Ferrari Reviews

After building many of the robots presented in Lego Mindstorms Masterpieces published by Syngress, I feel I am now qualified to give a fair personal assessment of this book. I have purchased many Lego Mindstorms books and each one has great ideas and a lot to offer. All books have shortcomings and room for improvement. How good a book is depends on how well it address the readers needs. My needs center on my use of Lego Mindstorms to teach mechanical engineering, logic, programming and robotics to my 13-year-old daughter. Lego Mindstorms Masterpieces is the newest addition to our Lego toolbox. There are so many positive things to say about this publication I'll place the very few items I would have preferred done differently at the end of this review.

A few key benefits this book offers to anyone involved with Lego Mindstorms are complete, well illustrated assembly instructions, detailed commentary by the authors with additional tips to aid in the construction, explanations of where the inspirations for the creation came from with historical references, web site listings for additional information and a e-book CD-ROM with program files. Many of the authors have active web sites of their own and are available to generously help people stuck during construction.

Lego Masterpieces not only expand the reader's knowledge of Lego Mindstorms applications, but engineering and robots in general. The concepts presented can be applied anywhere the logic, computers, or machines are designed and built. The book shows that the construction of a machine must go hand in hand with the programming to best fit an application. Giulio Ferrari explores basic Artificial Intelligence and the foundations of modern computers with the Turing Machine. Another chapter presents the mechanics and theory of creating logic cells amazingly through the use of pneumatics and then combining them into the synchronous PneumADDic II calculating machine by Kevin Clague. And again by Kevin, the building of an asynchronous artificial muscle using Autonomous Pneumatic Circuits in the Synchropillar without RCX programmed control. An all terrain wheeled vehicle by Doug Carlson uses his Tri-Star drive design called the Stair Climber and will crawl over and out of almost anything. A spy robot by Miguel Aguilio called The Shape-Shifting Camera Tank utilizes Vision Command's camera, can increase or decrease it's height and you may control it with it's own Lego parts constructed joystick. The Learning Brick Sorter by Mario Ferrari, which combines a robotic arm with an automated task, blends the machine with excellent basic AI programming, which can learn new tasks. And finally, the most advance Lego robotic arm I've ever seen is in the chapter on CyberArm IV by Hideaki Yabuki. Not only does this arm have five Degrees of Freedom and 180-degree rotation, but you can also build the optional Power Glove to operate the robotic arm from your own hand movements!

The few complaints I have of this book are that the Bill Of Materials on some of the chapters are printed so small and illegible that I couldn't read them with a magnifying glass! Adding a page and printing the illustrations larger and clearer would have better represented the quality of the overall material. The other complaint is found in most books. Someone should proof read it before publication. Spell checkers don't think!

My final message about this book is BUY IT and start collecting the parts you'll need. It expands the frontiers of Lego Mindstorms and you'll need all the parts you can get your hands on!

This book has gathered together "Masterpieces" from some of the the world's greatest LEGO creators. Builders from the US, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, and Japan have brought you their passions, the theories behind each masterpiece, and detailed building and programming techniques. "LEGO Mindstorms Masterpieces" is truly at the zenith of all related books and I believe it will become a true masterpiece both in name and in reality.

This book began in July of 2002. And, while the the creation, writing and editing was extremely difficult, the authors fought mightily to accomplish our goal: to build LEGO robots both suitable for Master Builders and worthy of this book's title! Amazing PneumADDic II and Synchropillar by Kevin as a computer processor specialist and creator of LPub and LSynth. Splendid Stair-Climber by Doug who is a well known creator of several Omni Drive Vehicles. And, two awesome works - Learning Brick Sorter and The LEGO Turing Machine that were invented by the famous Ferrari brothers - they are co-authors of the best selling "Building Robots with LEGO Mindstorms" and have been called the "DaVincis of LEGO". Biped robot expert Miguel created complex SSCT faithfully based on the real robot that was active for life search and explore in WTC, New York. Lastly, a robotic arm driven by 10 motors and feedback system - CyberArm IV that I have created as a series in four years. All of these are the real robots that are backed by real robotics - only the materials are LEGO! We are very pleased that we could explore a new frontier in LEGO Mindstorms, and be able to offer it in book form.

As the one of pioneers of LEGO robots, I have had my experience of the results in the MIT Media Lab fortunately in the middle of the 80s, and the result of my writing of over half year keeping is included in bundle CD-ROM as a over 50 pages bonus chapter. I have tried to write about a lot of topics to explain the world of robots and LEGO Mindstorms - history of LEGO robot or their philosophy of the LEGO Group, precious list and description of early LEGO educational sets for control learning, personal robot boom in the 80s, from a more than 300-year-old Japanese automata (the Karakuri) to the latest state-of-the-art robotics. I believe that my discussion and description about the way of thinking and creation - included building, programming, CAD and even about Art - are useful in particular.

We hope that this book will never lose its value and that it will become loved by people of all generations.

From Tokyo
Hideaki Yabuki
Media Activist

I can summarize the value of this pocket book very easily: I tell my residents that if there is one book they read this year, this is it.

I also recommend this boook for surgical, family medicine, and anaesthesia residents because you encounter these common medical emergencies in your training.

I first started using this book under its old title when I was a medical student just starting on the wards. At that time, I was involved in handling emergencies, but it was the junior residents making most of the decisions. With this book in my coat pocket, however, I knew very quickly what was going on, and after seeing a few cases of DKA or MI's, I could answer the resident's questions about what to do next, step-by-step.

