Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 10

Public Lecture Monday Night: Nonfiction for Today’s Reader

On 1 July, I’ll be giving a talk on Nonfiction for Today’s Reader at the Ann Arbor Public Library’s Westgate branch. 6:30PM EDT.

If you’re around and have any interest, do come by and listen to me spill the secrets of my craft.

50: My Childish Behavior

I’m fighting with the Kickstarter web interface to fulfill the Run Your Own Mail Server campaign and trying to get Dear Abyss ready for launch, so here’s a chunk of an advice column.

All three regular readers of this column appear to be drawn by the pleasure of watching my childish behavior when confronted with the tedious duty of writing said column. While “you insulted me in the first three words of your greeting” is a feeble justification for breaking into your systems and converting them to ...

“Run Your Own Mail Server” status

The copyeditor reports she’ll be done fixing my innumerable errors around 15 July.1

My goal is to get ebooks out before 4 August, and print in later August.

49: Witnessed from Gleaming Eye Sockets

I’m mostly resting this week because I’m taking vacation after BSDCan and the Kickstarter of WTF. Not sure which was more exhausting. The new Steampunk Fantasy Storybundle just launched, though, and it includes my Prohibition Orcs novel Frozen Talons, so here’s a sweet little old lady forging a weapon out of her dead husband’s bones.

The grooms’ quarters was too cramped for bone-melding, but Mha made it work. Bone-melding should be done beneath the open sky. It should be done at a roaring fire b...

“Run Your Own Mail Server” print/ebook bundle available

You can now preorder “Run Your Own Mail Server” at tiltedwindmillpress.com.

The last time I did a print sale (for OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems), I offered options. From that sale, I learned that I am easily confused and should not offer options. This time I’m keeping things simple.

You can order a paperback or a hardback. It’s slightly more expensive than retail, because managing shipping is actual work that takes me away from writing.

When the books are ready to print, I will close this sale an...

48: Three Pounds of Skull Pudding

My next book will be Dear Abyss: The FreeBSD Journal Letters Column, Years 1-6. Seeing as each column was written in a one hour burst of bile, I’m going through them and polishing off the missed opportunities for rage.

The annoying thing about asymptomatic system failures is that they’re asymptomatic—but no less real than the kind with noticeable symptoms. Some user makes a call, an actual voice call where they’re spewing random words in some language from their food-hole and you’re expecte...

“Run Your Own Mail Server” Kickstarter finished

All I can say is “what?”1966 backers. $76,833.
I have never received that much for a single title in a single lump. The Absolute books might each $40,000 over their publishing lifetime, spread over years, occasionally boosted by Humble Bundles and the like. This is stunning.
My gratitude to everyone.
Some comments, in no particular order. I could put them in order, if my brain wasn’t fried from screaming NUMBER GO UP! NUMBER GO UP! all weekend.

31% of pledges were referred by Kickstarter. I sus...

Kickstarter Madness: Run Your Own Mail Server

So, uh, this is a thing.

$51,097? The world has gone mad

Admittedly, about half of this will go to fulfillment and half of what remains will be held for taxes. (Taxes will probably be less than that, but self-employed people must always have tax money on hand. Always.) Still, I’ve never had a chunk of money this large for a single book hit my account all at once.

Thanks to backers sharing the word and saying nice things about me, all backers will get six books: Run Your Own Mail Serv...

47: Agent of Desertification

Here’s a snippet of the next Letters column for the FreeBSD Journal.

We’ve all seen the propaganda on configuration management. Deploy dedicated-purpose, highly tuned servers with a single command! Adjust computation clouds with a simple playbook! Seamlessly and transparently migrate from server to server! Containers! That’s fine for people starting from a green field in the last few years, but most system administrators work in environments best described as “baroque” if not “antediluvian.”...

May’s Magniloquent Sausage

(This post went to Patronizers at the beginning of May, and to the world at the beginning of June. Not a Patronizer? Sign up at https://patronizemwl.com.)

This month was better than last month. If you look at April’s Sausage post, you’ll see that is a terribly low bar to clear, but I’ll take it.

The “exciting” news on this is that I’ve set a up the Run Your Own Mail Server Kickstarter. I’m not excited for the Kickstarter itself, but I’m curious how well it will work out and that curiosity ...