3 comments about Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process: Strategies for print and new media designers (VOICES).

1. HOT-WIRING YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS: STRATEGIES FOR PRINT AND NEW MEDIA DESIGNERS tells how to recognize and believe in creativity, using inspiration past and present to evaluate work, develop new experimental applications for standard tasks, and more. Any designer who would streamline creativity and develop more efficient work habits will find HOT-WIRING YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS comes packed with tips on how to put into practice an array of creative techniques.



2. Being creative is very difficult for me. The movie actor and singer Judy Garland was called "one take Judy" because she could act a scene or record a song perfectly in one take. Creativity doesn't come that easily for me. Sometimes it becomes so difficult that I want to give up, close up Photoshop and just write computer programs for a living. Programming is comforting. There are rules to follow and as long as you don't break them, your program will work. But eventually, I find myself back into Photoshop trying again to be creative. If you want to be a professional artist, you need to be creative "on demand" and, to make things even more difficult, the project concept is usually not yours. So what do you do? I am always in search of that "secret" which will help me become and, even more importantly, stay creative. One thing that can help, until you find that magic pill, is to study how other artists are creative.
   
   This book, by Curt Cloninger, has some very useful ideas for increasing your creativity. He uses quotes, tidbits and interviews to share his and other artists' creative process. He begins by breaking down the creative process into four steps; predesign, design, development and implementation. He discusses how each step is influenced by the needs of the artist and client. He then shows several ways to stay creative from brainstorming to using a set of cards by Peter Schmidt called Oblique Strategies: Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas.
   
   Another source of creativity is what has been done before. Cloninger discusses how to recognize good design and ideas from history and how they might be applied to your current project. He then moves on to software and grids. He tells you not to be afraid to use these tools to free you to be more creative especially when you use the software in ways it was not originally designed for.
   
   Next, he discusses five realms of design; media constraints, audience needs, client needs, professional ethics and aesthetics. Finally, he tells you it is OK to fail. According to Cloninger, failure is what leads to successful creativity.
   
   Curt Cloninger is a successful artist, designer, author and instructor in Multimedia Arts & Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His previous books include Fresh Styles for Web Designers: Eye Candy from the Underground. His artwork has been featured in popular publications such as How Design and FILE.



3. I have several books designed about creativity and this is the best one that I've read. It is filled with solid information, not gimmicks.

5 comments about Pro OGRE 3D Programming (Pro).

1. It was a good start for Ogre and really fill some blanks from the tutorial. I thought it would be covering more intermediate and advanced aspects and features of Ogre.
   Ogre is such a wonderful engine and it needs a "Ogre's Bible" title.



2. While this text represents what amounts to a noble effort on behalf of the author and the Ogre community, I'm afraid that the best I can say for this book is that it's not entirely terrible. Hoping to fast-forward past the traditionally hackish explanations offered by online documentation, I had purchased this book expecting to learn about Ogre in a more carefully structured and comprehensive (not to mention, professional) manner. Unfortunately, this was simply not to be.
   
   The examples in this book... suck. They're terrible. Everything is simply copied (often incorrectly!) from the freely available Ogre samples. What's more, any explanation of this code is purely cursory, often suggesting that the reader "Check the website for more details," which are apparently too involved or lengthy for inclusion in this $35 hardcover text on Ogre. Oops.
   
   Perhaps I've been spoiled by the OpenGL programming guide. For one reason or another, I've come to expect concise examples that illustrate a single idea presented with plenty of discussion on how this idea might be used in practice and some exposition as to what features exist to allow one to best do so. Compared to this expectation, what this book manages to give you is a tiny sampling of a semi-relevant example drawn from the SDK's sample projects, partnered with the name of the classes and member functions involved in said example all laid out in a nice monospace font, and that's about the sum of it (give or take one or two sentences of description-- sometimes). For instance, while one whole page is dedicated to a laundry-list of the Camera's member functions (clearly copied wholesale from the header file with minimal corrections), maybe three or four functions for interacting with the scene graph are *shown* (not presented) in the context of-- you guessed it-- a small subset of some Ogre sample project. This and some sample code showing how to query the scene in one or two ways is basically all you get from the ~30 page chapter dedicated to the subject.
   
   Often times, the author spends pages upon pages singing praise to a particular feature of Ogre (render queues, techniques, LOD, schemes...), proceeding thereupon to omit any sort of actual explanation of how this feature is used later in the text. As you might imagine, this habit becomes quite annoying by the third or fourth time it occurs. Worse, still, is that any discussion that *is* presented by the author often culminates in a lacking, vague, and ambiguous description that ultimately fails to convey any sense of "The Big Picture." For one reason or another, the author seems convinced that a six line code snippet from the SDK is sufficient to explain just about everything there is to know about, say, Materials or SceneManager instances. And in the end, you feel *almost* as inexperienced with this library as you did when you originally set out to learn Ogre. Of course, by the time you've finished this book, you'll also have learned the valuable lesson that the website is really quite good-- but I'd bet that's not exactly the lesson you were planning to take from this book when you plunked down your money for it in the first place.
   
