Chet Haase's Blog

Done? Done. It's Here

We're finally, actually done. The book exists, in hardcopy form. Romain and I received our advance copies yesterday. The rest will arrive in the warehouse in the next few days, so Amazon's August 17th date is probably pretty accurate.

I thought it would be useful to compare the book to other books that readers might know. Comparing it in text or concept would be way too time-consuming and tedious. Besides, it's a graphics book. So I took a picture:

We can see, from the picture, how Filthy Rich Clients compares to other important books. For example, the book is much smaller and less significant than Edward Gorey's Amphigorey Too anthology, yet it offers far more than the classic Beyond the Far Side. It is somewhat less weighty than some of my favorite graphics books, Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice" and Graphics Gems II, but is of a similar height to the last Harry Potter book. It is quite close in height to Effective Java, although considerably longer and therefore deeper (Josh obviously needed more screenshots in his book). Finally, it is significantly larger and more weighty than the series of classic child and adult novels toward the right.

Hopefully this gives you a good sense for whether the book will suit your needs.

Comments

• Congratulations!!!

  Posted by: geertjan on August 07, 2007 at 11:23 AM

• Looks rather tidy. And lacks bling.

  Posted by: sumitkishore on August 07, 2007 at 12:15 PM

• Congratulations! It's great to see another Carleton graduate in the Java graphics world. I just preordered my copy from Amazon and it should ship in 10 days.

  Posted by: scottoreilly on August 07, 2007 at 12:50 PM

• great job..

  Posted by: felipegaucho on August 08, 2007 at 03:52 AM

• I asked myself -when I read your excellent book a couple of weeks ago- wouldn't we want "Filthily Rich Clients" rather then "Filthy Rich Clients" ? "Rich Filthy Clients" wouldn't be that good to have and neither would it be of use to have "Clients' Rich Filth" (or anyone's Filth for that matter). Could you please clarify.

  Posted by: mikaelgrev on August 08, 2007 at 04:18 AM

• I have to prop my overheated laptop up on a book to give it extra air circulation underneath. Otherwise it sometimes crashes during my workday. Unfortunately the Harry Potter book is too thick; it produces too steep an angle to work comfortably. Effective Java almost works, but the laptop still crashes on occasion -- obviously the book is too thin. I'm thinking Filthy Rich Clients might suit my needs perfectly.
  

  Posted by: joconner on August 09, 2007 at 10:15 PM

• When I saw a video promo for this book from a link on Sun's home java page and after checking out filthyrichclients.org, I knew I just had to have this book! I preordered a copy from Amazon a few days ago and am now just waiting for my order to ship.

  Posted by: markt1 on August 12, 2007 at 02:55 AM

• mikaelgrev: Like many of the footnotes in the book, the title is all about the joke. If "rich" clients are good, then "filthy rich" (a term which doesn't seem to translate well outside of English, meaning "incredibly rich") must be really good. Right?
  
  joconner: It's great to hear that you've found some other uses for the book. We aimed for a size that would help the book serve many uses, including a monitor prop, a door stop, a lunch tray, and a nice aid in hand-to-hand combat. We also recommend that you wear the book on your chest, as its 600 pages will serve as adequate body armor. Like Paris Hilton, the content inside is really secondary to the size and weight of the packaging.

  markt1: Glad to hear you've ordered it. Hopefully it's arriving in your mailbox this week. Amazon says "4 to 6 weeks" although I have to think that's an error in their database since they're supposed to start receiving and sending out copies this week. Maybe they're talking about the "Super-Duper Shipping Saver" program, where they'll actually pay you to pick that shipping option whose copies are sent out by bike messengers direct from Seattle, but which take several weeks to arrive.
  

  Posted by: chet on August 16, 2007 at 05:41 AM

• By the way, if/when anyone gets your copy from Amazon, I'd love to hear about it. I'm hoping this happens in the next few days, but it's hard to know since I had a different channel for getting my copy (mine was $32.99 cheaper, but took a lot more effort and time...).
  Oh, and if anyone feels inspired enough to post a review on Amazon, we wouldn't mind.

  Posted by: chet on August 16, 2007 at 01:37 PM

• Where can we get the book to buy in Nigeria considering the fact that lots of us dont have credit cards yet. Very food book and going buy all the source codes of the examples (which i have used in and out) means that I JUST MUST HAVE COPY.....

  Jaji

  Posted by: lukman_jaji on August 19, 2007 at 09:59 AM

• I just got a notification from Amazon that the shipment has been delayed until (September 19, 2007 - October 3, 2007).

  Posted by: scottoreilly on August 20, 2007 at 08:14 AM

• scottoreilly: Thanks, I've heard similiar news from other folks that pre-ordered from Amazon. It appears (according to the publisher) that Amazon's having some, er, issues with the data for items that are new to their catalog. Hopefully this will get resolved soon - the darn book is out there and available, and this just seems to be a filthy bug in the Amazon system that needs to get fixed.

  Posted by: chet on August 20, 2007 at 08:22 AM

• Update: It appears that Amazon's distribution issues are better now. Hopefully people can actually order and receive the book there now...

  Posted by: chet on August 27, 2007 at 07:10 AM

• I just got my copy from Amazon ahead of their estimated delivery date and it's fantastic!

  Posted by: scottoreilly on September 04, 2007 at 12:34 PM

• Nice job, very infromative and light to read... but is it above picture meant to advertise more than your book? ;)

  Posted by: alienisty on September 11, 2007 at 05:40 PM

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  Posted by: pasing3 on June 17, 2008 at 01:23 AM

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