Secrets & Lies, subtitled "Digital Security in a Networked World", is Bruce Schneier's electronic security guide for all seasons. Whether you're a security expert, a system administrator, a software developer, a manager, or simply a computer user, you'll learn something that you can use from this book. It's basic message is that electronic security isn't a problem that can be solved once and for all, but a risk space that can be managed. If you only read one book on computer security, this should be it.

My performance at the 2010 Scottish Master's World Championship in Highlands Ranch, Colorado was underwhelming. Even so, I had good time, it's good to be in the game rather than on the sidelines. It was great to meet the other athletes and I went to school on their various techniques.

In Blood and Thunder Hampton Sides relates the life and times of Kit Carson in the context of the westward expansion of the United States. From the time he left his native Missouri at sixteen on the Santa Fe Trail until his death four decades later, Carson played key roles in many pivotal events. His exploits were sensationalized in the popular dime novels called ''blood and thunders''. Carson's career ran the gamut of western experience: camp cook, fur trapper, buffalo hunter, expeditionary guide, Indian fighter, rancher, army officer, Indian agent, and diplomat.

Sides combines an engaging narrative with well documented research, giving a perspective of the old west that you won't find in dry history texts or popular fiction. It's well worth the read.

We just returned from a camping trip around the Rockies. We drove down the Front Range and camped near Larkspur, CO the first night, then Santa Fe, NM for a couple of nights. We then headed West across New Mexico to camp two nights at Navajo Lake, NM and North to Mesa Verde, CO for a couple of nights. West again to Moab, UT for two nights, then Northeast to Grand Mesa, CO for a couple of nights. North to Craig, CO for two nights, then East Boyd Lake near Loveland, CO, and back home.

I competed in the Elizabeth Highland Games Sunday. We drove down Friday and camped at the site. While I'm moving better, my throws aren't going anywhere. I need more practice and some coaching.

Flow Based Programming is the second edition of Paul Morrison's book describing his data flow centric progamming methodology. FBP is a coordination language Paul developed at IBM well suited for connecting components to model and implement business processes. It lends itself to graphical representation, an FBP flow chart really is the program and tools exist to transform the graph into a list of components and links that an FBP engine can execute. Non-programmer domain experts may develop and maintain applications with appropriate component collections. Morrison's claim that FBP makes business applications easier to maintain seems plausible.

The flow of data from one component to the next resembles the Unix shell use of pipes to link the output of one utility to the input of another or tacit programming in J. Where these are linear, FBP supports tree and looping constructs. The components may be realized loosely coupled processes distributed across multiple cores or computers. FBP promises a path to take advantage of the proliferation of cheap, multi-core computers that challenges conventional development methods and languages.

Primitive components may be written in any language convenient for providing the necessary functionality, often assembler or PL/1 at IBM, but C/C++, Java, Python, and others have also been used. While components may be written in any language, their essentially functional nature seems to be a good fit for Erlang, Haskell, and the Lisp family of languages. I may experiment with FBP in Racket, since it seems to be a good environment for building domain specific languages.

I'd recommend this book for those interested in software development alternatives, multi-core, or distributed processing. While useful and readable as it is, new material for the second edition is appended to that of the first with insufficient integration of the text.

I've been playing with the Racket Slideshow language for an upcoming presentation. It is domain specific languages for describing pictures and slides. As such Slideshow is a good choice for programmers unhappy with standard presentation applications (they all suck swamp water).

I've also tried Bruce - The Presentation Tool, which is attractive because it's a Python application. However, I didn't find it as fast, well documented, or easy to blend into my work-flow as Slideshow.

We're experiencing a somewhat gloomy 4th of July, cloudy with occasional rain. The U.S. economic and political situation looks gloomy as well, but some optimists are looking forward to the restoration of the republic. Jerry Pournelle has a nice piece by Isaac Asimov on our National Anthem.

Happy Independence Day!

The Left/Right division in politics has always struck me as inaccurate and misleading. As a libertarian, I never fit, was I "left" or "right", and relative to what? The Pournelle Political Axes provide a more useful two dimensional political classification schema.

In Fooled by Randomness Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows the importance of chance and how it is often unrecognized. People tend to attribute their successes to their skill or wisdom and their failures to bad luck when in fact chance plays a role in both success and failure.

An interesting point is that history represents one possible sequence of events out of many possible outcomes. Historical analyses should therefore be taken with a grain of salt.

I drove to Kansas City for the Highland Games, though the announcer insisted on calling them the Kansas City Wetland Games. The weather was better on Sunday when I competed than it had been on Saturday. It only rained in spurts, and the sun showed its face briefly in the afternoon. I had a good time and hope to do it again next year.

After 15 years of development, the Programming Languages Team (PLT) has decided to rename their development system, PLT Scheme, to Racket with version 5.0 to emphasize the differences. Only time will tell if this is a good marketing move, but the system itself is impressive.

Racket is a modern Lisp with a modern development environment that combines the classic simplicity of Scheme with a well designed module system, an extensive collection of third party extensions (batteries included), and a good balance between research and pragmatism. If you're a programmer, I think you'll find Racket interesting and inspiring. If you're not, but are interested in programming, you couldn't find a better place to start.

As we remember D Day storm clouds are gathering in the Middle East. We may have much worse things to deal with than the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 had a successful maiden flight today. Commercial space marches on.

Freedom isn't free. On the this memorial it's important to remember those who have paid the price. Richard Fernandez explains why. So why is our president AWOL?