same. it's a perfectly fine shitty radio. i have 3 of them that i keep stashed in various places. they certainly aren't as nice as my yaesu, and they do splatter, but they do work just fine.
I love this book for it's, ah, eloquent and inclusive way of describing more advanced JS topics. Definitely of value, even for the more experienced JS dev.
I put together a similar talk last summer: http://thedrearlight.com/functional-js-wut unfortunately, don't have the vid either, but the slides might be complementary to the ones linked by the OP.
--edit
It's formatted kinda weird, where both up/down and left/right arrows navigate through the different sections.