Rob Huddleston's Blog - General

My 2009 Reading List

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:29:00 -0600

Inspired by my friend Nolan Erck, and helped of course by Evernote, I kept track of all of the books I read this year. I was going to hold off until the actual end of the year to write this, but it's pretty clear that I'm not going to finish either of the books I'm currently reading in the next three days, so I figured I'd go ahead and write it up now.

The numbers: I read 37 books this year. 30 were fiction and 7 non-fiction. My top two authors Bernard Cornwell and Stephen White, with eight books each. Adding two books each by David Baldacci books and Micael Connelly to the Stephen White books and you have a mystery as the clear winner in genres at 12, just under half of my total. Historial fiction was second, with the eight Cornwell books added to one by Conn Iggulden. I also read five Star Wars novels. The two novels that don't fit either of those genres were the one fantasy novel I read, by Terry Brooks, and the one contempory fiction, by my friend Jake Lurie. In non-fiction, I read four history books, and one each in technology, psychology, and, uh, well Disneyland.

Below are brief reviews of each of the books. I decided early in the year to keep track of books by category (fiction and non-fiction), and then in order of reading within them. I now regret that choice and wish I had just kept a straight chronological list, which I will do this year.

The novels:

Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell: I had heard of Cornwell before, but never read any of his stuff. Those that know me, however, know that I'm a sucker for anything written about Agincourt, so I didn't have to think twice about picking this one up. It follows the adventures of Nathaniel, a down-on-his-luck archer in Henry V's army. The book follows what I now know is Cornwell's formula, but it's an entertaining read and Cornwell does, as much as possible, get the history right. My only real objection to the book was that Nathaniel isn't a terribly likable character.

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell: Despite its flaws, I did enjoy Agincourt, so I decided to check out some of Cornwell's other works, and for no particular reason began with this, the first in a series of books about Alfred the Great and his quest to recapture England from the Vikings. The story follows Uhtred, an English-born but Viking-raised boy who must constantly battle between his devotion to those who raised him and his loyalty to his native people. The Last Kingdom follows Uhtred from his violent childhood through his upbringing as a Viking.

Millenium Falcon by James Luceno: The Falcon is without a doubt by favorite vehicle from Star Wars, so I was looking forward to reading this story that promised to follow its history. Unfortunately, the book fails to deliver, instead providing a disjointed story that tries, but fails, to mingle the Falcon's early days with the current post-post-Return of the Jedi storyline in the Star Wars novel. Not nearly as horrific a novel as Death Star, but still, if this is the way that these one-off Star Wars novels are going to go, then I'm going to have a hard time continuing with them.

Invincible by Troy Denning: This marked the fantastically disappointing conclusion to the Legacy of the Force series. The series as a whole was good, following the descent to the Dark Side of Han and Leia's oldest son. But this book felt like an after-thought of sorts, and the supposedly epic confrontation between Jacen and Jaina was so poorly written that I almost felt cheated after having read the previous eight novels in the series. Again, not a good sign for the future of Star Wars novels.

Order 66 by Karen Traviss: It's becoming increasingly clear that novels that focus on the characters from any of the Star Wars movies are going to be a let down. Fortunately, Karen Traviss has gone in a different direction in her series about a group of Clone Troopers during the events between episodes II and III. The books follow a group of young Jedi and their increasingly close bond with the troopers under their command. Since the beginning of the series, you cannot be help read these books with a sense of dread, knowing as we do what happens between the Clone army and the Jedi in Episode III, events chronicled in this book. The army's assassination of the Jedi would seem to paint Traviss into a corner, and while I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that she very nicely, and believably, finds a solution.

Lost Light by Michael Connelly: I started reading Connelly a few years ago on something of a lark, and have enjoyed his novels ever since. The only reason that he appears but twice on this year's list is that I've already read all of his older books, so I am now mostly at the mercy of waiting as he writes new ones. Lost Light was one of the few older novels I hadn't caught yet. This story follows detective Harry Bosch trying to cope with his retirement from the LAPD. Now a PI, he takes on the case of a murdered Hollywood executive and $2M in missing cash. This is standard Connelly fare, meaning highly entertaining and completely readable.

The Pale Horsemen by Bernard Cornwell: Book two in the Saxon series follows Uhtred as he joins Alfred's forces in their darkest hour. Driven from his kingdom, Alfred was close to defeat, and the book nicely describes these pivotal events in English history. Cornwell does a great job of developing his characters, from the angry and violent Uhtred to the taciturn Alfred. Another great Cornwell read.

Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell: One of the joys of playing catch-up on existing series is the ability to go straight from one book to the next. In this third book of the Saxon Stories, Uhtred returns north to free his step-sister and attempt to regain his inheritence. Again, Cornwell brings pre-conquest England to life in a way few others can.

The Program by Stephen White: My mom introduced me to Stephen White a year or so ago with his fantastic Kill Me, still his best book to date. The first of many of his books that I would read this year is about a woman placed in the Witness Protection Program, but unsure if she is safe there. What I like about White's books are the interesting characters who get to follow from one story to the next and his familiar settings: almost all of his books take place in and around Boulder, Colorado, where I went to college and one of my favorite places on earth. What I dislike is his habit of rushing into unfulfilling endings, and this book has both.

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell: The fourth book in the Saxon Stories details the English attempts to take London and establish Alfred as ruler of all England. I thoroughly enjoyed all four of these books, and cannot wait until the publication of the next book, The Burning Land, sometime soon.

Genghis: Bones of the Hills by Conn Iggulden: Genghis Khan is perhaps the greatest military commander in history, but at the same time, he is perhaps the least known, at least to us in the west. We know a lot about the exploits of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and yet so little about Khan, who founded the largest land empire the world has ever known, stretching from the China to Europe, Siberia to the Middle East. It was larger than either Rome or Alexander's empire, and it was created in a mere 30 years by men on horseback under the leadership of a single will: Khan. Even as a history buff, I knew little about Khan, so it was really on a lark about two years ago that I picked up Iggulden's first book on Khan, a series which concludes with Bones of the Hills. If you're looking for good historical fiction that will also introduce you to one of history's most important figures, you should read these books.

Bronze Verdict by Michael Connelly: Connelly joins his two main heroes, Harry Bosch and Mickey Heller together to solve the murder of a defense attorney. The story is good, but the melding of Connelly's fascinating Bosch character with his much-less-intriguing Heller character has mixed results.

Outcast by Aaron Allston: The first in a new series of Star Wars novels. With the defeat of the evil Darth Caedus, the republic is trying to rebuild, but suspicions abound about the Jedi. A totally unconvincing election of a former Imperial to lead the republic, combined with a boring sub-plot about insane Jedi and a contrived story of Luke being exiled combine to drive all hope from those of us looking for the Star Wars novels to return to readability.

Cold Case by Stephen White: I mentioned earlier that the advantage of catching up on an established writer's works is the ability to read a lot of his or her books over the course of a year. The disadvantage is in not realizing that they may loosely fit together in some order, and occasionally encountering books that foreshadow events that you already know the outcome of, thanks to having read a later book. This early White book follows psychologist Alan Gregory, the hero in most White novels, as he tries to solve a decades-old murder. Decent, without White's normal rushed ending.

Divine Justice by David Baldacci: Baldacci is another author my mom introduced me to. While I enjoy most of his political thrillers, his recent series on the so-called Camel Club has been less than thrilling. This novel follows the club's leader, Oliver Stone, as he wanders meaninglessly through the Virginia countryside, stumbling upon a bunch of uninteresting characters and stories. This is the first Baldacci novel I actually had trouble finishing.

The Whole Truth by David Baldacci: Fortunately, Baldacci returned to form with this interesting story of an overly-rich man attempting to start a war for profit. It's scariest bits are how it shows how easily it could be done.

Harm's Way by Stephen White: Alan Gregory tries to figure out who killed his neighbor and friend Peter. The story is interesting and the plot engrossing, but once again White rushes the ending.

A Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks: I first read Brooks in junior high school thanks to a recommendation from a friend, and I've been hooked ever since. I anxiously await his once-a-year release of a new book. Here, he returns to his light-hearted Landover series with a story of the now-grown daughter of the King of Landover having a series of misadventures. It's an interesting look at adolescence, but honestly not one of Brooks' best works.

The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwell: While waiting for the next book in the Saxon stories, I decided to check out another series. This trilogy of books follows Thomas of Hookton, an English archer a generation before the one in Agincourt, as he searches France for the Holy Grail. The Grail is really nothing more than a sub-plot here, though - in reality, the series is about France during the Hundred Years War. In this opening story, Thomas sets out on his quest, but ends up getting sidetracked by a beautiful French girl and the Battle of Crecy.

The Friday Night Club by Jacob Lurie: This is the odd story on this list. I don't particularly care for contemporary fiction, and honestly this story would not have held much interest for me. However, it was written by a good friend, and when he offered to send the manuscript for me to read and review, I agreed, and I'm very glad I did. The story is fairly straight-forward: a young man, on the eve of his wedding, looks back over the last few years, questioning the decisions that have led him to the altar and whether he's marrying the right girl. Part of the appeal of the book was admittedly the once-again familiar settings of Boulder and Denver, but what really drew me in were the exceptionally well-developed characters. There are no throw-away back-ground characters here: every person in the book is a well-rounded, totally believable person. Even if the author is a friend, I can honestly say that this is perhaps the best book I read this year.

