Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one

(apologies to The Primitives)

Here I go, way too fast
Wrote The Best of Hack and /
It's about Open Source
It's a Linux Admin Crash Course

So click, click that link
And let me know just what you think
I had enough past tips for you
Enough to fill a whole book through

So what type of book (there's three)?
Hardcover's the best to me,
The paperback is not bad too,
The ebook isn't paper bound
With glue

https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kyle_rankin

#writing #publishing #SelfPublishing #linux

The Best of Hack and /: Linux Admin Crash Course is published!

This book doesn't aim to be an exhaustive guide to everything you need to know to be a system administrator. Instead, this book allows me to act as a remote mentor to someone starting out in IT or system administration whether as a full-time job or as a full stack developer.

It's available in premium hardcover, paperback, and ebook forms here:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/kyle_rankin

#writing #SelfPublishing #linux #publishing

Look what just showed up in the mail! My (hopefuly final) page proofs for the standard and premium hardcover versions of my new book The Best of Hack and /: Linux Admin Crash Course!

At first scan things look good. I will give everything a final, careful look, and if all looks good, I could go live as soon as tomorrow! If you can't tell by the overuse of exclamation points, I'm excited!

#writing #publishing #SelfPublishing #linux #linuxjournal

After five years of helping to build hardware and software that protects people's privacy, security and freedom, at the end of the month I will no longer be at Purism (I'll still be helping out as an advisor).

For the near term, I plan to spend my time promoting my new book (coming very soon), writing yet another book, and thinking about what's next for my career.

If you have any suggestions for what I should do next, email me at next@kylerank.in (DMs are disabled on this instance).

I should note that this is a slightly modified form of macros I had been using for a LONG time inspired by this blog post:

http://www.jukie.net/~bart/blog/20090608232531

But defaulting to the '.o' view instead of the '.i' view, and adding flagged messages to the '.o' view has made all the difference.

My email flow has dramatically improved ever since I created a macro and folder hook in mutt so that by default I only see new, unopened, or flagged messages. I don't move opened emails from my INBOX elsewhere so no INBOX 0.

Now I only see emails I need to take some sort of action on. I can filter messages other ways, then press '.o' whenever I want to resume this view.

If you are a mutt user, use these two options to your .muttrc:

macro index .o "l(~N|~O|~F)\n"
folder-hook . push '.o'

#mutt

For Easter dinner we will be wiping our mouths with overshot napkins I wove last year. I didn't realize until after I wove them that the elongated wheels (due to fabric weft matching warp in thickness) look like a row of Easter eggs.

#weaving #easter

I almost forgot to change the yarn color in my knitting clock for today! I had planned to do it before bed, but first thing in the morning works as a backup.

#knitting #easter

Among the list of reasons modern cars are unappealing to me: in addition to uploading location data, they also sometimes have cameras that upload video to the vendor. In this case employees at Tesla found the juiciest videos and shared them internally:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/

#privacy

My weaving and other projects are put on hold for a bit, but it's for a good reason! After completing this first self-published book (which I hope to launch in the coming weeks), I've been (re)bitten by the writing bug.

I want to ride this wave of writing productivity so my off-work time and weekends will be devoted to writing a brand new book! I'll share more once I get a bit further in the process, but the outline is already done and I'm ready to start writing.

#writing #SideHustle

Neat! My Tempus Nectit knitting machine clock project was featured on @hackaday !

https://hackaday.com/2023/04/05/tempus-nectit-a-diy-knitting-clock-with-instructions/

Some might find it interesting that all of the work to turn a bunch of disparate articles into a properly-formatted book, from the additional writing and formatting work (VIM + LaTeX plugin), digital page proof review (Evince), LaTeX research and integration with the self-publishing platform (Firefox), cover photo tweaks (GIMP), happened not only with FOSS tools, but all on my personal computer, which happens to be a Librem 5 phone attached to a lapdock.

#Librem5 #lapdock #convergence #foss

I worked on my book all weekend. I finished the book layout in LaTeX and reviewed the 200-page digital "page proof" word by word, correcting any formatting mistakes and other errors. I finished my final tweaks to the index and this evening uploaded the completed and proofed PDF, designed the cover, and submitted all of the rest of the information.

The final step before I release "The Best of Hack and /: Linux Admin Crash Course" is printing and reviewing the finished physical product.

#writing

This weekend I managed to climb the steepest part of the learning curve with formatting a book using LaTeX.

Watch this space, as I should be able to complete and publish this proof of concept pretty quickly. If this book works out to be worth my time, you can expect quite a bit more publishing from me soon.

#writing #publishing #SelfPublishing