Scott Reviews

I highly recommend this book for the reef hobbiest of all levels! It's packed with lots of information on coral lighting, care, and best of all coral diseases and treatment. Unlike my other reference books that are packed with more information about fish than they are with coral care, this book is ALL ABOUT CORALS. You won't be disappointed!

I cannot say enough positive things about this book. I have a significant collection of books on marine fish and reef aquariums,and this is easily one of the best I have. If you are planning to keep corals and are really serious, you should buy this book and follow Borneman's advice. The pictures are excellent, and the depth and intelligence of the coverage on everything from corallimorphs to stonies is exceptional.

At the present time, this is the best work of its kind. It is a must have for anyone interested in corals. Eric is a gifted person and we are lickey to have him share his knowledge with us.
A "must have" book.

I had the amazing opportunity to meet Scott Fried a few weeks ago at a convention. His story told through his lecture changed my life since it hit so close to home. I've had to face the challenges of coping with the loss of someone very close to me to AIDS. I had a 15 minute conversation with Scott in which he gave me so much confidence. Scott if you read this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your words and your book. I read it in one day, but I keep reading it over and over again. It's a must read for everyone to learn about how AIDS affects people. And the fact of the matter is that AIDS affects all people, whether you are positive or negative. Read this book and give it to all of your friends! I am only allowed to give it 5 stars in rating, but it's way off the charts! Thank you Scott for everything!

The entertaining, educational, non-judgemental tone of Scott's spoken lectures, this touching, easy-to-read book, and his beautiful music cd confirm that instead of bitterness and regret, people can live a life filled with joy and productivity when faced with darkness. Hold your tissues closely, and buy this book to share with your teen. It is difficult to teach good judgement making skills, but Scott bares himself to illustrate how choices in activities and attitudes can change life. There is a special place in my heart marked for Scott Fried. L'Chiam.

Scot is loving and caring. His book is very well written. Also his CD is great.

Brianne was on her way to be with her sister while she was having her baby when she had a car accident. When she came too, she walked a few steps fell down an embankment and blacked-out again. When she again awoke it was to see a handsome man telling her that she was a whore sent by his friend as a joke. She thought he was mad, and that everyone in the area was in a historical play (for the tourists). He would not believe she was from the future. Imagine when she finds out that he was really an ancestor of her sisters husband. Read the book to find out what happens.

Timeless Passio

I am a avid reader of Historical Romances. ... I was in love the minute I started reading [this book]. All the characters in the book are simply wonderful and Briana is a courageous woman. ... Its a book that is very hard to put down and you will love reading all over again.

5 stars if you know Flash well.
1 star if you haven't had any experience with it at all.

I was a beginner once, who couldn't figure out Flash at all. I'd like to help you build a bridge between where you may be now, as a beginner, to where you may find yourself aspiring to go.

If your only experience with Flash is to have seen the many wonderful and breathtaking Flash movies on the Internet and just had a look at the authoring tool, I strongly recommend that you leave this book until much later. It has its place in the learning curve but it isn't, in my opinion, the first book to see.

There are understandings to possess that this book doesn't cover sufficiently well enough for those whose minds work in particular ways. This is a programming book, for using the phenomenon of programming to create great design and animations. Whilst the focus is on design, you aren't using the design tools on the interface. With this book, you are using the Actionscript language and you have to have a logical mind for this activity (as well as keeping your strong creative one).

I began my steep learning curve with Flash by watching others and watching video tutorials, especially those by George Pierson. In this way, I can ask questions that are tailored for me and I get tailored responses. Books aren't always able to do so well here.

What is great about this book is the MX Actionscript reference in it and the seemingly well designed theory tutorials. I can't find a fault with the reference. The theory is quite good. In the reference, all Flash MX commands are covered. There are examples of how to use them, but the coverage may not be enough for some. Brill. Just BRILL. I can be excited but because I can follow Actionscript.

Approach this book when you are successfully making Flash movies on your own. Yes, on your own. For me, this book is an aid for when I am going to where I haven't gone to before. It helps me make judgements on ideas I get.

