Book preview: Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts

Good things come to those who wait. And wait I did. Somewhere back in June when I could still just walk around in a T-shirt, I decided to buy a book. After getting scared from looking at my Amazon wish list'o-saurus I quickly found myself searching for completely other books. O'Reilly always was a good string to start the search. I mean the search after doing the meta search to get the damn name right. It seemed only more quick to order directly from O'Reilly, you know, cut out the middle online-book-giant. After deciding to go for a more advanced Ruby book this time, the Ruby Cookbook found it's way to my shopping basket. Clearly this was not a book to read from beginning-to-end, but more of a handy help in desperate times. So, why not try to find something else as well? Something to really read from beginning to end. This time I found a book from NoStarch, Ruby by example. I remembered two other books from this publisher which I really valued for it's size, content and readability. So it seemed like a good choice. Time to check out. While experiencing the online-shopping rush at it's peak moment, some promo drew attention. Three for two, 3:2, 3-2=1, I have two, get three, one for free! Finding the last book was a daunting task. Only a few days later I found a book that was just added to the book announcements: Wicked cool ruby scripts from NoStarch. Interresting. It featured a robot on it's cover holding some kind of gem. Good, robots are cool. The announcement mentioned something about system administration, web scripting, utilities and security.

That last one just did it, BANG, the collision of two of my favorite subjects! So I pre-ordered the book, which was to be published in September. No hurries, I had the other two books to read (on top of the to-read-stack I amassed already). But you can guess this one met with the most anticipation. After a while, having started on some other books just to get by, I received both the cookbook and ruby by example. So I started reading (reviews coming soon). Summer passed. September passed. No book. No word. Rescheduled release date. No word. Rescheduled release date. Still no word about my delayed order. So I sent mail to O'Reilly and after getting the most rude, dumb and hostile response. That's quite something coming from somebody who wants my money. To further add to the bad taste, even another release date slipped by. Was it ever going to be finished and sent? A few day's ago finally salvation in the mailbox: my book had been shipped!

After having to wait a few more days, due to a UPS guy being an idiot, I finally had it in my hands! I just took the book from it's cardboard prison.

First impression: this book is thin like it has been starving all those months I've been waiting. 189 is the number of the last page. If you have read my review on Learning Ruby you know I truly value short books. I feel an urge to tell you what I have against big, fat, long books...must..not...rant.

Second impression: the author writes he will skip explaining Ruby. this is not a 101 Ruby book. Ok, good, there are plenty of those already!

Next, I looked at the index, which read as follows:
Chapter 1: General Purpose Utilities...could be handy...Chapter 2: Website Scripting...nice, too many Ruby books fail to give it the attention it deserves, probably due to Rails......Chapter 3: Li(U)nix System Administration...*nix stuff, always nice!...Chapter 4: Picture Utilities...Chapter 5: Games and Learning Tools...Chapter 6: String Utilities...Chapter 7: Servers and Scrapers...what the hell is a scraper?...Chapter 8: Arguments and Documentation...
Chapter 9: Sorting Algorithms...some memories about my study years started to float around in my mind...quit sort...bubble sort in JAVA...beer...youth......Chapter 10: Writing a Metasploit 3.1 Module with Ruby...oh those sweet years, where have the times gone...wait: read again...Chapter 10: Writing a Metasploit 3.1 Module with Ruby......Metasploit...Oreally? OMFG that just ROCKS!

Starting from chapter 10, off course, I read a little, flipped some pages to get some impressions. Well it sure looks promising, short scripts that look really useful, not too long explanations and a clear look and readable format look that is so typical for NoStarch books. Well this can't go wrong can it?

There just remains one question: how the hell will I manage to read 7 books in the same time?