My Book is now Available

In the excitement of PDC, it slipped my mind to let everyone know that the book on which I was a co-author was actually shipped at the beginning of October. The title is the terse, yet incredibly descriptive MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-503): Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5 Windows® Communication Foundation (PRO-Certification). There is a bidding war for the movie rights and I'm hoping that George Clooney plays me in the adaptation. :)

For those of you wondering how the actual release might have slipped my mind, the reason is that I'm not involved in the steps that takes place at the end of the publishing process. Most of the book was written in the first half of the year. Since July, I have been reviewing chapters and responding to editor notes. But since the middle of August my tasks have been done. And, I'm afraid, when it comes to book writing, once I'm done, I mentally move on to the next task. So I wasn't even sure when the publication date was. But it was released and, based on the numbers that I've seen so far, it seems to be doing quite well. If any of you have the chance to read it, I'd be thrilled to hear any feedback (both good and bad).

Non-Geek Fun

I've been a fan of Malcolm Gladwell since I read The Tipping Point. And after following that up with Blick, it is clear that Mr. Gladwell is a fascinating author on subjects that are quite interesting, even when it falls outside my normal range of reading material (that being mostly geeky ). Apparently on Tuesday, a new book of his entitled Outliers: The Story of Success is coming out. That in itself is enough to pique my interest. However, it turns out that, as part of his book tour, Mr. Gladwell is speaking in Toronto on Dec 1 at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Business. And the price of the tickets (only $31 and which you can get here) includes a copy of the book. I'm signed up already and if you have found his books interesting, here is a chance to hear him in person.

A Disappointment with PPTPlex

I did a presentation this afternoon on some of the basic functions of WCF. I had put a slide deck together using a new Microsoft Office add-in called PPTPlex. You can see demos of what this add-in does in the provided link, but basically is allows for a much more dynamic experience of going through the slides in a slide deck. As compared to the typical linear flow, PPTPlex allows you to easily jump from one slide to another with a couple of clicks up and down the slide hierarchy.

I was pretty excited to be able to put this technology to work in the real world - right up to the time when I started the slide show.

Most of the time when I do presentations, I use a split screen. That is to say that what is displayed to the audience is not the same as what I see on the laptop in front of me. The new Presentation Mode in PowerPoint 2007 helps me a great deal with working that way. I was expecting that, when PPTPlex was run as a slide show, I would have expected the same appearance, that being that the slide show (such as it is) would be displayed on the secondary monitor.

I was disappointed.

Now it may be that there is a setting that I missed that would have allowed this to happen. I will admit that I was standing in front of the class when I tried this, so the time allocated for exploration was limited. But I expected it to just work and it didn't. Sigh.

Now I haven't yet got back to a place where I can do some detailed investigation, but as soon as I do I will see if I missed something. I hope so, but I doubt it. More details as they become available.

Writing is done, so back to the blogging

The two or three of you who follow my blog with regularity will have noticed that I was dark for most of the summer. The reason was that I was in the process of writing a book. Co-writing, would be more accurate, but still long hours were spent pounding out prose on my antique Underwood. Okay, maybe not so much pounding, but writing a book does dry me out for writing blog posts.

The recent influx of posts would seem to indicate that the book writing process was finished. And indeed it is. In fact, my editor informed me yesterday that the files have been shipped off to the publisher for final processing and printing. This is a source of great cheer, as I can now rest easy that no additional requests for editing will arrive in my inbox.

For those of you who are interested, the book is the MS Press training kit for the Windows Communications Foundation exam. You can see what it looks like at Amazon. And feel free to buy multiple copies...they make great Christmas gifts [:)] 

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