The Best Revenge by Stephen White: Alan Gregory returns yet again in White's most over-thought and least believable book. It had something to do with some people getting a guy out of prison for a crime he didn't commit so that they could torture him for another crime that he did, or maybe didn't, commit. Convulted? Yes. Interesting? No.

The Siege by Stephen White: Perhaps it was an unfair contrast with Revenge, but The Siege is one of White's best, right begin Kill Me. Sam Purdy, a secondary character in most White books, takes center stage here, but what makes this book so good is the realism behind the story. It's both comtemporary and scary.

Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell: Book 2 in the Grail Quest series follows Thomas of Hookton as he returns to England to search for the Grail, getting caught up in the Scottish invasion of 1347, the tragic events of which lead him back to Brittany to continue his quest.

Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell: Thanks to a TV show, the adventures of Richard Sharpe are perhaps Cornwell's best-known books. Here, we meet Sharpe as a private in the British Army in India in 1799. Determined to desert, he is instead thrust front-and-center into a bloody conflict as the British attempt to take the stronghold of a local Indian warlord. While the story drags at points, it does provide a good introduction to Sharpe.

Critical Conditions by Stephen White: While written over a decade ago, this book could have been written this year: a young girl is dying, thanks to her insurance company's refusal to pay for a heart transplant. When the head of the insurance agency turns up dead, Alan Gregory has to figure out if his patient, sister to the dying girl and niece to his friend Sam Purdy, could be guilty of the murder. This book was really good until the last 50 pages, when White's usual weak ending is made worse by a completely unexpected and unnecessary action set-piece.

Death Troopers by Joe Scheiber: When I first heard that they were doing a horror novel set in the Star Wars universe, I was excited. That excitement, however, only lasted through the first 30 or 40 pages of his mess of a book. It isn't the least bit scary or even suspenseful. Instead, it's predictable dreck, weakened even further by the totally unnecessary introduction about half-way through of two of the Star Wars universe's most well-known characters. This was the point at which I really began to doubt whether or not I was going to be able to continue to read Star Wars novels, since they do seem to be getting progressively worse. Hopefully, though, Death Troopers will mark the low point: it's almost hard to imagine how they can get much worse.

Abyss by Troy Denning: Yes, I'm a glutton. You would think Death Troopers would have turned me off Star Wars novels for awhile. You might also think that, given the disappointment of Outcast, I might think twice about reading the follow-up novel. But sometimes, habit takes over, and the habit of getting and reading Star Wars novels as soon as they come out is a hard one to break. This series, however, might just do it. This second novel in the new series is every bit as boring and contrived as was the first one.

Heretic by Bernard Cornwell: The final novel in the Grail Quest series finds Thomas on the run even from his own people, having chosen to save a beautiful woman comdemned by the Church to burn for heresy. (Two common themes of Cornwell's books are his hero's weaknesses for beautiful women and his disdain for the medieval Church.) The series is brought to a close very nicely in this third book. Fans of medieval historical fiction should definitely check out all three books in this series.

Privileged Information by Stephen White: White's first novel introduces Gregory, Purdy, and the other characters about whom I already knew a great deal, thanks to reading the later books. The story here is interesting enough, putting Gregory not in physical peril as most of his other books do but rather in professional peril, but the ending is, as usual, unsatisfying.

Higher Authority by Stephen White: An interesting twist on the Gregory novels puts Gregory's then-finance Lauren Crowder at the center of a mystery involving the Mormon Church. You'll learn a lot about Mormon theology here, which I did find interesting, but the mystery is a bit flat, and need I comment on the ending?

The non-fiction books:

A Whole New Mind by David Pink: This very interesting book challenges the traditional "right-brain" versus "left-brain" idea by discussing how almost all activities actually involve both sides of the brain. The most interesting bit from the book, however, dealt with the author teaching himself to draw. The reasons why most people have such a hard time drawing faces are that we tend to put the eyes too high up (the eyes are in fact exactly in the middle of our heads), and we tend to draw the eyes either too big or too small (the width of the eyes is actually the same as the distance between the eyes.)

Genghis: Life, Death and Resurrection by John Man: After completing Igullden's Genghis books, I wanted to learn more about the "real" history, only to discover that biographies of this oh-so-important figure are few and far between. Man's biography is as accessible as any. The first two-thirds or so of the book are good, being as they comprise the actual biography. Unfortunately, the books veers off-course after that, becoming a sort of personal travel journal of the author's adventures through Mongolia.

Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough: The Michael Mann movie of the same title inspired me to check out this book. Fortunately, the movie is only very loosely based on the book. The movie focuses on Johnny Depp as John Dillenger, but the book is a broader look at the pivotal years in which Dillenger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, the Barkers, and several other gangs ran rampant across America. More important than the criminals, though, were the law enforcement agents who pursued and ultimately captured or killed almost all of them. At the start, the FBI is a collection of incompetant rookies who consistently allow the bad guys to get away. At the end, only two years later, it had been transformed into the professional crime fighting force that we know today. It's a history much more fascinating than what is shown in the movie.

Disneyland: Little-known Facts about Well-known Places by David Hoffman: We're taking the kids to the Happiest Place on Earth in February, and when we go this time we'll know to always go to the food line the furthest to the left, since it is consistently shortest, and to ride the purple teacup, which spins the fastest, and to get in the line at the Matterhorn on the right, which leads to a faster, longer ride. These facts and more are outlined in this great little book.

The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West by Tom Holland: In 800, Christianity was still little more than a sect practiced in a few corners of Europe, and the continent was divided into a series of tiny fiefdoms rules by petty warlords. By 1100, the whole of the continent had been converted to Christianity, and the nation-states we know and recognize today, including England, France and Spain, were established and on their way to becoming the dominant powers in the world. This history chronicles these pivotal centuries, and discusses the rise of the papacy, the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, and much more. It's a fascinating period that is brilliantly told by Holland.

Defenders of the Faith by James Reston, Jr.: I was first introduced to Reston years ago with his Warriors of God, a history of the conflict between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade (although some readers might be more familiar with him thanks to his being portrayed by Sam Rockwell in last year's Nixon/Frost). Here, Reston takes on another infamous west versus east conflict, that of Emperor Charles V and Suleyman the Magnificent. Interestingly, just as these two great leaders were moving head-long into a clash that could decide the fate of Europe, each was also dealing with conflict and heresy at home: devout Catholic Charles was fighting Martin Luther's reforms and Henry VIII's marital woes, while Suleyman had to deal with the rise of heresy in his empire as well. The long-term impacts of the clash still resonate today: it was in this period that the power of the pope was weakened, both by Luther and Henry and also Charles himself (whose army sacked Rome), while Suleyman's conquest of the Balkans laid the foundations of the religious strife that led to the bloody Balkan wars only a decade ago. While I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I did Warriors of God, it was nonetheless a fascinating read.

The Digital Photography Book, Vol. 3 by Scott Kelby: In a perfect world, ever digital SLR would include copies of the three volumes of Kelby's Digital Photography books. This being a less-than-perfect world, you'll just have to settle with buying them separately. But buy them you should. Not only will they teach you a lot you didn't know about your camera, they will also teach you how to take better pictures and become a better photographer.

So there it is, my reading list for 2009. I've already started on books for next year (my arbitrary decision is to include books I finish each year, rather than those that I start in a given year.) I'm already working on two books I got for Christmas: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson and Cold Zero by Christopher Whitcomb, but you'll need to wait until next December to read what I think of them.

Word 2010?s Navigation Pane

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:52:00 -0600

I've been using Office 2010 for several months now. I'm not sure what combination of lucky circumstances combined to have Microsoft invite me to be on an early "technical preview" of the beta, but what the heck.

My first impressions were decidedly un-impressed. The interface is mostly the same as that of Office 2007. (For the record: I very much like the Office 2007 interface. I'll admit it takes some getting used to, but it's mostly an improvement.) Outlook has been given a facelift to match the rest of the Office suite. The File menu (what Microsoft called the "Office Button" in 2007 has been renamed back to the more appropriate "File Menu" this time around) takes over the whole screen ? which I'm not sure I like ? but has some useful additions. I am particularly a fan of the new Print dialog, which at long last includes Print Preview.

Mostly, however, I just dug in and started working in Word 2010. When I said above that I wasn't overly impressed it wasn't because of anything partiularly wrong with the software; I just didn't see much that was different. Because its interface was, as I mentioned, mostly the same as the 2007 interface, I didn't really spend much time playing around trying to discover new features. Okay, I'll be honest. I didn't spend any time looking for new things. Thus, I was pretty shocked this week when I stumbled upon what has to be the single coolest feature of Office 2010.

First, some background. Over the last three years, I've spent a lot of time in Word, an obvious side effect of writing books. Quite often, I thank the years I spent teaching Word, since there is no doubt that being a "power user" makes my life much easier today.

