Timesplice - Inkshares Funding and Nerdist Competition

Timesplice is now open for funding on Inkshares as part of a competition being sponsored by Nerdist. The top 5 funded sci-fi and fantasy books will be published by Inkshares, one of which will also be selected to be added to the official Nerdist book collection.

The complete first chapter is available now on Inkshares (and hasn't even been published on my own site yet - but will be over the next couple of weeks).

If you have never been to Inkshares before - it is a crowd funding site for book publishing. To pledge support for a book it is only $9.99 - with no payment or cost until the book has been completely funded. And if you are new to Inkshares, they will give you a $5.00 credit towards supporting a book - reducing your very first pledge to only $4.99.

If you happen to like what you read, it would make me very happy if you would be willing to support Timesplice. One way or another I will complete this book and make it available to everyone, but if you support it now we might even be able to get it published on actual paper - giving you something to hold in your hands and read which would be amazing!

Timesplice - Chapter 1: September 24th, 2015

I have updated Timesplice adding Chapter 1: September 24th, 2015.

This is the first update to the "Thread" section - and over the next few weeks I will continue to make additions to this section until the first chapter is complete.

Enjoy!

Timesplice - Chapter 1: Experiment 001

Just a quick note, I have updated Timesplice adding Chapter 1: Experiment 001.

This is a bigger update than I will normally be making on a weekly basis, but it makes sense to post it in its entirety for the first chapter.

Each chapter will be broken up into three distinct sections. The Prologue, The Experiment, and the Thread. This section is the Experiment, and next week I will start posting the Thread.

Enjoy!

A New Endeavor - Timesplice : A Novel

I've decided to try my hand at something new, something I've never tried to do before. I'm writing a book.

Now I'm not new to storytelling, or short form writing by any stretch. But most of the writing and storytelling that I've done has been in the context of a game - most often Dungeons & Dragons which I have been running games for nearly 15 years. But what I like about being a GM is not only shaping a story, creating grand plots, but also collaborating with the players and getting new and unexpected ideas from them.

This is a bit different. I have control over the story from the start to end, and I'm also writing it in a non-traditional narrative structure too.

So this is where you come in. The website is at GarretRempel.com and the book is called Timesplice. It is going to be freely available, chapter by chapter, as I write it. Each week (on Monday mornings) I will add new content and sometimes revise/edit existing content. It won't be a full chapter each week, but at very least a new scene. I would also be happy to receive feedback, the more constructive the better! I have most of the story arc in my head already, I've been thinking about and working on this in some capacity for a year, but I am open to new possibilities too. Questions, comments, suggestions, they are all welcome.

I've also published on my new website a short story titled "Confessions of a Drone Pilot". It's one I wrote awhile back, but I figured since I was going to the effort to create a website I might as well publish it too.

Just as an added plug as a thank you, my friend Bill Harris of Dubious Quality has been helping me with editing. He is also the developer of the game (available on steam) Gridiron Solitaire.

Book Club - Foundations of Software and System Performance Engineering

I recently received and am currently reading a copy of Foundations of Software and System Performance Engineering that I ordered through Amazon by André Bondi, a Senior Staff Engineer working in performance at Siemens Corp.

I had the good fortune of meeting André Bondi this year at ICPE '15 (which is where I learned about Foundations) and he was a fascinating, enthusiastic, and wonderful person to talk to. After I had presented my paper on Defining Standards for Web Page Performance, he approached me and we had a wonderful discussion about performance requirements and the perspective of the end-user and he had great things to say about the work that I was doing. His energy and interest in the subject was plainly obvious. It was a pure pleasure to have the opportunity to meet and talk with him.

As for Foundations, I haven't read very far into it yet, about 60 pages or so, but I have gone through and skimmed each section. This book is shaping up to be a fantastic resource and introductory guide to Performance Engineering. Since it is based on a training course that Dr. Bondi developed to train performance engineering and testing teams, I would expect no less. The book covers the entire software lifecycle from the perspective of how it connects with Performance Engineering as a practice, from requirements, to metrics, analysis, workloads, testing, instrumentation, and validation, and how they work within Agile environments and how to communicate and work with stakeholders on the project.

I won't write a complete review of Foundations yet as I still have much more to read, but I can be quite sure that this book is going to take a prominent place on my bookshelf, and play an important role while I am training my own performance engineering team.