Book a week 2009 - 7/52

Last year I tried to read a terribly detailed technical book about the linux kernel. It made some sense, but I felt frustrated that I couldn't understand the code snippets written in C. So I've decided to learn C using - what else - the iconic The C Programming Language (2nd Edition) by Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie. Actually, looking at my to-read list on goodreads - it looks like my aim for the next year is primarily to increase my technical knowledge in 4 areas -

1. Unix and Unix programming in C to the point where I can at least understand code snippets given in the kernel book and possibly start contributing some kernel code to the linux community.

2. Increasing my Java knowledge to the point where I can pass a high level technical certification.

3. Learning Ruby and Ruby on rails in order to use them more fluently at my current job.

4. Mac OSX programming in Objective C and Cocoa to the point where I'm writing some desktop or iPhone apps.

Sounds like a very ambitious range of projects, learning 4 languages. But it's not really - since I already know them all to varying degrees, and most object oriented languages seem very similar to me at this point. So that leaves C, which from most accounts I've read, is relatively to pick up. We'll see.