The book then got me through my internal medicine residency. Other books just did not tell me the things I needed to know. They went on too much with trivia and left the important stuff out.

Finally, when we did our orals for internal medicine at the end of our program, we used this book as the source for the right answer when the examiner gives you a case, of, say, DKA, and asks you how you would manage it. They do not want you to tell them the pathophysiology of DKA. They wanted to know what you would do step-by-step, and if you knew what issues would arise during treatment, and how you would handle them. This pocket manual gives you all that.

This is a great book with fresh ideas for the future of Middle East Peace. Ferraris has realistic suggestions and recommendations for the future of world peace.

Jerusalem and the way the U.S. deals with Isreal on the world stage is at the heart of the current Middle East conflicts.

I think this is one book I could not help reading at one stretch. I could hardly keep it down once I picked it up. Jacques Ferraris, has done an outstanding job in bringing the reader unbiased, logical analogies, so the readers can come to conclusions by themselves. This is a great book to add to one's library - a must for everyone avid reader and book fan!

As a member of a 12-step program and a minister as well, I am deeply impressed with the depth of sincerity (laced generously with levity) that carries the rather deep spiritual teachings of this book.
I highly recommend it to anyone who is seeking insight into and greater awareness of the shift in consciousness that is happening today.
Readers who are willing to listen with their intuition as they read the words on the pages will find a connection with the thoughts, feelings and possibilities that are now awakening throughout the soul of humanity.
Besides that, the cover art is captivating! Do yourself a favor and read this book.

Actually, I could review this three separate times with different ratings from one star through five stars according to perspective.

Thus, I am rating this from its value as metaphysical speculation and a look at what may well be an upward evolution of mankind. We are all familiar, I'm sure, with talk about the new generation of "Twilight Children". This takes the theory of current evolutionary advancements further and postulates that older generations, senior citizens in particular, are also partaking in this evolution. The concept should be familiar to those who saw the movie COCOON. However, this delves deeper into the spiritual evolution of mankind.

All this is explained to us by some very likeable fictional characters such as Barbara, an 88 year old woman who is apparantly in her 60's going on 40 something. The primary character, a painter in his mid 40's, is going through a spiritual crisis and is led to a group of seniors who explain to him what is happening in his life and guide him in dealing with it. These particular seniors are definitely evolving and in doing so, have ceased to age. Four select seniors are actually regressing in their ages, quite dramatically so. We are told clearly how this is happening through eight attunements.

Now, as a novel, this book is somewhat lacking. The plot, such as it is, takes second place to the philosophical treatises as to what is happening. And there are specific practices, primarily breathing and drinking lots of purified or distilled water. Anyway, the plot is on the slight side. However, the characters involved are likeable and believable.

As a whole, this book reminds me of THE CELESTINE PROPHECY, but in my opinion it is much clearer in its concept. The plot also is somewhat more engrossing than that in the better known book.

The upshot is that if you are interested in, and want to learn more about, the possible evolutionary process that we are undergoing, you will find this book quite engrossing and inspiring. However, if you're looking for a good entertaining novel, you might want to look elsewhere.

Great mix of robots in this book--some "standard" variations on familiar prototypes (using UBS parts) and some pretty out there ones as well that I would have never thought of. Excellent book. I've seen the RIS one that came before this but didn't buy it--I'm going to go back and get it now.

This book contains miscellaneous information about the Mythos collectible card game. It contains: the rules of the game, a FAQ, a short play and deck construction guide, a sort of designer's notes on the game, background information on selected cards, rules for solitaire play and creating your own adventures, a complete spoiler list for the limited edition of the game and lists of card attributes and requirements for completing adventures.

As a collector and player of the game, I found the designer's notes on the history of the game and the design philosophy to be especially interesting. Also useful to me are the short notes on the background of selected cards and the rules for creating and scoring your own adventures. The pictures of the selected cards are black & white with a paragraph of background info. Buyers should also note that there is an updated version of the rules of the game at the Chaosium website.

I found "Autobiography of a Spirit" to be a rewarding, enlightening book which focuses simply upon the nature of existence. This book is not afraid to offer answers, nor does it cringe from challenging the dominant paradigm with a offering of ideas that everyone should be able to relate to in some fashion. The story begins with the beginning of a life, before conception, as the spirit decides the family and time it would like to be born unto. The story continues with birth, and much of it is spent on the enlightening and simply beautiful journey of childhood. Nica, the main character, does not accept but challenges many of the roles that we take for granted, such as school and work, and offers new ideas and thoughts about and against these institutions. For those disgruntled with the endless tedium of conventionality, this book offers a new vista of thought minus the apocolyptic message of "Brave New World" or "1984." All in all, a beautiful story of how the future could be in the present, if we all only began to examine life and our own spirits more carefully.

Fulvio Ferrari's Carlo Mollino Polaroids gathers a range of small color vintage photos of women. Chapters provide intriguing images which are diverse and unusual. An excellent art library acquisition, especially for collections strong in photography.

This book truly shows the beginnings of Air Power theories. This book was written in an attempt to talk the Italian government into using Airpower as a new weapon. Douhet initially failed in this venture, but the Italians later realized their mistake. While the views and opinions of Douhet are at times extremely different from airpower today, and may seem a little ridiculous, this is certainly excellent reading for those who wish to begin learning about the origins of airpower theory.

This book covers most of the subjects you need to become a good C programmer. The book is divided in two parts: the first one shows the intrinsics of the C language in a very comprehensive way, while the second one explains and describes the most important tools that Unix/Linux provides to the development of software projects using this language. Extremely useful !