Advogato: Personal info for jsheets

jsheets is currently certified at Master level.

Name: John Sheets
Member since: 2000-05-19 21:08:14
Last Login: N/A

Notes:

I spend most of my spare time working on writing novels and screenplays (still working on my first of each), and designing and writing code for the WorldForge project. For WorldForge, I'm developing COAL (Client Object Aggregation Library) a generic support library for game clients and Anvil, a WorldForge client, formerly written in C/C++ and GNOME, but now in the process of migrating to a more platform-neutral Python implementation. Both projects are in the Worldforge CVS tree.

I work at McCaa Webster, a cute little consulting company here in frosty Minnesota. My former employer, CodeWeavers, recently laid me off due to increasing financial woes caused by a lack of business in the Windows --> Linux porting business. Oh well. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "So it goes."

I'm also the proud author of a book on GNOME development for Addison-Wesley, called Writing GNOME Applications. It went into distribution in September 2000, and did pretty well out of the gate. Unfortunately, sales are dragging quite a bit lately, and GNOME books in general don't seem to be moving very well. However, I did get Addison-Wesley to allow me to relicense four chapters of the book under the GFDL license. I put them up at the GNOME developers' web site, and should probably get them up on OpenBooks as well.

When I had spare time, I used to play guitar and bass in local bands and write sci-fi/fantasy stuff. Don't do much of either lately, but I hope to get back into that creative hoo-hah someday soon. For now, I'm perfectly content to spend the time with my family and dogs.

Projects

Lead Developer on GNOME Anvil
Lead Developer on COAL
Developer on Worldforge

Recent blog entries by jsheets

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26 Jul 2001 »

Starting to get back into writing again, only this time I'm focusing more on the creative genres. The book did alright the first quarter, but apparently has not been selling as well as any of us had hoped. My editor lamented the fact that none of the GNOME books seem to be doing very well.

As far as I'm concerned, that's a sign to look for greener fields. I may eventually team up with a buddy from WorldForge to write a graphics book, but that's in the longer future. For now, I'd like to return to my original writing interests and pursue sci-fi/fantasy writing. In particular I'd like to finish my first screenplay and get started on my long-overdue first novel. I have a good starting base for both, but just need to devote the time to finish it.

Stay tuned for more info on my new related MetaDoc project, which I'll likely host on the OpenBooks web site....

8 Nov 2000 (updated 8 Nov 2000 at 19:47 UTC) »

InformIT just kicked off a two-week Featured Expert series on me, featuring the book. Part of the media blitz. They'll be running six small articles the first week, and I'll answer questions during the second week. It does require a free registration *cough*

Also, I finished the first pass at converting the book into DocBook for publishing on the Web. Just waiting final approval from Addison-Wesley before I can officially put it online.

And finally, we ship out tomorrow for our long-awaited cruise to Mexico and back. We'll stop briefly in election-fickle Florida. Just in time to miss the first major cold spell in frosty Minnesota!

18 Sep 2000 »

Woo hoo! The book came out this weekend. We threw a nice little release party with some neighbors and CodeWeavers co-workers. The bindery finished ka-chunking them together at midnight Friday, and AWL saw to it that my complimentary copies made it in time for the party (thanks guys!).

Hmmm, still waiting for that Pearson's open license to finalize so I can put the book up on the OpenBooks Web site....

25 Aug 2000 »

Registered the OpenBooks project on SourceForge, to maintain and distribute WGA and my other book-length writings, as well as any other professional-level books with open licenses. No website yet...

1 Aug 2000 »

The chapter proofs are finally done now. I still have to do the appendix (the GNOME FAQ) and the front matter, plus the index, but that shouldn't take much work...relatively speaking.

6 older entries...

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