weblog.masukomi.org

Yes, I really have that hat. I knitted it. It’s supposed a tea-cosy hat like Hermione knitted for the House Elves. Unsurprisingly, it looses something in the translation to black-and-white-cartoon.

Yes, more details will follow about the new co. as soon as the site is up, but yes, I will be publishing other people’s work, and yes, I’ll be focusing on books for geeks initially. What I can tell you about Very Useful Books is that I’m looking to publish a line of concise, but very useful books. Yeah, I know, that doesn’t help you much. But hey, if you’ve got a good idea for a programming book that no-one else seems to have bothered to write. Get on it. If I don’t publish it there are other companies that will probably jump at the opportunity.

A lot of people think you need to horde writing ideas lest some other writer steal them, but the truth is that there’s no difficulty in thinking of something to write about. The difficulty is in actually writing it. Or, more accurately, the difficulty is in continuing to actually write it. I think if you ask any non-fiction author you’ll find that after the first few chapters it’s actually work. Enjoyable, fulfilling, and constructive work, but work none-the-less. The trick, as the NaNoWriMo folks know, is to just keep writing. Don’t stop. You need to try and write something for your book every single night. Even if it’s just a page. I advise eschewing any major editing until the end. Editing just slows you down and makes you feel like you’re not getting anywhere.

The downside, I’ve found, to writing books about software is that you can’t just stop and say “that’s enough.” At least, you can’t if you’ve still left a third of the thing undocumented. You have to write about it all. Maybe not cover every single little detail but you can’t just skip over a feature set because you’re tired of writing about the subject. On the other hand, it means you have to explore all those corners of the app/language/library that you wouldn’t have normally looked in, which means you become even more proficient in it by writing about it.

The Git book is actually making decent progress. I’m pretty much done with the section on managing files, and have a start on the section on managing local repos, but I’ve not taken my own advice and pretty much blew-off writing this week to play Project Gotham Racing 4. It’s a really good game but I’d only recommend it if you have an HD screen. It was “meh” on my standard-def. After the upgrade, it rocked.

P.S. Yes, as soon as I post this, I’m going back to working on the book.

P.P.S. Is the comic a little too small? I can’t decide. I think I’m pushing the lower size boundary, but anything bigger doesn’t fit this site layout (which really needs to go).