Test-Driven Database Development: Unlocking Agility

I think there's a light at the end of the tunnel.  As I stated recently, I passed another milestone in the development of my book.  Today, I passed another one.  We've settled on the name "Test-Driven Database Development: Unlocking Agility."

The metadata are changed and flowing through the publishing industry.  Look for the change shortly and pre-order your copy today.

Auto-Revert and a Sense of Accomplishment

It's been one day since I set up our CruiseControl.net server to automatically revert changes that break the build and already I'm seeing an improvement.

The obvious thing I like is not having the goddamn build be broken for hours or even days on end.  However, there's already evidence of another side effect... one I expected but thought would take months to develop.

People are changing the way they treat the code base.  Time was, people were pretty "willy nilly" as to what they checked into the source control server.  Many didn't care if the build was red, how long it was red, or if they were the ones that made it red.  Now that's changed.

For one thing, if the build is red, you can't check in.  The system locks everyone out and runs one more build and test pass on any pending changes.  So the "no check in on red" rule is no longer a policy.  Now it's a thread in the fabric of our reality.

For another, there's no more "fire and forget" check-ins.  You're check-in is your responsibility.  If it works, fantastic.  If not, it's kicked back to you for fixing.  It just won't get in if it doesn't pass the tests.

Furthermore, your problem becomes everyone else's problem so there's a serious potential for some peer pressure.  If you and Joe check in at the same time and you break the build, now you own Joe's submission and are responsible for getting it into the source server.  If you don't, Joe might come knocking.

I was talking to a friend about it and they pointed out another force that I hadn't even considered.  This is probably the critical piece that made the auto-revert feature shape people's behavior so quickly.  Developers - especially old-school developers - get a sense of accomplishment when they check in some work.  That sense is largely unjustified.  You've accomplished something when you make an incremental change for the better, not just any old change.

Because the build-and-test cycle is less than thirty minutes long, the auto-revert feature has the property of providing immediate feedback on whether or not you actually accomplished something with your change.  In my friend's words: It removed the positive feedback associated with a bad check-in.  Pair that with producing some negative/constructive feedback (an email to all the leaders), and you've got a powerful behavioral modification tool.

KDP Select and Short Stories

I have opted back out of the KDP Select program for Sleight of Mind #1 so this is the last day it will be free in the Amazon store; probably ever.  It ends up not making as much sense for short stories as it does for full-length books.

Sure, you get the free promotion days.  On the other hand, I could just post a .mobi file on my blog and maybe get fifty or sixty percent of the value those provide and be able to do it for as long as I like to make up for the lower value of a given free day.

The real benefit of the KDP Select program is the fact that your book goes in to the Kindle Lending Library.  That's a service wherein Amazon Prime members can borrow a book free for an unlimited period of time.

On the surface that seems great.  Readers read for "free" - meaning they paid for the service but don't actually spend any money on your book - but you still get paid.  Deeper analysis shows it to not be very valuable for short stories and here is why: You can borrow a book for as long as you want but you can only have one book borrowed at a time and you can only have one book borrowed at a time and you can only borrow one book per month.

Those two rules, mostly the last one, create a scarcity in the ability to borrow that makes it more like an alternative currency and less like a way to read for free.  If you have a unit of currency and you are deciding how to convert it into a useful product, you're probably going to want to do it in the way that simulates the best "exchange rate" possible.  That is, if you can only borrow one book a month, you're more likely to borrow a $9.99 book than a $0.99 book.

That means that, for people with expensive, book length assets there is probably some value to using the KDP Select program - a certain class of people, who are known to be heavy readers, can get your book for free and you get about half the royalties.  The price you pay is that your book is only available on the Amazon store.

I've already gotten some borrowing activity on Madness & Loss and the royalties on that are comparable to what I would have gotten if someone bought it.  That's fantastic.  Freeish to the reader.  Money for me.

On the other hand, if you have a ninety-nine cent asset like a short story, you get the ability to promote it for free - which you could ordinarily do yourself - and the ability to put it in the lending library - where nobody would want to waste a checkout on it.  The price you pay is that you can't put it on any of the other digital services or send copies of it to any reviewers.

So that's why I'm having the Sleight of Mind series exit the KDP Select program.  I may come up with my own "free for a certain period of time" plan when the 90 days is up and I will definitely start hitting up book review sites and other e-reader avenues.  I just can't see a good reason to put a short story in the KDP Select program again.  I can't imagine why anyone would.

My New Country Home

I've moved, recently.  From the "city," as people in Central Oregon think of it, to the country.  Truly the country.

I wasn't sure I was going to care for it at first.  I was dreading the commute and I was a little worried about the isolation and lack of services out here.  To reinforce this fear, I recently needed an emergency veterinarian and had to drive a half hour into Bend to get one.  That definitely sucks.

Turns out it's not so bad.  I'm sure there's an on-call vet closer and we'll find them.  The commute turns out to be not so bad and there are even some people I can carpool with to make it a little less bad still.  In addition, there are some really nice things about it.

In the country we can afford about five acres more land than we could in Bend.  That is, we can afford about five acres of land.  It's a nice little lot.  It even has a sound-facing slope we might use to grow grapes, if we can find grapes that like Central Oregon.

Our indoor/outdoor cat is really digging the new digs as well.  Five acres is a lot of roaming space with all kinds of new things to smell and a new kind of soil in which to roll around.  She still hasn't figured out what her territory is going to be but I imagine the neighboring dogs will help her define those boundaries.  I knew this would matter to me, our cats' quality of life is important to us.

We're on top of a knoll - that's why we have a south-facing slope - so we have a view in all directions.  I didn't think I'd care about that but it appears I do.  To further improve upon things, the house is two stories with the living area on the second story and a wrap-around deck so the view is enhanced by being above the juniper trees.

Out here, I can afford a much bigger place.  The living area here is just shy of the whole house we had in bend.  Then downstairs area has a real two car garage; meaning there's two doors with ample room to fit two large American cars.

Even better, there's a very large shop.  I'm not really a "shop" guy but my wife and I have a plan to turn that into a work out/recreation room.  The wrap-around deck also has two enlarged areas where tables, chairs, etc. can be put.  That means we don't have to store as much of our outdoor junk in our garage!

Better still, there are a couple of small out-buildings for storage, one of them with power and phone that I'm considering turning in to my home office.  I'm not sure about that, yet.  It could get chilly in the winter.  If nothing else, those sheds are about as much storage as we had in our old garage.

So, all told, the number of square feet we have to put our junk in has dramatically improved.  I didn't think that would matter either but I was wrong.  Having a nice, light, open space as a sanctuary in which to work with lots of potential for development ended up having an immediate and dramatic psychological impact for the better that outweighs the drawbacks many times over.

Another Milestone

I just passed another milestone on the journey to getting my first printed book published.  Test Driven Database Development: Unlocking Agility has finished it's developmental review pass.  I think I have some front matter to write or get written but otherwise, it's on to the next step.

It looks from Amazon, like the hope is to release this book toward the end of January, 2013.