Inside Out – Personal Excellence Through Self Discovery – 9 Steps to Radically Change Your Life
Jeroen Coenen and Gareth Stubbs – MX Publishing – ISBN 978-1-907685-67-5

Inside Out by Jeroen Coenen and Gareth Stubbs is a journey of self discovery in a readable and entertaining paperback. Their down to earth, no holds bared introduction gives you all the history and credibility you need. These guys have been round the block, down in the gutter, clawed they way back out and managed to build their own success story. In their unique style, using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), personal anecdotes, exercises and inspirational quotes they will take you on a journey which can help you achieve success, love and personal fulfillment. Working through this book will help you achieve better results, and may inspire you to do what you always dreamed of.

Jeroen Coenen and Gareth Stubbs are both NLP Master Practitioners, and the inspiration behind Ego Invenio, their movement for personal excellence through self discovery. Ego Invenio are passionate about the results that people create in their own lives, and through our their personal experiences have discovered some pretty powerful tools and techniques which they are sharing with people. Let Jeroen and Gareth take you on a journey to personal excellence, taking what you have within you and truly boosting the results in every area of your life whether it be career, relationships, finances or life style.

If you don’t yet know Jeroen and Gareth from their events and trainings, you will want to meet them after you have used this book. A colleague of mine picked up Inside Out – Personal Excellence Through Self Discovery, and opened it at one of the exercises. Once she realized what it was about, she asked me where could she get her own copy!

Buy the book, complete all the exercises and experience for yourself how to turn your life inside out, and achieve the results that you have always wanted.

Inside Out – Personal Excellence Through Self Discovery – 9 Steps to Radically Change Your Life Using NLP, Personal Development, Philosophy and Action for True Success, Value, Love and Fulfilment.

Arguably the first programmable machine was a loom built by the son of a French silk worker in Lyons. Lyons was the capital of the silk industry in France and produced much fine fabric; amongst their products were fine tapestries showing detailed pictures of landscapes and portraits. These were very laborious to produce and hence expensive. Jacquard determined to design and manufacture a better loom that would produce as good a quality product but with much less effort. The result of his efforts was the Jacquard loom controlled by punched cards; cards that could be re-used and transferred from one loom to another – in other words, the first program.

Jacquard’s work was greatly appreciated by an English mathematician, Charles Babbage, who was working on a project of his own to automate repetitive tasks. In Babbage’s case it was the production of mathematical tables, a far cry from woven portraits but with the underlying similarity of predictable, repetitive actions. Babbage was sufficiently impressed by Jacquard that he visited Lyons and bought a woven portrait of Jacquard produced on a Jacquard loom at a cost in today’s money of £2500.

This book explores the chain of links that led from Jacquard, through Babbage, to the first programmer – Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace. It goes on to Herman Hollerith who produced the punch card machine for data analysis. Hollerith found that the US census was taking so long to analyse that the next census was being made before the data from the previous one was available so developed the machine initially to analyse the census data. It was later further developed to extraordinary levels and was a mainstay of business until it was superseded by the next link in the chain, the digital computer. The final links in the chain are Howard Aiken who was largely responsible for the Harvard Mk 1 and subsequently Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.

The main focus of the book is the early days with Jacquard having 70 pages out of a total of 280; Babbage gets 45 pages and Berners-Lee a short paragraph. This is probably quite reasonable as there are many books currently in print about the birth of the web but very few about Jacquard and how his loom works.

Overall the book is a fascinating run through the very early history of IT with much background detail of the individuals who had such an impact on our lives today. It is obviously well researched leading to a very readable book without too much technical detail in the main body; there is an appendix with the technical detail of how a Jacquard loom works. Highly recommended for anyone who has an interest in the origins of computing.

John Weller is a Fellow of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers and a long established IAP Council member. You can contact John through the Institution, and purchase books at substantial discounts through the IAP Bookstore

Jacquard’s Web is available through Amazon in Paberback and Hardback

• Jacquard’s Web (Paperback)
• Jacquard’s Web (Hardback)