The book I read to research this post was Nelson's Spy which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This book is a history of Alexander Scott who may have been a spy at the time of the Battle Of Trafalgar and was a close friend of Lord Nelson. He may have been a key person in the outcome of the battle and helped tend to Nelson when he was mortally wounded. It was a battle between the British & French navies and it was the British who won. Alexander was a minister which enabled him to evade suspicion as a spy and also hear things because many people dropped their guard with a member of the clergy. He got the chance to do lots of travelling and lived to a ripe old age. His daughter wrote this book of recollections about him in 1842 and it has recently had an introduction added and been republished. Alexander came from a wealthy family but decided to go into the clergy because he lacked money. Many clergy men were able to save a nice nest egg and certainly Nelson rewarded him for any information. At one stage fresh from having a post in the navy he was offered a job as a chaplain on a smallish ship but felt it was a step backwards. Nelson told him if he got in an influential position he would make sure he was offered a better job. Spies were very important and could make the difference between winning or losing a battle. Even if their ships were outnumbered they could try and force a ship to put into port to try and even the odds or force a ship to go on the open sea where they could engage it in battle.

I am reviewing the business autobiography In My Shoes: A Memoir by Tamara Mellon which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Tamara is famous as the part owner of Jimmy Chou Company in which she designed a lot of the shoes and boots they sold. Before that she worked for a women's magazine and did a backpage feature on footwear. She got made redundant from that job and had a bit of a drug and drink habit which had to be sorted out. She did go to a rehab centre. She had by then met up with a shoemaker and suggested she could look after the day to day operations of the business and this man, Jimmy Chou could make the shoes. They had a hell of a job getting funding and later they focused on breaking into the American market. They tried to get celebrities to wear their shoes at functions like the Oscars. Kate Winslett almost unbelievably mentioned her Jimmy Chou boots during her acceptance speech. Sales then really took off. At this point Tamara was just drawing a salary of $15,000 per year although later on she would become extremely rich. Funnily enough in those days when Jimmy learned to make shoes, little emphasis was put on designing them. Eventually after the company had been going for a few years and was one of the designer label toasts of the town, Tamara had a cut from the $101 million it was valued at when it went public. She eventually got annoyed that the new set up skimped on materials which she thought would ruin the companies success. She currently has her own new fashion label called Tamara Mellon which will focus on limited edition fashion goods which she is expanding on the shoes and handbags the previous company did.

The book I read to research this post was Malware Forensics Field Guide For Windows Systems by Eoghan Casey et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book looks at the legal aspects mostly according to American law and also looks at the technical aspects of dealing with a virus infestation on either a network or desktop pc. It lists loads of software that can do the various jobs, far too many to list here and looks at doing the basics with some of this software. Eoghan is a bit of a legend in Digital Forensics and I have read quite a lot of books by him. There is also quite a lot of posts on different aspects of digital forensics at my computing blog at http://scratbag.me & my technology blog at http://scratbagroberts.com
If your computer is attacked by malware it's best to analyze it in a live state which means with out re booting it which will often destroy any evidence. Many professionals use MD5 or Memory Digest 5 to copy the hard drive. One problem facing you in this job is there is various types of memory that all need to be copied. Another problem is what you copy it to, in most cases it will be an external hard drive due to the enormous amount of data. Also copying it to writable media like dvdr's takes longer. A good program that will copy a network to another network hard drive is Encase Enterprise. A lot of malware nowadays contains keyloggers to find things like passwords, something to locate credit card numbers & an email address for this information to be sent to. One way you can spot malware is you use a port sniffer like wireshark it will constantly try to access the internet to send its newfound information. This book is nearly 1,000 pages and covers every aspect of malware and I really enjoyed reading it.

I am reviewing the thriller novel The Up And Comer by Howard Roughan which is an excellent story which I bought from a local secondhand bookstore. Howard has co written various novels with James Patterson and does seem like a pretty good thriller writer. This novel isn't that different to the kind of thing Patterson writes. The book plays with your emotions quite skilfully and the key character who is an up and coming lawyer in a successful firm, hence the title, does starts off as not very likable but I did find myself feeling sorry for him by the end of the book although perhaps justifiably there is a bitter sweet ending. It's very skilfully written and it does seem a shame it hasn't reached a more mainstream audience. The plot is a lawyer in a successful firm who is married to the bosses daughter is having an affair with the bosses wife who he is meant to be defending on a driving whilst under the influence charge. Then an ex friend of his comes back in his life and has snaps of him and the bosses wife that incriminate him. He wants a $100,000 to keep quiet and threatens this bloke and refuses to pay up. In the meantime he joins a poker circle with some friends and cleans up with lots of money, he gets $3,000 alone when he joins the group but it makes sense to pay the ex friend to stay quiet especially when he discovers he knows his boss. Anyway by a twist of circumstances he ends up killing the ex friend more in manslaughter than murder but makes it look like a robbery gone wrong. At this point his whole starts to come apart and the police are hot on his trail. I really enjoyed this book and it definitely keeps your interest throughout.

