Electrical Essentials for Powerline Workers

Book Description

This unique text fills the need for a convenient, single-volume reference source on the electrical theory that is the foundation of an electrical utility system. The second edition includes updates to many technical points, describes the equipment and situations that lineworkers deal with daily, and features information on safety. The thorough explanation of theory increases the lineworker's knowledge of the system being operated and maintained. The material is presented in a chronological order, taking the reader from an overview of power systems through current technology affecting the operation of electrical utilities.

Book Description

Pollution prevention technologies are experiencing great growth as organizations seek the economies and benefits of their implementation. Environmental audits, anticipation of International Standards Organization (ISO) 9000, the desire to avoid future liabilities, costs, and accidental chemical releases, as well as to promote worker safety and a "green" image in the United States and internationally, combine to encourage businesses to adopt pollution prevention programs.

The implementation of pollution prevention requires diverse engineering and management practices that reduce or preclude the pollution that reaches the air, water, or soil. Pollution Prevention Opportunity Assessments, along with its accompanying software, provides business and technical managers with straightforward guidance on how to perform pollution prevention. The compiled software, HOW2DOP2, is industry- and process-tailored and will run on virtually any machine equipped with a Web browser.

Pollution Prevention Opportunity Assessments is geared for small businesses that do not have large environmental staffs trained in pollution prevention principles or the time to learn thoroughly all of the background information necessary to develop a specific pollution prevention plan. Concentrating on the technical and practical subjects associated with performing pollution prevention, this book, with the accompanying software, provides practitioners with the tools to develop pollution prevention plans and to enable their businesses to benefit from their implementation.

Book Description

Definitive history of Coil, Current 93 and Nurse With Wound-a peculiarly English underground phenomenon. Deluxe paperback edition of last season's bestseller, written with full co-operation of all three bands. Lavishly illustrated with color and black & white photos, including a CD of material from Nurse With Wound, Current 93 and Coil. Cover designed by Stephen Stapleton.

"A superb document that effortlessly unravels the intricacies of his protagonists and their relationship to post industrial England."-The Wire

Customer Reviews:

The God's Got Three Faces and The Child's Got No Name.......2005-02-26

Nurse With Wound, Coil and Current 93 are musically manifestation of the same creative force. They are interdependent and each compliments the others. David Keenen describes this connection beautifully in this work. It begins by describing the musical scene out of which the bands all took their shape. In the strange days of the early eighties the post punk musical world was really going into several directions: oblivious pop, new wave pretension, industrial and Goth and finally bands like Current 93 Coil and NWW. These sounded more similar in there early days than they do now but still have the same vibe. What's most interesting about them is that they keep artistic focus and this book tells this story in a beautifully bound form.

The book uses a lot of quotes and pictures to tell the story of these bands using information from collaborators of the bands. It is very well researched and while many have said it reads like journalism it seems more like academia to me. The style is great and with so little actual documentation to work with quotes are one of the few viable options. It is really interesting to peer into the lives of these individuals and sometimes it is stranger than fiction: Tibet Balance Stapleton and Christofersen lead bizarre lives. This is a part of why they make such interesting work. It would have been more interesting to me if there was more said about the specific influences of the artists and the works. While we can infer much there could certainly be more here. Nevertheless what is written in this book is very enlightening to me. We as fans of the work often dissociate Coil and John Balance as a distant cousin to c93 and NWW but reading this really put the perspective in order. This book puts the artists in perspective so that even a non fan would find it interesting.

Overall I really appreciated reading this book. Being a huge fan of these bands I would be happy with anything and have often been placated by reading incomplete web pages and bad 'zine articles. This book is far better than that and really makes me appreciate the music all the more. It is by no means definitive and is missing many other bands (most notably Death In June). But I guess the book would loose focus if it were to contain more bands. This is a book that you will love to have and read again and again. Being fans of musicians that the mainstream media doesn't care about or cant understand we are thrilled to see stuff like this.

