Oy… I started this just for fun.. I prolly wont continue to use it, and there is no way for me to delete my account, hmm… %)

In retrospect, this is pretty hilarious. I’ve now had a blog for over 20 years. Above, I linked to a post that’s currently self-hosted on a WordPress instance, but at the time the “account” I mentioned was on an old blogging site called Xanga. It was popular at the time and a couple people I knew had started doing this “blogging” thing over there so I decided to check it out.

I eventually moved to LiveJournal as community momentum shifted, and I brought all my Xanga posts over. A couple years later I started self-hosting with a WordPress instance and I once again moved everything over. When I did that migration, I considered doing some editing of posts, since looking back at those old posts is pretty embarrassing. I was young (20), very bored, and my writing was very bad. The early posts had the rawness of a stream-of-consciousness rather than anything carefully written. I never expected it to last, and I certainly never expected to eventually become a published author!

I am also dyslexic, and had a lot of support when I was really young to learn to read. Writing was a tremendous challenge throughout middle school, and only slightly improved in high school. When I was starting my blog, I still had a long way to go, but I just sat down and wrote every day. It was silly, self-involved, and random, but I got it down, and ultimately I kept it up. My blog posts today are much more polished and thoughtful. Seeing this all laid bare it’s a reminder to me that we aren’t born knowing how to write, it takes practice, which is what I happened to spend years doing aimlessly.

People often ask me how I got into writing. I wouldn’t recommend the aimless route I took. If your goal is actually becoming a writer, it probably makes sense to go down one of the paths of using writing prompts and doing more than just pouring “what I did today” notes into a public blog. Still, it did work for me, even if it took a long time.

As to why I did it, I think it was the same reason we use short-form social media today. It was a way to keep in touch with people, save moments of my daily life, and be part of a community beyond my desk. As the LiveJournal grew in popularity there was a community like you see on social media today, you became friends of friends after seeing their comments or link to each other’s posts, and other friends from other spaces of the web would make their own blogs that would show up on your Friends list.

By the time most people had moved on from blogging and over to mediums like Facebook and Twitter, I had started to see the value in blogging for myself as a reference and sort of autobiography. What year did we take that trip? When did I last visit that festival? Who was the intro act to that show we went to? All these questions are quickly answered by my blog! I’m reminded of this every time I fall behind on posting or am building up the momentum (and often skipping sleep) to write about something. I also know the value in owning your own words and thoughts, if I was serving up that stream of thoughts and moments to a company hosting it at no cost, with no guarantee of preservation, I’d be deeply concerned about control and posterity. I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed with what they’ve lost as the cracks start to form in our digital footprints.

A great story shouldn’t end here, but I don’t have anything revolutionary to say about this milestone of 20 years. I don’t think I’ll be making any real changes to what I do today. I don’t publish as much as I used to, but that’s really just an artifact of how much my life has changed, I simply don’t have as much time as I used to. I also found that my blog has trended to be much more positive and less raw and critical. As I’ve matured I’ve realized that I’m no longer just throwing my words into a black hole. Every time I throw a thought out that’s critical of something someone else has made, that has the potential to land with a real person, and I don’t want my thoughtless, throw-away comments to hurt someone. The positive nature of my blog today is related to this, but also a result of my struggle to write at all when I’m not in a very good mood, so I don’t. I do sometimes worry that both these things make my blog less genuine than it used to be, and that may be true, but I think I’m OK with that. I still think I’m more honest here than most people are in public, and this blog was never meant to be a private journal that I kept locked in my bedside table.

Along the way I recruited my excellent contributing author Matt Fischer, who in addition to his Puppet and OpenStack expertise, shares a history with me in the Ubuntu community and Mystery Science Theater 3000 fandom (he had a letter read on the show once!). In short, he’s pretty awesome.

A lot of work and a lot of people went into making this book a reality, so I’m excited and happy to announce that the book has been officially released as of last week, and yesterday I got my first copy direct from the printer!

As I was putting the finishing touches on it in the spring, the dedication came up. I decided to dedicate the book to the OpenStack community, with a special nod to the Puppet OpenStack team.