   One final criticism: be warned! When this book first arrived, I was quite surprised to discover just how thin it was. Before you assume that it's because this book is concise and to-the-point also note that the print is TINY. It's a real pain that the publisher decided to cut corners and use a 10 point font to cut down on page count all the while selling this text as a clunky hardcover book! This, coupled with the numerous typos, bugs, and inconsistencies make for a very unprofessional read. If this were a freely available tutorial you could find somewhere on the website, I'd give it 4 stars. But this is a pricey, hardcover book that's supposed to be professionally edited, organized, and polished; hence, it gets 2 stars.
   
   Okay, okay. This book isn't entirely bad. It's always nice when an open source project becomes big enough to warrant a book. And I'm sure that the author had fine intentions when setting out to write this text: some of the chapters do manage a decent description of their subject matter, and the author's enthusiasm for Ogre is quite evident in his writing (which can be amusing, at times). Unfortunately, however, this book is just not there yet: it is a thorough sales pitch, a high-level tutorial, and many suggestions to visit the website; expect nothing more.
   
   My suggestion? Take his advice, and save some money. Visit the website and skip this book.



3. Spending all day reading and implementing obscure APIs, you tend to develop thick skin for badly written documentation. Programmers generally don't have english degrees. You suffer through and glean the information you need to get your job done.
   
   I'll cut to the chase on this review. This book contains NO information. That's right, it tells you nothing about how to use Ogre. The author spends the first quarter of the book on downloading, installing, and calling the init function (which takes up to three arguments).
   
   Halfway through the book I started thinking "He's actually going to put and object in a scene any minute now". Nope, it never happens. After spending a hundred pages talking about how great Ogre is and the four types of objects he skips over actually using any of the objects. The book doesn't even cover the object trees. It flops back and forth between halfway done remedial 3D concepts (What is a camera? I'll tell you in chapter 7) and marketing speek (Ogre has a great plugin archtitecture you should love only I won't tell you how to use it).
   
   I'm still in awe that something this free of actual content could be published. After reading the entire book, I still had no idea how to perform basic functions in Ogre like loading a texture.
   
   This book has no audience. It doesn't really cover any basic 3D concepts so it's bad for beginners. It doesn't cover how to use the APIs so it's bad for a bootstrap reference, and it doesn't cover any core logic so it's bad for advanced developers. No one should ever buy this book.



4. This book was a well written , easily and objective. The goal of this book is to describe who to use Ogre 3D framework and you main functionality. I only would recommend this book for advanced developers .



5. The book presents all the crucial information in a very organized manner. I found the presentation to be concise and easy to read.
   
   Warning: The book does not teach you how to make a game, It explains the core api functions of OGRE and some background behind them. This should give you a good start to utilize the 3d rendering capability offered by OGRE. You need another book or a course in game design before you can really start making non-trivial games.

3 comments about OpenGL(R) Distilled (OpenGL).

1. I often get asked for good starter books that can teach proper OpenGL concepts. The problem with most of these books is that concepts are expressed en masse with huge code blocks, often obscuring the actual concept being expressed. In this reguards, "Distilled" is that. The author expresses a concept, discusses relevant caveats and practices, then endows us with a short example. The authors coding standards and style are kept minimally intrusive.
   
   A few pros: though most examples use GLUT, Win32 setup is covered. Shaders are presented in the book, as well as other 1.5+ features, but the book does not hang on shaders (the Third Edition Superbible is horrible about this).
   Cons: As with any OpenGL book, GLUT.
   
   The areas covered are relevant, and what you need to know about OpenGL is there. I would recommend book over the Superbible or RedBook for beginners, and would wager it contends with them as a reference material.



2. In "OpenGL Distilled", Paul Martz details the essential elements of the OpenGL 2.0 API used in regular development. As the title describes, the book is a concise 266 pages that span eight chapters and four appendices. The book is published by Addison-Wesley Professional (ISBN: 0321336798) and is retails for $35 USD.
   
   Starting with the first chapter, An Introduction to OpenGL, Martz provides a brief paragraph or two of background summary, followed by what you will, and will not learn in the chapter. The writing and flow is well structured and consistent, making it easy to follow. Each chapter picks a subset of the OpenGL API and highlights the practical issues with each command that a programmer may encounter in actual development.
   
   The other chapters, Drawing Primitives, Transformation and Viewing, Lighting, Pixel Rectangles, Texture Mapping, Extensions and Versions, and Platform-Specific Interface, all follow an identical format. Each chapter picks and describes the usage of several of the core OpenGL API commands.
   
   Generally, the selected commands are well chosen as they are fundamental to the API. The text illustrates usage, pitfalls, and occasionally provides common debugging solutions with the selected commands. Throughout the book, small code fragments and example code is provided. Each code fragment shows operational usage of the key API commands covered in the chapter. There is also a web site where you can download all of the source code, view the color slides, and check for updates.
   
   While the book also provides many references to other sources of OpenGL API information, it doesn't attempt to describe all the API functions. As such, extension libraries, such as GLU/GLUT, shaders, or complex lighting aren't considered due to scope. This might disappoint more sophisticated programmers.
   
   It would be a mistake, however, to think that the book is geared toward the novice graphics programmer. The book assumes at least a casual familiarity with the OpenGL API and doesn't attempt to be instructional. While the second chapter, Drawing Primitives, starts with glBegin()/glEnd(), it jumps straight into methods of drawing primitives using vertex arrays, and finishes with details of the rendering pipeline (clearing the frame buffer, model transformations, depth tests, and alpha blending).
   
