News and Progress
8/31/08 - Put the book under an Attribution, Share-alike license.
8/30/08 - Editted the Jokes and Dragon World chapters. Also got the barcode and ISBN, and the back cover is now uploaded.
8/29/08 - Re-added the forums, this time with phpBB. Hopefully the anti-spam features will make it usable.
8/6/08 - Finished an editing pass of the Bagels chapter.
8/1/08 - Finished several edits to the first three chapters and the Othello chapter.
6/15/08 - Version 1 of the complete book is available. Still needs layout, some editing, page numbers, and a table of contents, but the content is complete. General todo: Add block diagrams to demonstrate the AND and OR oeprators. Also finished the web page for the book.
6/13/08 - Finished the table of contents template. Fixed a bug in the hangman program. Wrote "Why Johnny Will Program", which I will publish in order to generate buzz for the book. I still need to figure out a way to add page numbers to this book.
6/12/08 - Editted chapter 5. Ran the entire text through a spell check.
6/11/08 - Completed the glossary.
6/10/08 - Completed the Othello and AI Simulation chapters! I'm done with the book's content, now I just have a (large) editing job ahead of me.
6/8/08 - Almost done with the Othello chapter content. Decided to add one more (and absolutely last) chapter on AI, which is really an extension of the Othello chapter. This chapter would cover simulating AI vs AI othello games, and determining which is a better algorithm.
6/7/08 - Edited chapters 3 and 4. Several cleanups all around. More progress on the Othello chapter.
6/6/08 - Cleaned up the HTML in all the chapters with a validation tool. Playing around with the PDF printer. Cut the Lights Out chapter and started on the Othello chapter.
6/4/08 - Started on the Lights Out chapter. Finished the Caesar Cipher chapter.
6/1/08 - Added several edits and sample runs to the chapters. Finished top portion of the Caesar Cipher (formerly called Secret Code) chapter. Some image updates.
5/31/08 - Found a website which has some nifty info on DIY Book Press. Also looking into Scribus, an open source desktop publishing app, to write this book. It doesn't have an "export to HTML" feature, however.
5/29/08 - Finished the sonar chapter's content (though it still needs editing). Added a new image to explain lists of lists in the Hangman chapter.
5/28/08 - More work done on the Sonar chapter. All that is left is the flow chart and then editing, which I can do with another day of work.
5/23/08 - Done with the Sonar chapter, aside from editing. Finished a round of editing on chapters 3 and 4. Swapped order of Lights Out and Othello.
5/22/08 - More work done on the Sonar chapter. Perhaps adding these extra chapters was a mistake? On the other hand, I feel like they are much more interactive games than Hangman and Tic Tac Toe.
5/21/08 - More work done on the Sonar chapter.
5/20/08 - More work done on the Sonar chapter.
4/29/08 - Added comments to othello and lights out. Placed a zip of all source and their py2exe compiled versions online.
4/28/08 - Added the forum to the website. Added comments to the sonar game.
4/27/08 - Finished code for Sonar. Some modifications to the other chapters. Completed a copy right page.
4/26/08 - Finished the Bagels chapter. Finished code for Lights Out. Some modifications to the other chapters.
4/25/08 - Added the Othello source code.
4/23/08 - Added a couple new chapters, against my better judgement. Bagels and Othello. Code is complete for Bagels. Also re-added the first secret code chapter, just to give a taste in this book. That pushes back my expected deadline a week or so.
4/22/08 - Better table of contents and glossary. Minor updates to various chapters. Resizing some images in Chapter 2. Experimenting with PDFCreator.
4/21/08 - Completed the Tic Tac Toe chapter. Beginning to go back and edit the earlier chapters and fill out the glossary.
4/20/08 - Another five pages done on the Tic Tac Toe chapter.
4/19/08 - More work done on the Tic Tac Toe chapter.
4/18/08 - Finished the rough draft of the Hangman chapter. Content-wise it is complete, though I still need to go through and edit it.
4/17/08 - Almost finished with the Hangman chapter. Minor code updates to Tic Tac Toe
4/14/08 - After a long pause, minor updates. Decided to cut out the remaining chapters and put those in a sequel book. This reduces my scope to the basics and keeps the book at a more digestible size.
2/28/08 - More updates to the hangman chapter. Man, this is getting to be a huge chapter. Added an estimated page count at the bottom of this page.
2/26/08 - More updates to the hangman chapter.
2/01/08 - Minor updates to the hangman chapter.
1/29/08 - Fixed traces (compatible with IE). Added flow charts for Dragon World and Hangman. (Hopefully this will help teach the reader how to design programs themselves instead of just copying them from the book.) Changed the CSS file for the book so that I use a serif font in general.
I have also finalized the chapters and Table of Contents. Which is good, because this book had a bad habit of feature creep. I can always add in new games & chapters later.
01/28/08 - Added trace of the Dragon World program.
01/24/08 - Added trace of the Jokes program, editted the trace of the second Guess the Number.
01/23/08 - Proof-read chapter 5. Minor edits and corrections. Improved the cover image.
01/22/08 - Created the cover art and proof-read chapters 1 to 4 (made minor edits and corrections).
01/14/08 - Uploaded the secret code & code cracker programs. Those chapters currently have no explanation, but I didn't want to sit on the code any longer. Square Dodge is a GUI game that requires PyGame to run. The code for these programs will probably need cleaning up before I write out the chapters for them.
01/11/08 - More updates to the Hangman chapter. Got rid of the dialogs (they'll be too distracting without adding any real value. I'll use the animal graphics in some of the games though.) Also completed the javascript for a program stepper to let people see how the program executes step by step.
12/16/07 - Started on the Hangman and Tic Tac Toe chapters. Added a couple of "dialogs". The dialogs serve to review the content in the book through a socratic technique. Not sure if that adds to the book at all, and it may get axed later. But I liked the format in Godel Escher Bach, so I'm emulating it here.
12/10/07 - Finished Dragon World chapter. Starting the hang man and tic tac toe chapters (the source code is complete).
10/28/07 - Generally started on this project with outlines and brain storming.
Eventually, I would also like to add chapters on three things: 1) how to use the debugger, 2) how to plan out a program, and 3) a general study question chapter (simply "what is the output of this code", or "write a program that outputs xxx".