My books all have to follow very specific formatting rules. My publisher provides me with a template that I use for writing. The template is actually nothing more than an empty Word document with a bunch of predefined styles. Back when I used to teach Word regularly, I would tell my students that using and understanding styles was the single most important thing to know about Word. With the introduction of the Navigation pane, styles just became even more useful.

The Navigation Pane is in fact something that I stumbled across purely by accident, thanks to another change that was made. I recently had cause to do a find and replace in one of the chapters of my latest book. Word has long had separate shortcuts for Find (ctrl-F) and Replace (ctrl-H); however, since both traditionally occupied the same dialog box, I have always used the ctrl-F shortcut, even when I needed Replace. I did this mostly because every other program in which I regularly use Find and Replace combines them into a single dialog, with ctrl-F as the shortcut. So, when I went to use the feature in 2010, I was a bit shocked when ctrl-F did not open the normal dialog box, but instead, this strange Navigation Pane suddenly appeared down the right side of my screen. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out where the heck Replace was, before finally determining that that functionality hadn't been moved from its original location along with Find. (That does mean that unfortunately I'm going to have to train myself to use ctrl-H from now on for Replace, which is the one bad point in this saga.)

I quickly discovered a nice feature of the new Find in word: it now searches as you type. For instance, in the picture below, I only needed to type "bur" for it to find Burke, the fictional realty company used in the class. It also displays the results more like a search engine, giving a few words or sentences to either side of the found term, and allowing you to click to jump to that spot in the document. Both the search-as-you-type and display of the results should make finding instances of terms in Word much, much easier and far nicer than the old method, whereby you had to keep repeatedly clicking the "Find Next" button to get to the next result.

(Due to confidentiality agreements, I can't show anything from the book, so I'm using a practice file from a Word class for these screenshots.)

Find, however, isn't what's great about the Navigation Pane. Instead, it's the other two tabs that make this feature so nice. The middle tab is a Browse Pages feature. If you've ever looked at a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat, you'll be familiar with this: it shows a small thumbnail of each page in the document. Again, you can simply click on a thumbnail to jump to that point in the document.

The other tab (which is actually the first tab, since I'm doing this in reverse order) is what really got my attention. I'm currently writing a book in Wiley's Bible series. As such, each chapter has a series of main headings, with one and sometimes two levels of headings below each main heading. The first page of each chapter has a list of the main topics, and the last page, a bulleted summary. In both cases, I need to be sure to go through the chapter and be certain that each topic is in the list. Prior to discovering the Navigation Pane, that required a ton of scrolling up and down through the chapter. Now, thanks to this feature, I won't have to do that anymore.

This first tab shows the Outline view. Word has long had the ability to read its Heading styles and generate an outline from them. In fact, for many years you've been able to take that outline and automatically generate a table of contents or even a PowerPoint presentation from it. However, from the work I need to do, it still wasn't terribly useful, as it was a completely separate view that only displayed the outline levels. In Word 2010, they've taken that outline view and placed it in the Navigation Pane, where it is more easily accessible. It's also really useful, since you can simply click on a heading in the view and jump right to that point in the document.

Another issue I've been having throughout the development of the book is numbering figures. In each chapter, I need to reference each figure sequentially. For example, the first figure in chapter 7 would be 7.1, the second 7.2, and so forth. My problem is that often I'll add a figure, and then write for quite awhile before I hit the next one. By that point, I can't quite recall which number I'm on, so again, I had to start scrolling up the document to find it. Even more challenging was the editing process: if I add several figures in the middle of a chapter, I not only have to figure out what number to use to start, but then be sure that every subsequent figure gets renumbered as well.

That problem is now gone as well. The Navigation Pane is set to work with Word's outline level, which is part of a style definition. This again is nothing new ? it's just been made more useful. Because Wiley was already requiring that I format the figure references with a style, all I needed to do was to go into the style definition and add that the figure style was part of the outline. Once I did that, each of my figure references appears in the Navigation pane as well, meaning that I can tell at a glance which number I'm on and as easily tell if any figures have incorrect numbers.

It's impossible for me to tell exactly how much time this feature is going to save, but it'll be a lot. For me, there's no question that this feature alone will justify the cost of upgrading to Office 2010 when it is finally released.

Comment Moderation

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:40:00 -0600

Sorry, but I have been forced to turn on moderation for comments here. Nothing against any of the legitimate folks - it's the ***hole spammers who are, once again, ruining things for everyone else.

Rest assured that the only thing I'm going to be blocking is spam. I appreciate the back-and-forth that comes from comments - even the negative ones - so I won't be rejecting anything other than spam.

Twitter Spam: I don't get it

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:10:00 -0600

Those who know me know that I've become quite the Twitter addict. Tweetdeck is one of three apps - Firefox and Outlook being the others - that are always running on my machine. In fact, I check Twitter far more frequently than I check email.

