A little over a year ago, I announced that I would be writing a book about fractals, entitled “Playing With Chaos”, based on a few presentations I did that went over really well. I set about writing the book and got almost two chapters in before fizzling out. The problem with self publishing is that you don’t have an editor breathing down your throat, asking for the next chapter some time around the next deadline. Other things come up and before you know it, a year has gone by and you haven’t looked at the book.
Several people have asked me about the progress of the book in the past few months. I’m really grateful for your interest in the book and your faith in me. It’s kept the book from going too far into the back of my mind and being completely abandoned.
Recently, as you may have noticed, I’ve been getting more into hardware and electronics. I’ve also felt the urge to write again and started putting together an outline for a book on that subject. However, as I contemplated announcing my intentions, I felt like the boy who cried “book”. I couldn’t announce a new self-published book project while people are still apparently waiting for my last one. And so I dug up the project, dusted it off and took a look.
Usually, when you (or at least when I) revive a semi-abandoned, half-done project and look it over, it’s all too easy to say it’s all crap and you might as well start over. I opened up the files with that very expectation. But as I read through the first couple of chapters, I was really surprised. It was pretty solid stuff. I needed to finish up chapter 2 and fix up a few minor things in the text. The outline looked good and the code held up 100%. Throughout the course of Saturday, I finished up chapter 2 and began chapter 3.
The best news is that I’m really excited about the project again. I’m not even sure why I drifted away from it in the first place. It’s too soon to have a good time estimate, but I’d hope to be done by the end of the summer. Feel free to hound me on progress. I really want to get this done.
Haha – well, you know the best way to get me to hound you on progress… 🙂
I am looking forward to reading it, though. Glad you’ve gone back to it.
I figured you’d magically appear here. 🙂
I’ve been wondering about this. I’m looking forward to it!
Great news! I thought back then that the book was great idea. Still do. With all the proliferation of frameworks, platforms, libraries and methodologies it would be just the kind of thing to help a lot of us remember why we started in this business in the first place.