O'Reilly $9.99 Exclusive Best of "Ebook Deal of the Day" | Hacker News Reader

O'Reilly $9.99 Exclusive Best of "Ebook Deal of the Day"

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40 pointsmapleoin47 comments

All O'Reilly's books are available cheaper if you have an iPhone (or maybe just iTunes?). Follow the guide here to extract the embedded ePub from one of their iPhone apps, which retail at $1.99 - $4.99. Scroll down to "Extracting an EPUB Pearl".

http://oreilly.com/ebooks/oreilly_iphone_tips.csp

btw, TapWorthy is well worth the $4.99.

Are they exactly the same ePubs that you'd buy from the web site? If so, I'm just stingy enough to do this. ;)

I don't know if they're exactly the same but I converted the Tapworthy one and it looked great as an ePub in iBooks on the iPad.

Many are available through the Android App Store for $4.99 as well (with the same export to ePub option).

I use this option, but beware. At least some of them don't offer the export. I forget exactly which book it was, but one of the ones I bought didn't have that option.

I imagine I could go pull the files manually off of /data/app, though.

You don't get access to the full on pdf which I find useful in some cases due to examples and figures.

Most public or university libraries have full, free access to Safari Online, the O'Reilly ebook subscription service that normally costs $40. You usually have to go through a slightly annoying web proxy, but you get all the books you could ever want.

I use it all the time but the one my university provides doesn't let you download or even chapters making on the go reading a pain. That's why I still buy ebooks.

Also note the code "4cast" gets you 50% off any ebook

Can anyone recommend anything from this list?

I'm almost through Learning Python after having worked with Python for about 2 years and I really appreciate it. It goes into great depth on all of the commonly used features of the language. I think I got to appreciate it more precisely because I already knew a good deal of Python. This book also shows the whys in Python and gives you an idea of what will be new in Python 3 (and why).

Well, I'd say Cooking for Geeks, but I'm a little biased. ;)

-Jeff Potter

Is this directed at Americans with an Imperial system and Fahrenheit scale, or will we Europeans also be able to understand it? :)

You can easily check that on Google Preview. From what I've seen, both temperatures and weights are given in both American and European systems.

Yes, the book is in both metric and imperial measurements. Seems like an easy thing for an author to do to reach a broader audience... No idea why more don't!

It's really widespread which is why I am on the fence so much. It's ridiculous, and you can only speculate what their reason is.

Looks like it checks out. Thanks.

Is the book relevant for vegetarians and vegans as well?

Yes - it's much "bigger picture" than just recipes. There is a fair amount about meat proteins (Ch 4), but there's still a lot of material applicable regardless of specific dietary constraints.

Thanks! I'll be looking into a purchase then.

Just bought it, entertaining stuff ;) E. g. loved how what happens with collagen is broken down (ahem).

Thanks! And it tastes good, too! ;)

Just curious, how closely does your book resemble an episode of Good Eats?

Good Eats episodes are focused on an ingredient and what you can do with it; Cooking for Geeks is essentially inverted, focused on concepts with recipes to illustrate and explain. This approach allows me to cover topics that don't readily fall out of traditional recipes or ingredients (ie psychology - what type of cook are you? or physiology - how does taste and smell work?).

Check out the preview on Amazon -- it's a very generous preview.

I learnt from the original edition of Learning Python. I saw a recent edition recently and couldn't believe how thick it had become! :)

Apress does a similar daily deal: http://apress.com/info/dailydeal

This is great, but is there any RSS feed? I couldn't find one.

I didn't find one either. I just assumed that they want you to come back each day to the site:)

I had a look and: http://twitter.com/ApressDaily (all Twitter accounts have an RSS feed too :-)) Or, you can just add the original page to Google Reader as-is. No need for RSS feeds nowadays since they track page updates too.

GoodReader finally just earned its keep.

It was the only way I could get my newly purchased Cooking for Geeks PDF into iBooks. Safari has no Open in iBooks option for PDFs (lame).

> Safari has no Open in iBooks option for PDFs (lame).

If you're talking about Mobile Safari, it very well does (at least in iOS4, once you have iBooks installed.)

If you mean plain-old-Safari—well, Safari itself doesn't offer any help, but you can just drag-and-drop the PDF into your iTunes library once it's downloaded, and it'll appear in the "Books" section.

How?

Dropbox handles this beautifully.

Any thoughts on R in a Nutshell?

I work in a statistics-related field and use R daily. Most R books emphasize applications for statistics, not R itself; they're written for non-programmers. R in a Nutshell overviews R itself and assumes basic programming experience. I personally prefer this method, since I can just Google for any particular stats functions I need. If you're already a programmer, this is probably the R book you want.

My background is in SAS and SPSS, but my new job required me to learn R. If you require an absolute beginners guide for R, this book might not be for you. It assumes you have a background in programming and basic statistics.

I am about halfway done the book, and found the chapters on graphics and lattices to be very helpful.

The one thing that is lacking, at least so far, is a section on formatting output. Most data is shown in raw tables, but for my job I need to feed these into excel.

My R toolbox has this book and the built-in R help system. So far, those two things are all I have needed two write my scripts.

Look into the RExcel plugin for Excel. There are other ways to get data between the two programs, but they usually involve importing and exporting CSV files. With RExcel, it's only slightly more complicated than copying and pasting.

I'm wondering how long it will be until the "e" in ebook seems anachronistic.

How long did it take with email?

You need to differentiate between email and physical mail, because physical mail is still in common use.

That will not be the case for physical books at some point in the not-too-distant future.

So ebook will not last as a term, there will be no need for it.

Email didn't kill off physical mail completely, but ebooks will completely eliminate physical books?

Any thoughts on TapWorthy?

I've been reading it for a while, definitely "worthy", I'm a UI designer and I've been designing iPhone applications for more than one year and I still find it extremely interesting. There are a lot of things that you take for granted without thinking about the why you are doing it, this book explained to me.

Anyone have any experience with Cooking for Geeks?

The first 4 or so chapters—about half the book—is available as free preview online, I think on both amazon.com and O'Reilly.

Feel free the shot me any questions...

-Jeff (jeff at cookingforgeeks.com)

I've read the food illness chapter online and I liked it. I think I'll read the whole book on safari.

Thanks! :)

A real bargain, thanks.

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