Software Diagnostics Library

It now becomes a tradition to publish a sample chapter about heap. As promised here are two draft pages from the forthcoming Windows® Debugging Notebook:

05 (0×05): Heap / Pool / Paged / NonPaged

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

01:00 am 24.05 I noticed it reached #1 bestseller status in Assembly Language Programming category:

Because the status is updated hourly you might not see the same status when you read this post

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

The book has finally made it through Google Search program and is available for search here:

http://www.google.com/books?id=RR5whfK1BYsC

Also, yesterday I approved the hardcover version for distribution on Amazon and it should be available there in a week or so.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

This is a picture from PubForum event gallery. I’m on the left and Rich Crusco, MVP, Citrix Technical Evangelist for Application Delivery and Virtualization technologies, is on the right. Visitors often think that these books are just on crash dumps… Click on it to enlarge:

More pictures can be found on here.

 - Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

As a happy owner of an Apple MacBook Air Laptop I’m introducing the new blog category where I’m going to dig into crash dump analysis on Mac OS X and FreeBSD whenever an occasion happens.

In order to seamlessly analyze Windows crash dumps and use WinDbg I also bought VMware Fusion

and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac to write about my experience:

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

PubForum pictures are available where you can see me selling Crash Dump Tools to the audience and explaining broken clipboard chains:

Pictures

All presentations from that event are available  here:

Presentations

My presentation is also available here:

Citrix Tools: PubForum Presentation

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I thought I discovered the concept “Books as Software” but Google search reveals that it was done before me by Shriram Krishnamurthi:

http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Memos/Books-as-Software/

It’s good to see that I wasn’t alone to notice this concept after publishing my first book on Lulu. However I went further and registered as a publisher and now use Lightning Source for long term publishing through Ingram and online bookstores like Amazon. Lulu now serves the purpose of a bookstore, instant publishing to test concepts, and also to publish in formats that are not available through Lightning Source.

Moving forward and thinking about multiple books brings us to consider book series as software product lines as well. We also need some kind of a management process that I call Iterative and Incremental Publishing taken from the family of scalable Unified Processes like Rational that I am used to. Scaled down to just one book it can be called Iterative and Incremental Writing as well. I was thinking about during past two months and finally came up with an idea to release a short book in October to help others to spring into technical self-publishing and writing especially software engineers. Iterative and Incremental Writing techniques can also be applied to traditional publishing as well where you already have an accepted book proposal similar to vision and requirements documentation and perhaps you have a draft chapter and table of contents that can be considered as a working software prototype.

The forthcoming book has the following draft product details:

• Title: Technical Books As Software: Iterative and Incremental Writing and Publishing
• Author: Dmitry Vostokov
• Publisher: Opentask (15 October 2008)
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 22.86 x 15.24
• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-03-2
• Paperback: 128 pages

I think there is a big difference between technical and other book genres like fiction so I decided to limit myself to technical book writing and publishing although some concepts of iterative and incremental development can be applied to other book categories as well where a process needs to be established to achieve the writing and publishing goals.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Here is the presentation PDF file:

Citrix Tools - everything you need for troubleshooting, optimization and analysis

It is based on my previous presentation with a few added slides which can be downloaded from Citrix support web site:

Selected Citrix Troubleshooting Tools

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Thanks to Volker who noticed WinDbg online help I was able to quickly update my HTML version of CDA Poster to point to online links instead of the local help CHM file:

http://www.dumpanalysis.org/CDAPoster.html

It is also featured on http://www.windbg.org

I’m also working on the better version that will be released simultaneuosly with WDN book.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

As always you can quickly get it through WinDbg Quick Links page:

http://www.windbg.org

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I’m presenting Citrix Tools at the famous PubForum event. It is a non-commercial Microsoft Terminal Services, Citrix, Virtualization and Server-Based Computing event. This year PubForum is held in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. See the final event details and agenda:

PubForum, 2008

My presentation date, time and topic are:

Friday, May 9, 19:00 “Citrix Tools - everything you need for troubleshooting, optimization and analysis”

See you there

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

This is a must have book for system administrators of complex Windows server platforms and client workstations to understand and choose the best course of action to address system and application crashes, hangs, CPU spikes and memory leaks. It is also invaluable to general Windows users and technical support engineers.

• Title: Crash Dump Analysis for System Administrators and Support Engineers
• Authors: Thomas Monahan, Dmitry Vostokov
• Publisher: Opentask (30 November 2009)
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 22.86 x 15.24
• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-02-5
• Paperback: 180 pages

 - Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

OpenTask, the publisher of Crash Dump Analysis books, joins PMA, the Independent Book Publishers Association.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Finally, thanks to agreement with Lightning Source, the paperback edition is available on Amazon where you can purchase it too:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1

Hardcover edition will be available there in a few weeks.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Preliminary Table of Contents is available for previously announced Windows® Debugging Notebook:

Draft Table of Contents

This book also features:

• - 256 pages 

• - 64 essential WinDbg commands

• - 32 essential concepts

• - 16 essential tools including Citrix

• - Hexadecimal and binary page numbering

• - Quick base, meta and extension command reminder at the bottom of each page

• - Expanded Crash Dump Analysis checklists

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Not too many new posts. Will try to catch up in May. 

ManagementBits Blog:

Managing Reading via Preemptive Multireading

LiterateScientist Blog:

Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich

The Fall of Berlin 1945

The Hundred-Year Lie

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I have created Book Errata page at this address:

http://www.dumpanalysis.org/MDAA-Volume1-Errata

The link to it has been also added to the main book ad page:

Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

This is the next scheduled book from Crash Dump Analysis Publishing Roadmap:

• Title: Windows® Debugging Notebook: Essential Concepts, WinDbg Commands and Tools
• Authors: Roberto Alexis Farah, Dmitry Vostokov
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 22.86 x 15.24

• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-00-1
• Publisher: Opentask (1 December 2009)
• Paperback: 256 pages

• ISBN-13: 978-0-9558328-5-7
• Publisher: Opentask (1 February 2010)
• Hardcover (Cloth): 256 pages

Draft Table of Contents will be published next month together with a sample chapter.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

Due to demand from people that prefer ebooks I published Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 1 in a digital format that can be purchased in Crash Dump Analysis Store. This format has color pictures inside.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -

I’ve made available Search Inside for MDAA V1 book on Amazon:

Amazon Search Inside

It is still not available for purchase there but will be in a few weeks because I use a different POD company for WW distribution and I made my submission too late. In the mean time you can buy it directly from Dump Analysis Store. Google Book Search will also be available soon too.

Note: The book is shown as color book inside but it is B/W in printed form. I apologize for any confusion that might have arisen from this fact. I’m working on a digital version and it will have color pictures inside.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -