W. Richard Stevens' Favorite Links

Here are some of my favorite links with comments.

• The Roasting Man. I am a fan (addict?) of pure 100% Kona coffee beans and for many years mail-ordered my beans from Kona Kai Farms on the island of Hawaii. Don Gridley was roasting coffee for Kona Kai for many years and in 1997 when Kona Kai was sold he took over their mail order business. If you have ever bought what is labeled as Kona beans (often called "Kona blend") you are in for a real surprise when you try the real thing. I always order about half medium roast and half Peaberry dark roast. Sometimes I brew the beans as-is, and sometimes mix half medium and half Peaberry.

• Lorie Line. Lorie Line is a pianist, probably described as "new age". I found her in August 1997 when I walked into the house and my wife was listening to Lorie's PBS special on the TV. I heard the music ("Threads of Love") and had that immediate "wow that's neat" feeling. I watched a little more of the special, then we pledged to get a CD and concert tickets for her December 1997 Tucson concert (at which I got to play handbells on stage for one song, but that's another story). Later that afternoon I went down to the local Border's and got her "Live" CD. I shortly found all of her CDs and bought them all. I listened to all her CDs while doing the page layout of "UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1, 2nd Edition" in September 1997. (Normally I do not listen to music while writing, but her music made the page layout phase much more enjoyable.)

  Lorie was the third "find" of mine through the PBS network. The first was about four years ago when I was in Chicago on a business trip. I was channel surfing in a hotel room and came across a PBS special about the music developed for the "Civil War" series: Jay Ungar, Molly Mason, and their group Fiddle Fever were playing "Ashokan Farewell" and I instantly loved the tune. You know that feeling when you hear a song for the first time and say "wow, this is neat", versus some other music that needs to grow on you for a while.

  My next PBS music find was about two years ago when our local Tucson station played the St. Olaf's Christmas special. I tracked down the St. Olaf's bookstore through the Web and ordered my own copy of the special. It is a wonderful collection of Christmas songs.

• Mach 1 Books. Having been a pilot and getting a degree in Aerospace Engineering in 1973, three engineering feats of the 1950s-1970s have always fascinated me: developing the U-2 spy plane, developing the SR-71 Blackbird, and putting a man on the moon. The first two were done at the Lockheed Skunk Works under Kelly Johnson and are truly incredible engineering feats. (Just imagine if any of these three projects had been handled the way programming projects are handled today!). Brian Shul flew the SR-71 and has written two fascinating books on it: Sled Driver and The Untouchables, both published by Mach 1 Books. The writing and photographs (almost all of the photographs were taken by Brian) are phenomenal. Buy both books and read them in that order. I am fortunate to have autographed copies of both, having met Brian while he was selling and signing books from a little booth at an air show at Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson in March 1998. You can also order autographed copies directly from Brian, as detailed here.