posts : books


books

this page is just my thoughts on some books i've read.

ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications - ARRL
i realized recently that most of my electronics knowlege still comes from an elementary school competition i did where i needed to build circuits and know the ohm's law and some other stuff. the extent of knowledge is no longer enough to sustain my projects. i saw a guy on youtube talk about how he learned electronics, and in it he recommends some books. the ARRL handbook was one of them which was available at my local library, so i checked it out and i'm reading through the first few chapters right now to figure out what the hell i'm doing in some of my projects. undoubtedly this will save me a few fried components, sooner rather than later. so far, i am really happy with the depth it goes into and the diagrams. i also like knowing this book exists because i kind of want to get into amateur radio at some point (so that when doomsday rolls around i will be able to make a living by operating my little radio)
Understanding Cryptography - Paar & Pelzi
i checked this book out from the library to teach myself some of the principles of cryptography for a research paper i was writing. i found it really interesting. i liked that it explained the principles of different forms of crypto, had detail about how different ciphers worked, used clear and intuitive diagrams, and discussed their vulnerabilities. the vulnerability sections were particularly interesting. i loved that it gave direct examples of real implementations of crypto concepts and that it actually explained the details of the implementation of different algorithms. the inclusion of actual analysis of past or existing ciphers was really useful. it was very succesful at teaching me a lot of practical cryptography and i would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anybody remotely interested in cryptography.