range and the brooding mood they created. Throughout the album, I could hear likely influences from contemporaries like Supergrass, Radiohead, Mercury Rev, Pink Floyd, the Flaming Lips, and Sigur Ros. Some of my favorite tracks are: "Caught in My Trap" - An intricate, Alt-Rock Opera in three movements. "Comets" - A beautifully textured, ethereal tune complete with haunting, breathy choral arrangements"Bubblecraft" - A cool, medium-tempo, Sci-Fi, Martini Lounge tune with Thom Yorke-ish vocals and a chorus that seems to contain a snippet of musical DNA from the Charlie's Angels television series theme. "Passenger Seat" - Rhythmically-driven, Alt-Pop song with tasteful helpings of soundboard experimentation and digital panache. Four minutes and forty-three seconds of this song will leave you wanting more. Overall, Water Sphere is a pleasurable, mind-stretching, musical odyssey from the atmospheric first track, "Caught in My Trap," to the Radiohead-meets-Andrew Lloyd Webber feel of the last track, "So Long." This is an exceptional debut album and is hopefully the harbinger of more great music from Texarkana's intelligent and musically inventive quintet. Catch Pilotdrift live as they wrap up their tour with Supergrass: Feb 22 - Los Angeles, CA at Avalon; Feb 23 - San Francisco, CA at The Great American Music Hall; Feb 25 - Seattle, WA at The Showbox; and Feb 26 - Vancouver, BC at The Commodore BallroomVisit them online at: Pilotdrift.com Highly Recommended. Edited: [!--GH--]

CD Single Review: The Voom Blooms - "Politics & Cigarettes"

Matt Largo — Tue, 7 Feb 2006 08:03:31 EST

Hailing from Loughborough in the U.K., The Voom Blooms are a four-piece band that creates masterful tunes with Rock and Roll bravado that belie their experience. Having only formed less than a year ago, The Voom Blooms (George Guildford - Guitars/Vocals, Thom Mackie - Drums, Craig Monk - Guitars, and Brett Young - Bass), seem to have tapped into a musical Castalian spring allowing them to create and deliver raw energy and genuine emotion where many fledgling bands fail. Their music, rich with a keen balance of texture, space, and volume, is replete with glimpses of British Culture and eclectic cinematic references. Drawing numerous comparisons to contemporaries such as Bloc Party, Interpol, and the Libertines, The Voom Blooms have defined their own unique parcel of this genre and musical space. Their soon to be released single, consisting of two tracks, begins with "Politics & Cigarettes", a future classic rock anthem. The unassuming intro starts with two tastefully interwoven guitar riffs accented by syncopated, machine-gun snare drum fills. Guildford's passionate vocals enter the mix declaring: You can keep all your culture 'cause we have got all our culture and you can keep your politics let someone else, get your kicks for you... (without us, without her, and without...)its awfully nice that you've stayed its awfully nice what you've said for us cause we all had such a beautiful start cause we have got simple hearts.if you just hold on, to politics & cigarettes if you just hold on, to politics & cigarettes if you just hold on, you'll find..."Politics & Cigarettes" is a sonically huge song that artfully utilizes smashing dynamics and lyrical swagger to effectively convey a sense of heady, youthful defiance. Guildford says that this song was inspired by a 1978 film by Scottish director Bill Douglas called "My Way Home" and has particular relevance to today's political climate. The second track on the disk, "Thoughts of Rena," is a mid-tempo number that opens with beautifully deft, spatial guitar riffs and chunks of strategically-placed, sinewy percussion, complemented by soaring melodic vocals:I thought of Rena yesterday, i don't know what to say, she got me, oh oh and i thought of Rena just a moment ago, she's from a right small town, where things are so-so. I thought of Rena, she's out with John, where'd all these townies come from? look at em', oh oh. As i talk to Rena, they've had enough.Now there's a riot sound, left, left, right, right, right, left, left. left, left, right, right, right, left, left. Now there's a riot sound, think that i should walk home, yet again."Thoughts of Rena" is a perfect example of a song that is greater than the sum of its parts. Guildford enlightened me with the meaning behind the song:"The song is about falling for a bird, but she's got a bloke already. When you get to the club and she's in there, all your mates are telling you not to talk to her, not to go over to her, but you cant help it, when you do the result is a scrap with some townies and a long walk home 'cause you're too broke to afford a taxi (a regular occurrence in the town we're from). It's a bit of a true story really. Some people ask what the left, left right part means. It's a reference to being punched from all directions as the fight breaks out in the club."The Voom Blooms have been generating an enormous amount of buzz due to their electrifying live performances. They have shared the stage with the likes of The Paddingtons and Babyshambles (ex-Libertines frontman, Pete Doherty's new band) and are slated to play some U.K. shows with Mercury Records recording artists, Boy Kill Boy, toward the end of February 2006. Their debut single Politics & Cigarettes will be released on Fiction/Polydor records on March 20th to coincide with their 14-date club NME tour. Armed with a cache of great songs and the power to deliver the goods, The Voom Blooms seem to be on a definite course for Rock stardom. I see an upgrade from taxis to limousines in their future. For more information visit: TheVoomBlooms.comYou can also catch The Voom Blooms on MySpace by clicking HEREHighly Recommended.

