Bøger af David Ackley

No one had bought his poetry - his words were all swept away into the sea of self-publishing obscurity.Ron couldn't count the number of rejection letters he'd received in seeking a publisher. His anger and frustration at being ignored was growing to the point that his blog had devolved into rants against the publishing industry. So, he'd decided that he was going to quit his writing 'career' at the end of the year. The stress of the upcoming holidays, the dreaded trip to visit Sara's parents, and the backlog of orders at his day job only worsened his attitude. Ron had walked out onto Madison's icy Lake Mendota on a freezing winter night to blow off steam, only to slip and crack his head in the process. He was shocked to awaken in Elizabethan England on a mild spring morning. Had he hit the ice that hard - was he in a coma? Dead? Encountering a prominent literary figure of the time made Ron yearn to either learn more from this person or to break free of the persistent hallucination. Suddenly he was back in 21st century Madison. His time for reflection while in England - and the writings left by a mysterious visitor who had been living in his house while he was away - ended up forever changing his attitude toward his life and his writing craft.

The Portland Police Bureau is already busy searching for four-year-old Melissa Davidson who was abducted from a local shopping mall, when one of Portland''s well-known newspaper editors goes missing as well.  Detective Galen Young is tasked with locating Robert Armlin, the Opinion Page editor of the Oregon Sentinel, in addition to joining the search for the missing girl. After interviewing Armlin''s wife, work colleagues, and friends, Detective Young finds that he has little to go on in tracking down the editor, so he delves into the opinion pieces Armlin had written in the past to gain more insight into the man and any enemies he may have made.  In response to many of the published articles are letters to the editor from readers who took offense at, or strongly disagreed with, many of Armlin''s statements and positions. Detective Young begins to suspect that one of the respondents could have had a hand in the editor''s disappearance. The detective himself opposes many of Armlin''s political views, but Young often finds himself persuaded by the editor''s well-presented arguments, causing him to reflect on his own beliefs.Little progress is being made in locating either Melissa Davidson or Robert Armlin when a discovery is made that appears to link the two missing persons cases. As improbable as this seems, the Bureau is left struggling to find possible motives and connections, only to be surprised by another unexpected revelation.Detective Young is a retiree from the Pendleton, Oregon police department, but after his wife and he move to Portland, he  finds it necessary to join the Bureau in order to make ends meet in the more expensive city.  His eldest daughter is currently incarcerated for drug possession in a nearby corrections facility, leaving it up to him and his wife to raise her two middle school-aged sons, adding to the older couple''s expenses and responsibilities. The make-shift family is just managing this arrangement when a sudden tragedy strains their relationships to near the breaking point.

Whatever became of Prospero’s enchanted staff after he snapped it in two and buried it ‘certain fathoms in the earth’ in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest?It was only a prop in a play, after all, so why was the staff now appearing to Martin Ropers? Martin had returned to a Greek island, trying to rekindle the spark that led to his highly successful first novel written in the ‘70s, but shortly into his trip he’d discovered the ancient staff and immediately lapsed into a coma. He would soon awaken to the persistent image in only one eye of a desolate island–where he grasps the staff.Back home in Montana, Martin’s situation takes a Shakespearean turn when he’s stranded in his house with neighbors seeking shelter from a mysterious wildfire that has erupted on the ridge just above them. His troubles deepen when he must contend with a painful, life-threatening condition within his brain and, to make matters worse, his literary agent and close friend has announced that she’s cutting her ties with him. Martin needs just one more successful book to turn his life around, but his damaged brain–and the staff–seem to have other plans.

When Carl collected the violin for repairs, he could never have imagined the momentous future awaiting its owner.A luthier repairs a Patent Office clerk's violin in Bern, Switzerland, and thus begins the friendship of Carl and Albert, two very different people - the one involved with his physical craft on a daily basis, and the other spending much of his time contemplating the mysteries of physics. A shared interest in music and membership in an amateur quintet bring them together regularly, and they find themselves comfortably discussing Albert's fascinating theories which subtly begin to shape Carl's view of the world and himself. The book is set in late 1904 during the months leading up to Albert Einstein's "Miracle Year" when he published four ground-breaking articles on physics. At this time in his life, Albert is a new parent busy with his day-to-day workload at the Patent Office; however, his obsession with his mental experiments in physics is always at the forefront of his thoughts. The luthier, Carl, with the help of his shop assistant, Peer, has his hands full with intricate and varied violin repairs and restorations, especially in keeping the school district's student violins in working order, but is also dealing with a long-distance marriage and increasing dissatisfaction with his routine job. Carl becomes involved in helping to understand the inexplicable appearance of a valuable violin bow in the hands of a local student and assists in uncovering the source of this minor mystery, while also discovering what had caused Albert's violin to change so much in tone that it needed repair. At the same time, during the winter of their acquaintance, Albert makes a series of breakthroughs in his efforts to solve some of the most perplexing enigmas facing physicists at that time. It is Albert's kind and open manner, and willingness to explain his discoveries in a language that he thinks Carl can understand, which endears him to Carl. Though Carl has difficulties in comprehending Albert's musings, Albert appreciates Carl's ability to apply what he hears to his own contemplation of the world. As Carl sees Albert single-mindedly pursuing his ambitions, he also gains the courage to follow his own creative vision. The novel also includes several other well developed fictional and historical characters including the Bern artist, Paul Klee, depicted as a longtime family friend of Carl's. It is through Carl's amateur attempts at drawing that Paul's views on art and music are explored.

In the "black box function optimization" problem, a search strategy is required to find an extremal point of a function without knowing the structure of the function or the range of possible function values.

In the "black box function optimization" problem, a search strategy is required to find an extremal point of a function without knowing the structure of the function or the range of possible function values.