I started with Macromedia's Flash MX ActionScripting Advanced and I learned a lot. However, it does not contain a complete dictionary. I bought John Davey's book and in addition to the complete dictionary in the book, it is also on the CD. I keep the online version loaded when programming Flash. Furthermore, the 400+ pages of tutorials, are simple, plentiful, and each one illustrates one learning objective. Both books are good, but this one is better.

I cannot say enough about this book. I, like most programmers, have a stack of computer books that's taller than I am, but this one is by far the best one I've ever seen. The ActionScript reference has entries that you can't find other places, including deprecated functions/operators and functions/objects that Macromedia doesn't tell anyone about. Each and every function, operator, symbol, etc. has an explanation and several examples, including how NOT to use it. Best of all, the entire reference is on CD, complete with text, images, and example files. I keep mine in my CD drive at all times when working with Flash.

This book doesn't stop there, though. It also has 20 chapters (3 on the CD) that discuss various aspects of ActionScript programming. These are all clearly written and easy to read. I would not say they are suitable for absolute beginners, but anyone with some programming experience in any language should be able to get a lot out of them.

The bottom line? If you use Flash MX and you don't have this book, you're not getting all you can out of your ActionScript.

As usual, I was skeptical in approaching a new Christian author. I'm an avid reader, but 75% of my reading list is composed of secular novels. Generally, I can't look past the plot, character, and writing flaws of Christian novels. Quality writing is sacrificed for the sake of a good message...Why can't we combine the two? Well, Scott does exactly that in Virtually Eliminated. The characters live and breathe, the plot moves along quickly, and the message is presented clearly without tossing away the storyline. Great job, Mr Scott. I didn't even have a computer when I first found your books, but I loved them. Yes, I've read them all. Keep them coming, and try to get a publisher that'll push your stuff more. The present publisher does a great job of printing--I like the layout and editing--but the marketing needs a kickstart. Good stuff!

Most authors we read understand the essential elements of good drama -- setup, pinch, big event, rising conflict, and resolution -- and have the skills to engage the reader. Now and then, however, an author comes along with something more, something which propels the story beyond the ordinary and into the realm of literature, where deeper and higher meanings dwell. In good games, such as chess, the rules are simple and the tools basic, but they allow for layers of strategy, endless permutations, and challenging engagements. So it is with good literature. In virtu@lly.eliminated, Jefferson Scott uses the simple tools of drama to engage the reader in a straightforward, entertaining thriller, while accomplishing the difficult task of creating a world of virtual reality as a metaphor for the battle between spiritual forces of good and evil. Note the "layers" of meaning: the VR interface to the GlobeNet (a superInternet) is itself a complex metaphor, like the Windows desktop. In the end, virtu@lly.eliminated is not about the thrilling conflict between Ethan Hamilton and Patriot, but rather the fecklessness of our most astonishing accomplishments when they do not serve God; for all of Patriot's skills, his intelligence, his access to great literature, and his self-sacrificing dedication to a cause noble in his own eyes, they come to naught in the face of Ethan's selfless, singular purpose -- to restore his own faith and put Jesus in the driver's seat. So put the kids to bed, kiss your spouse goodnight, and stoke up the fire, for when you pick up this book... well, you're going to stay up late to finish it.

The first time I saw this book, I thought, yeah another book about computers, it's all good.

The minute though that I read the first page I was hooked. Jefferson Scott has done a great job of balancing Sci-Fi with a great Christian Theme. As a christian, I found this book really uplifitng and an insight into just how we are called to treat others.

This book is just totally "there" and it just hooks you in from the start. Every page, every twist, every plot turn has you in suspense. This book is just one of the excellent novels that Jefferson Scott has produced and you must get it!

I also highly recommend the sequels, Terminal Logic and Fatal Defect as well as the Operation Firebrand Series

This is a book that will interest both people with only a passing interest in birds, and those with a very serious interest in bird ecology. It is an easy read, but still is cramed full of useful information about bird migration. Weidensaul follows many different species of birds as they move about during the migratory year. He clearly shows how all the places employed during migration, breeding and nonbreeding seasons are interrelated, and just how fragile the entire migratory system is for the birds. Living on the Wind is must read for any serious birder, and one well worth reading even if you are not!

