Noel Rappin Writes Here

Welcome back This week I sort of broke ground on the book that will probably be called Master Space and Time with Ember. Here are some things I know or am reasonably sure about. It’s going to be pretty much a complete rewrite. I mean, some of the cranky rants might still be there, but all the technical content will be new. A new example application, too, though I’m still trying to figure out what that might be.

Here’s where we are at the moment. Master Space & Time With JavaScript: Ember I think I may have finally gotten my head around the Ember release plans. My current understanding is that: A 1.0 final release of core ember is imminent, possibly as soon as September 1. There’s another major overhaul of Ember-data (the “jj-abrams” reboot branch), which will become the master branch sometime between now and the 35th of Octvember.

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.

You have no idea how happy I am to announce that Book 4 of Master Space and Time with JavaScript: Ember is now on sale. You can buy it at /mstwjs It’s not done, of course. But it’s off to a good start, and I think it’s going to be great. Here’s the state of the world: Release 1 of the Ember book is $7, just like its recent siblings.

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.

Here’s a quick status update on Master Space and Time With JavaScript, book 3… Short version: expect an early beta of about 1/3 of the book to be out in about a week. Longer version: Work is proceeding steadily, the current draft of just hit 30 pages toward a target of around 90, though about 10 of that is the same intro and outro that the other books have, so it’s more like 20 pages toward a target of 80.

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.

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.

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.

I hate Microsoft Word. That’s not the only thing that caused me to want to do this book this way, but it’s in the top five. That’s what we in the writing biz call “a grabber”. Right? Feeling grabbed? The usual complaints about Word aside — it’s bloated, the UI is hopelessly busy, managing complicated layouts is nigh impossible… um, it’s possible I’m not leaving those complaints completely aside. Let me try again.