   The book also does a nice job highlighting multiplatform nuances encountered in the OpenGL API. Not only is a chapter dedicated to three of the major operating systems, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, but the downloaded example code also compiles on those targets as well.
   
   Interestingly, the book comes with a free 45-day coupon to view it electronically via Safari, an online partnership with several major publishers that "rents" a dynamic bookshelf for reference texts. The service features a large number of technical books complete with search, preview, and printing capability. With the smallest bookshelf, users can keep up to 5 books and rotate books (at most) once every 30 days. The basic 5-slot cost is $10 per month, although other options with additional features also exist. It's a compelling service with a growing number of books from which to choose.
   
   The book seems to best serve intermediate OpenGL programmers. Developers who already have some experience writing OpenGL applications and have already read the "Red Book" ("OpenGL Programming Guide, Version 2" by Shreiner, Woo, et al) would do well with this book. But those doing more sophisticated rendering, with shaders or other cutting edge features of the API for example, may find it's not as valuable of a reference and should consider browsing it via Safari prior to making a purchasing decision.



3. I recently bought all of the official OpenGL books including OpenGL Distilled. Before having these, I have only used up to OpenGL 1.2 because the red and blue book I had before only cover OpenGL 1.2.
   
   This book was a great place to get acquainted with the new OpenGL features like Vertex Buffer Objects. It also has a decent section for the platform specific setup (I didn't even notice but I was creating my Window with the wrong parameters the whole time).
   
   The book is a lot smaller than I thought it would be (it's about 2cm thick) but that's a good thing. It's a quick reference manual for a lot that OpenGL has to offer. If you're looking for more in depth OpenGL knowledge, try the red or orange book instead (The super bible 4th edition looks good as well).

1 comments about Creating Web Graphics for Dummies.

1. Book Review for AAUG Communique
   Title: Creating Web Graphics for Dummies
   Authors: Bud Smith & Peter Frazier
   Pages: 312
   Publisher: Wiley Publishing, Inc. 2003
   Price: $24.99
   Web: www.dummies.com
   Phone: 1-800-762-2974
   Pro: The eye-catching yellow covers of the For Dummies books are
   widely acknowledged to maintain a high standard of excellence
   when it comes to their how to books and Creating Web Graphics
   for Dummies is no exception.
   Con:The book's back and forth between the world of Microsoft and Apple's way to create great graphics for the web I found distracting at times.
   Rating: 4.5 Moose
   Reviewer: Penelope Wells

   Graphic design authors, Bud Smith and Peter Frazier recently produced
   Creating Web Graphics For Dummies. The focus of this book is to teach
   both amateurs and semi-pros alike how to create good looking graphics
   for the Web. The importance of minimizing the user's waiting time which
   is less about the means of transmission and more about what's on the
   page is also discussed. The authors don't try to cover everything
   related to Web page design and graphics rather this book is part of Bud
   Smith's other For Dummies books related to this topic, including
   Creating Web Pages; Web Design and Web Usability.

   This book follows a certain progression starting out with an
   introduction to topical and how-to information allowing you to start to
   do web graphics tasks right away in the first section.

   Part II covers specific graphic tools, and devotes a lot of space to
   Window's Paint, Microsoft's Paint Shop Pro followed by Adobe's
   Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

   Part III is a step by step guide on how to get your photos into your
   web site, and, without causing problems for the user. There's also a
   section devoted to the mechanics of compressing photos.

   Part IV, the do's and don'ts of using GIF images in your Web Site and
   how and when to use animated GIFs.

   Part V refers to useful online resources. The authors also include some
   graphic tips for creating a business web site in contrast to a personal
   home page.

   There's a CD-ROM in the back of the book which allows you to try out
   versions of Adobe's Photoshop, Elements and Illustrator, and other
   software geared more for Microsoft and PC users.

   Overall Creating Web Graphics for Dummies is a well-written book and
   serves the student well. However, the authors guide us through many
   tasks with more reference using Microsoft's software programs. For a
   novice in both graphics and the web and one who prefers to focus on
   information and instruction for the Mac at this stage, I found some
   parts of this book confusing and distracting. According to the
   authors Microsoft's user-friendly Paint Shop Pro is now on a par with
   Photoshop Elements leaving the user with more software choices for
   creating eye-catching graphics for your web page.

5 comments about AI Game Programming Wisdom (with CD-ROM) (Game Development Series).

1. "Artificial Intelligence" means different things to different people. One useful application is the control of nonplayer characters (NPC) in video games. This is the first book to address this field. Like any collection of papers, it is uneven and does not systematically cover the subject. It should be read in conjunction with a traditional AI text, such as Murphy "Introduction to AI Robotics", Russell and Norvig "Artificial Intelligence: a Modern Approach", Tom Mitchell "Machine Learning" or perhaps Bruce Blumberg's forthcoming "Synthetic Characters".

   I teach AI at DigiPen Institute of Technology and made this one of the required books. It is good in showing which techniques are most useful in games and what you need to consider when designing your AI. Some papers are overly general and some are too specific. That's probably unavoidable, but game programmers can pick and choose the most appropriate ideas. Unfortunately, some of the better introductory articles on A*, finite state machines, flocking and fuzzy logic are not in this book but in "Game Programming Gems".

   Once you understand the basics of AI, this book can save some major headaches by helping with the selection of an appropriate architecture. The CD has source code to help you get off to a good start. Reading the appropriate articles will let you anticipate problems before they happen and design around them. Professional game programmers will likely find at least one technique that pays back the cost of the book.




