Category: Chatter

What most of you probably don’t want

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Books at BSDCan

I’m sure everyone who reads this blog knows I’ll be at BSDCan tonight through early Sunday morning. I will also have books for sale, however.

  • Absolute OpenBSD, $50
  • SSH Mastery, $20
  • DNSSEC Mastery (4 proof copies only), $20

    Cash only.

    If you buy a book, I’ll throw in a free Tilted Windmill Press T-shirt while supplies last. Because why not.

    I’ll also be giving away some books as review copies. If you want a review copy of Absolute OpenBSD, you’ll need to give me your email address. I’ll be handing it off to the NSP publicity department. Sorry to be a pain on that, but I have to pay for any Absolute OpenBSDs that aren’t review copies. (Or I can ship them back to the publisher, but that’s just a waste.) I’m more flexible with review copies of self-published books.

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    Penguicon Schedule

    Someone pointed out that it would be nice to know when I’ll be doing what at Penguicon. So, here’s my schedule.

    Friday, 26 April:
    6PM-7PM opening ceremonies
    7PM-8PM Guest of Honor Social Hour
    9PM-10PM OpenBSD (kind of obligatory)

    Saturday, 27 April:
    10AM-noon: liquid nitrogen ice cream, my own flavor
    5PM-6PM: Technology Publishing in 2013

    Sunday 28 April:
    3PM-4PM: closing ceremonies

    Other than that, I’m basically free. You can find me elsewhere, as I’ll be playing free range author, but you can definitely intercept me at these times.

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    At Penguicon this weekend

    I’m a guest of honor at Penguicon this weekend. I’ll be doing a one-hour talk on technology publishing in 2013. I’ll also be inventing an ice cream flavor.

    Other guests include author Jim C Hines, chef and author Jeff Potter, Arduino and Raspberry pi guru & author Maik Schmidt, hackerspace advocate and censorship activist Nick Farr, plus author and filmmaker Jason Denzel.

    Whenever I go to this type of con, I usually take in a few panels, see some cool demos, and spend a good chunk of time hanging out in the bar or lobby, wondering who all these people are. If you’re in the Detroit area, come by and say hello.

    I will also have hard copies of Absolute OpenBSD for sale at $50 each. Amazon doesn’t have them yet. No Starch doesn’t have them yet. But I have them. Cash and PayPal accepted — I had hoped to take credit cards, but the PayPal credit card app doesn’t like my knockoff Android tablet. But by showing up, you can get the book you’ve been demanding for four years now.

    And now that I’m a guest, maybe the cool kids will let me hang with them. But probably not.

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    Misc: Books, and April Fool’s

    Absolute OpenBSD is at the printer. I can do nothing more on this book. For better or worse, the book is complete. I’m resisting the urge to scream “I can do it better! Give me the book back, I will rewrite it until it doesn’t suck!”

    I got copyedits back on DNSSEC Mastery. Hopefully, the ebook will be available on the weekend, with print next month.

    On an unrelated note

    April 1st is a tedious day, with all the efforts to be funny drifting around the Internet. Unless, of course, you’re the one pulling the gag, in which case it’s freaking hilarious. I don’t pull pranks, of course.

    Unless they’re really, REALLY good. So I’d like to present a flash from the past here, and point you at FretBSD.

    And, of course, there’s always the Great Committer. You know, I haven’t spoken with John Baldwin much since that post. Odd, really…

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    Upcoming Appearances

    For those who want the dubious pleasure of encountering me in meatspace:

    I am a guest at Penguicon April 26-28, 2013, in Pontiac, MI, USA.

    I am teaching at BSDCan, May 15-18, 2013, in Ottawa, Ontario, CA.

    I expect to have copies of Absolute OpenBSD at both events. (Penguicon might be pushing it, but I’m hopeful.) I’ll sell them in person for $50USD. This is a little more expensive than buying them online, but you get hand delivery and possibly even a handshake depending on how many people have been poking at me in the recent past. Also, I hate carrying change.

    Why do I sell books, instead of giving them away to all the fans who take the trouble to come see me? One, because I have to pay for them. Two, because mortgage.

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    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.

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    TWP sponsoring BSDCan 2013

    The money has left my bank account, so I guess this is official: Tilted Windmill Press (the LLC under which I self-publish) is the official T-shirt sponsor of BSDCan 2013.

    Why do this? First, it’s important to give back to my community. BSDCan is one of the biggest and oldest cross-BSD conferences, and this sponsorship will buy plane tickets for several speakers. Second, independent publishers must meet two standards: a) write good books, and b) don’t be a jerk. This should put a touch more weight on the “not a jerk” side of the scale. Plus, everybody who goes to BSDCan will get a T-shirt featuring the TWP busted knight logo. That’s pretty dang cool, to me at least.

    As I know someone will ask, I’ll also say: the conference is being paid for out of TWP profits, not out of my pocket. Self-publishing does work, and can be profitable. See point 2 above.

    And if I can sponsor a BSD conference, you can too! BSDCan has cool sponsorships available, as do EuroBSDcon, and NYCBSDCon. Admittedly, there’s nothing quite as cool as being the T-shirt sponsor, but still, if I can swing that surely you or your employer can do something.

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    Technology versus Democracy

    Yesterday’s election was mostly a primary, but also included a few millage issues. The purpose of a primary is to keep the obvious maniacs from getting onto the final ballot, so I make the effort to vote. (Your definition of “obvious maniacs” probably differs from mine, but that’s okay.)

    I’m waiting for verification, and am glad to see that they’ve finally replaced the big printed books with a laptop. But all of the verification people are standing around the laptop, getting more and more frustrated. One of them is on the phone. “Yes, we entered the password. No, it’s not letting us into the site. He’s entering it again. Yes, I’m sure the Caps Lock key is off. He’s trying again. Yes, the password we’re using is ‘election’.”

    I’m third person in line. The line is growing quickly behind me. I peer at the laptop, lean in, and quietly say “Excuse me, but your Caps Lock light is on.”

    The guy at the keyboard turns off Caps Lock, the password is entered, and the poll workers quickly get us all through. Everybody hails me as a technical genius. Which I might well be, if you define “genius” as “someone who looks to see WHICH LIGHTS ARE ON.”

    I have three points to make on this seemingly pointless anecdote:

  • In discussions about electronic voting machines, remember: these are the people who have time and interest to work the polls. They have no awareness of good security practice. They don’t troubleshoot, because they don’t really know how to. It’s not a question of age: one of the people was a senior citizen, two were middle-aged, and one mid-twenties.
  • If you have time to volunteer as a poll worker, do so. Democracy isn’t about voting; it’s about doing things to help your community.
  • I am the savior of democracy. In Precinct Three, at least.

    • PS: I didn’t include the real password here, but the actual password was just as bad.

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    Splitting blog?

    I usually post two different sorts of items here: tech articles, and publishing articles. Would you lot prefer I did two separate blogs? I would probably still feed both to third parties such as Twitter and Facebook, but it appears that most of my readers use RSS.

    If nobody cares, I’ll leave things as they are.