Book Review: Learn to Program by Chris Pine

Matt Largo — Sat, 4 Feb 2006 06:45:40 EST

Learn to Program by Chris Pine is a concise introduction to the world of programming using an interpreted scripting language called Ruby. An initial "cool point" goes to Pine for writing Learn to Program around Ruby, which is totally free to use, copy, modify, and distribute. The examples start from the basics of getting Ruby correctly installed and configured for your particular operating system. Although Ruby is mostly used to develop applications on Linux, it is a cross-platform language that is supported on many types of UNIX, DOS, Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP, MacOS, BeOS, and OS/2. I ran the examples on my Windows XP laptop without any problems, using a simple, free text editor called Textpad for some of the examples and the command line to round out my experience. The best part of it all: all of the programming tools were free! Gotta love it.Pine aptly starts out with the essentials for most newbies to programming: data types, arithmetic operations, variables, and variable assignments. I found the overall approach and programming examples to be fun, detailed, and loaded with little tidbits of information, which gave great insight into the "how" and "why" of things. Pine's examples and explanations throughout Learn to Program were great at illustrating the power of Ruby and programming in general, without having the overtly silly and annoying tone typically found in the Dummies series of books. Learn to Program progressively and painlessly takes the reader through increasingly complex (for most newbies) programming concepts such as methods, classes, objects, recursion, and flow control. To reinforce the concepts in each chapter there are sections called "A Few Things to Try", which were both interesting and amusing. One of the more interesting topics involved writing simple programs to read, write, save, and load files using YAML. (YAML is a format for representing objects as strings). It's always fun to learn how to dig around in various files to extract and manipulate information. This should also come in handy when managing log files on several OpenVMS servers I manage. Yes, there is a tested version of Ruby (version X1.8-1X014) for OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-1 and V7.3-2! The final chapter of Learn to Program tied all of the concepts together and introduced the use of blocks and procs as a step beyond using custom methods. The proc examples were an eloquent introduction into the more conceptually challenging topic of passing objects into methods and returning objects from methods. I remember learning the power of passing objects to and from methods in a college Java course (years ago), only after we were taken through the paces of writing programs the "dumb" way without knowing how to do this. I wish I had read this book before I took that class. Learn to Program is an excellent book for anyone who has an interest in learning to program. It is written for true beginners, who have little or no programming experience. Surprisingly enough, Pine magically manages to go from "What is an integer?" to full-blown object-oriented programming in less than 200 pages. Another bonus is that you will be learning Ruby, one of the newer, (in my opinion) sexier programming languages currently in circulation (i.e. COBOL=not sexy, Ruby=sexy). Decide for yourself: "Hello World" Program Examples:COBOL -------------------------------------------------000100 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION. 000200 PROGRAM-ID. HELLOWORLD. 000300 000400* 000500 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION. 000600 CONFIGURATION SECTION. 000700 SOURCE-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL. 000800 OBJECT-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL. 000900 001000 DATA DIVISION. 001100 FILE SECTION. 001200 100000 PROCEDURE DIVISION. 100100 100200 MAIN-LOGIC SECTION. 100300 BEGIN. 100400 DISPLAY " " LINE 1 POSITION 1 ERASE EOS. 100500 DISPLAY "Hello world!" LINE 15 POSITION 10. 100600 STOP RUN. 100700 MAIN-LOGIC-EXIT. 100800 EXIT. Ruby ------------------------------------------------- puts 'Hello World!' Learn to Program is thoroughly engaging and informative and manages to painlessly convey some pretty sophisticated programming concepts that can benefit both novice and more experienced programmers. If you want to learn to program or want a great introduction to Ruby, Learn to Program belongs on your bookshelf. Edited: [GH]