Bücher von Michael Hoffman

Brave Tsavo, the first Rhodesian Ridgeback dog, never dies. An African nature god blessed him with multiple lives, and he returns again and again as a boon to the people he loves. Follow Tsavo's heroic journey from the Dark Continent to the 9/11 disaster site to his life as a loyal shapeshifting companion who crosses the genetic line between man and animal.Colorful African mythology and my lifelong fondness for fantasy literature have inspired Ridgeback Tales. I am also convinced that dog-to-owner mental telepathy actually exists, because my own Ridgeback, Mister Brown, dictated these stories himself with unrelenting hound talk that coaxed me to write every day.When you finish the last story, you will ache for more. When that happens, take your own beloved dog for a walk and ask, "What do you think happens next?"

Based on the encoding process, arithmetic codes can be viewed as tree codes and current proposals for decoding arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols belong to sequential decoding algorithms and their variants. In this monograph, we propose a new way of looking at arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols. If a limit is imposed on the maximum value of a key parameter in the encoder, this modified arithmetic encoder can also be modeled as a finite state machine and the code generated can be treated as a variable-length trellis code. The number of states used can be reduced and techniques used for decoding convolutional codes, such as the list Viterbi decoding algorithm, can be applied directly on the trellis. The finite state machine interpretation can be easily migrated to Markov source case. We can encode Markov sources without considering the conditional probabilities, while using the list Viterbi decoding algorithm which utilizes the conditional probabilities. We can also use context-based arithmetic coding to exploit the conditional probabilities of the Markov source and apply a finite state machine interpretation to this problem. The finite state machine interpretation also allows us to more systematically understand arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols. It allows us to find the partial distance spectrum of arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols. We also propose arithmetic codes with memories which use high memory but low implementation precision arithmetic codes. The low implementation precision results in a state machine with less complexity. The introduced input memories allow us to switch the probability functions used for arithmetic coding. Combining these two methods give us a huge parameter space of the arithmetic codes with forbidden symbols. Hence we can choose codes with better distance properties while maintaining the encoding efficiency and decoding complexity. A construction and search method is proposed and simulation results show that we can achieve a similar performance as turbo codes when we apply this approach to rate 2/3 arithmetic codes. Table of Contents: Introduction / Arithmetic Codes / Arithmetic Codes with Forbidden Symbols / Distance Property and Code Construction / Conclusion

Michael Hoffman started writing poetry when he was forty-five. He kept his mind busy while in prison for the six years that he was there. He turned his life over to God, and he started writing poetry in many different themes, writing for his children to their mother during a fall on relationship.He was the one who had to change his life around. No one else could force him to change, but it had to be him who had to do it. He kept thinking and praying and doing it to be able to go home. He now lives in upstate New York. Some of the proceeds from this book is being donated to charities of choice in remembrance of his loved ones who passed away.

Brave Tsavo, the first Rhodesian Ridgeback hound, never really dies. The African nature god Shango blesses him with multiple lives, and he travels through time and space as a boon to the people he loves. Follow his heroic journey from battles with ferocious lions on the Dark Continent to his 9/11 disaster site search and rescue miracles. Watch him soften the hearts of weary soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg and open the doors of perception for patients in the office of a famous Beverly Hiils psychiatrist.Colorful African mythology and the literary freedom of magical realism have inspired Hounds of Mercy. Dog owners know that communication with their companion animals is no fantasy. When you finish reading "The Psychiatrist's Hound", take your own beloved canine for a walk and just ask, "What do you think happens in the story about Lockdown, the prison hound?"

Travel companions on my journeys are four in number: Odysseus, Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn and Basho." (Travel) "He walked in priestly garb. Arriving towards evening at a town or village, he'd chant sutras until passersby gave him, or flung him, enough money for a flophouse bed, a little food, a bath and enough saké to induce a measure of forgetfulness. 'A beggar,' he admonished himself, 'has to learn to be an all-out beggar. Unless he can be that, he will never taste the happiness of being a beggar.'" (Walking) '"The pleasantest of all diversions,' said the fourteenth-century Japanese priest Kenko," is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.' Reading is inseparable from reverie. 'Sitting alone under the lamp,' I was soon not alone at all, but hosting, I venture to say, as vivid and varied a company as ever gathered under one roof. (Genji, Myshkin and Jones) "Everest is nothing, mere seismology." (Fuji, Sinai, Olympos)

"Listen, Granule, about what daddy said. Is it true?""Mummy said he was joking.""I think it's true.""Really?""I think so.""D'you mean mummy's a liar?"Mandolyn was thoughtful. Granule's eyes were fixed on her face. He loved her face. It was so… he didn't know the word… it kept changing… unlike his own, which was always the same. Mandolyn smiling and Mandolyn grave were almost two different people; Mandolyn laughing was a third; Mandolyn perplexed a fourth, and so on. When she was deep in thought, two tiny wrinkles appeared on her forehead, making her look, to Granule, almost old, though otherwise, partly because she was so small, partly because of what Granule thought of as her beauty, she seemed younger than her nine years and could easily pass for seven or even six."Let's run away," Granule suddenly blurted out.

Green sheds new light on the gamut of issues associated with renewable energy, a topic whose importance increases exponentially with every temperature record-setting year. It covers the misinformation and confusion over global warming, and demonstrates the degree to which renewable energy can be part of the solution.

Michael Hoffman's characters are, willy-nilly, participants in plots that don't add up. Some emerge stronger; others, shadows of their former selves. The six stories and one novel that make up this collection are set, wholly or primarily, in Japan, land of the artful mask. Meet the man who loses his key and sets in motion a chain of events whose incomprehensibility he will never understand; a small girl who accosts a fugitive murderer (is he really a murderer?) for sex, only to be admonished to go back to school; a murdered boy who is resurrected (is he really?) and wreaks his mad revenge; and, finally, Sidney Levin, whose reunion twenty years later with a lost Japanese girlfriend ends in a hopeless entanglement with her growing daughter.