Publishers, though, follow The Law Of Conservation Of Pages To Be Reviewed, which states that the number of pages that must be reviewed will never decrease. Consequently, I got a buncha new books over the past couple of weeks. I've now got the following. . .
3D Game Engine Programming
Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX (2nd ed)
Character Development and Storytelling for Games
PHP Web Development with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004
The Definitive Guide to Windows Installer
Beginning DirectX 9
Mathematics for Game Developers
Beginning C++ Game Programming
Shaders for Game Programmers and Artists
Game Development with ActionScript
Flash MX 2004 At Your Fingertips
Getting A Job In Computer Graphics
Flash MX 2004 Accelerated
Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional
If you're interested in seeing if any of these books are worth reading, leave me a comment, and I'll move your pick to the front.
On the personal front, I finished Foundation's Edge and have started Foundation and Earth, which will complete the seven volumes of the increasingly-innacurately-named "Foundation Trilogy". Although following the similar Law of Conservation of Asimov, which states that the number of books written by Asimov will continually increase despite the fact that he's been dead for twelve years, I found out that there are actually three more "Foundation" books written by other authors. Luckily my local Half Price Bookstore had 'em, so I was able to score all three for about four bucks. According to the reviews I've seen, they're worthy sequels, so I look forward to seeing how other authors treat Asimov's universe.
Oh, and I got an email from the Game Programming All In One guy (see the June 30 entry below). He wasn't angry at this review, thankfully. He did explain why the three final chapters seemed tacked on. They were basically unchanged from the first edition, and the publisher apparently wanted some first-book content, so those got thrown in. He also agreed that the chapter on playing Autodesk Animator files was a bit anachronistic for a book published in 2004.
And on an entirely unrelated note, I just got finished buying a couple of 3.6 Ghz Dell machines for CivilGrrl. They won't be delivered for a month, as the chips aren't even shipping yet. That means that I'll soon have three slack machines taking up space here (A 1.5 Ghz Pentium 4, a Duron, and an Athlon 2000-something-or-other).
I'm not yet sure what I'm gonna do with 'em yet. Probably just donate 'em and get a tax writeoff.
I am very interested in your views on "3D Game Engine Programming" so would appreciate it if you segue that one to the front [grin]
Even though I suspect it is another door-stopper!