2. Published by the same folks who brought you Game Programming Gems (and edited by one of the more prolific AI authors in that series), AI Game Programming Wisdom provides a wealth of real knowledge by actual game programming professionals, not professional authors. As a game programming professional, the number of game programming books that sit on my shelf is fairly small. Most have nothing interesting or meaningful to offer beyond rudimentary descriptions and concepts.

   AI Wisdom is definitely a cut above the rest. The topic selection is intelligent and relevant, and the articles are all of a consistent quality and polish. I've already referenced articles several times when writing production code, and several co-workers have borrowed it when they had a particularly tricky problem to solve. This is simply a must-have resource for any professional AI programmer, period. Or, if you're an amateur or hobbyist looking to see the tricks and techniques professionals use, then this is a book you absolutely can't afford to miss.




3. Being in the game development business, I am always on the lookout for new and different tricks, techniques and strategies. When most programmers go to the lectures, panels and roundtables at the Game Developers Conference, we are looking to pick up this same sort of material... we share ideas and approaches - but rarely get the chance to get down to the code details to make it easy for us to implement those ideas into our own work. This book makes that possible.

   Along the lines of the other "Gems" series of books, this collection is filled with ACTUAL techniques and code chunks that are used by some of the top professionals in the industry. Just flipping through the list of the contributors to the book is like going around the room at one of the AI roundtables at the GDC... in fact, Steve Woodcock and Neil Kirby are 2 of the "3 AI guys" that RUN those roundtables! (The 3rd being Eric Dybsand who has contributed to the "Gems" series but not this title.)

   Many books on game development are informative. This one is actually USEFULL. I have personally adopted Steve Rabin's source code from the section "Implementing a State Machine Language" into my own game and it has saved me many hours of development and improved the readability and understandability of my code for the rest of the team. Just that section alone has netted at least a 1000:1 return on the cost of this book. Other sections have given me a different approach on how to handle the economic strategy layer that I could have come upon myself... but was able to implement a lot quicker than if I had done it myself. It was definately worth the price.

   Are any of these sections worth the purchase price for YOU? I suppose that depends on how much you value you your time. Once you equate the cost of the book to the man hours you save, it's a no brainer!




4. This is the best book in my library.
   Write by professionals, with usefull techniques and well explained details of almost every cool aspects of AI in the game programming world.



5. It's hard to find good information about game programming and design. The trouble is that people working in the industry have an incentive to keep their techniques secret -- they don't want their competitors to learn them. The people who aren't in the industry can write about games but don't have the experience to back it up.

   Game AI Programming Wisdom gives us wisdom from people who have worked on real games. Each section is a short explanation of a particular problem (like pathfinding, tactical reasoning, or pattern recognition). Since they're short and independent, you can pick the section that applies to the problem you're trying to solve and read that without having to read everything in order. However, each section is written by a different person, so if you try to read the book straight through you will be distracted by the change in writing styles and level of detail.

   I'm quite glad to see this book. It's actually the first game programming/design book that I purchased. (I'm quite picky when it comes to books. I'm sure Amazon doesn't like that.) Most of the game books I see go into low level programming details. This book teaches you the principles and techniques that will be useful for more than the specific problems they cover.

4 comments about The Art of Stop-Motion Animation.

1. I was curious about stop-motion animation and decided to invest in this book. I have to say that is very useful and well explained. The examples are great and the book guides you step by step on how to get started. It is worth the money.



2. I ordered this book and am very impressed. While on the way to the book store Christmas Eve, with a nasty ear ache, on the phone, and very content, I called the bookstore in advance to pull anything off of the shelf for my purpose. When asked to check for books about stop-motion animation, I was told that there is a book on 'the art of stop-motion animation'. I said order it. There I was driving to the book store to do the usual checking the shelf, to look in the arts section (for my intended mission) on clay animation, or puppets.... anything about stop-motion animation?, I asked. Yes. Order it I said. I have the book now. And I have not put the book down since. My goal is to learn how to make puppets like the one in Rudolph, and all the Rankin & Bass specials. I got a lot more from this book. It is right in line with everyting you will want to know about stop-motion animation. The author has the passion for the art. Extensive background on the history of rare antiquated movies in the art and also contact with very recent directors and producers from movies like 'Corpse Bride' and 'The Night Before Christmas.' Also within this book is golden information from those who have private studios and offer courses with valuable knowledge in the field of puppetry for stop-motion animation. The book is easy to read, very informative from what is needed to film, how to animate, and even interviews with teachers, and Professionals within this field. It is an art that will survive and will continue to, even along side CG (Computer Graphics). It is almost like a class college book,(regarding the lay-out and the interviews with associates-a special bonus added!), yet is so simple to ready. The author speaks like he is talking. It is and continues to be a very special treasure! The author even includes classes one can take a professional colleges. I find it fascinating and one that I will keep.
   
   Hats off to this author!!! Now -- in persuit those who are serious in entrepreneurial venture, or hobby.



3. to see some of my friends mentioned in this book, as well as a couple of sites I frequent regularly. Everything, right down to the stopmotion software I use is presented in this book, and the author is a nice guy, very quick to write back, and supportive of raw talents in stopmotion. Great teacher, great book!



