Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 60
March 3, 2015
SMLR on N4SA
The Sunday Morning Linux Review did a very long and thorough review of Networking for Systems Administrators in episode 145.
Seems they liked it.
The rest of the podcast is interesting and amusing–as SMLR is.
The post SMLR on N4SA appeared first on blather.michaelwlucas.com.
February 25, 2015
BSDCan proposals and rejections
This year, BSDCan passed a critical threshold: we got too many good proposals. As a conference, this is an excellent problem to have. As a concom member, it kind of sucks. When your papers are mostly excellent, how do you decide which proposals to take and which to reject?
What follows is my highly personal take on BSDCan proposals and the evaluation procedure. It should not be taken as BSDCan concom gospel.
Generally speaking, a person who gets persuaded to present at BSDCan submits in later y...
February 11, 2015
n4sa Print Sneaking Out
The print version of Networking for Systems Administrators is starting to appear for purchase on Amazon’s web site.
n4sa US
n4sa UK
Other Amazon sites should appear shortly.
Amazon has not yet performed their usual discounting. Usually, if you order a brand-new book they’ll retroactively drop the price. But not always. I’d tell you to add it to your cart today and check tomorrow.
Vendors like Barnes & Noble and Powells will pick it up in a week or two.
The post n4sa Print Sneaking Out appeared firs...
February 5, 2015
FMSE Chapter 10 available for free
The FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials page now offers Chapter 10: SMART, as a sample.
I think this is the shortest blog post I’ve ever done, but… hmm… nope, that’s it. If you’re dubious on the book, here’s how you can try it for free. Have a nice day.
The post FMSE Chapter 10 available for free appeared first on blather.michaelwlucas.com.
February 3, 2015
Testing Reddit Advertising for Nonfiction
The biggest boost in book sales I’ve ever seen is from when the review of FMSE went on Reddit’s sysadmin board.
Reddit has a self-serve advertising platform, with a minimum buy of $5 for 5000 impressions. I’m willing to risk $5 on an experiment.
So I now have a sponsored link on Reddit, pimping Sudo Mastery. I would post a link, except you lot would click through and mess up my impressions count. If you’re reading my blog, I’m going to assume you are aware that the book exists. If you have not...
January 28, 2015
“Networking for Systems Administrators” on Kindle
After more time than I expected, Networking for Systems Administrators is available on Kindle. I’ve uploaded it to Nook and Kobo as well, but they haven’t made it available yet.
The Amazon links on the book page are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I make a little extra.
I’m working on the print layout today. Print will be available ASAP.
Once I have an approved print proof, I’ll make the book available on tiltedwindmillpress.com.
Thanks to everyone who helped to make this a better book....
January 27, 2015
Word doc placed in Indesign gets numbered headings
This has bit me more than once, and according to Google it affects nobody else on the whole Internet. Do I feel special or what?
I write books in Microsoft Word, using Styles. Paragraph and character styles are essential for producing electronic and print books.
At random times, when I import a Word doc into Indesign for print layout, numbers appear before the headings. These numbers do not appear in the Word document. Resolving this problem drives me near to madness.
InDesign and Word both have...
January 24, 2015
“Tarsnap Mastery” pre-pub reviewers wanted
The first draft of “Tarsnap Mastery” is ready for pre-pub review.
Colin has reviewed the manuscript, so I’m fairly sure that the technical stuff is correct. But Colin knows Tarsnap very well, so he read the book already understanding what I’m trying to teach.
And in aggregate, y’all use Tarsnap much more than I possibly could. There’s thousands of you. You’ve probably figured out ways to abuse the service that I would have never thought of.
If you’re interested in doing a pre-pub review, send me...
January 23, 2015
FreeBSD Jail Management Tools
To design “FreeBSD Mastery: Jails” I need to look at the existing jail management tools. Jails have been around about fifteen years now, and FreeBSD has accumulated a whole bunch of wrappers and supporting tools. Many of these have wound up in the ports collection.
Jails have evolved over the years. Some of these add-on tools are not useful for FreeBSD 9.1 and later.
Here’s a few things I discovered in my research. I’m hoping that you lot will offer your own comments and help me decide which to...
January 21, 2015
Jan 2015 Status & Next Projects
Welcome to 21 January 2015. Here’s the news.
I finished the first draft of Tarsnap Mastery yesterday. Today I went through it one more time, then shipped it off to Colin Percival for his comments on the last few chapters. Once I have his corrections, I’ll solicit reviewers.
Networking for Systems Administrators is at the copyeditor. It’s due back Friday. I expected this book to be pretty easy, but the tech reviewers savaged it. The end result will be a much better book, but it still wasn’t much...
