Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 62
December 4, 2014
FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials at printer
Last night I received the print proofs of the new FreeBSD book.
I found two errors: a missing tab in a footnote, and an extra page before the index. I’ve fixed those, double-checked the file, and sent it to the printer. It should be available in print in the next week.
I’ll have four copies at next week’s sudo talk at mug.org. Show up and you might be able to bribe me to get a copy of one of these very exclusive rare, authentic, original, limited edition books.
I’m very happy with the look of th...
November 24, 2014
FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials ebook released
The book is finished, and available at most major ebook retailers. It’s still working its way through the system at Kobo, and Smashwords hasn’t fed iBooks yet, but it’s coming.
More details at the FM:SE page on my web site.
Working on print this week.
The post FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials ebook released appeared first on blather.michaelwlucas.com.
November 19, 2014
Book Review: Book of PF, 3rd Edition
No Starch Press was kind enough to send me a review copy of the new 3rd edition of Peter Hansteen’s Book of PF. The first two editions are the standard reference work on the OpenBSD packet filter, and this is a topic I’ve written about in some depth before, so I’m fully prepared to eviscerate Hansteen if he screwed up.
Third edition, huh? So how does this stack up?
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. All three editions have yellow covers, but the first edition had blue trim; the second editio...
November 18, 2014
Initial reactions to “Immortal Clay”
(For my own reference later.)
One of the worrisome things about putting out your own books is the concern that it might suck. I have a long track record in nonfiction, so I’m pretty confident there. But novels are a whole different art. When I put Immortal Clay out two weeks ago, I suspected that nobody would get past page two.
Most of the initial feedback came via Twitter, with things like:
So. I told @mwlauthor to write more and it turns out he's a madman. Now reading Immortal Clay. #ImmortalC...
November 13, 2014
Sudo talk at mug.org, 9 Dec 2014
I’ll be talking at mug.org in Farmington Hills, MI, on 9 December 2014.
The topic is Sudo: You’re Doing It Wrong. If you use sudo, you need to show up for this. Because you’re doing it wrong. It’s based on Sudo Mastery, as you might guess.
Come to mug.org. They have cookies.
They usually record and show their talks, so if you can’t be bothered to go to Farmington Hills in December you can probably catch it on YouTube later. But it won’t be nearly as awesome.
Also, I’m planning to go to the IT in...
November 10, 2014
And today, on Audible…
What? Lucas linking to an audiobook? What the heck?
My aversion to audiobooks is pretty well known (I don’t object to you listening to them, just don’t ask me to). But yep, I’m going to point you at Audible today.
John Campbell’s classic novella, Who Goes There, is on sale at Audible.com today for $0.99.
Less than a week ago, I put out a novel that owes certain literary debts to this classic SF work. It’s three-quarters of a century old, and certainly bears signs of the age it was written in, bu...
November 9, 2014
“FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials” sent to copyedit
I’ve integrated the last of the tech edits into the FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials manuscript and sent it to tech editing.
With any luck, the final book will be available on ebookstores at the end of the month, with print early December.
The post “FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials” sent to copyedit appeared first on blather.michaelwlucas.com.
November 5, 2014
FreeBSD “Working copy ‘/usr/src’ locked.”
Poul-Henning Kamp is working with me on some GBDE fixes. Which means he sends me patches and says “Here, try this,” along with very valuable exposition on how GBDE works and the threat model it applies to. This means I’m updating frequently.
My usual update process is:
# cd /usr/src
# make update && make -j8 buildworld && make -j8 kernel && reboot
Half a second after typing this, I realized I’d forgotten to apply PHK’s latest patch. I hit CTRL-C during the make update before building an unsuitabl...
November 4, 2014
New novel out: “Immortal Clay”
Most of you follow me for nonfiction, but this book just came out, so I’m gonna tell you about it anyway.
My SF novel, Immortal Clay, just hit Kobo and Amazon. It’s in process at other outlets like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and so on, and print is forthcoming.
I’d describe this book as an alien invasion tale like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing, set after we lose.
You can read the opening on my web site. Or you can jump straight to Kobo or Amazon and buy it sight unseen. I’m good eithe...
November 3, 2014
Next Project: “Networking for Sysadmins”
FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials is out for tech review. (If you’re reading the pre-pub book, you’ve got a few more days to get comments back to me.) I’ll then make the corrections and send it to copyediting.
So I’m writing another book.
The current title is Networking for System Administrators. (I’d like to work the word “Mastery” in there, but it sounds artificially kludged together, because it would be.) It’s a small book, readable in a couple hours.
I’ve worked in a whole bunch of IT orga...
