Guy has an awesome sense of humour.

Holy crap Charles Petzold lives in my zip code 3 blocks from me.

I think your "famous blogger" T-Shirt is officially no longer a joke. :)

Kudus to Mr. Petzold for his great attitude!

Jeff, you might want to consider blurring out his mailing address - in case that happens to be his HOME address or something.

That was awfully nice of him after you so callously insulted his last book. ^_^

Once you've finished the book, tell us how you like it! I'm curious to see if your suggestions improved his work.

Jeff,

Was it wise to publish his mailing address?

I'm not sure I want to send you any mail now...

Geoffrey

Petzold is a class act indeed! And I still prefer his books to other Windows tutorials, colored or not :)

It's all to easy to forget the incredible amount of personal effort that goes into making a technical manual such as this by an author. Truly mind boggling...

I can imagine that after all the blood, sweat, and tears they put into their work that they'd be much more defensive. It's great to see that he's able to shoulder that criticism and win the critic over the old fashioned way.

Kudos.

> Was it wise to publish his mailing address?

FWIW, he's listed in the phone book under that address, so I don't think it's privileged information..

http://www.google.com/search?q=charles+petzold+%22new+york%2C+ny%22

C.P. kicks butt! I got my start with his iconic early Windows and OS/2 Presentation Manager books.

jeff - could you please write down what c.p. wrote on the last pic? i can 't decipher what's written there -.-

Hey Petzold, I think your book sucks too. Email me for my mailing address.

;)

Pardon the stupid question: Is this book about 3D dev on Silverlight?

Kudos to CP. I can't wait to add that WPF book to my growing collection.

hacktick, it reads:

Jeff,
Hope you enjoy [underlined]this[/u] one!
(And I hope I didn't make too many coding [underlined]or[/u]
literary horrors.)
Charles Petzold

thank you, transcriber ;-)

@Andrew

This book is about WPF 3D programming. Silverlight uses a subset of WPF. It is very close to what you want, but not EXACTLY, as I'm not sure if Silverlight even supports 3D, and if it does, may not support everything in this book. I'm sure you can look it up somewhere.

If it sucks I'm sure you could make a packet on ebay :-)

Good job Mr Petzold, thats awesome.

Classy!

Charles Petzold is a god. A minor god, but a god. And to receive an actual signed copy of his book, unprompted, makes you a protogod. Wow.

Period after E but not after BLVD?
Comma between POINT RICHMOND and CA but not between NY and NY?
This code does not compile.
Don't trust it.

I second the kudos to Mr. Petzold on having a sense of humor. Shows class, which is rare enough lately..

Don't you think printing the guys name and mailing address on a widely read blog might not be such a wonderful idea?

Man, you guys are sensitive. Some people consider their address a matter of public record, not necessarily a state secret. What are we, Dick Cheney?

Here's my address:

Jeff Atwood
410 Clayton Ave.
El Cerrito, CA 94530

Scary!

I'm going to knock on your door and run away!

hey AC, you can try but he has plasma guns on the roof :)

I wish everyone I slated on my blog sent me stuff. Especially car manufacturers

How paranoid are your readers Jeff ?

"Here's my address:

Jeff Atwood
410 Clayton Ave.
El Cerrito, CA 94530

Scary!"

Haha! It's true! What's so special about an address? I guess if you REALLY want to spend the money and come and see me, I guess that might be creapy..... Maybe.....

It may be that he's not afraid of posting his address himself, it may be a case that you are posting his address without his consent to do so.

Steve.

Although I guess Jeff's address is public record (at least it is now -- I couldn't find it on anywho.com), it's amazing what you can find just by poking around.

For example, (probably) Jeff's neighbor had a false alarm call to the fire department on 2/22/03.
http://www.el-cerrito.org/fire/call_log_february2003.html
(is there a story?? :D)

According to Zillow.com, Jeff's house is worth ~$613,000, has 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and is 1200 sq.ft.
http://www.zillow.com/search/Search.htm?addrstrthood=410+Clayton+Ave&citystatezip=el+cerrito%2C+ca&GOButton=%3CSPAN%3EGO%3C%2FSPAN%3E

Other 'public record' sites let us know that Jeff is 36.

There's a lot more out there (thanks to Google) but I'm not feeling too stalkerish this morning :)

Petzold is an industry legend and a class act. Like many people I learned Windows programming at the API level from his classic Programming Windows book.

tjb

I haven't read the book or your post about it, but I'm sure if it's anything like all other Microsoft sponsored documentation, it's bloated and confusing.

I've always wondered why every single code sample microsoft puts out includes huge amounts of code that does things that have nothing to do with the sample. So if I want to see how I should write a particular piece of code, I first have to extract it from all of the extra code. I really don't have the time or the patience to do that, so I always end up searching Google and finding some third-party article that explains it clear as day and shows me exactly what to do.

