As I mentioned, I’ll be speaking next Tuesday, October 17, 2006, at the Diablo Valley Mac User Group in Walnut Creek, California. The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. (not 7:00, as I’d said previously), though my portion of the program won’t begin until about 7:30.

I’ll be discussing backup strategies, borrowing heavily from Take Control of Mac OS X Backups, but with some new material discussing, for example, the Time Machine feature coming in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. As a bonus, I’ll spend some time toward the end discussing Thanksgiving dinner. A good time will be had by all.

After the presentation there will be a Q&A session. I’ll be happy to answer questions about any of my books, articles, Web sites, or whatnot.

To celebrate the autumnal equinox today, I’m happy to announce the publication of an appropriately fall-themed book: Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner. Like other Take Control publications, it makes complicated tasks easy for mere mortals; in this case, though, the subject matter isn’t computers, but rather cooking Thanksgiving dinner. It costs $10 for the downloadable PDF version; a spiral-bound print-on-demand version will also be available in a couple of weeks or so (regrettably, too late for readers in Canada, where Thanksgiving falls on October 9 this year). Readers of both versions get access to a special “Print Me” file with summaries of all the recipes, shopping lists, and schedules. As usual, you can download a free 31-page sample.

I’ve written a lot of ebooks (this is, I think, my 11th, depending on how you count) and I thought I’d more or less mastered the process. But this one was a much different (as in significantly longer and harder) undertaking. For one thing, recipes take a lot of time to test: if you overcook the turkey you spent the morning brining, you can’t just use an Undo command or revert to the backup turkey you archived an hour ago. For another, everyone’s kitchen, ingredients, and skills are a bit different, so what works marvelously for one tester may not work for the next. And we’ve had to overcome numerous technical hurdles (such as getting fractions to print correctly on certain platforms) and management issues (such as an illustrator flaking out on us before Jeff Tolbert came to our rescue), among many others.

In all, this project has been much more work for all of us than we’d ever imagined, and speaking for myself, it was the most difficult ebook I’ve written. That’s a bit ironic in the sense that we’re trying out this whole cookbook thing for fun, not as a change in our editorial direction. (Of course, if this title sells 10,000 copies in the next month, I think we’d all be more than willing to endure this sort of pain again…but we’re not counting our books before they’re sold.) But I also think it’s one of the best and most useful things I’ve written. I’m really proud of the way it turned out, and I expect it will make Thanksgiving a lot easier and less stressful for lots and lots of people.

Speaking of cooking and computers, I’d like to officially announce The Geeky Gourmet, my new blog about food and technology. I’ll be mentioning a lot of Thanksgiving-related stuff, of course, but the blog will cover all sorts of things: cooking science, food gadgets, restaurants, culinary technologies, and anything else pertaining to food that strikes my fancy, especially if it also has a technology angle.

Last but not least, I should call attention to the fact that I’ve retooled the look and feel of this site a bit, moving from a cluttered three-column design to a more streamlined two-column approach, swapping in a newer picture of myself, and making lots of other small changes. Perhaps I’ll even manage to post a bit more frequently, now that the place looks spiffier.

For a couple of months, I’ve been on the cusp of producing an update to Take Control of Mac OS X Backups. I updated the manuscript quite some time ago to cover things like using USB 2.0 drives with Intel Macs and backing up Windows data from Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop, but then, every time I thought we were just about ready to publish, some backup app or another got a significant update, and I’d have to go in and rearrange things again. There are just so many backup programs, and they’re in such a constant state of flux, that it’s difficult to keep up with them all—even in an ebook. But we’ve finally drawn the line and finished version 1.3; it should be available later today as a free update.

This latest version of Backups, along with Take Control of Maintaining Your Mac, will (with some modifications) be rolled into a new print book from Peachpit: Real World Mac Maintenance and Backups, due on bookstore shelves in late September or early October.

Meanwhile, even though it’s only July, my attention has been focused on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce—I’m working on my next Take Control ebook, which (no kidding) will be about Thanksgiving. This fall, nothing will be left to chance, as you’ll be able to follow my simple instructions for a delicious yet stress-free Thanksgiving dinner. It’s our first foray into a food-related topic; if it’s successful, there may be more, but we’re mainly doing it for fun.

And does this have anything to do with backups? Yes indeed. Just as things can go wrong with your computer, they can (and do) go wrong when cooking. So the Thanksgiving ebook will feature a number of troubleshooting, backup, and shortcut tips to enable you to salvage the meal if something doesn’t turn out right.

Update (7/13/06): The updated version of Backups came out today—a bit later than I’d expected, but I’m delighted to report that it’s finally available.

Two and a half weeks ago, TidBITS published a preview version of Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac. Folks who pre-ordered it and reviewed the preliminary manuscript on the Web made more than 100 comments. I incorporated most of their suggestions into the final version, and made numerous other edits and additions. The final (version 1.0) result went on sale today.

This is my tenth Take Control ebook, and despite the fact that writing it required installing Windows numerous times, it has turned out to be one of my favorites. It took me a long time to collect and test all the information in this ebook, and I think its usefulness-to-cost ratio is extremely high.

The 104-page ebook costs $10, but it includes a coupon for $10 off Parallels Desktop, which I cover in some detail and recommend highly. It also has a $5 off coupon for Small Dog Electronics, so we’re basically paying you to $5 buy it!

As usual, I’ll update this ebook as the relevant facts change. For example, if Microsoft ships Windows Vista during my lifetime, I’ll add installation and upgrade instructions. And if Apple changes the nature of Boot Camp dramatically with the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (as most people expect they will), I’ll cover that as well. Minor updates to the ebook will be free.