4. First, I must say that the book's cover was designed good enough, and previous reviews in this page, were so appealing that made me expect a little more of stop-motion movie related examples than what I found.
   
   However,basic and rough exercises through the book (and the CD-ROM)are useful enough for any stop- motion beginner to keep him/her motivated without expecting outrageous results.
   
   The book offers also some interesting data through the appendix section. I believe it's a good starting reference, but not outstanding alone.
   
   If you are interested for more in depth stop-motion references, check this other titles available from amazon. I believe you wont be decieved:
   
   Books
   
   *Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation (Focal Press Visual Effects and Animation) (Focal Press Visual Effects and Animation) by Susannah Shaw.
   (Full of average difficulty stop-motion tips and exercises)
   
   * Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance by Barry J C Purves
   (A really passionate book about stop-motion, its origins and particular procedures through case studies and interviews. Fully recommended-)
   
   DVD
   
   There are a great number of commercial stop-motion DVDs through amazon U.S., but I really would like to recommend this less commercial title from amazon UK. I really hope it's still available by the time you read this (you could still find it in other european websites with international shipping services, but I believe this kind of information is banned in amazon):
   
   *Peter & The Wolf - Sergei Prokofiev
   DVD ~ Suzie Templeton
   (A must have!)

5 comments about After Effects and Photoshop: Animation and Production Effects for DV and Film, Second Edition.

1. This book seemed to cover all the topics I wanted to get me in to being able to doing some of the things that I wanted to do right away with 3-D photo montages and working in 3-D space with AE and Photoshop but the book skips far too many steps and assumes you can read minds and know the "in-between" steps to get from one set of instructions to the next. I would not recommend this book to any one who does not have a very good grasp of AE. If you know AE very well then this may be the book for you. As for me I guess I'll just have to go back to my Total Training DVD's but I was hoping to get up and running a little quicker.



2. I have to say that you MUST need a solid undertanding or at least the basics of After Effects before getting this book. Also, there are not many figures to ilustrate the projects in an easy way.
   Get the book if you have good knoledge of After Effects.



3. have bought many books on after effect and photoshop.
   This is so far the best ever. Easy to use, easy to understand.



4. Tired of the usual "Blah, Blah, Blah" in computer books? FINALLY - somone is listening to the needs of graphics professionals and students wanting to learn tips and tricks for doing these effects and animations! Foster not only shows you HOW to do these techniques, but more importantly, WHY! I have found this book indespensible in my advancement way beyond the basic tools and functional training of other After Effects books. If you want to learn animation or do any kind of special effects on your own, then get this book NOW!



5. Cuando adquiri este libro pense en que solo me ayudaria en comprender mejor al Photoshop con el After Fx pero fue mejor que eso...
   En realidad entendi el como y el porque de hacer muchos procesos desde Photoshop pàra agilizar y darle mas realismo a las composiciones.
   Adventencia: No es un libro facil de leer para principiantes, es mejor leer cada capitulo y repetir ejercicios al menos 2 veces. Eso incrementa el tiempo de terminarlo de leer.
   Si yo fuera tu, si lo compraria.
   he dado asesoria de postproduccion por 3 años y es bastante didactico.
   Puede bajar cientos de tutoriales de internet, pero no podras entender el como realizar desde cero proyectos de mayor alcance sin la ayuda de libros como este.

5 comments about Graphics and GUIs with MATLAB, Third Edition (Graphics & GUIs with MATLAB).

1. This is the best book I have found on developing GUIs in Matlab. Other reviews claim that the coverage of GUIs is limited. I agree that the coverage is limited, but yet it is the "less limited" coverage I've found. It is true that there is only one chapter on GUIs. Yet, this is the last and longer chapter in the book. Before buying this book, I tried to learn how to develop GUIs from the Matlab manuals but got only poorly-developed GUIs. with unbearable "side effects" (mainly related to using the Matlab base workspace). This book taught me how to avoid these side effects and how to develop GUIs that are self-contained and whose interaction with the Matlab base workspace is minimal or null. I highly recommend this book to anybody who needs to develop GUIs.



2. This is not a book for beginners who want to learn MATLAB or GUI. If you already know how to run MATLAB and know some GUI, then you may find this book useful. It will improve your graph and GUI skill. If you have no knowledge on how GUI is created, this is not a book for you.



3. I mainly wished to just make a GUI interface, but then I found i needed some graphics and found this book to be very helpful in both categories. For the GUI section, there were many options available for making a GUI and all options were clearly laid out from the use of global variables, to using GUIDE.



4. I'd been using Matlab for several years (completely self-taught) and wanted to learn how to set up a simple GUI for some routine tasks I was performing at work. I borrowed this book from a coworker, but plan to buy it in the near future. I have the "Mastering Matlab 7" book, which only covered how to use individual GUI elements. There wasn't much in the way of how to structure a GUI program, which is the niche I feel this book handles nicely, even going into a bit of animation type stuff, which is handy for using the mouse to interact with a plot, among other things.
   
   After reading the GUI chapter in this book, I was able to create a simple GUI without much difficulty. I was happy to see that the old functions that I had previously written required only very minor changes to interface with the GUI. Understanding the structure of a Matlab GUI was the key that this book excells at in my opinion.
   
   Now that I've made a "decent" GUI (albeit simple, I'm not a software engineer), I just clone and modify it for the next GUI that I need. This book will definitely provide a good jumping-off point for GUI development. The rest you can learn by doing.
   
