Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 58
June 17, 2015
YouTube review on “Networking For Systems Administrators”
While I was at BSDCan, tutorialLinux posted a review of Networking for Systems Administrators.
“One of the best five systems administration books he’s ever read?”
That’ll do me for a bit, I think.
He also used my new brag shelf banner photo to establish my credibility as a writer. I resisted having a brag shelf pic on my site for quite a while, but apparently it does make a difference.
May 30, 2015
I will have books at BSDCan
The printer says that they’ll have FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS to me before I leave for BSDCan.
And they’ve sent UPS tracking numbers. Numbers that UPS acknowledges. While they don’t show a delivery date yet, UPS says that the boxes exist.
So I’m pretty confident in saying that I’ll have books there. And I take Square.
The list price is $24.99 US. Given the exchange rate, they’ll be $25 USD/$30 CAD for a “FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS” print/ebook bundle.
May 22, 2015
FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS ebook done
You can now get the ebook for FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS at Tilted Windmill Press.
I’m uploading it to ebookstores today. Should be available everywhere very soon. I’ll do another post when that happens.
The final cover is below. Art by the illustrious Eddie Sharam. Beastie is copyrighted, of course, by Kirk McKusick.
May 15, 2015
FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS cover
And now for something fun: the cover painting for FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS. Like FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials, this was done by the excellent Eddie Sharam.
The original work was Hy Sandham’s Bicycling.
May 13, 2015
Tarsnap talk on-line
My 20-minute Tarsnap talk at mug.org turned out to be more like 40 minutes. It’s now available at YouTube.
Or, just watch it below.
May 12, 2015
European Union VAT and my bookstore
For the last couple years I’ve been fairly successful selling my self-published books from my own store at tiltedwindmillpress.com. Recent legislation in the European Union changes this.
The EU has this thing called VAT, or “value-added tax.” It’s a tax that requires all sorts of paperwork. It requires charging tax based on the buyer’s location. And it applies to ebooks as of 2015.
Legally, if I’m doing business in the EU, I’ll need to collect VAT and remit it to each country in the European...
May 7, 2015
Free novella at Amazon
My SF novella Forever Falls is free on Kindle through 11 May 2015 (next Monday).
This book is only available on Kindle right now — I’m trying their Kindle Select program, which supposedly gives additional visibility and promotion. It doesn’t seem to have helped so far. Come 3 June, when the Select enrollment runs out, I’ll have this piece on iBooks and Kobo and all the other ebook platforms.
But until 11 May 2015 the book is free, from all of the usual Amazon outlets.
Amazon US Amazon UK Ama...May 6, 2015
WordPress versus FreeBSD
I recently migrated my web site to a new FreeBSD install, configured so I could use ZFS boot environments. This upgrade crossed FreeBSD versions (10.0-10.1), filesystems (UFS - ZFS), and PHP versions (5.5 - 5.6).
And my WordPress pointy-clicky upgrades stopped working. Every time I ran an upgrade, the web gui hung with:
Updating Plugin Honketyblatt (1/1)
The web site would site there, forever. Enabling WP debugging gave me no error messages.
If I had the job of running WordPress sites, I woul...
May 5, 2015
Web site rearrangement
In case you’re reading this in reverse order in your RSS feeder: ignore the last couple of posts. It’s content I’m moving from my web page to the blog.
I’ve redesigned and rearranged the fiction section of my web site, so that it more easily answers hard questions like “What have you written?” and “Do you write anything I might like?”
The nonfiction section is OK, given how many tech books I’ve written. Hopefully the fiction section will now scale as well.
May 4, 2015
short story: Wednesday’s Seagulls
Wednesday’s Seagulls
by Michael Warren Lucas
I’d dry-swallowed the last instant coffee days ago, but the thought “Oversleep and he’ll eat your brain” gutkicks you awake. No matter how tired you are. Two or three nights with only a couple of hours sleep puts sand in your brain and smothers your joy in life. Six nights like that, and your brain glues shut and your energy dwindles into bovine endurance just this side of death.
I spasmed awake at the first flicker of dawn. When I saw that enough...