Writing with obvious affection for the subject, Scott Weidensaul does an exceptional job of reviewing the complex topic of avian migration. The book is an up-to-date treatment of how, why, and to where birds move (at least in the Western Hemisphere). It is not written as a standard ornithological text (nor was it meant to be one) in that it does not include citations at every fact, but this makes the book flow more smoothly, and references are included at the end. The book is chock full of details, some written as very readable anecdotes about the author's travels and experiences as a birder and bird-bander. His lyrical descriptions of birds and their migratory accomplishments do justice to an incredible biological phenomenon.

If you enjoy nature reading you will love this book. I am not a birder, but nevertheless found this book to be an eloquent and fascinating read. Weidensaul introduces and explores a world that occurs around us every day but that few of us know anything about. He writes extremely well. Overall, a wonderful book.

Overall, it was very good especially if you can get your spouse to read it with you and actually try the suggestions given. Now if only one of you are reading the book it also works in a viewpoint that you'll understand where you stand and how he/she may be reacting to the discussion, disagreement or whatever. For example, you'll notice that when one of you walks away or stays quiet while the other is trying to solve the problem then instead of thinking he/she isn't paying attention you may say to yourself he/she is now withdrawing so let me put this off until we are both open to listening and discussing the situation. Many points in the book were very helpful in making sense of how men and women view things in a different light of importance. The book is not only good for couples but for singles as well, Marriage is a TEAM that works best when you can communicate and learn that you go from I, ME to US and WE. I recommend it - great insights even better if you can convice the other to join you in reading it together.

After the gown is packed away comes the reality that marriage is hard. How come no one told us? This book contains real strategies for making your marriage stronger. After years of trying to explain to my husband how I felt he sometimes dismissed my feelings, I did a cartwheel after discovering a whole chapter on what the authors call "invalidating" your partner's feelings - one of the most toxic things you can do in a marriage. Well my husband used to do it - a lot. This book opened his eyes - and saved my sanity.

My husband and I married in our mid thirties thinking we had a lock on good communication skills and knowing we were mature enough to really make this marriage work. Nonetheless, it wasn't long before we were "mired in muck". When a small conflict arose, we found ourselves so caught up in being right and fighting our point to the death that small events escalated into huge issues. We could feel the good things in our relationship slipping away and felt helpless to fix the problem. (This was AFTER reading probably 20 different books on marriage, doing the Barbara D'Angelis program, the Gary Smally Program, attending several couples workshops, etc.). Contemplating calling it quits on our marriage, I happened accross this book, loved it, then went to a PREP workshop. Our marriage is AWESOME. We actually know how to hear and be heard and have the skills to RESOLVE the conflicts. (By the way, note the "I". My spouse hasn't read the book and refused to go to the workshop.) I learned the skills and used them in our marriage and our relationship changed. It even works with kids, in-laws, co-workers.... Yippee!

For some reason, I didn't find this book quite as funny as some of Adams' later stuff, but it still gave me some good laughs!

The funniest humor always has a root in reality. . . that's why Dilbert is so hilarious! Though sometimes outlandish, I can sometimes see similarities between the Dilbert characters and people I work with!

If you're only going to get one Dilbert book (which would be folly), get this book. It has Adams' best comics, and I couldn't stop from laughing out loud in public reading some of the strips. Get it ASAP!

Monkey: Evolution favors monkeys. Eventually humans will be kept in cages as pets...
Dilbert: Impossible! We humans will never allow ourselves to be treated like that! Now, get out of my cubicle!

Dilbert, the mainstay of office-life critical witticisms, is the concept of Scott Adams, who quit his job to write the column, using it primarily to exorcise the demons that haunted him (and, indeed, seem to haunt all in small-to-large corporate America) during his tenure as a mid-level office worker.

