Here’s a new Podiobook recommendation: The Max Quick Series by Mark Jeffrey. I suppose they’d be classified as Juveniles, but only because the main characters are young and the content is family friendly. The story is far more sophisticated than Harry Potter.
Max Quick 1: The Pocket and the Pendant is available as a Podiobook. It was available in paperback, hardcover, Kindle edition, and in PDF, but due to the bizarre nature of the publishing world those have all been pulled. HarperCollins bought the book, and in their infinite wisdom they have decided to stop selling it until 2011. But you can still download it free from Podiobooks. Whatever.
Max Quick 2: The Two Travelers is also on Podiobooks, and just like Max Quick 1 the print editions have been pulled. It’s a shame because the cover has a picture of my favorite building. The story really picks up in The Two Travelers. In both books Mark Jeffrey has done a great job of moving the story along and never falling in to the trap of relying on a simple mechanism (like a magical power) to fill pages (or minutes, as the case may be.)
Max Quick 3: The Bane of the Bondsman is currently being written. No word yet if it will be made in to a Podiobook, but I certainly hope so – especially since HarperCollins doesn’t want to sell books.
The author reads the podiobook himself, which I normally don’t care for, but Mark Jeffrey has done a great job with these productions.
Comedians are really catching on to this whole podcasting thing. I’ve been listening to 3 of them recently:
Check them out! These links might not go to the official websites. If you use iTunes just use those titles as search terms in the iTunes Store.
Today I’d like to recommend reading, or at least scanning, Security Maxims by Roger G. Johnston, Ph.D., CPP. It appears on the website for the Argonne National Laboratory and was brought to my attention by the Security Now podcast.
As noted by the author, they were written with physical security in mind but are certainly applicable to computer security as well.
A few highlights:
Infinity Maxim: There are an unlimited number of security vulnerabilities for a given security device, system, or program, most of which will never be discovered (by the good guys or bad guys). Thanks for Nothin’ Maxim: A vulnerability assessment that finds no vulnerabilities or only a few is worthless and wrong. Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid Maxim: If you’re not running scared, you have bad security or a bad security product. Weakest Link Maxim: The efficacy of security is determined more by what is done wrong than by what is done right. I Just Work Here Maxim: No salesperson, engineer, or executive of a company that sells or designs security products or services is prepared to answer a significant question about vulnerabilities, and few potential customers will ever ask them one.
Infinity Maxim: There are an unlimited number of security vulnerabilities for a given security device, system, or program, most of which will never be discovered (by the good guys or bad guys).
Thanks for Nothin’ Maxim: A vulnerability assessment that finds no vulnerabilities or only a few is worthless and wrong.
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid Maxim: If you’re not running scared, you have bad security or a bad security product.
Weakest Link Maxim: The efficacy of security is determined more by what is done wrong than by what is done right.
I Just Work Here Maxim: No salesperson, engineer, or executive of a company that sells or designs security products or services is prepared to answer a significant question about vulnerabilities, and few potential customers will ever ask them one.
There are a lot more. Read the rest.
More from Podiobooks:
Shadowmagic
“Hi, my name is Conor. Other than my father being a bit of an eccentric lunatic, my life was pretty normal until I got attacked in my living room and whisked away to Tir na Nog, the mystical land of the ancient Celts, where it turns out Dad is the usurped heir to the throne and everybody wants me dead because of some prophecy. Don’t you just hate when that happens?” Shadowmagic is a rip roaring fun fantasy adventure novel by John Lenahan very loosely based on Irish mythology where every chapter ends on the edge of a cliff (or at least a high curb.) Join Conor as he grapples with typical teenage problems like, how to deal with a father’s high expectations, how to survive in the world on your own and how to woo a beautiful girl – that wants you dead. Shadowmagic a podcast novel for young adults from 12 to 112.
Lost and Not Found
Lost and Not Found details one man’s journey all the way from being laid off from his mundane corporate job to becoming the author he truly dreams to be by following his attempt to write his first novel within the challenging timeframe of only four weeks. As his story unfolds we get to read what he is writing and can see the relationship between the author and his work unfold until his life literally unfolds around him.
Fried Green Zombies
Chett and Harry are two recently unemployed construction workers on their way to a weekend of beer, Southern Comfort, and frog gigging at their musty-rusted 1970′s RV parked at their favorite hunting camp when they stumble on Bob, the mysterious, busty, burqa-clad, non-English speaking beauty just standing in the middle of nowhere on the side of dusty Nine Mile Cutoff in rural Bovina, Mississippi. Then all hell breaks loose. Their favorite pond is missing. They’re being chased by truck driving zombies, dirty cops, UFOs and other ne’er-do-wells. Someone stole Chett’s jacked up Scottsdale four-by-four. Zombies are traipsing around their trailer, and crazy Uncle Crank is trying to feed them zombie chicken for dinner. Aided by a classic computer nerd, a crazy man wielding a frying pan, and a space babe who gets nekkid any time someone turns out the lights, follow Chett and Harry as they battle their way across the rural countryside and ultimately save the world. Why is their pond missing, and why did the Dodge of Death spring from the muddy crater left in its center? Who is Bob and why is she so good with shotguns? Why are they being chased by two really skinny, pale, bald, goatee-clad wierdos? What is the dirty county sheriff hiding? And will Chett and Harry ever make it out alive?
The Immortals
The future story of United States Internment Camps … of the dreams of the pre-deceased … and of triumph beyond oblivion. It’s 2020, and an attempted cure for AIDS has mutated into a deadlier disease, V-CIDS. The U.S., under martial law, has set up “quarantine centers” in the Southwest. Searching for his gay son, Jon, media mogul Michael Barris smuggles himself into one of centers only to discover that it and the other centers are actually extermination camps. With a strange assortment of allies, including the leader of the camp’s gay barracks, an army officer and a local cowboy, Barris precipitates an inmates’ rebellion that promises the unraveling of the death-camp system and the overthrow of the government that established it.
Forget What You Can’t Remember
Featuring a zombie outbreak and a strange sort of doomsday, but really focusing on how coming through those experiences into utopia and freedom effects different people, Forget What You Can’t Remember is an exploration of the human mind under pressure. It’s about relationships, memory, opportunity, and dealing with their loss – and other kinds of loss. Forget What You Can’t Remember is a spin-off novel in the same universe as Lost and Not Found (also available on Podiobooks.com) which doesn’t require you to have read that book to understand it.
