2013 Projects and 2012 Errata

When you set goals for a year, you need to tell people about them. The potential embarrassment of having to admit failure helps you complete the goals. With that in mind, here are my goals for 2013:

1) I will do three short technology books through my private label (aka “self-publish”). The first, on DNSSec, is underway. Some text exists, and I’m making copious use of scratch paper and whiteboards to figure out how to explain KSKs, ZSK, and the signature and key lifecycle in a coherent manner. (If you happen to have a good resource for this, please feel free to point me at it in the comments.)

2) I will write & self-publish one novel. If I write nothing but nonfiction, my brain freezes up and the tech books become unreadable. If I’m going to write fiction anyway, I might as well release it. Attempting to traditionally publish a novel takes more time and energy than writing a book and will probably fail, so I prefer to spend that T&E writing. The odds of the book succeeding are negligible either way, so I’d prefer to do so in the least expensive manner.

3) If I accomplish both of these early enough, I will continue writing. I will indulge myself in trying something that’s “just crazy enough to work,” like, say, “dc(1) Mastery” or “netstat Mastery.”

Now here’s a leftover from 2012:

Richard Bejtlich has reviewed hundreds and hundreds of technology books over the last ten years. For a time, he was one of Amazon’s Top 100 reviewers. Each year he posts a list of the best books he’s read, and gives one book the “Best Book Bejtlich Read” (BBBR) award. The award and $5 will get me a nice gelato.

I’ve been on the top 10 list before, in 2007, for Absolute FreeBSD, and 2006 for PGP & GPG.

2012’s BBBR went to (drumroll): SSH Mastery.

This comes with some caveats, mind you. Bejtlich read and reviewed only one tech book in 2012, and this is his final BBBR award. I had no competition. But I’m okay with that.

Bejtlich no longer reviews tech books, which I personally find disappointing. (I mean, how can I not like reviews that start start off with The master writes again? That’s the sort of thing I bookmark for those nights I get really depressed and start contemplating a shot of whiskey and a small handgun.)

Life changes, however, and he’s working in other areas now, so: Richard, so long, and thanks for all the fish. I’m still putting that last quote on the cover of the DNSSec book, though.