This is a Reprint of the Original... Lower Cost Same great material

-- Ted Murena

Customer Reviews:

Jerry's first interview just before the first album release.......1999-06-14

This wonderful calendar of GD events has as a forward the first known interview with Jerry. It was recorded at the Dead House at 710 Ashbury sometime early in 1967 either Feruary or March. It was just prior to the release of the Dead's first album. Areas discussed include, What is a hippie?,What is the San Francisco Sound all about?,long hair, drugs, the Hells Angels, comments on current groups like the Monkeys the British invasion, other SF bands, the Vietnam War, and of course music in general. Jerry's unrehearsed answers to these timely questions gives you a rare insight into the mind of a legend.

Amazon.com

There have been five James Bonds, but even Ralph Fiennes, star of the Avengers movie admits that there is only one John Steed. When he first donned his iconic bowler hat, actor Patrick Macnee put an eccentric spin on the traditional English gentleman. Witty, urbane, a stickler for etiquette, and able to disarm the most dastardly villain with a casual flick of his tightly furled umbrella, Steed helped London to swing during the heady days of the 1960s.

The Avengers and Me is Macnee's memoir of his time on the cult TV show. Reading the book is like sitting down with the actor over a nice cup of tea as he reminisces about life behind and in front of the cameras. He is particularly gracious in his discussion of the women with whom he shared his adventures: Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg, Linda Thorson, and Joanna Lumley are all lavished with Macnee's signature charm. He only becomes critical when writing about some of the production decisions that, he believes, compromised the original vision of the show, and he seems to think that The New Avengers was not a terribly good idea. Overall, however, The Avengers and Me is as warm and as witty as the man himself. --Simon Leake

Book Description

For the first time, Patrick Macnee tells all! The never-before revealed secrets of the hit TV series The Avengers are laid bare by the man who played John Steed in no less than seven series of the show.

Lavishly illustrated, with many unpublished stills, behind-the-scenes photos, and snaps from Macnee's private collection, this is a very personal portrait of the world's best-loved cult action-adventure series.

Customer Reviews:

What a very enjoyable book.......2004-02-04

This is a good book. It is very good reading about that famous British import TV show. It is very insightful. I recommend this highly. Good reading!

STEEDs VIEW.......2003-11-29

"The Avengers & Me" is a very good book if you love that wonderful British import to American TV. Patrick MacNee is really at the core of this book as he is without a doubt the one and only John Steed. It's really from his perspective. It is very insightful and full of great stories about the workings of this great TV show. A must have if you grew up with it.

With quiet understatement, We realize just how Great..........2002-01-05

Macnee is. "The Avengers and Me" gives the reader a true sense of just what type of man Patrick Macnee is, more so, I feel, than his autobiography, "Blind in One Ear."

And while he downplays his role and acting abilities, we all know better. During the past few years, I'd taken to listening to his audio tapes of the "Sean Dillion" (Jack Higgins) stories, and his ability to take other's works and add so much character to them is astonishing. This book will not disappoint.

For true lovers of the show, this is a "must have" book. For those who strive to learn what makes the best actors tick, this is a "must have" book. Finally, if you want to learn a little more about British culture, this is a "must have" book.

An Avengers Retrospective.......2000-07-10

This is a "Must Have" if You are an Avengers Fan. The book focus mostly on Mr Mc.Nee history along the show from the begining to the end,included The New Avengers. It also includes a number of interviews to the different people involved in the show. Is like "The Biography of Mr Mc Nee". The photographs are great and it has plenty. Just a small complain:The book does not extend too much about the musical scores. But is a great book! Perhaps readers will be disapointed if they looking for an episode guide because that is not included. A detailed ep.guide can be founded in the other book of the Avengers "The Avenger Companion" But the two books does not repeat any information, so is great to have both and both complement each other.