For those that don't know, Twitter is what is called "micro-blogging". Essentially, you say what's on your mind ... as long as what's on your mind can be said in under 140 characters. Why do I do it? I think that Twitter is the ultimate social media tool. It's like Facebook in a way, in that it allows you to connect and stay in touch with people. But it's like Facebook without all of the extra crap. No, I don't want to join you in Mob Wars. No, I don't want your Flair. I just want to know what's going on in your life. So when you sign up with Twitter, you not only start having people follow you; that is, they can log in and see your posts. The much more important aspect of it, at least to me, is that you also choose to follow other people. I follow a few celebrities, such as Wil Wheton of Star Trek:The Next Generation fame, John Cleese from Monty Python, and Felicia Day from The Guild.. (My dad thinks that their posts are actually done by publicists; in the case of Cleese, that's likely true, but I think that both Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day are geeky enough to be posting for themselves.)

But following celebrities (and for the record: you have my permission to ban me for life if I ever follow Ashton Kutcher or Oprah) isn't what it's about. Twitter is about staying in touch with friends I've made at Adobe and people with whom I've connected at conferences. It's about connecting with two cousins: because of a sizable age difference, we were never close growing up, but thanks to Twitter, I know have a relationship with both for the first times in our lives. It's also turned out to be a good communication tool with local friends and co-workers.

However, like everything else on the internet, there are folks out there who seem hell-bent on ruining Twitter for the rest of us. Ever since Oprah got onto Twitter, I've seen a huge spike in my followers. All of them are quite obviously spammers. Every radio station in Sacramento follows me. A bunch of "single 22-year old" women follow me. But here's what I don't get. One of the great things about Twitter is that it's automatically set up to filter out the noise. I only see posts from those whom I choose to follow. So then what's the point? If you're a spammer and you're filling your Twitter feed with a bunch of worthless BS, who cares? I'd have to be stupid enough to follow you to see your crap. So then where's the business in it? Yes, Twitter is free, and yes it only takes a few seconds to create a post. But still ... I may be good at ignoring them, but at least I actually see your spam emails.

I guess it's just one of those mysteries in life...

Adobe Community Expert status renewed

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:13:00 -0600

I'm pleased to report that my status as an Adobe Community Expert has been renewed for another year. The Community Expert program is a way by which Adobe rewards folks like myself that spend time volunteering online to help other users. There are lots of benefits to being in the program, but the two biggest for me are that I have a connection to other experts, many of whom I've become friends with, and an insider access to Adobe, which is where I can get all of my up-to-date information (although often that information is covered by the non-disclosure agreement I signed when I first joined the program, so it's not always information I can share.)

Happy birthday Mac!

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 13:48:00 -0600

On January 24, 1984, Apple officially released the first Macintosh, 2 days after airing one of the most famous ads in TV history, directed by Ridley Scott. So happy 25th, Mac!

How To Ask a Good Question and How To Be a Good Student

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:46:00 -0600

When I started the blog, I made a promise to myself that I was going to avoid becoming one of those bloggers who spent all day simply posting links to other sites and blogs. However, sometimes it's just plain necessary.

First off, I'd like everyone to read How To Ask Questions the Smart Way. Yes, it's kind of long, but please, take a few minutes and read it. As many of you know, I spend a lot of my time moderating and responding to posts on several Yahoo groups, and not a day goes by that someone doesn't violate a few of the simple guidelines presented on that page. Routinely, people post questions that are way off topic, or have bad and/or meaningless subject lines, or are so non-specific or so poorly worded that they are meaningless.

I should note that I'm not posting this because somehow I think it will make things easier for me. The vast majority of the time, if a question is really badly written or way off topic, I'll simply ignore it. So really, having people read the article and start asking better questions would most likely end up in more work for me, not less. But the point here isn't me. The point is that if you learn to ask better questions, you're much more likely to get better answers more quickly.

Second, one of the blogs I read daily is Scott Kelby's. Kelby runs the National Association of Photoshop Professionals and is the best-selling computer book author out there. In fact, I will, without reservation, recommend any book he's written.

Several months ago, he had a great post on how to be a good student. This is very similar to the "good question" thing above, and again, I post it for the same reason. Obviously, having good students is something near and dear to my heart, and I wish I could hand out a print-out of this article and make everyone read it before class each day, but in lieu of that, I'll just post it here and hope everyone reads it...

Charlotte, North Carolina

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:55:00 -0600

I've had the pleasure of teaching this week in Charlotte, NC. I've never been anywhere in NC before, so just adding a new state to the list is cool. Unfortunately, I can't say that I've seen much of anything here - since it's winter, it's been dark by the time class ended each day, so there's not much touristing I can do.

