Helios Unblogged is Now Available.

It's not often that I get talked into something that I don't want to do. As in life itself, sometimes it's best to listen to those who really do have your best interests at heart. In this case, it's a loose-knit bunch of advocates who want to see our efforts succeed.

As I do the thing I do, I blog about it and publish articles in various magazines and publications that have empty space to fill. They have to be fairly desperate to publish my stuff but surprise of surprises...it does happen from time to time.

In this case, a trusted friend has come to me with a few other reliable sorts and they've talked me into publishing my previously unpublished blogs, articles and rants in book form. To call helios Unblogged a "book" is a stretch. In it's dead-tree form, it will occupy a bit over 100 pages and it will have everything unpublished I've written over the past three years...things only a handful of people have ever read.

They were not published for a number of reasons. Some are conversations and interactions with others that may have been a bit "confrontational". Others just didn't have much to do with current events in the Linux Community. Still other things I didn't think would fit in the blog of helios at that particlar time...or they were omitted due to legal reasons.

Now that some of those legal restrictions have been lifted and I have ceased to really care if those "confrontational" conversations are known, I've decided to allow helios Unblogged to be published in order to fund our Komputers4Kids effort. Lord knows this thing has turned into a money-swallowing monster and we can use all the funding help we can get. Until we can afford the advertising budget HeliOS Solutions demands, we are going to do what we can to make Komputers4Kids work.

We are now taking pre-orders for helios Unblogged and you can see the hype written for it here.

Those who pre-order will be given as a bonus, a section of the book called "Hatemail to helios." Even I am amazed from time to time, the venom and honest-to-hatefulness stuff that people send me. I've pretty much given up on trying to figure out why people feel this anger toward me. The sad part is that about 80 percent of this hatemail is from Linux folks.

Sad indeed.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why, but I've been asked to personally autograph these pre-ordered books and assign a registration number to them. I am not in control of when the pre-ordering stops so there is no way I can tell you when the registration numbers and autographed copies will cease to be available.


So, I've put this off as long as I can...being the one that harps to the community on how important self-promotion is, I couldn't very well ignore my own advice. Those who have taken it upon themselves to shoulder this project would be just a wee bit miffed if I didn't do something to help myself in this effort. This is my attempt to do just that.

Because these "books" are being printed on an "as-ordered" basis, they are a bit expensive to get made. Our price for the book is high, yes...but when I can get enough pre-orders, I may eventually be able to lower the price. PDF or "Reader" digital formats may become available for $10.00 soon. Besides...look at it as finally getting something for your donations.

Even if it turns out to be pages torn to get the fire place started...it will have some use.

All-Righty Then