Hey, ho! Just a quick check-in to let you know where things stand on the second edition of " The Yii Book", for version 2 of the Yii framework. Over the past month I’ve started sequentially going through the book to update it for the new Yii version. I’ve also set targets in my mind, with my own target deadline (not sharing, because then it’s just embarrassing when the deadline sails past).

I’m going to be speaking to the Frederick Web Tech group, in Frederick, Maryland, on Tuesday, March 3, 2015. The event is free, and if you’re in the greater Maryland-Washington, D.C.-Virginia-Pennsylvania-West Virginia-Delaware (why not?) area, I encourage you to come out. It’s going to be a cozy affair, with pizza and beer!

The specific presentation I’m doing is “How To Get There”, first given at the Northeast PHP 2013 conference, and revised as a keynote for php\[tech\] 2014 in Chicago. This is a motivational-type speech, in which I lay out the attitudes and behaviors you need in order to achieve  your personal and professional goals. The official talk description is below.

The talk itself will begin around 7:00pm, and last around 45 minutes. There will be plenty of time for questions, during and after. Or you can have a beer with me later that night!

My thanks to the Frederick Web Tech group for having me!

In this edition…

• About This Newsletter
• What Were You Thinking? => Freelancing, Part 1
• On the Web => Project Billing
• On the Blog => Putting Your Current Clients First (Duh)
• Q&A => How do you get clients?
• What is Larry Thinking => Rethinking How You Think About Clients
• Larry Ullman’s Book News => “The Yii Book” version 1 Complete!

About a week later than I would have liked, I’m happy to say that “The Yii Book” now has a new home at larry.pub. If you’re an existing customer, your existing account information should work there. If you have any problems at all, please let me know.

Why…Hello! I am very pleased, and elated, and relieved (mostly relieved) to say that the first edition (i.e., for Yii 1) of “The Yii Book” is finally, finally, finally! done. I posted it earlier today. I’m going to skip the obligatory–and deserved–“OMG I’m sorry it took so long” and get onto the “What’s next?”.

I was fairly slow to adopt Git (having been raised on other version control tools), but, needless to say and like most of us, it’s now a daily component of my work flow. And certainly using Git myself is a much different beast than using Git in a massive organization with hundreds of engineers all working from the same code base. Which is to say: there’s still plenty of room for my Git skills to grow.

Recently, though, I’ve come to appreciate another value of Git, which hadn’t previously crossed my mind or been written about elsewhere (such that I’ve seen):

Git is a valuable tool for technical writers.

One interpretation of that sentence is that you can use Git to manage revisions to a document. Sure. That’s completely logical and not surprising. But I’ve found something more nuanced in my Git usage as a technical writer.