Been a while since I have been in this thread. Bonus to note is DDR2 ram seems to be coming back down in price -- got a nice 800MHz 2 gig laptop DDR2 stick the other day for £6 which was nice as it means I don't have to enforce such great ram discipline any more as I have a whole 3 gigs in my main machine.
Within science and engineering there is a concept called the duality of knowledge. Or if you prefer if you build it then you know how it comes apart. In this case I got a 1940s manual, of a work that originated around 1900, on how to prevent explosions and fires. Or in my hands it is a manual on how to blow things up.
Videos may be reflective of my approach to such things
Anyway
and a selection of the contents pages
Bunch of other books too but fire, and explosions, is more interesting than 1940s engineering drawing and chemical engineering.
Did also get a chance to try to read a 1700s French translation of a story (forgot the name already). Really quite hard that was.