What made this really fun, though, was my students. I'm teaching Flex to the Bank of America (their headquarters is here), and I had a great group. They were all exactly at the level they should have been for the class, but more important, they were really actively engaged in the class and asked a lot of really great questions.

Ed Saab, the guy at BofA who arranged the training, was also great. He took me to lunch each day. All three days were good, but yesterday we went to little place where I had one of the three best meals of my life. He said that it's the best restaurant in Charlotte, and I believe him.

The one and only downside to the trip - apart from coming all the way out here and not really getting to see NC - is that the jet lag is killing me. I haven't been able to get to sleep much before 2 or 3am each day, and had to get up at 7 to get to class. Fortunately, class ended today but I'm not leaving until tomorrow, so I'm just taking it easy this evening and plan to (at least try) to sleep in a bit.

I did have a chance to catch a special advanced screening of Jim Carrey's new movie, "Yes Man", this evening. It was very entertaining - the best Carrey movie in a long, long time. Last night, though, I had the misfortune of sitting through "Australia", one of the very worst films of 2008.

Anyway, it's time to get to work. I'm going to take this rare opportunity of having both some time and some motivation to work on a certain project that's been on-again, off-again for, oh, about 14 years now. I'm not going to say what it is yet, but I have a whole bunch of ideas of how to get it back on track, so I'm going to give it a go.

Annoying quirk in Acrobat 9

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:29:00 -0600

I installed the Adobe CS4 Master Collection about three weeks ago. While I've been using Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop and After Effects heavily since then, I'll admit that I rarely if ever actually use Acrobat. However, I did notice a very annoying issue: I couldn't open a PDF from within Firefox. That's something I do all the time - whenever I travel to San Francisco, I take Amtrak, and they have their schedule online in PDF format. So for my last couple of visits, I've been forced to switch over to IE to open the PDF. I even tried reinstalling Reader from Adobe.com, but no dice.

Tonight, I needed to do more with Acrobat. I'm teaching at one of those corporate-America places (it's one of the biggest banks in the country) that has an extraordinarily paranoid IT department, and so I cannot get online during class. I needed to pull some extra information off the web (and I'm really fighting hard right now to keep from going off on a rant about hotels with "high-speed" internet that is anything but...) and since I won't be able to access those pages tomorrow, I thought I'd pull them up in IE and convert them to PDFs. Well, weird thing: the Convert to PDF button in IE didn't work. It literally did nothing.

Huh. Weird. So I decided to open up Acrobat directly ... and stumbled across the source of the problems. It turns out that Acrobat needed to be launched directly to finishing installing itself before it would actually work. So now the Convert to PDF function works ... and I can once again view PDFs in Firefox ... but I have to ask, WTF? None of the other products in Master Collection require that they be individually launched before they work, and it seems that Adobe might want to warn people or just have the damn program launch and finishing configuring/installing/whatevering itself during the MC installation process.

So be warned: if you get any of the CS4 suites (and I think Acrobat is in almost all of them), be sure to open the program manually to let it do its thing before you think about doing anything else PDF-related.

Happy Thanksgiving and all that...

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:35:00 -0600

Oops. Two more weeks passed by and no blog posts. I really need to do better...

Today is of course the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm quite contentedly sitting at home doing practically nothing. It's been an interesting holiday so far: both of the kids spent all day yesterday being sick, and we got to spend this morning with my son at the doctor. My daughter summed it up best last night when she said, in response to the question about what she liked best about Thanksgiving, "This hasn't been my best day." Fortunately, they both seem to be feeling better now.

One thing I'm not doing today is shopping. I know that that somehow makes me un-American, but I did buy the paper yesterday to look through the ads and frankly, I couldn't find anything on sale that was a good enough bargin to make it worth getting up at 3 to go stand in line and fight crowds. In fact, the two big items I'm looking at - a small digital camera for Kelley for Christmas and a digital video camera for us for our anniversary* - are both cheaper on Amazon at regular prices than they are in any stores today.

One good bit of news - I dropped my contract into the mail today for book #4: ActionScript 3.0: Your visual blueprint™ for creating interactive projects using Flash CS4 Professional. I've actually been writing it for about a month already, but now that the contract is signed I'm official. Wiley also changed the payment terms that they've been using for the prior books in a way that made me really happy. So that's good.

Well, that's it for now. I'll be posting some news next week about the Sierra MMUG, but until then, have a great start to the holiday season!

CS4 trials now available

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:30:00 -0600

The trial versions of the CS4 products are now available for download from Adobe's web site. To get them, simply go to www.adobe.com/products/name_of_the_product_you_want; for example, Dreamweaver is at www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver. As always, you'll need to log in with your Adobe.com username and password.