In his introduction, he says: 'I was doing some thinking today. But I didn't enjoy it very much, so I decided to write this introduction instead....'

Who can argue with this? This, perhaps in a brief statement, summarises much of the underlying philosophy of the corporate culture Adams presents in his Dilbert column. It certainly epitomises the prevailing attitude of the boss and management structure. And of course, being in charge of his own column, Adams has graduated (or, perhaps sunk) to the level of management.

This book consists of a generous sampling of Sunday columns (complete with colour -- OOOH! AAAH!) -- colour of course being a Dilbert-ian device to disguise the lack of information. Yet, the information here is timely and timeless (insofar as anything about corporate culture can be timeless).

Dogbert's entry into and rising through the hierarchy is a good case in point, where LOUD equals results. After securing a corner office with a window by being LOUD, a task force ripe for empire-building within the company, the budgetary control of his boss, he is invited, at the end of his first week on the job, to meet with the president of the company.

President: You've made quite a name for yourself in the week you've worked here.
Dogbert: It was easy to grab power, once I realised that other executives were just imbeciles with good hair.
President: I hope you don't think that of me.
Dogbert: No, that looks like a toupee from here...

Onward and upward...

Finally Dogbert becomes president, exercises stock options after a disastrous but stock-market-friendly series of initiative plans (of course, they only have to be plans for the stock market to react), and retires to devote himself to philanthropy, which is 'mostly about watching people beg, and having buildings named after me.'

We are introduced to Dilbert's co-workers, who are variously competent and stuck in their jobs, rejoicing the occasional tiny victories, or, more frequently, plotting grand schemes to gain the minor advantage (a few more inches of cubicle space, for instance). We are introduced to incompetent co-workers who get promotions and jobs in other firms with real offices and perks. We discover what kinds of women will date (and dump) Dilbert. Of course, that might have become a bit of a different problem had Dilbert's boss not been corrected in time...

Boss: My boss says we need some eunuchs programmers.
Dilbert: I think he means Unix, not eunuchs. And I already know Unix.
Boss: If the company nurse drops by, tell her I said "Never mind."

Dilbert does sometimes win after all.

The Land is and outstanding book. It really gets you into the book. When you read it it is a though you care about the Characters. It also uses great detail on some of the scenes. At times the conflict is a little to much. The Family is basically divided into 2 sections. The black side and the white side. The father had 3 children with his wife, and 2 children with his slave. This book is very conpelling.

Mildred Taylor has written an outstanding novel. The Land is a prequal to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. It traces the life of Paul-Edward Logan. Paul-Edward is the son of prominent Edward Logan and his former slave, Deborah. This mix leaves Paul mostly unaccepted by the white community and the black community. Where does Paul fit in? The book recounts Paul's inner and outer struggles of growing up. It tells of his conflicts with family, friends and strangers. The novel is very well written and includes emotions by using the appropriate dialect that it allows the reader to become part of the story. I felt that I was there in the scenes as a bystander.
I think the novel is appropriate for a high school audience. The novel covers some very sensitive issues. Their maturity is needed to accept the struggles and prejuidices without becoming so angry and upset.