   I would most definitely say that a thorough understanding Matlab's "handle graphics" is a REQUIRED pre-requisite before trying to do GUI operation.



5. After ordering shipping was fast, but refund was slow.
   I ordered books 2 tmies. The first I wanted to order 2 books (one of each)
   however, for whatever reason 3 books were sent. I want to return and refund one book. I have returned one book for one week, but so far I have not received any thing.
   
   However, my second order was received fast.
   I do not know what I can say or comment.
   Seon Yip

5 comments about Security Data Visualization: Graphical Techniques for Network Analysis.

1. I found the "Security Data Visualization" to be well written and full of useful information. The book provides a snapshot of the state-of-the-art in security data visualization, which includes the latest academic work as well as open source and commercial tools.
   
   I particularly liked the examples in Chapter 3 comparing visual representations of port scans from Nmap and the Unicornscan. The differences between the two port scans stood out very clearly even before reading the corresponding explanation.
   
   I also enjoyed the hands-on examples of dissecting visual representations of Nessus and Metasploit attacks in Chapter 4. Among the other things I liked about the book were the examples of using TreeMaps to visualize alert logs from Snort and to perform detailed analysis of alerts described in Chapter 8. (Make sure you read the first chapter because it explains many of the fundamental concepts.)
   
   Also, for those who like reading chapters out-of-order (like myself :) - to save time, I'd recommend reading the first three chapters before reading anything else. I found that it is much easier to understand the rest of the examples in the book that way.
   
   Overall, the book provides practical insights into a very interesting emerging area of information security--security data visualization. I would recommend this book to all security professionals.



2. Security Data Visualization (SDV) is a great book. It's perfect for readers familiar with security who are looking to add new weapons to their defensive arsenals. Even offensive players will find something to like in SDV. The book is essentially an introduction to the field, but it is well-written, organized, and clear. I recommend all security analysts read SDV.
   
   I give five star reviews to books that meet certain criteria. First, the book should change the way I look at a problem, or properly introduce me to thinking about a problem for which I have little or no frame of reference. Although I have been a security analyst for ten years, I have little visualization experience. Author Greg Conti spent just the right amount of time explaining the field, describing key terms (preattentive processing, occlusion, brushing) and displays (star plots, small multiples, TreeMaps). I loved the author's mention of Ben Shneiderman's visualization mantra: "overview first, zoom and filter, details on demand" (p 14).
   
   Second, a five star book should have few or no technical errors. SDV was as sound as they come, at least as far as the security and networking information goes. I can't comment on the author's synthesis of the visualization community. I also liked the case studies in Chs 3, 4, and 5. I liked reading the visualization methodology introduced in the chapter on analyzing firewall logs (Ch 7).
   
   Third, a five star book will make the material actionable. I finished SDV thinking I could try at least some of what I read on my own network. Ch 10 talked about how to build your own visualization tool. I would have liked additional detail on using some of the tools in the book, so perhaps a future edition will expand on that point.
   
   A fourth feature of great books is including current research and referencing outside sources. SDV cited many foundational papers and presentations on visualization in general and security visualization specifically. Chs 6 and 12 addressed these subjects in detail. Ch 11 presented readers with ideas for future projects.
   
   Overall, it should be obvious I really enjoyed reading SDV. My only real complaint seems inherent to the field: how to analyze large data sets. The case study in Ch 5 ("One Night on My ISP") only looks at 303 packets. It is easy to dismiss it since there's hardly any data to analyze. However, I feel that the author's techniques can be creatively scaled if one maintains realistic expectations. SDV is an excellent introduction to the security visualization field and I hope to see other works from the author and others on this important topic.



3. If you want to get into security visualization this is the book for you. This book gives you everything you need to get started in the field. You may be asking yourself why you should care or want to be interested in Security Visualization. In Chapter 1 the author sums it up nicely. "Visualizations make abstract data more coherent...In many cases, visualizations seek to display large amounts of information in a compact but useful way."
   
   Before we get into the review, I'll disclose that I know the author and he gave me a review copy. I don't think this makes it easier for the author to get a good review, in fact, I think it makes it harder because I expect a lot from the author. Its his fault I'm into computer and information security and I have taken courses that he taught, so he had high expectations to meet.
   
   The first three chapters, An Overview of Information Visualization, The Beauty of Binary File Visualization, and Port Scan Visualization give you all the background you need to get started and introduce you to the author's visualization tool, RUMINT. It was interesting to see the difference between nmap and unicornscan and paves the way to create signatures for all types of port scanners based on their default behavior. Chapter 4, Vulnerability Assessment and Exploitation, walks us through analyzing a dataset with an attack using the Metasploit Framework, very interesting and shows us that even with metasploit's built-in IDS evasion, in the end it must create sockets and connections and those can be seen with visualization tools (with the proper tweaking and analysis). I read the sample chapter available (CH 5, One Night on My ISP) before I read the whole book, and it was certainly easier to follow after reading the previous chapters. I think it gives you a good taste of what you can do with security visualization tools and what the book can teach you but can be hard to follow without the background material in the previous chapters. Chapter 6, A Survey of Security Visualization, gives us an overview of how other security researchers are solving security problems with different types of visualization. Chapters 7 (Firewall Log Visualization) & 8 (Intrusion Detection Log Visualization) written by the guest author Raffy Marty uses his tool "AfterGlow" to examine firewall logs and Treemaps to try to organize the volumes of IDS data. Chapter 9, Attacking and Defending Visualization Systems, shows us some sample attacks that attackers could use to thwart security visualization tools. The occlusion and windshield wiper attacks were interesting as well as the idea of using graphical attacks to send images to the analyst. Chapters 10-12, Creating a Security Visualization System, Unexplored Territory & Teaching Yourself, closes out the book with discussions and thoughts on building your own security visualization tools, areas of future research and obviously ways to help teach yourself security visualization.
   
