Welcome back.

After the series of posts on chapter 5 (you’ll find them under August and September in the blog archive on the right side of the page), a short intermission about the PDF version of the book.

First: in the past, a few people asked me what LaTeX style file I was using to produce it. I finally managed to clean the file up a bit and I added it to the drafts page for download. Go ahead and do whatever you want with it.

Second: I’ve updated the PDF version of chapter 2 with the changes I’ve made before posting it on the blog in July. Again, see the book page and get it while it’s hot.

As for the general state of the thing: for the time being, it could easily do worse. The latest posts gave me a first version of chapter 5, which was one of the two stinkers I’ve mentioned in this post. The other (chapter 8) will probably take a while. In the meantime, I’ll probably revise and post one or two of the chapters I already have; chapter 3, for instance, which would give me an excuse to finally write its last section.

Of course, it could all go the way of the best laid schemes of mice and men instead. If I’m lucky.

A final note: PDF files are ok to produce actual physical books (which I’ll probably do at some point using something like Lulu or CreateSpace) but they’re not optimal on all those newfangled tablets and thingamabobs you people are using. I’m looking into a couple of possibilities for producing an ebook version—such as using LeanPub, for instance, that would also allow one to optionally donate a few bucks when downloading the book. However, it would need some work for me to get the content in the required format, so please let me know if there’s any interest in that. If it’s of no use to anybody, I won’t even begin.

I guess that’s all for today. Follow me on Twitter if you want to be notified of new posts, or add me to your circles, or subscribe via RSS: the buttons for that are in the footer. Also, make sure to check my Training page.