Ernie's 3D Pancakes

Buy My Free Book!

I'm happy to finally announce the publication of an actual dead-tree paperback edition of my Algorithms textbook.  The book can be purchased from Amazon (US, UK, DE, ES, FR, IT, JP), for the ludicrous price of $27.50 (or the equivalent in pounds, euros, and yen).

I've also updated the freely available, full-color electronic version at http://algorithms.wtf; this electronic version will remain free indefinitely.  The same site includes several additional lecture notes and other course materials.

Thanks to everyone who reported dozens of errors in the 0th and ½th edition on the Github issue-tracker.  Please keep the bug reports and feature requests coming!

Enjoy!

Steal This Book!

Today I'm finally releasing a final (or more honestly, “final”) pre-publication draft of my Algorithms textbook under a CC-BY license. This 448-page textbook evolved out of a subset of the algorithms lecture notes I've been maintaining for about 20 years.

There are still a few more steps before this becomes an actual paper book—most notably an index—but I wanted to get this out the door this year. I expect to publish the actual paper book in a few weeks; it will also be licensed CC-BY.

Meanwhile, I've set up an issue-tracker on Github where anyone can report errors or provide other feedback.

The book site also includes copies of the lecture notes that I left out of the book (because I wanted a finite book in a finite amount of time), along with a complete archive of old homeworks, exams, lab handouts, and the like.

Enjoy!

• Official book site: http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/
• Mnemonic shortcut: http://algorithms.wtf
• Please report errors: https://github.com/jeffgerickson/algorithms
• Archival copy: https://archive.org/details/Algorithms-Jeff-Erickson

Blame Canada

he court ordered an injunction; (i) restraining John/Jane Does and anyone who has directly or indirectly received a copy or any other form of disclosure of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling (“Harry Potter #6”) from John/Jane Does and anyone who is given notice of the order from copying or disclosing all or any part of Harry Potter #6 or any information derived therefrom including without limitation the story, plot or characters of Harry Potter #6 to any person prior to 12:01 a.m. local time on July 16, 2005 without the consent of the Plaintiffs’ solicitors save for information which has been made the subject of any press release issued or other communication made by or on behalf of and with the authority of the Plaintiffs;

Oh, right. Like the Supreme Court of Canada is really going to send some 12-year-old to jail for revealing plot details of a children's book four days before its release. Who do these people think they are? Apple?

[via BoingBoing]

Blasphemer! Heretic! Throw the book at him!

Rabid bibliophiles at Metafilter rant about the exhibition from Marty Demaine's course on making furniture with books at MIT.

Bizarrely, this actually angers me more than that artist who makes the finger-puppets out of the dead white mice. I find violence against books more appalling than violence against animals.

*weeps silently in frustration over the thought of having to read around the holes punched in the pages of the books - or the thought of realizing a book she REALLY wanted to reread was trapped in the middle of a piece of furniture she'd have to disassemble in order to get to*

My family brought me up to treat books with respect. I find that neither respectful nor pretty. If they happened to be romance paperbacks or John Grisham novels, I might concede the point, but they do not appear to be so.

A few more level-headed visitors mentioned more ambitious book-building projects by professional artists, including an entire house and several miles of road.

Strangely, nobody seems to object to the idea of eating books.