The book I read to research this post was Onward by Charles Schultz which is an excellent business autobiography which I bought from kindle. Charles is the ceo of Starbuck's, they always express job titles in lower case letters at that company and later on he was brought back into that role to turn the company around. Charles went on holiday to Italy in the early 70's and was impressed by the specialist coffee shops in Milan & Verona. He then started learning all he could about specialist coffee and how it should be prepared. He worked in a cafe that served instant coffee so he left his job and started his own coffee shop. 10 months later he earned enough to buy out his former employer and their name which was Starbuck's became the name of his company. This book is a kind of a sequel and is primarily about when he was brought back as ceo. One thing he discovered was that the employees didn't make the coffee properly. When they made cappucchino they often put the milk in the milk frother more than once which broke down the sweetness of the milk. When they made espresso they either poured it to quickly or too slowly which spoilt the consistency which should be similiar to that of honey. He closed down all his shops in America and retaught his workers their job which many thought was corporate suicide and cost the company millions but paid off in the long run. They also reintroduced sandwiches at breakfast which they had previously only been doing on request which resulted in a cut in their revenue. This many people requested be reintroduced. Starbuck's is one of the best employers anywhere and even gives shares to it's part time employees. Employees are called partners. It has a very strict but fair policy on the products it buys where it pays more than the market price but the highest standards are expected. Workers don't wear after shave or perfume in case it taints the coffee. Starbuck's has also become a cyber-cafe and was among the first to see the benefits of social networking. Believe me this is a heck of a good read and I think any business person will love this book.

I am reviewing the psychological thriller novel Guilt by Jonathan Kellerman which is a very good story and which I bought from a local supermarket. This book is part of the Alex Delaware series featuring a psychologist who works for the police in Los Angeles along with his partner Milo Sturgis. These stories tend to cover serial killings and this is no exception. The story centres on a well to do neighbourhood where there has been a spate of ritual killings done some time ago. The first one discovered is by a lady who is 5 months pregnant and is in a large metal container in a huge tree in her garden at the house she has recently moved into. There has been problems with the tree which has dead wood and it's as one of the large branches comes down, the metal box is exposed. The body has been there quite a long time. There is the body of a baby later discovered and it becomes apparent the killer is a doctor who used to drive an old classis car called a Duisburg and due to its age there are no records of it. They discover there were 3 of these cars in the area. This isn't as good as some of the other stories in the series but is still pretty good. I think When The Bough Breaks is my favourite. Anyway there is a happy ending and the story is nicely paced. Jonathan used to be a very distinguished psychologist prior to becoming an author and has written some factual books on the subject in addition to his thrillers. He is a gifted writer and most of his fiction books are Alex Delaware novels. I am surprised no one has made any of them into films as I they think they would be quite popular.

I am reviewing the adventure novel The Storm by Clive Cussler et al which is an excellent story which I bought from a local supermarket. In Britain this novel has only just been released on the paperback bestsellers chart and is currently doing quite well. It's part of the Kurt Austin series or the NUMA files as it is sometimes called. Actually he also does a Dirk Pitt series who also reputedly works for NUMA in a fiction sense and occasionally features as Kurt's boss in these novels. This novel kicks off in World war 2 with an American ship being hunted by the Japanese before it is destroyed for it's precious cargo. Actually the main theme of the story is nanotechnology and we later learn that the famed German scientist Wernher Von Braun as part of the story was working on nanotechnology which is creating many microscopic robots which can digest material and replicate and turn it into something else.There was a real scientist called Wernher who helped develop rockets in Germany during the war and later he defected to America where he was a key member of the Space Program. As part of the story there is a plan to change the climate pattern of the world to benefit the Middle East. There are 2 tyrants 1 in Northern Yemen & 1 in China that Kurt must hunt down. There is also a NUMA research vessel that falls victim to these nanotechnological bots. Incidently I did a post on Nanotechnology at http://scratbagroberts.com which is my main technology blog. It may be worth reading. Kurt comes across some survivors from the WW2 ship called the Roosevelts living on an isolated island in the Indian Ocean and worshipping American culture like a religion which results in some rather amusing questions for Kurt that he must get right and with a name like his at first they assume he must be German. He also has to pilot a seaplane and hasn't got a clue how to land it safely. They do say that is the most difficult aspect of flying. There is a nice young lady that helps Kurt and it has quite a happy ending as with all Cussler novels. I found the book very enjoyable and the plot is one of his best.

