I have at long last returned to my online book to try to create an actual paper/print version of it using lulu (now that I've got a pretty good pile of books I've done and have learned a lot of the gotchas it seemed like time). After a certain amount of teeth-gritting cursing as I learned that my eps files included non-embedded fonts where lulu requires embedded fonts, followed by a frenetic conversion of eps to jpg and epsfig to graphicx and latex/dvips/ps2pdf to pdflatex in Makefiles, I succeeded in getting a crown quarto conversion of the book to upload and build into a book with a still-dweeby cover from their stock cover list. It passes the initial page-riffle in evince, but paper copies often have hidden flaws and it will take a week or so for me to get one to review.
The book also (momentarily) has ALL the flaws of the online version -- missing chapters, somewhat obsolete material (but still a damn good treatment of Amdahl's Law and parallel scaling if I do say so myself, and still a good getting started sort of treatment for newbies). So it may be of some benefit even in its 0.1 draft version. I do plan to work on it pretty aggressively to turn it a book without all the missing sections, then into a book that is more up to date (as in all computers currently made are pretty much multicores and have gigabit ethernet onboard, not single cores where you have to buy and add 100BT), then into a book with more sections that is up to date again. That way it won't "look" so obviously unfinished and I can fool more people into buying it so I can grow fabulously rich...;-) Anyway, I've pretty much broken the hell out of my personal website Makefile targets for A4 and postscript images, and probably won't rebuild them any time soon. So the online version at Duke is likely frozen for the time being where its been for some years anyway (so no big deal). So for now, the FREE DOWNLOAD available via my lulu store drop for the book will be the only up-to-date version of the text available, and it should pretty much exactly match the paper/print text version. In the long run, this will (I hope) prove beneficial. If people actually buy paper copies of the book (as so many people have requested and said that they would in years past) I'll have a strong incentive to work on it and update it. If people are happy with it pretty much as it is, downloading the free PDF, that's fine too. Either way I'm going to clean it up at least one more time and make it fairly current and "complete" and buy it an ISBN just so it can be found on Amazon and B&N and BookSense webstores. I don't expect it will ever be horribly expensive, and I do expect to continue to make a PDF download available for free pretty much forever (for our many friends overseas who would have a hard time affording even an inexpensive book). Hopefully that's not too spammy and self-serving an announcement, but if it is, well, what can I say? Demote me to proctored or something...;-) Remember, the rgb web-store is here: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=877977 and Engineering a Beowulf-Style Compute Cluster is right there underneath (in no particular order that I can discern). You can see that the download is immediately available for free (and grab one right away if you need one). I'd LOVE feedback, suggestions, comments -- a good time for it as I crank up to work like hell on it for a while. I plan to include some of the content I wrote for CWM (now on clustermonkey.net) in suitable chapters or sections. I also promise to autograph any print copies of any of the draft versions to increase their eventual FABULOUS value one day (yeah, right...:-) if and when I have the opportunity. Be Warned! As noted above, the print copy hasn't been reviewed by me yet, and might look a bit "odd". Chances are pretty good it is readable, though, as the page sizes and so on are a perfect match and it IS my fifth or sixth lulu effort... but purchase now at your own risk! rgb -- Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:[EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
