For those unfamiliar, a Development Editor works with an author to help guide the book’s progress. It’s part content editor, and part project manager. I’ll be reviewing chapters, making suggestions on content, ensuring that things are clear, easy to follow, and are written in the appropriate “house style”, but I’ll also help set short and longterm goals for the book’s progress. I’ll manage the technical reviews and help the book along in the production process. Best of all, I’ll be able to share what I know about book writing with other aspiring authors. It’s all very exciting, and it goes hand-in-hand with my love for teaching and mentoring people. I won’t be responsible for copy-editing the book though. Spelling and grammar corrections happen at the end of the process and the Pragmatic Bookshelf has an absolutely amazing copy editor who makes everyones book better.)

I’ll be starting off with one book, and picking up a second very soon. I have no idea what this means for my consulting business long-term, but after 15 years of coding for money, I’m excited for a change. I’m extremely grateful to Dave, Andy, and Susannah for giving me this opportunity.

Reading my book, just received from the printers.

I just received my copies of my book today, and that brings this chapter of my life to a close. Three years of work, two rewrites, a lot of frustration, and close to 3000 copies sold so far. I’m pretty proud of this book, and while there are a ton of things I’d do differently, I am glad I don’t have to do a third rewrite.

However, I’m not done writing. I’ve started something new, and I’ll let you all know more about that very very soon.

My book Web Design for Developers is now available in Beta form.

You’ll learn how to design a web site from start to finish, and you’ll use many of the techniques and thought processes you’ve come to rely on as an application developer. You’ll learn some color theory, some typography basics, some XHTML and CSS, and how to incorporate Photoshop and Illustrator into a work flow that works for you, not against you.

You can buy an early copy and then contribute to the feedback cycle to help make this an even better book when it eventually ships. You can purchase the PDF and start reading now, or preorder the printed book which will ship after the beta process finishes up.

I launched http://www.snippetstash.com/ a few weeks ago. It’s just a simple site that lets programmers store bits of code they tend to use over and over again. When you program for a living or as a hobby, you tend to encounter cool tricks that you’d like to keep track of for later use, and SnippetStash lets you do that. You can also share your code snippeets with the rest of the world if you want to. It was something I threw together over the weekend and I got some decent feedback on it.

Other than that, it’s been book, book, book. Oh, and Call of Duty on XBOX Live every Tuesday night.

First, Ana just finished up Second Grade. She’s planning to spend her summer doing lots of reading and learning, and hopefully she’ll get some video game time in with me. I’m pretty proud of her–she really pulled it together this year.

Next, I just gave a presentation at RailsConf 2008 in front of 208 people. I gave hands-on training in web design, teaching color theory, typography basics, and showed some fun Photoshop and Illustrator stuff too. If you’re bored, you can check out the slides and handouts from my presentation.

I’ve made good progress on the book. We launched MyDecisionHelper so I have some more free time, although I’m looking for more work since I could use the money. Unfortunately the book is top priority right now and I’ve been rewriting a good chunk of it as of late.

I also launched a site caled FeelMySkills where you can build your own online profile page where you can list your skills and show examples of your photography, illustrations, designs, video or audio production, or whatever else you can share on the web. The site is designed to be easy to use so it’s easy to create an employer-safe web presence for yourself like this one. Give it a try. You can sign up for free and upgrade to a pro account when they’re available.

Lisa’s doing very well with things. There’s a chance she’ll need surgery again on the 27th of this month, so we’re all hoping she won’t. The 27th, as you may or may not be aware, is the day before Dad’s wedding. We’ll have to go to Marshfield on the 27th and then head to Monroe on that day or the next day depending on the need for surgery. Nobody’s happy about that, least of all Dad.

And I’m still waiting to hear about Tor Seilheimer, son of Titus and Amy. Any day now, right?

We’re gearing up for the baby shower this weekend. We’re in the last mile, as the baby is due at the end of the month. Carissa’s more than ready now though, and she’s wondering if she’s going to make it that long. In all honesty, she’s doing just fine and we’re all very excited. We’ve been busy over the break clearing out stuff we don’t need and making trips to the mission to donate toys, clothes, and other household items. We just put the Christmas stuff away today and got the house back in order, gearing up for this weekend.

I’m looking forward to seeing people this weekend. If you are in town that weekend, let me know. The guys will be off somewhere else playing Rock band or some other mindless video games while the ladies do the shower thing.

It’s also Ana’s birthday this weekend! Whoo Hoo!

If you’re looking to get started with Ruby on Rails and you’re a Windows user, this book will walk you through setting up some of the tools you’ll need, as well as show you how connect to Microsoft SQL Server and set up Capistrano. Of course, this is targeted at people who are new to Ruby on Rails and come from the Windows platform.

Curt Hibbs wrote the first chapter, where he showcases how to use RadRails and InstantRails to create a quick and easy setup.

The book covers

• InstantRails and RadRails
• Installation with the One Click Ruby Installer
• Installing RMagick
• Working with MySQL and SQL Server
• Setting up a simple Subversion repository on Windows
• Using SQLite and scaffold_resource to rapidly prototype a simple application
• Using Capistrano
  … and more.

So check it out, won’t you?