When I discovered, through the note provided by Mildred Taylor, that The Land was more than five years in the making, I literally swooned in admiration of the freshness of the story. Any book which takes half a decade to research and write evolves with a certain degree of vulnerability. How can any author sustain such an endeavor, especially in the face of her readership, so familiar with her own impossibly hard acts to follow, and emerge holding such a live treasure as The Land, in the end?
The Land is a prequel, in that it tells the stories of the Logan family that chronologically came before those of her beloved, already known, characters. What sets this novel apart from typical prequel status, in my mind, is the electricity between its pages. The Land is filled with its own magical energy. Paul-Edward's many adventures, his beliefs in himself and his family (as well as his view of all the other people living on his father, Edward's, land) his complex relationships with his white father, his African-Indian mother, his white brother (Robert), and his African-American friend (Mitchell) are exclusively important. They are exclusive in that they are whole, in and of themselves, and a reader can appreciate their strengths without prior knowledge of Taylor's previous work. They are important in that they can and should be told, breathe, and stand on their own. I feel that comparing them might fail them, to a certain degree. That said, the stories of the life of Paul-Edward are certainly crucial... beyond their status as prequel. The private pain and pride of Paul-Edward that we come to know, as we follow his evolution into the young landowner we reluctantly must depart at book's end, all the great sorrows and victories that spill before him in his quest to, in his mother's apt words, have "something for himself"-his own land-while caring for Caroline, her brother, and Mitchell are wondrous, well told, at times lyrically rich.
There is nothing, in The Land, of the staleness that can threaten to tinge any writer's work when she is forced to write a prequel, by her readership, critics, or heart. Perhaps the staleness comes when a writer is not certain of the very something she must be precise about, as she attempts to trace steps prior to the heart of her matter (previous, related book(s)). I have come to believe that a great many prequels and sequels are created not in order to answer an author's own calling, but to answer the call of the readership. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Still, in Taylor's writing of The Land as a whole thing, contained in one book, which tells a before so well, as well, is wholly felt, the mold of the prequel is broken. The Land is exceptionally revealing for those who have known and loved the Logans. The Land is also its own, gorgeous, story.
I believe the heart of Mildred Taylor's matter is, actually, those family stories she finally tells, through fiction twinned with the breath of heritage, in The Land. The novel has clarity and life and a protagonist we love, and a singular life-almost as if The Land contained the most essential things the writer (the niece, the daughter, the landowner) needed to write; almost as if all those stories she'd already made were leading us to this great center.

This book was just as stunning as the movie. The many pictures were not just ones used for promotional purpoises but ones that were actually taken from other scenes in the movie. This book has everything, from parts of the screenplay to photos of the actors and director to the plans for the catapults used in the opening scenes for the battle of Germania. This book is highly recommended to anyone who likes to know how they make an epic movie of such size. Once you have read this book over you'll be wanting to see the movie again, and again, and again so you can see how they actually made these scenes. This movie has a huge international cast including New Zealander Russel Crowe. Hopefully he'll get the Oscar, and then there is the amazing actor Joaquin Phoenix and the late Oliver Reed who died just before the completion of the movie. This book tells you how they made some of the final scenes of Oliver Reed after he died. >Enjoy<

I was very pleased when I received the soft cover version of GLADIATOR. It is very well written with wonderful pictures that will remind you of how much you enjoyed the film. When you see the film it moves so swiftly that you don't have time to ask, "How'd they do that?" The historical facts are made clear in the book. Although there were liberties taken with those events, the film has the "feel" of the times. Ridley Scott, manages to let you in on secrets that made this movie so incredibly popular. It is a book you will wish to return to often, before and after seeing the film again. The star, Russell Crowe, a dynamite actor, tells how he learned the dangerous swordplay, that had to carefully choreographed so that no one was injured. Mr. Crowe had the magnetism necessary to make Maximus a great hero, and at the end you wish there could be more of the book, and more of the film. It's a beautifully put together book with lots of "inside" information. You will add this to your film library with pride.

Director Ridley Scott's epic, Gladiator, is my favorite film of the year 2000. It reminded me of the way movies in old Hollywood were made. I can remember watching films like Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments and Lawrence Of Arabia on television with my Mom, and being wowed by the spectacle of it all. Gladiator brought back that same kind of feeling for me.

The story behind The Making Of Gladiator is almost as epic as the film itself. The book is divided into 2 main sections. The first, talks about what it took to get the film to the big screen, while the second discusses the filming and post production. Scott provides a well written introduction, while Co-Executive Producer Walter Parkes pens a foreward. The main text of the book was written by Sharon Black. Thankfully, the text is very readable, and the full color photography is some of the best I have seen in a book like this. The usual cast and crew interviews are present of course. But the photos really tend to put the book over the top for me. Script excerpts, original storyboards, and a complete credit listing are also included.

Even if you already own the film, this book still makes a fine companion to it. This is a must if you like the film as much as I do. The book has 160 pages and is highly recomended