   Some likes and dislikes. I liked that the author regularly points us to background material and extra reading for every section. Each section could pretty much be a book in itself so links to more reading and current research was helpful for the specific areas that peeked my interest. I really liked that the book was in color, I don't see the book being near as effective in black and white. I liked the guest author's take on visualization, it was nice to get a second opinion in the same book and it was extremely nice that they didn't cover the same material like a lot of books that have multiple authors seem to do. Lastly, I liked that the author had created his own tool to do some of the visualization and that its freely available on the tool's site. I was able to get up and running with RUMINT from the material in the book and the how-to on the site.
   
   For dislikes, it would have been nice to have access to some of the scripts mentioned in the book. Hopefully the author will post those on his site. I didn't care for the font of the book, Times New Roman, small times new roman font got a little tiresome of reading after a chapter or two (minor gripe)
   
   Overall, a great book and highly recommended to anyone interested in getting started with security visualization.



4. To those in the information assurance or network security fields, Security Data Visualization by Greg Conti is a must read title due to the fact that it represents the first significant text to analyze its namesake of its title. For those unfamiliar with the utility of visualization systems, the text provides excellent examples on the graphical presentation of information to aid analysis, and how human intuition can be far more effective than standard machine processing. After establishing the basics early on, the book dives into security applications very quickly. By the end of Chapter 2, Conti has already shown enough so that the reader can see how to find a security vulnerability in the file structure of Microsoft Word documents via visualization techniques. As the book progresses so do the applications covered, which include network traffic visualization, visualization of firewall logs, and a handful of other topics. The work presented is extremely eye-opening, as it really has not gotten much attention outside of research and conferences. Security-minded readers unacquainted with this niche field will find the book impossible to put down.
   
   This title is not without its drawbacks, which unfortunately are numerous. In writing Security Data Visualization, Mr. Conti seems to have lacked a clear opinion regarding the identity of his average reader. From the title, it might seem that this would be an advanced/applied topics book on Computer Security, which would imply an assumed basic knowledge level of the reader. Some chapters seem to make this assumption and waste no time getting to the heart of the matter associated with their chapter titles, whereas others get bogged down with extremely unnecessary levels of detail regarding information that does not belong in a book like this. As an example of several sections of this nature, nearly half of Chapter 3, entitled "Port Scans," is spent explaining TCP/IP and the OSI seven layer model. These are topics that a majority of readers would need as prerequisite knowledge in order even to be interested in a book like this, and this inconsistent scope of information hinders the already short book by wasting pages on topics that do not directly relate to the title. The book also frequently falls victim to favoring 'what' over 'why' in explaining most topics. All too often chapters fail to rationalize design decisions, or why certain visualizations were used in conjunction with specific applications. In writing the first book for this field, it would have been much more beneficial to have the text read more like a tutorial than a proof of concept.
   
   However, the most glaring problem with this book involves deception of the reader. In Chapter 5 "One Night on My ISP", the author introduces a Security Visualization program called RUMINT which is a tool to visualize network packets, and juxtaposes it with heavyweight open-source security tools such as Wireshark and nmap. What is not to be found anywhere in the book other than in an image caption in Chapter 11, and in a few small words on the back cover, is that RUMINT was written by the author and is not a community standard like the programs it is presented alongside. Further investigation into RUMINT at its project website (www.rumint.org), shows it is written in the obsolete Visual Basic 6 language and requires Microsoft Office as well as an expensive 3rd party component called PacketX to be installed in order to compile. Its use of the PacketX library also probably makes RUMINT illegally licensed with the Creative Commons version of the GPL it is published under. In addition, the software has several limitations and is incomplete, being nowhere near the level of maturity that the Wireshark or nmap projects have achieved over the years of community revision. If the author had stated anywhere in the text that he was using his own tool in order to illustrate a concept, all of the above would have been excusable. RUMINT is used throughout the book, and this is not the only example of selective omission in Security Data Visualization. Two chapters that cover firewall log visualization and intrusion detection system log visualization, and were written by his colleague Raffael Marty, who uses these chapters to anonymously promote his own software package called Afterglow. The lack of disclosure regarding the origins of these programs results in a serious loss of trust in the author. Omissions of this nature, especially in a book related to information assurance, are very difficult to forgive.
   
   Despite all of this criticism, Security Data Visualization is a must-have for any computer security professional's bookshelf. The abilities this book will add to your toolkit, such as being able to look at a visualization of your network traffic, and then being able to not only eyeball that you are being portscanned, but identify the specific program the attacker is using is nothing short of incredible. Each page is printed in full color on semi-gloss paper, presenting the wealth of visualizations and diagrams the way they were meant to be seen. Aside from covering most common network security topics in a completely new light, the book constantly reminds the reader of the youth of this niche field and provides ideas and suggestions for future work. With this book Mr. Conti has definitely succeeded in creating a groundbreaking title, and with some revisions and a second edition he almost certainly will succeed in creating a classic.



