Ali H. Soufan, The Black Banners, The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda(New York: W.W. Norton, 2011). This book, complete with redacted pages by the CIA, was written by an Arabic speaking former FBI agent who interrogated many high level al-Qaeda captives. Before reading this book I didn’t really care too much about how al-Qaeda captives were interrogated. However, the writer makes a strong case from personal experience that he received more useful information without using enhanced interrogation techniques. Aside from that it gives a very good overview of the structure and growth of al-Qaeda in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, etc.
Stuart Hollingdale, Makers of Mathematics (New York: Penguin Books, 1989) As title states a history of math. Equations are included, but are mostly just to illustrate points and generally I was not able to follow the math in his examples.
Piers Paul Read, The Templars (New York: St. Martins, 1999) History of the Templars starting with background of the history of Jerusalem, and then the founding of the Templar order in 1119 in Jerusalem and their dissolution and trial at the hands of Phillip the Fair in 1307.
I recently watched an episode of the Monarchy with David Starkey documentary series on Netflix that covered the reign of Henry II of England. It was of interest because it mentioned a cousin or possibly uncle of mine that I have discovered in my genealogy research.
Reginald FitzUrse, in fact, committed a infamous murder. Here he is pictured as one of the four knights who murdered Thomas Beckett.
After performing this horrible and unpopular crime he suffered years of persecution and ended up being sent by the Pope on crusade to the Holy Land, where he died and was buried by the Templar’s church.
Records show that he held the manor of Barham in Kent. The Barham family of Virginia, of which I am a descendant through the marriage of Thomas Moore and Mary Barham about 1738, is descended from Robert Barham of East Hall in the parish of Boughton Monchelsea in Kent. Genealogists differ on the relationship of the ancestors of the Barhams to Reginald FitzUrse, but agree that they were from branches of the same family.
I went to the national meeting for the Huguenot Society in Richmond at the start of June, and was introduced as the new webmaster. When I got back from the meeting Ann and I got to work copying about 50 pages from the old frames based site into the new template I created. By last weekend we had finished, and I made the change in the site configuration so that visitors will now see the newly redesigned site.
After considering one of the various content management systems, I decided to create my own templates from html. This turned out to work fine, and I didn’t need to learn a new program that I might not need to use in the future. The template was written in html5, with some php, mostly to create separate files for the header, navigation section, etc. If you look at the site you might remark that it looks nice, but probably if you are a professional graphic designer it appears that the layout was not done by a professional.
There were several books I found helpful in designing the site – a book about html5 , one about typography, and a book by Jeffrey Zeldman. Zeldman it seems is very influential in modern web design. I heard of him by attending the local web design meetup group.
I used parts of a template file from the web site html5 reset. If you are planning writing an html5 site I would recommend you look at the template. Among other things it resets all the attributes of the elements to zero or default. This can be helpful, but then you have to go out and find the browser defaults for all the elements and add them back in. At least you know what you have. A program you will run into with html5 is modernizr. I didn’t use this for my site and if you are just starting you can get by using html5 shiv. They both fix Internet Explorer for html 5, but modernizr also detects what features are available in your browser.
Matthew David, HTML 5 Designing Rich Internet Applications(Burlington, MA: Focal Press, 2010) Topic is obvious from the title. Good overview of using HTML 5 and its advanced features, some of which I probably won’t get around to using for a long time. Didn’t actually read all the material, but read enough to get me started with using HTML 5.
Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 1992) Discussion of typography and page layout for books.
Petr Beckman, A History of Pi(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971) Mathematical history centered on the constant pi. Starting in ancient times, but emphasis on work of Archimedes, and on into modern times. Not much on computer techniques.
I received an e-mail several months back from one of the officers of the Huguenot society that I have joined. Ann, the person who wrote me the e-mail asked if I would like to be the society webmaster. I wrote back and told her that I would be happy to do it, and now I get to travel to the society meeting this summer and be introduced to the executive committee.
The society website has been written over the past 10 or so years using frames. I have decided that we need a new website design without the old frames based layout. This will involve in addition to redesign moving about 50 pages from the old site to the new site.
So now I am considering how to redesign the site. I have been involved in web site design professionally for 5 years, but mainly involved in backend coding and database work. Now I have to decide how I am going to approach this new project. Should I write out all the web pages myself as templates and cut and paste the old content into that? If so do I use the old HTML/XHTML 4 or do I learn the new HTML 5 and use that?
Aside from coding my own HTML, I can use a Content Management System (CMS). Evidently, there are 3 leading choices – Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal. I have some experience with WordPress, so if I go in this direction, that is probably what I shall choose.
Oystein Ore, Number Theory and its History (1948; reprint, New York: Dover, 1988)
Good book for an introduction to number theory if you like math. Contains proofs, but avoids mathematical notation so its easier for amateurs. It took me about 2 1/2 months to finish the 360 page book.
