This short book provides a very understandable explanation of how Bay Area weather is formed by topography, winds, and the ocean. He devotes sections to the four seasons, in which he tells how the fog is formed, where storms come from, and why there is so much variation within Bay Area microclimates. He also has a chapter on clouds, and a concluding chapter on climate change. I never knew much about weather (besides what I understood from forecasts on TV: sunny, partly cloudy, rain, etc.), but now I appreciate more the unique climates of the SF Bay region.

Ever wonder why it's SO COLD at Candlestick Park? Ever wonder why there's so much summer fog, and why it burns off in by Noon? Ever wonder why it can be 45 in San Francisco and 100 in San Jose? Harold Gilliam's concise little book will tell you!

His explanations of the cyclic weather patterns of the Bay Area, and the interactions between ocean-born events and the coastal, Bay and mountain geographies are easy to understand. Even more enticingly, they're easy to observe.

A great read for anyone who lives in (or even visits) the Bay Area.

With great love and with a scientist's objectivity Mr. Gilliam goes thruogh a year's cycle of the unique passage of fog, rain, warmth, and haunting beauty of the changing seasons. But he is no mere puff writer. He tells us why, and where, these events begin. Anyone who is familiar with the books by George R. Stewart on the history and climate of Northern California, should not miss this.

I was looking for a book with photos of the Monterey Peninsula, as I am considering relocation to the area and wanted to know what the peninsula looks like. This book provides a good variety of lovely aerial views that show off the region and essentially met my expectations. (I actually hope the photos don't do the area justice!) The photo captions provide some history of the features in the photographs, but I would prefer more description of all the things I'm seeing. Although, that would mean less room for the pictures! My only real beef with the book is a lack of a table of contents, which would make flipping to the right section/region easier.

Well I am always amazed at how well Robert Cameron's photos turn out. These pictures are breath taking. I'm fortunate enough to live close to Monterey and to enjoy the beauty. These photos are great as I can see where i've been from a different perspective. Everything is there from Salinas (which has changed a bit since photo was taken) to Carmel to Big Sur. All photos are wonderful and has sentences explaining what you are looking at. Great value too ...!

The information in this book is out of date. Techniques discussed are no longer in use as they've been replaced with safer practices.

Better approaches to buddy procedures, use of trimix and heliox beginning at depths of 100' and other techniques are NOT mentioned, although they should be. Equipment configurations are not fully discussed with modern emphasis on more streamlined, cleaner configurations.

Although he has some points, I disagree with the previous reviewer's harsh one-star assessment of this text. The second edition of this text dates to 1995, and as such can't be completely dismissed (other than some details which I will cover below).

I have been diving for 17 years, and even my technical dive training (TDI Extended Range) wasn't as informative to me (the theory part, at least) as this book. Just the historical references, including detailed accounts of fatal deep diving accidents, could make a book on their own, and really instill in the reader the value of training & advances in technical diving equipment systems, and provide a deep appreciation for the very expensive lessons that have been learned over the past half-century of experience.

I found this book to be more detailed in many aspects than many Technical Diving training manuals, and much more interesting to read. Certainly, this book is not a replacement for officially sanctioned manuals, though when I (soon) become a Technical instructor I plan to make my students absorb this text as required "additional reading".

Nevertheless, due to a lack of further updates beyond the first revised edition of 1995, readers should be aware that this book is slightly dated or completely outdated in the following aspects:

- New approaches to using helium mixes at much shallower depths than before, and more attention to breathing mixtures such as hyperoxic and normoxic trimix

- New developments in dive computers, particularly multigas, gas-switching computers such as the Suunto Vytec, the VR3, and Nitek He, the latter two supporting helium mixtures.

- Pre-dive planning of dive Multi-level, multi-gas profiles using PC-based software

- Various general diving and decompression procedures have become more standardized and stricter since this book's publication, particularly issues like gas-supply redundancy.

Despite these and some other less significant issues, this book remains a very important text which I think all technical divers should read, at least as a historical reference. Of course, it would serve both TDI and the diving community greatly if Bret Gilliam & co. would produce a new revision to this book, Which is why I am giving this book "only" four stars.

Reaslistic, practical, and easy to understand. Hazards and rewards of deep diving are both well defined. Safety well covered and emphasized. Good resource for either tekkies or those who will dive within recreational limits.

This JavaScript reference is a truly good computer book. It covers client-side scripting very well. It is very well laid out with a short tutorial section at the front of the book and a very long and well written Reference section. This book is the answer to all simple cross-browser scripting problems since it has a thorough indication of which browsers any particular function will work in. (It may somewhat over-simplify some DHTML issues). In addition, it is also a good Jscript reference and very useful for doing server-side Asp programming in Jscript (which is a better choice than VBscript for ASP, really). This book also covers the powerful topic of regular expressions (which seem to be an under-rated aspect of Javascript). Every function has sample code with it. This is a joy to read. One small reservation I would make, is that the Examples often do not have any indication of what the results from that code would be in the browser etc- which detracts slightly from the learning experience.

This book would also be an invaluable reference for doing Windows Scripting Host scripting using J(ava)Script.

In summary, this is the sort of computer book that you only rarely find. Perhaps the only sad thing is that such a good book has been written about a topic that is perhaps not of the first interest to serious programmers.

As the title of this book indicates, "Pure Javascript" covers everything about JavaScript in depth even better, from my point of view, than O'Reillys JavaScript: The Definite Guide.

I like the book also because its index indicates all the JavaScript syntaxis. Hence, when someone is programming and forgets the exact word, it is easy to look for it quickly, instead of wasting time browsing through all the book. Another positive aspect, is that the introduction of the book is pretty well organized (Shows you when to use JavaScript, its origin, operators, variables, fuctions, server-side JavaScrit, etc.) and gives you a concise idea of JavaScrpt capabilites.

However, the downside is that the book is not for amateur programmers since some terms are not explained in detail (the book states that it expects people who has experience with C, C++, Java or Pascal)

Overall: It is a MUST HAVE book for a serious JavaScript programmer, it is worth every penny you invest on it. But I'd recommend easier books first if you are a firt time programmer.

Simply, this book is the best reference you'll find on javascript, it covers every single aspect, including server-side, javascript 1.4 and jscript 5.

But, this book isn't for beginners, it will not teach you how to write and script, it asumes you already know what "