Technology books are never done

By on June 12, 2014 - Opinion

One thing I am discovering about the difference between writing fiction and writing non-fiction technology books is that technology books are never really done.

With fiction, at some point you have told the story you are intending to tell. You may well have sequels to write, but a given story eventually is complete.

When you are working on non-fiction, there is always something more to add. Right as you are finishing the final review process, an important change is happening in the project core. You find a new tool that significantly improves on the painful process you documented in your book. The next version of the software is going to arrive after your book goes to the printer.

It never ends.

Breaking ground on another devOps book.

By on May 28, 2014 - News

I can’t make announcements of the title just yet, but I am excited and pleased to say that I’ve got another devOps book coming soon. Look this fall for an announcement. Contract has been signed, I start progress on the long road this week.

ActiveMQ 5.9.1 RPM for CentOS / RHEL 6

By on April 20, 2014 - Geekery Tags: ,

There are some significant scaling issues with ActiveMQ 5.8 and MCollective, especially around SSL connections. I’ve been working with some clients and solved many of these problems by using ActiveMQ 5.9.1 as the middleware.

I’ve created an RPM for Active 5.9.1 on RHEL/CentOS that matches the one published on the Puppet Labs EL6 dependencies repository, with the following changes:
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Learning MCollective now available in Early Release

By on March 7, 2014 - Geekery, News Tags:


Learning MCollective is now available in Early Release.

This has pretty much every chapter and subchapter we expect to have in the final book, but my editor and I are still polishing some rough edges. As O’Reilly says on their website:

You’ll receive updates when content is added, as well as the completed ebooks. You get free lifetime access, multiple file formats, and free updates.