The book I read to research this post was A Newbies Guide To Nexus 7 by Minute Help Guides which is fairly short but a very good book which I downloaded from kindle. I have done a couple of posts on the Nexus 7 at my technology blog at

http://scratbagroberts.com

This is my computing blog but I thought this is a relevant subject for this blog too. The Nexus 7 is a digital tablet which is much cheaper than the current leading tablet the iPad by Apple but has a similiar amount of processing power and on the whole does away with some of the more superfluous features like a sim card in favour of wi-fi & bluetooth which it still uses but also is very cheap for a tablet especially with the features it has. It generally needs a wi-fi network to do things like install apps via your computer or a wireless hotpoint. It's worth mentioning Google were giving away $25 away in the form of a voucher if you joined Google Play for you to download apps and I know currently give away 1 paid app free every day. It's worth noting Google remove any apps that get a lot of negative reviews but don't check them as such like Apple do with the Appstore. It's best to check reviews prior to downloading an app to make sure it's value for money.

The Nexus holds a charge for 300 hours, lets you watch 9 hours of video & lets you read a book for 10 hours when fully charged. It has a 7 inch screen measured diagonally. You can watch video in high definition. I noticed in a technology magazine that rated digital tablets it was 2nd behind the iPad and it has the latest form of the Android Operating System 4.1 and as new features are rolled out you can update that via a wireless connection to the internet. This book keeps it simple & I think was a free or very cheap download but I think if you want something more detailed on the Nexus I would recommend the book Google Nexus 7 For Dummies by Dan Gookin.

I am reviewing the fantasy novel The Crippled God by Steven Erikson which is an excellent book which I bought from a local bookstore. This book was part of the Malazon Book Of The Fallen fantasy series which has to be one of the greatest of this type of series ever written. Quite a long time ago before I did fiction book reviews I read the first 8 books of this series and this is the 10th and final book and there is a kind of spin off book of short stories. Each of the books of the series is around 900 pages so it will take up a lot of time reading it but it's quite rewarding. Also they are really for adults as they are quite violent but apparently it did well in a poll of fantasy book series of the Millennium. The books are set in and around a country called Malaza & in this book there are various groups vying for control including someone with an impressive army who wishes to challenge the gods, little realizing you need to be dead to become a god. There is another group who wish to reintroduce dragons to the desert where they once roamed and they do come in handy in one of the battles where they smell blood and decide to eat the enemy who at the time are winning. There is a female good character who leads a coalition on a knife edge of collapsing. It turns out she is pregnant and even who own troops think they are done for and suggest slaughtering the horses for food. She does insist on sticking with it and there is a happy ending. There is also a group who want to slaughter all humans and start the evolutionary cycle all over again. I would suggest if you read this series start with the 1st book because otherwise it gets quite confusing keeping up with what is going on. The early books have a section that explains the various characters which is handy although it's a nuisance having to keep referring to it. I am going to re read this series again and I can review it on here so that might be quite interesting. The last few hundred pages of this book are very exciting and I think this final book is a worthy ending to what is a great series. It's strange to think the 1st book was turned down by many publishers before a relatively less well known publisher decided to take a chance with it.

I am reviewing the novel The White Princess by Philippa Gregory which is an excellent historical fiction book which I bought from a local supermarket. I think the ending of this novel is the climax of the Cousin's War series based on the story of the Plantangenet rulers and at the end we see the beginning of the Tudor house. Philippa has a PhD from Edinburgh University and really seems to know her history. This book almost reads like an eyewitness account and she is a stickler to the facts in her stories. She has already done a series based on the Tudors so this series is a nice add on. This novel starts with the Battle Of Bosworth & Richard the 3rd's death and how Henry the 7th became king despite there being an unknown disease that many is a punishment from God. Henry marries Richard's sister to try and unite the Houses of Lancaster & York. At first his bride is reluctant to have anything to do with him and considers the sex they have to be rape and can't believe his mother actually condones it. As times goes on she warms to him gradually but when a pretender who is just a boy is trying to take the thrown although there are other people behind it. He eventually gets a job in Henry's kitchens and she is grateful to him for sparing him. Two other people claiming to be her cousin and brother aren't so lucky. Henry goes to all the trouble of staging an invasion of France just so the king will hand these 2 over. They do flee to Flanders but are eventually captured in Spain and handed over. At the end of the day the young lad claiming to be her brother does believe he has a genuine right to the throne and his sister despises how he is treated. It's a great story and I think it shows the best stories are often real life stories.