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• Book of the Week: The Box

  This week I read The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson. I’ve been thinking a lot about how goods move from place to place and how that will change in the future as the sharing economy grows. The Box tells the story of how the shipping container overcame obstacles and became ubiquitous. The world became a much smaller place, because of the shipping container.

• Book of the Week: The Art of the Start

  This week I read The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki, the original Apple evangelist. The book covers starting, positioning, pitching, writing a business plan, bootstrapping, recruiting, raising capital, partnering, branding, rain making and being a mensch. I liked the book a lot, but a lot has changed in the startup world in 10 years. Not that anything mentioned here is wrong, but it is now gospel is startup land. The ideas are more formalized now. It was a good read since it conveys information efficiently with no bullshit. Bootstrapping and Raising Capital

• Book of the Week: Minecraft

  

• Book of the Week: The Startup Owner's Manual

  If you have taken the Steve Blank’s Lean Startup class on Udacity, you may have heard of The Startup Owner’s Manual. This isn’t one of those books that you read cover to cover. He treats it like an automotive repair manual. You read the sections of the book that you are having problems with. It is only worth reading if you actually have a startup. Reading the book is pointless unless you actually have actions to take. I can read all about repairing an 86’ Supra, but if I don’t have the car, all that knowledge is not going to do me any good. This book represents Professor Blank’s work to make startups more systematic.

• Book of the Week: Marijuana Gateway to Health

  After the legalization of recreational marijuana in Arizona, I decided to learn more about the medicinal uses of marijuana by reading Marijuana Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us From Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease by Clint Werner. Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease Studies show that marijuana decreases the risk of cancer, even lung cancer. This is in stark contrast to tobacco. Makes you wonder why tobacco is legal, but marijuana is not. The effect of making marijuana illegal, lead to growing of strains that had high THC to CBD ratios. THC makes you high, but CBD may have more medical uses. People want to carry around less weed, so they grew strains that were stronger. I didn’t know there were so many strains with different ratios. Legalization of marijuana should improve the genetic diversity of the plant making it better for researching medical cures. Marijuana seems like a miracle drug. Maybe it will lead to a cure for cancer.

• Book of the Week: The Art of Fermentation

  I decided to read The Art of Fermentation after hearing an interview with the author on Science Friday. Fermented foods are a large part of many cultures. It seems that I like reading about fermentation since I already read a book on making alcohol from various plants. I liked this book more than the Drunken Botanist, which was more of a coffee table book. Health When I first read the author’s bio of being a HIV+ homosexual hippy, I was worried the health section of the book would be all touchy-feely without science substance. My worries were unfounded. The bacteria around us and inside us have a large influence on our health and well being. Our ancestors have evolved in a bacteria filled environment, so one would believe that there may be some dependence on them. After all, mitochondria used to be outside our cells and now live inside them. Fermentation is about creating a controlled environment, such that the good bacteria may live. Everybody eats fermented foods, but most people don’t like bacteria. A consequence of this is the rise in allergies linked to the war on bacteria. Food There are so many different types of fermented food. Best to just read the book and then start fermenting yourself.

• Book of the Week: The Score Takes Care of Itself

  In anticipation of the NFC championship game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Seattle Seahawks, I read The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh with Steven Jamison and Craig Walsh. Bill Walsh died of leukemia before completing the book. There are a lot of little things in this book, so it is hard to summarize effectively. I liked it, because it provided some insight into how Bill Walsh turned around the 49ers and how Joe Montana and Jerry Rice became Hall of Famers. Bill Walsh turned around the losing 49ers as the general manager and head coach. His first task was to fix the culture and install his “Standard of Performance”. This meant getting rid of many of the existing players and staff. Culture is very important. His culture was not focused on winning, but executing things to perfection. To always get better.

• Book of the Week: Made to Stick

  This week I read Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath to learn how to make my ideas sticky. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t make it sticky, it won’t matter. Chip teaches OB 568: How to Make Ideas Stick at Stanford. They mention that this book complements The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. A tipping point occurs, when you reach the right people at the right time with a sticky idea. Made to Stick details what makes an idea sticky.

• Book of the Week: The Most Powerful Idea in the World

  This week I read a book from the list of the best books that Bill Gates read in 2013. The Most Powerful Idea in the World is about all the pieces that had to go right in order to bring the steam engine to life. The beginning of the book was slow going, but it picked up steam midway before I gave up. Many things had to be in place for the steam engine to exist. Not just technology, put the economics, politics, laws and people. You need people who put in 10,000 hours to become experts, so they can build the invention with ever increasing improvements. The legal protection needs to be there for actors with the financial motivation, but weak enough that other people can enter the playing field. The steam engine contest at the end of the book reminded me of the DARPA challenges. Government has a strong role in advancing technology. I take a lot of things for granted. If I want to make something, I can order parts from a catalog and get custom parts fabricated through CNC milling, laser cutting or 3D printing. What is keeping us from advancing technology? The answer is that there needs to be a market for your advances. Before the steam engine was used for locomotion, it was used to mine and make textiles. Everything has to go right for a game changing technology to flourish. Just because you can build something, doesn’t mean it makes sense to build it. Also what is the cost of our technological advancement. We as inventors are separated from the ecological impact of our inventions. In the Lord of the Rings, you could see the trees being cut down to fuel the fires of Mordor to make metal weapons. The early metal workers had to deal with a lot of deforestation and started importing wood from neighboring countries.

• Books 2013

  List of Books I read in 2013

• Book of the Week: Masters of Doom

  To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Doom, I read Masters of Doom. The book is an account of how the two Johns (Carmack and Romero) came together to make Doom and changed the face of gaming. I had a few flashbacks to my early childhood while reading. I grew up with Commander Keen, Wolfenstein and Doom. Two Johns John Carmack and John Romero balanced each other. They both did not have a respect for authority. When they were starting out, they “borrowed” computers from employer during the nights and weekends. They were focused on making games. They could see things that other people couldn’t.

• eBook of the Week: The Free Beginner's Guide to SEO

  Moz has The Free Beginner’s Guide to SEO. I’m a sucker for anything free, so I read it. SEO stands for search engine optimization. Google also has their Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. If I have a website and want people to visit it, what can I do to my website to make Google find me and put the links to my website ahead of other website? Being good at SEO translates to bringing more traffic, which in turn should bring more users.