People who know me, and people who have read the past few entries, know that while I drink the Microsoft Kool-Aid, I also quench my thirst at other water fountains. One of those, for quite a while, was Palm - I owned a Palm IIIc as well as a Handspring Visor. In fact, with the VisorPhone add-on, my Visor was my cell-phone for a while - show me a Pocket PC (not a Windows Mobile smart phone, a Pocket PC) that has a single add-on piece of hardware that turns it into a smart phone. Didn't think so...
Anyway, I had and used Palm devices, and wanted to code for them. After some searching, I found the resources I needed to do it - all free, all open source, all tricky to configure. Oh, sure, I could have forked over the big buck for Code Warrior, but as you may have figured out, I'm a fan of free software and open source - why pay for something when, with some study, know-how, research, and a little configurarion, I can get for free myself?
Of course, there is no end of information on the web on how to program - right now, I can put my hands on 3D gaming tutorials, data-driven web site development, source control concepts, even how to run GIMP. So, I found some sites on programming for the Palm, downloaded the tools I needed, even found a 300+ page PDF file called the Palm OS Programmer's Companion. But none of it was enough - I needed something that wasn't tied to the screen I was trying to code on - I needed a book.
Yes, I'm a book junkie - even better, I'm a book collector. I've got a modest library, say no more than 500-600 volumes, ranging from classics (Twain and Dickens) to sci-fi (Heinlein, Asimov, Dan Simmons, and Robert J. Sawyer) to history to technology. Yes, I buy technology books, even though I know they're out of date the minute they're printed. However, I have an out - I buy a lot of them, and sell the old ones at Half Price Books here in Seattle.
So, I not only found a few books on Palm programming at Half Price, but I sold them there last night (no, I don't do Palm programming anymore - I don't program Apple ][e computers anymore. I've got my limits - go figure). I threw in an old VC 6.0 book as well, and my wife had two older Atkin's books - five big heavy books. They gave us <insert drum roll>: US$3.00 and a 10% off coupon. That went towards buying O'Reilly's Learning GNU Emacs for only $8 (less with the coupon and tax). Retail from O'Reilly? US$39.95. And before you say anything: yes, I know there are free web resources all a bout Emacs I can use. What can I say?
I'm a book junkie. What are you?
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