Text:

This book is dedicated to the OpenStack community. Of the community, Iâ€d also like to specifically call out the help and support received from the Puppet OpenStack Team, whose work directly laid the foundation for the deployment scenarios in this book.

Huge thanks to everyone who participated in making this book a reality, whether they were diligently testing all of our Puppet manifests, lent their OpenStack or systems administration experience to reviewing or gave me support as I worked my way through the tough parts of the book (my husband was particularly supportive during some of the really grim moments). This is a really major thing for me and I couldn’t have done it without all of you.

I’ll be continuing to write about updates to the book over on the blog that lives on the book’s website: DeploymentsBook.com (RSS). You can also follow updates on Twitter via @deploymentsbook, if that’s your thing.

If you’re interested in getting your hands on a copy, it’s sold by all the usual book sellers and available on Safari. The publisher’s website also routinely has sales and deals, especially if you buy the paper and digital copies together, so keep an eye out. I’ll also be speaking at conferences over the next few months and will be giving out signed copies. Check out my current speaking engagements here to see where I’ll be and I will have a few copies at the upcoming OpenStack Summit in Barcelona.

One of the things we focused on with the 8th edition was, knowing that it would have a shelf life of 2 years, future-proofing. With the 9th edition we continued this focus, but also wanted to add a whole new chapter: Ubuntu, Convergence, and Devices of the Future

Taking a snippet from the book’s sample content, the chapter gives a whirlwind tour of where Ubuntu on desktops, servers and devices is going:

Chapter 10: Ubuntu, Convergence, and Devices of the Future 261

The Convergence Vision 262
Unity 263
Ubuntu Devices 264
The Internet of Things and Beyond 268
The Future of the Ubuntu Desktop 272
Summary 273

The biggest challenge with this chapter was the future-proofing. We’re in an exciting point in the world of Ubuntu and how it’s moved far beyond “Linux for Human Beings” on the desktop and into powering servers, tablets, robots and even refrigerators. With the Snappy and Ubuntu Core technologies both powering much of this progress and changing rapidly, we had to be cautious about how in depth we covered this tooling. With the help of Michael Hall, Nathan Haines and Sergio Schvezov I believe we’ve succeeded in presenting a chapter that gives the reader a firm overview of these new technologies, while being general enough to last us until the 10th edition of this book.

Also thanks to Thomas Mashos of the Mythbuntu team and Paul Mellors who also pitched in with this edition. Finally, as with the last edition, it was a pleasure to work with Matthew and José on this book. I hope you enjoy it!

In addition to the obvious task of updating content, one of our most important tasks was working to “future proof” the book more by doing rewrites in a way that would make sure the content of the book was going to be useful until the next Long Term Support release, in 2016. This meant a fair amount of content refactoring, less specifics when it came to members of teams and lots of goodies for folks looking to become power users of Unity.

Quoting the product page from Pearson:

The Official Ubuntu Book, Eighth Edition, has been extensively updated with a single goal: to make running todayâ€s Ubuntu even more pleasant and productive for you. Itâ€s the ideal one-stop knowledge source for Ubuntu novices, those upgrading from older versions or other Linux distributions, and anyone moving toward power-user status.

Its expert authors focus on what you need to know most about installation, applications, media, administration, software applications, and much more. Youâ€ll discover powerful Unity desktop improvements that make Ubuntu even friendlier and more convenient. Youâ€ll also connect with the amazing Ubuntu community and the incredible resources it offers you.

Huge thanks to all my collaborators on this project. It was a lot of fun to work them and I already have plans to work with all three of them on other projects in the future.

So go pick up a copy! As my first published book, I’d be thrilled to sign it for you if you bring it to an event I’m at, upcoming events include:

• August 9, Philadelphia: Fosscon
• August 27-31, Portland, OR: Debconf 14
• September 11-13, Orlando: Fossetcon
• September 23, San Francisco: PuppetConf
• October 22-23, Raleigh: All Things Open

And of course, monthly Ubuntu Hours and Debian Dinners in San Francisco.