News You Can Bruise for 2005 June 16

I got into the book-writing business at the beginning of the year, on the recommendation of Clark colleague Tony Steidler-Dennison. Not only has the experience been more or less fun, but with my pen I have made enough money to pay for the dinosaur hunt I'm going on with my mother in August (assuming it is just a trip to Alberta to see some dinosaur bones and not some sort of Sound of Thunder thing where we hunt live dinosaurs).

Now, you too can gain entry into this lucrative field (writing, not dinosaur hunting)! Tony thought of me when his editor needed someone to work on a Python book; now I'm paying it forward. My Wiley editor needs someone to finish a chapter about clustering on Knoppix. I don't have the equipment to run any kind of cluster, but I bet one of my readers does.

You should probably know something about cluster programming, but not neccessarily anything about Knoppix. The ability to write good prose is 5-10 times more important than knowing about the topic beforehand. You just have to be good at picking things up quickly, because by the time you're done you will need to know a whole lot about the topic.

Send me email if you're interested in this. It's just one chapter and much of it is done already, so it's about the easiest introduction into the world of writing you could hope for. If you deliver on time the editor will have a mental picture of you as someone who saved their bacon, and think of you for other, larger projects, and pretty soon the world is your scallop.

Is Rogue not realistic enough for you to consider it a true tactical simulation? Perhaps playing it on a hex grid will help.