Review of Scott Berkun’s “Confessions of a Public Speaker”

October 15, 2012

It’s three in the morning, and I’ve just arrived at my hotel in Instanbul, Turkey. It took 49 hours of travel to get here. I haven’t really slept in 37 hours. My one piece of luggage is nowhere to be found, which means that I don’t have my suit, laptop cords, laptop remote, or business cards. The presentation is in 8 hours. I have 8 hours to make up for two days without a good night’s sleep and to go shopping for presentable clothes. Oh, and did I mention that I’m deathly uncomfortable with public speaking?

Surprisingly, the presentation is going to go okay, in part because I had the good fortune to have read Scott Berkun’s “Confessions of a Public Speaker.” That may sound like hyperbole, but it’s true.

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Introduction to jQuery Mobile

October 12, 2012

A few months ago I began using jQuery Mobile for a couple of Web projects. If you’re not familiar with it, jQuery Mobile uses CSS and JavaScript to make an HTML5-based site look and act much like an iOS app. No native programming required; nothing for the user to download and install. It’s a pretty amazing little package, which is not unexpected given how great jQuery is. If you’re curious to learn jQuery Mobile, check out this excellent tutorial written by C. Enrique Ortiz and posted at IBM’s developerWorks.

The only thing I’ll add, which is not mentioned in the article, is that jQuery Mobile is a logical choice in situations where you’re making a mobile version of your Web site that’s separate from the main version (and, presumably, redirecting mobile clients to it). Whether or not that’s a good policy is of much debate these days.

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Introduction to Stripe

October 10, 2012
This entry is part 1 of 8 in the series Processing Payments with Stripe

I cannot state this more clearly: you should be thinking about using Stripe for every e-commerce project you do. Period. Exclamation mark. Although Stripe is just over a year old now, it’s quickly made a name for itself as an excellent payment solution that everyone should at least consider using.

I first heard about Stripe a few months ago, and have since used it on a couple of projects. In this first part of an exhaustive series, I’ll introduce Stripe for those not yet using this great service. In subsequent posts, you’ll learn everything you can ever possibly need to know to use Stipe today. Well, almost everything.

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How Much Should I Charge for “The Yii Book”?

October 8, 2012

The question I pose to you is: how much should I charge for the book? There will be a minimum charge (i.e., you cannot pay less than X), but the system will be set to allow readers to pay whatever they want above that. For example, one person has already offered to pay $50 (seriously). And she is the most awesome person in the world. But I’m not going to charge $50. From my perspective, the book is a ton of work, and I have no guarantees of income (especially compared with going the traditional publication route), but I don’t want to gouge readers, either.

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What It Means To Be A Writer, Part 6 => The After Life

October 3, 2012
This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series What It Means To Be A Writer

So you’ve finally done it: you’ve written and published a book. Congratulations! That’s excellent news. Of the many things I’ve figured out when it comes to being a writer, none is more true than this: It’s much, much better to have written a book than it is to be writing a book. Writing a book is hard, but having written a book is great.

But your life, and your job, as a writer isn’t over now (whether or not you ever do another book), it’s just beginning a new phase. If you’re unfamiliar with the mechanics of actually writing a book, then what happens next is going to be even more of a surprise.

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