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• 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.

• Book of the Week: Outliers

  Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers talks about why people are successful.

• Book of the Week: The Arabian Nights Entertainments

  Ancient people didn’t have the internet. They got their entertainment from old people telling stories. I imagine an old drunken guy sitting at a bazaar. Old drunk guys survived long enough to tell tales, because alcohol kills bacteria. The Arabian Nights is a collection of those tales in English. I read about The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. The seven voyages are all similar.

• Book of the Week: Mature Optimization Handbook

  

• Book of the Week: If I Knew Then

  As part of preparations for the 50th reunion of Harvard Business School’s 1963 class, they collect advice for the younger generation from the alumni. If I Knew Then is a compilation of that advice.

• Book of the Week: Drunken Botanist

  The Drunk Botanist by Amy Stewart describes the relationship between people, alcohol and plants. All civilizations have figured out how to make alcohol from plants. Booze is what brings us all together. If it is a plant, there is probably an alcoholic beverage derived from it.

• Book of the Week: Wicked Bugs

  For a Halloween themed book, I picked Wicked Bugs by Amy Stewart. It covers things you hope to never encounter. The book is a bit about being grossed out while learning a thing or two. I learned that Brazilian wandering spider venom can cause priapism. There are stories about each the bugs to keep it interesting. It is amazing how the lifecycles of different organisms are linked. Toward the middle of the book, I became very appreciative of sanitation. I was distracted and frustrated by the book quoting itself. It makes it harder to read. This might be more of a problem in the eBook. Bot Fly [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23eimVLAQ2c&w;=420&h;=315] Mosquitos