CS4 Now Shipping

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:48:00 -0600

Adobe announced that the CS4 products are now shipping, so get your copy today!

Some quick updates

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:42:00 -0600

Sorry I've been a bit remiss in writing entries. The last two weeks were a bit crazy. First, I was rushing to get the book done. As you know, I finished writing a few weeks ago, but then I had to do the author review, when I get all of the comments back from the copy and tech editors and have to make revisions. So that took some doing, but I'm happy to say that I finished that up last Friday. I'm going to enjoy some free time this week - it will be a bit strange to have a train ride to San Francisco this week and not have any writing to do - but I am working on a proposal for my next book already, so we'll see if the publisher accepts that so that I can move forward.

Second, I've been insanely busy even without the writing. Two weeks ago, I had something going on almost every night. Monday and Thursday were both teaching nights, and Tuesday and Wednesday were back-to-back user group events for the CS4 release. Then last week, I ended up teaching a class (PHP) during the day, with a one-on-one ActionScript each evening for an hour after that. On Thursday, I set a personal record by teaching 3 different classes in one day - PHP from 9-4, ActionScript from 4-5, and the HTML from 6-8. Yikes.

But the good news is that things are much slower this week. Today is a special family day thanks to Columbus Day. We're going to take the kids to Bishop's Pumpkin Farm, and I'll try to post some pictures later on. Tomorrow is my first day off where I don't have to either be writing or feel bad about not writing in a long time, so I plan to enjoy that. Then I'm off to SF for the remainder of the week. I'll be attending the Bay Area ColdFusion User Group meeting on Weds and the meeting of the local Flash user group - very creatively named San Flashisco - on Thurs. I also plan to try to squeeze in a movie or two, so it will be fun.

And I will get back to tech-related posts soon ...

CS4

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:40:00 -0600

This morning, Adobe officially announced the CS4 product line. There's a ton of information online about it, but I'm going to try to coalesce the most important bits here.

First off, the actual editions. Just as with CS3, there are six packages of CS4 you can get: Design Premium & Standard, Web Premium & Standard, Production Premium, and Master Collection. Design Premium (the one that I suspect the majority of folks will want) includes InDesign, Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Acrobat 9. The Standard edition includes only the regular version of Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Acrobat. Web Premium contains the new versions of Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Acrobat 9, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Contribute, and (in a change from CS3) Soundbooth. Web Standard is basically the old Macromedia suite: Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks and Contribute. Production Premium has Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, Flash, After Effects, Premiere, Soundbooth, OnLocation, and Encore. And the Master Collection has everything. All of the suites also include Bridge and Device Central, and all except the Production Premium include Version Cue.

Pricing seems similar to CS3: Design Premium is $1,799, Web Premium and Production Premium are $1,699 each, and Master Collection is $2,499. (All of the above are US prices. Yes, overseas prices are higher. No, I don't want to get into why.) Adobe is introducing a new two-tier upgrade policy, whereby it will be cheaper to upgrade from CS3 than from older versions. Also, they have a three-versions-back policy, so if you have Illustrator CS, CS2, or CS3 you can upgrade, but if yours is older than that, you can't. You can upgrade from your Mac edition to a Windows edition if you've switched since your last purchase and you can switch to another language if you need to. You can upgrade to Dreamweaver CS4 from GoLive, Illustrator from Freehand, and InDesign from PageMaker. And yes, the educational pricing is still available. Oh, and yes, there is a policy in place that will provide a free upgrade to CS4 if you have recently purchased CS3, but unfortunately the page that details that policy doesn't state the exact date after which you have to have purchase CS3 in order to qualify. I'm trying to get that date from my Adobe contacts and will post a note here when I do.

As for details of the new features ... they are for the most part huge. Over the next few months, I will be doing a series of demos and user group meetings and possibly even video trainings of what's new in the products about which I'm most familiar (Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop will be first up), so stay tuned. You can of course visit the individual product pages (simply go to www.adobe.com/go/product_name) to see a list of some of the key features.

And then the last question I know everyone has: when can you get your hands on these? Adobe is mum as to an exact release date - all they are saying now is "mid-October." And trail versions should be out about a month later, so around mid-November.

New Certifications

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:43:00 -0600

This morning, I decided to take advantage in a slight lull in writing to try to knock off a couple of Adobe certifications that I've been wanting to take for awhile now. I started with the Flex 2 test (the Flex 3 test isn't available yet) and am pleased to say that I passed it. I followed that up with the Photoshop test, and while I actually thought that that test was considerably more difficult than the Flex one, I actually passed it as well. So all in all, a good day.