A delight for fans of the series.......2000-07-09

If you are a fan of "The Avengers" series and even have a recollection of "The New Avengers" series, you will love What this book also tells us is how the participants did not particularly have as much fun making the series as we did watching them. When Diana Rigg announced that coal miners were making more than they were--a remark that did not endear her to coal miners--or when the cast of "The New Avengers" found they were not going to be paid--or when Joanna Lumley stood up at a gathering and let the others know how hard the cast worked while everyone else partied, we begin to reconsider what came over the tube in a new light and admire the actors even more for not showing their displeasure before the cameras.

As is common today in "confess all" autobiographies, Macnee is quite honest about his weight and drinking problems; and more interestingly, about his feelings of inferiority before such "real" actors (as he puts it late in the book) as Diana Rigg and Ian McKellen (but not Orson Welles, for reasons that you will find in the last chapter).

Book Description

Extreme Programming does not mean programming naked while rollerblading down the side of the Grand Canyon. It does mean a new approach to software development that is both radical and common-sense. Unlike many software development methodologies, XP has been accepted quickly because its core practices--particularly code sharing, test-first development, and continuous integration--resonated immediately with software developers everywhere. Instead of impressing developers with a body of theory, XP got programmers to say, "Yeah, that's how I'd like to work." Oddly enough, although most developers turn to Extreme Programming methods in order to code real, hands-on, and extensible projects quickly ("Code comes first"), most books on Extreme Programming insist on focusing on the theory and not the practice. Not the Java Extreme Programming Cookbook. Brimming with over 100 "recipes" for getting down to business and actually doing XP, the Java Extreme Programming Cookbook doesn't try to "sell" you on XP; it succinctly documents the most important features of popular open source tools for XP in Java--including Ant, Junit, HttpUnit, Cactus, Tomcat, XDoclet--and then digs right in, providing recipes for implementing the tools in real-world environments. Each recipe offers solutions that help you put an extreme programming environment together: then provides code for automating the build process and testing. Although the time saved using any one of these solutions will more than pay for the book, Java Extreme Programming Cookbook offers more than just a collection of cut-and-paste code. Each recipe also includes explanations of how and why the approach works, so you can adapt the techniques to similar situations. One of the biggest challenges facing developers today is sorting through the wide variety of tools available form various source and figuring out how to them effectively. The recipes in Java Extreme Programming Cookbook showcase how to use the most important features of these XP tools. Many of these tools are geared towards unit testing, while others are invaluable for continuous integration; with these practical examples, you'll be able to choose the most effective tools to accomplish your goals, then implement them in a cohesive development environment quickly. If you want to set up a test-driven development environment that allows you to focus on writing testable code--now--this book will prove invaluable.

Customer Reviews:

All around great book!.......2005-08-27

I'll keep this short, since I don't think I can say anything not already said. But I just felt like sharing that I loved this book.

Great technology how-to, but not a cookbook.......2004-02-27

This is an interesting work because while it does have the cookbook format it isn't really a cookbook. The book starts with an introduction to the XP methodology (which is concise and great), and then has chapters on a number of tools (Ant, JUnit, HTTPUnit, XDoclet, Tomcat, etc.). Each of these technology chapters has a number of 'recipes' which are in fact how-to segments about commonly used tasks around these technologies. Now these sections are great and I think anyone looking at these technologies should consider this book a quick and concise way to learn the fundamentals.

That being said the book fails somewhat, and thus the four stars, because it isn't organized in the problem/solution manner of the cookbooks. Most of the chapters are about testing but these are organized around the tool and not the problem. I would have preferred a section on web development that combined information on Tomcat and Ant, and one on web testing that talked about HTTPUnit, JUnit and Ant. In that way the book addresses problem areas without relying on the reader to understand the tool that would address his problem in addition to understanding his problem at hand.

My gripe is not so critical. The content in the book still remains very valuable and if you are looking for a concise how-to in these Java technologies you should have a look at this book.

