Horror author HP Lovecraft was not cancelled in August, but you can be forgiven for thinking he was.
What’s Hot
Top-Ten lists are passé—ours goes to 11. These are the top titles that folks are interested in currently, along with their rank from last month. This is based solely on direct sales from our online store.
| 1^ | 3 | CoffeeScript |
| 2 | 2 | The Cucumber Book |
| 3v | 1 | Designed for Use |
| 4^ | NEW | Web Development Recipes |
| 5^ | NEW | Mac Kung Fu |
| 6v | 4 | Agile Web Development with Rails |
| 7v | 5 | iOS Recipes |
| 8 | 8 | Programming Ruby 1.9 |
| 9v | 7 | The RSpec Book |
| 10^ | NEW | Pragmatic Guide to Sass |
| 11v | 6 | New Programmer's Survival Manual |
Dreams and Nightmares and TouchPads
Nobody dreams of being the one competent guy in a team of idiots. Great colleagues are a keen motivator. — @tottinge
Created a new technical keynote in my dreams last night, jotting down details before I forget, dreams should come with autosave. — @venkat_s
Thankfully, unlike the Kafka story his image evoked, the giant cockroach I awoke to this morning wasn’t me. #lsrc — @chadfowler
Seeing “recursive panic on CPU” on a server. I know that feeling. Breathe deeply, poor server. — @priscillaoppy
Believe it or not, The Machine Shed Restaurant just served 135,000 pieces of deep fried butter at the Wisconsin State Fair! — @NoReservations
Time to break out the Arduinos. Halloween is coming soon... — @PragmaticAndy
“Happy Birthday HP Lovecraft” just doesn’t sound right. bit.ly/rrHvKp — @marick
From HP Lovecraft to HP Touchpad: the future today. #eldritchichor — @GreatDismal
HP single-handedly destroys non-iPad tablet market. zd.net/p4V4Q2 — @ZDNet
Looks like all my hard work ignoring WebOS finally paid off. — @joehewitt
Man, HP should stop producing hardware every day! — @jeff_lamarche
Lessons Learned—or Not
Resolved: Next time I’m asked (for the millionth time) who the worst cooks on Food Network are, I’ll just shut up. — @NoReservations
“I don’t have to decide that right now” is a great decision-making skill to learn. — @venkat_s
The zeroth step in creating humane workplaces is to start calling people “people” not “resources.” #mgmt — @estherderby
Most industrialized nations take care of the mentally ill, while in the US they are left to run for President. — @BorowitzReport
Choosing a lang based on TIOBE index is like choosing a country where to live for its population: 1.5 bln Chinese cannot be wrong, isn’t it? — @mariofusco
2 GB of smartphone data on AT&T costs $30. 2 GB of SMS messages on AT&T costs $2,684,354.56. How does this make sense? — @johnolilly
I wonder how many people now have “correct horse battery staple” as their password? xkcd.com/936/ — @marick
Again, claims we released a study about aliens are not true. Here are the facts from the report’s author bit.ly/p5SYDe — @NASA
(Can’t you just hear the sigh in that tweet?)
Aw Shucks
fantastic 40% off at pragpub using AGILEWEEK code results in $40 savings. (also $100 spending. yay, good stuff) — @RonJeffries
I think the “The Pragmatic Bookshelf” account and book notifications over twitter is a brilliant idea. #good #stuff @prag_notifier — @frankvilhelmsen
People are actually building the video game system I have described in the latest PragPub issue: http://bit.ly/ozsihQ #pragpub #arduino — @maik_schmidt
Read PragPub News on paper.li/pragpub/pragpu… it’s cool, nicely organized, gives good technology pieces. Well done PragPub! Stay pragmatic. — @grantontw
I’ve read PragPub Magazines #21-#26 this week-end. PragProg, you rock! pragprog.com/magazines — @vorushin
Finally, a @pragpub title to help all the beleaguered OS X Lion users out there: pragprog.com/book/ktmack/ma… — @gruber
If Corporations Are People
If corporations are people, can they vote in the Iowa straw poll? — @OTOOLEFAN
If corporations are people isn’t owning a company technically slavery? — @Tedgar3
If corporations are people, then acquisitions are cannibalism. — @izs
If corporations are people, are Taco Bells in Arizona required to show their papers with each order? #p2 — @pari_passu
If corporations are people, I’m gonna marry Apple. I like their style—plus they’re rich!!! — @dgulbran
So, if corporations are people, then people are corporations. No more taxes for me! I’m off to poo in the town well with impunity. — @AndyCobb
If corporations are people, then what is Soylent Green? — @alwen_lost_arts
Who Are Those Guys?
First, they’re not all guys, OK? This month we followed Alwen, Anthony Bordain, Andy Borowitz, Casey, Andy Cobb, Esther Derby, Chad Fowler, Mario Fusco, William Gibson, Jon Gruber, David Gulbransen, Joe Hewitt, Andy Hunt, Ron Jeffries, Jeff LaMarche, John Lilly, Brian Marick, Ted Meredith, Don Millard, NASA, Priscilla Oppenheimer, Tim Ottinger, Grant Sayer, Isaac Z. Schlueter, Maik Schmidt, Venkat Subramaniam, Frank Vilhelmsen, Roman Vorushin, and ZDNet. You can follow us at www.twitter.com/pragpub.