5. I'm somewhat on the fence as to whether I really liked this book or not. A book that covers this subject in detail with a number of practical applications in the real world is sorely needed. Unfortunately, this book only half-meets that criteria.
   
   As previously mentioned, the author has serious trouble maintaining focus on his intended audience, and spends far too much time providing security basics, when the audience who will understand the significance of this book will be intermediate/advanced security people.
   
   The entire book is only 230 pages including images, and can easily be read in an afternoon or two. Without images, it clocks in at well under 200 pages. Many of the chapters ended prematurely, when the information was just starting to get really interesting.
   
   Many of the images really could have been done better. For example, in several screenshots he shows packet traces in rumint, but it's impossible to tell which source and destination packets are which, because he uses 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 as his IP addresses, whereas designating one box in the 10.x range and another in the 192.168.x range would have illustrated his point much better. Several of the color choices in his statistical analyses were far too similar for easy distinction (blue and dark gray against a black background? Really?).
   
   I did find his treeview analyses of snort logs very interesting and useful, and the chapter on analyzing firewall logs and how to determine how to parse the logs was really good.
   
   In all, it's not a bad book, but it's clear that this author has much knowledge to impart, and I'm disappointed that more of it didn't make it into this book.

5 comments about Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach.

1. I waited several months for this 3rd edition of Neteler and Mitasova's 'Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach'. I'm not disappointed.
   
   Pros:
   1. The book is a major re-write of the earlier edition, and uses GRASS version 6.x - which has many improvements from earlier GRASS versions
   2. It has tons of example applications, drawn and derived from an up-to-date sample dataset for North Carolina. Examples span the fields of hydrology, remote sensing,and a large number of standard GIS operations on vector and raster datasets.
   3. It is well organized and succinct in its language.
   
   Cons:
   1. There are several typos.
   2. Some of the examples may not exactly work on your own system - the authors acknowledge this, as each version of GRASS has some variations in dependent packages and libraries.
   3. Some of the pages are not cross-referenced right.
   
   [...]
   
   To summarize:
   I first used GRASS (version 4.3) in the year 2000. While I recognized back then how powerful GRASS is, I found it quite difficult to learn and to appreciate. In 2005-07, I revisited GRASS (version 6.0) for my dissertation research, and found that it had improved vastly. This book is an excellent way for readers to get a taste of how powerful GRASS 6.x is. It will be most useful for students and researchers who learn by doing - you will not learn GRASS (or any other GIS software) by just reading. Also, this book alone will not answer all your questions about GRASS - use the friendly and resourceful GRASS mailing lists for specific help with your own GRASS GIS projects.
   
   Get into this book and GRASS GIS, only if you are willing to use the command line! If you are a programmer and are used to learning new languages/software, you probably do not need this book - the material on the GRASS website would be enough for you. If like me, you dont consider yourself a programmer but 'can do' when needed, this book will be very useful.
   
   I hope that a more affordable paperback version of the third edition comes out!



2. Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach is now on its third edition. I have all three editions. It is remarkable how much the program has advanced in six years. The third edition deals with version 6.x and is still invaluable to older users and new users alike. Many changes occurred between 5.x and 6.x. Sites have been replaced with point vectors. The GUI interface has advanced. Things are just not done the same way they used to be and since this is a UNIX program, the changes may not be intuitive for people used to the Mac or Windows OS.
   
   GRASS is a free alternative to to ARC GIS. This book will help the user to unleash GRASS's power.



3. I bought this book because I needed to use GRASS and R to produce maps with the results of statistical analysis. Though I am an experienced programmer, I had never used R neither any GIS. The tutorials available on the Internet were enough to learn R, but GRASS was a brick wall.
   After reading and trying the examples until page 200, I found myself able to work with raster and vectorial maps. Since I was completely illiterate on GIS, I learned in the book how the raster and vector data are organized, how to alter and combine maps and how to manage the vector databases. The sections about R and GRASS integration was very useful. Although it was of no particular interest to me, there are several sections about spatial analysis tools, 2D and 3D output, image processing and GRASS programing.
   The book is not an exhaustive descriptions of the commands, which should be found on the GRASS documentation. It is more like a hands-on tutorial that makes you familiar with the system and the commands, even if you are novice. It will also be useful for people familiar with the graphic interface of other systems who need to start working with the command line.



4. The book covers many subjects broadly, from Remote Sensing, LIDAR as well as scanning historial maps. However, I found myself using the online users manual for the basics and step by step detail on HOW to use GRASS.
   
   In addition, the binding of the book broke within 6 months, and about 25 pages fell out of the spine, with average use.



5. As some of the other reviews here indicate, it's not that easy for a novice to get started using GRASS. I had trouble installing GRASS on my ubuntu machine; then I had a hard time getting the GUI to do anything. Once I got the book, and began using the command-line interface rather than the GUI, it went very smoothly. The book is expensive, but when I figure that the book probably saved me a couple of weeks of frustration, I think it was worth the price. For those who haven't looked at it yet, GRASS is very impressive; the tie-ins with R make this the obvious GIS choice for anyone focusing on spatial statistics.