Noel Rappin Writes Here

The reported errata for Master Time and Space With JavaScript (buy it here) has been pretty light so far. A bunch of typos, some setup weirdness. And one interesting issue worth exploring. What is a dependency, and maybe more to the point, where is a dependency? This issue was raised by a reviewer whose name I’m not going to mention — that’s not a reflection on the reviewer, but rather a reflection on the fact that I’m going to put words in his mouth to expand on his brief comment on the issue, so my interpretation of his position may not actually be his position.

And now for a more inside-baseball post about how the self-publishing aspects of Master Space and Time With JavaScript are going. Did you know you can buy it? Short answer: Pretty well, though I could always have done better. Still unclear how this will work over the long haul. At this point, the book has been on sale for 10 days, plus the pre-sale to people who were on the mailing list.

I have a new book, Master Space and Time With JavaSript. You can buy it. Here’s the secret origin. This all started over a year ago. Rails Test Prescriptions had been complete for a few months, and I was getting a little antsy to take on a new project. But what? I wanted it to be a project where I would learn something, and I wanted it to be something where I had a particular perspective to offer.

For the first time in quite a while, I’ve been able to spend time working on a brand-new Rails application that’s actually a business thing and not a side project. It’s small. Okay, it’s really small. But at least for the moment it’s mine, mine, mine. (What was that about collective code ownership? I can’t hear you…) This seemed like a good time to reflect on the various Object-Oriented Rails discussions, including Avdi’s book, DCI in Rails, fast Rails tests, Objectify, DHH’s skepticism about the whole enterprise, and even my little contribution to the debate.

Updates, schedules, things, and stuff. Scottish Ruby The Scottish Ruby conference is having a charity workshop June 28, and I’m presenting my “Advanced Rails Design” workshop. This is the extended dance mix version of the workshop I did at Mountain West Ruby earlier this year. I thought it went really well (so did the attendees, I’m sure), and I’m very excited about this one. Details at http://scottishrubyconference.com/charity/ — you don’t need to be attending Scottish Ruby, but you do need to register in advance.

At it’s best, working in Mac OS X combines the power of the Unix shell with the convenience of an actual interface. Here’s a best case scenario: As I may have mentioned here a few times, I’m writing a book. As part of my current workflow, I need to convert my text from it’s old format to my new format, which is Markdown. The old format is a custom XML-based language the details of which don’t matter beyond the fact that it’s XML-based.

There is a plan. It goes like this: Master Space and Time With JavaScript will be split into four parts. Part one and part two will be available sometime in July. I’d say July 1st, but I’ll still be in Scotland. It’d be sooner, but there are still logistics to be managed around the actual layout of the book and getting the payment gateway in order. Plus, I need to actually finish the text.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that I’ve been writing the same two or three chapters for six months. I think — I hope — this is the last time. This is a more or less weekly update on the manuscript currently known as Master Space & Time in JavaScript. Today, the update is about the first few chapters and how they change over time. These chapters cover a lot of ground, and getting the order and beats right has been a struggle.

Next up on the Master Space and Time With JavaScript status report is the workflow that takes my words and turns them into a PDF. And an HTML file. And an ePub. And don’t forget Kindle. As you can imagine, this is something of a minefield, although there are a lot more tools available than there were three years ago when I did this the last time — here’s an overview of the process I used then.

And now, the return of the semi-occasional link post. I’m going to try to do this at least once a week, but who knows. If you are writing JavaScript, you should be looking at Justin Searls and his JavaScript testing tools. Justin posted the slides for what looks like a great talk on JavaScript testing. These slides made me happy. In random media sales, the audio book of World War Z is on sale for a mere six bucks.