Noel Rappin Writes Here

Making me happy One of the things I want to do in 2015 is write more. This, like all New Year’s type resolutions, is invariably doomed, but we’ll take it as it comes. I also want to write more about things that aren’t programming, because, well, there are a lot of things that aren’t programming but are still interesting to write about. Combining these ideas, I’m going to try (and probably fail) to do a weeklyish “What’s making me happy this week” blog post based loosely on the similar feature at the end of the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour Podcast.

Here’s what’s going on. WindyCityRails Had another great time at WindyCityRails. I enjoyed the talks, and it was great to meet new people/see people I don’t see enough in person. As usual, Ray and the WCR team had the logistics of the event down (even the WiFi was pretty fast for a conference.) The venue is really nice, if maybe not perfectly arranged for the kinds of talks being given.

It’s been well over a month since the last official update to Master Space and Time with JavaScript, and since I was hoping to get updates out more-or-less weekly, it’s probably a good idea to check in and let you know what’s going on. (Could be worse, though, I’m still hoping to post my top 10 books I read list. From 2011.) All of the MSTWJS customers out there have been either very patient in waiting for the next update, or you are completely disengaged.

The state of the Noel Rappin publishing — I can use the word “empire”, right? MSTWJS 3: Backbone Master Space and Time With JavaScript, Book 3: Backbone is draft complete as of today’s release except for a page or so of summary at the end, which I will probably wait to write until the Ember chapter is complete. The next release will be an edit pass, to clean up typos and bad sentences, smooth over the explanation, fix errata and generally polish stuff.

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.

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.

Here’s what I’ve got. 2 chapters introducing jQuery and Jasmine via a walkthrough of a simple piece of JavaScript functionality. 1 need to convert all my text from its current proprietary format to something more Markdown based. 1 genuinely silly conceit tying together the application that gets built in the book. And I mean that in the best way. It should be silly, there’s no reason not to be bold. There is even a twist ending.

So… The JavaScript book that I had contracted to do with Pragmatic will no longer be published by them. I need to be careful as I write about this. I don’t want to be defensive – I’m proud of the work I did, and I like the book I was working on. But I don’t want to be negative either. Everybody that I worked with at Pragmatic was generous with their time and sincere in their enthusiasm for the project.

Today is the RailsConf tutorial day, with the conference proper starting tomorrow. I was less disappointed than I thought I would be when my talks were not accepted, but I’m more disappointed than I thought I would be not to be going. Have fun, everybody. On the other side of the country, today is the Apple WWDC keynote, which I’m sure I’ll join the rest of the internet in obsessing over.