More about the tools you need for Extreme Programming..........2004-01-08

If you are starting out in the Extreme Programming (XP) methodology, you will quickly learn the importance of running continual builds and unit tests of your code. And if that process isn't easy and automated, realistically it won't get done. Fortunately, there are a number of open source tools out there that are commonly used to take care of this. The Java Extreme Programming Cookbook will help you understand what those tools are, how they are used, and how to solve some of your common problems with those tools.

This isn't a tutorial on XP. Instead, it concentrates on the tools you need to make XP work for you and become part of your normal development process. In some ways, a more accurate title for this book would be the Java Extreme Programming Tools Cookbook. The format provides a nice basic introduction to each tool, where you can download it from (as well as where to find the complete documentation), and then a number of problem/solution scenarios from basic install to more complex automation tools.

For instance, let's take one of the tools; JUnit. JUnit is a tool that does unit testing on your code. You define a test class as well as test cases that should either pass or fail. Once you have your test class and test cases set up, you can quickly test your code after making changes to make sure that all the results are still accurate. In XP methodology, you actually write your test cases first, and then write the code to make them pass. In that way, your testing drives your coding. This book will give you the overall information on what JUnit is, how to install it, and how to run it. You then run into a number of situations, such as running tests concurrently, repeating tests, testing naming conventions, and organizing tests into test suites. Using the problem/solution layout of the Cookbook series, it's very easy to get the base information you need to stay productive.

If you are brand new to XP or the tool set, you might be a little lost since it's not a "step-by-step" how-to of each tool. It assumes you either have a small amount of working knowledge, or that you'll supplement your knowledge with the tool's documentation. Still, you can't look up what you don't know, and this book made me aware of some tools I didn't know existed. An experienced user of these tools might also gain a few tricks that they didn't know about, and it might be worth it for those tricks alone.

For Websphere developers, you might find that a couple of these tools aren't necessary. For instance, Websphere Studio does your build for you, so Ant isn't as critical as it would be if you were running a J2EE server such as Tomcat. Also, JUnit integrates directly into Websphere Studio, so it's very easy to run that tool in your environment. Even so, having this book will help you expand your horizons.

Conclusion
If you are a Java developer using the XP methodology, get this book to learn the tools you need to make your build and testing process flow correctly. Even if you don't practice XP, the automated build and testing tools will help you to write better code.

Immediately Useful.......2003-11-29

I found this book immediately useful. I say immediately because the recipes presented in this book are succinct and to the point. It has already helped me in several consulting assignments.

You don't have to be a die hard believer in all aspects of XP to find this book useful either. If you're a Java developer and you believe in unit testing, this book is worthwhile. It will help you sort through the various tools out there and find the best one for your situation. It will also give you clear explanations and examples of good techniques.

Great book if you remember to use it.......2003-10-23

This book covers a very similar selection of tools and techniques to "Java Tools for Extreme Programming" by Hightower and Lesiecki, and in a broadly similar way. Both use the currently fashionable idea of Extreme Programming (XP) to attract readers to a collection of short pieces about a bunch of useful tools for Java programming.

The XP stuff is covered quickly at the start, the meat of the book is in the "recipes", which walk you through configuring and using tools such as Ant, JUnit, Cactus etc. to build, unit-test and manage the development of a Java project.

The tools and tips the authors have chosen to include are a good representation of current practice, but I have a few reservations about the organization and structure of the book. My biggest worry is whether the target reader is actually likely to find many solutions. The authors seem to assume that everyone will pore over the several pages of "contents" at the front of the book every time they hit an obstacle, but in my experience they are just as likely to flip through pages or head for the index at the back, neither of which works particularly well. Worse than that, they may never think to look in the book in the first place - the "Extreme Programming" in the title may help it sell, but it's not something that jumps to mind when you are struggling to get Ant to deploy a web application to Tomcat.

That said, I'm glad I've got it, and some of the recipes now have little sticky notes to try and remind me that it's often an unexpectedly good place to look for Java development tips.

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