Sometimes I feel like Microsoft over-engineers everything so that only they know how to use it.

I'm looking forward for my copy for arrive, progress on my 3D WPF pinball simluation is on hold until I've got a solid 3D reference book: http://www.strifestrips.com/3dpinball

Total class act, Mr Petzold is. And a fine author as well.

> According to Zillow.com, Jeff's house is worth ~$613,000, has 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and is 1200 sq.ft.

Also known as "welcome to California". It's even crazier in Silicon Valley, if you can imagine that.

> How paranoid are your readers Jeff ?

Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't after them.

I removed the closeup of Petzold's address last night, just in case. It's a fair criticism, although I don't agree with it. Better to err on the side of caution, I suppose.

That's big of Mr. Petzold, and shows some heartwarming camaraderie among Windows buffs.

Just for the record, I read his book on "Programming Windows 95" and learned an important lesson from it: I decided then and there never to code to the horror that is the Windows C API. I am utterly thankful to Delphi and Java for hiding it so well.

Hi Jeff,

I'm interested to read your assessment of the 3D book.

> I removed the closeup of Petzold's address last night, just in case.

Kind of pointless to remove it when you still have the comment showing how easy it is to find it on Google. I'd think the only options that would make sense would be to remove both or (preferably, since this is silly) to remove neither.

For the record, 'tain't no big deal about my address. My address and phone number have been listed in the Manhattan phone directory since 1975, and anybody regularly reading my own blog could easily locate the building in which I live, and even estimate which window was mine! (Here's a view of the corner of 9th St and Broadway: http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2006/02/120940.html)

When I wrote for "PC Magazine" back in the 1980s, sometimes someone would have a question about one of the little DOS utilities I had written for the magazine, and surmise that perhaps I lived in the same city that was home to the magazine. And then I'd get a phone call: "I have a question about the SWEEP program you wrote...."

Now *that* was weird, and that's why Al Gore and I teamed up to invent email.

>> How paranoid are your readers Jeff ?
> Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't after them.

Reminds me of the old joke :

I've watched you; I've followed you; I've even fired a shot at you to see how you would react.
There's only one conclusion to draw : You are paranoid.

P.S. What's the deal with copying text from this blog? You can't finely mouse- or keyboard-select a limited amount of text from any article. It either copies everything from the point of selection to the top of the document or to the bottom. I even banged on my shift & control keys just in case any of them were stuck on. I just don't remember this being an issue in my previous quotations. (There is the single exception that you can double-click any word & select it alone, but that's not very useful for copying paragraphs of text. And even after selecting a single word, you can't hold the shift key & use the arrow keys to select more text.)

I lived in El Cerrito (on Lexington) in the early '60s. Had an empty lot next door. Stepped on a yellow jacket nest and one flew up my nose and about 10 others started biting my head.

> ... and that's why Al Gore and I teamed up to invent email.
> -- Charles Petzold

Now *that's* funny.

And I bet your royalty on each email sent is more than Al's, huh? Lucky bastard.

> For the record, 'tain't no big deal about my address.

There you have it. Thanks again for the book, Mr. Petzold!

> What's the deal with copying text from this blog?

Let me guess: you're using IE6.

As far as I cen tell, this is an IE6 problem; the markup itself is clean. Can you switch to something more modern, like IE7 or Firefox?

Also, I think Credence Clearwater Revival is from El Cerrito.

Yep, CCR is from El Cerrito. They played their last concert at El Cerrito High (the Mighty Gauchos) which is less than 2 blocks from my house.

(Google Maps link)
http://tinyurl.com/2fak7w

> Let me guess: you're using IE6.
> As far as I cen tell, this is an IE6 problem; the markup itself is clean. Can you switch to something more modern, like IE7 or Firefox?

Yes I am; & no, because I'm just too stubborn to switch to FF & too paranoid to upgrade to IE7.

But thanks for letting me know it's a browser incompatibility, even though I think it's a fairly recent issue since I've copied/pasted from here before.

Hm, sounds like bribery or the tactic Michael Jordan used before game time against the Knicks (if anyone remembers that). Just kidding...

Seriously, in defense of Petzold, his books are not intended so much for beginners. But they are great to fill any missing knowledge gap after you have a better understanding about the topic. By that time, other books no longer seem interesting to read, but Petzold's books begin to.

That was indeed classy of Charles Petzold.

OTOH Jeff, I hope this classic example of conflict of interest won't deter you from the kind of rude-but-needed-to-be-said review of Charles (or anyones) work.

I have just read most of Petzold's and Nathan's WPF books. There is a lot of great content in Petzold's book and I got a lot out of it. But I was frustrated by the lack of simple, tech-writing-101 structural cues like subheadings. I'd have been much happier if Petzold poured his high-quality content into the more standard, obviously structured style that Nathan uses. Hopefully Charles will actually adapt to the constructive criticism rather than just blowing it off. Honestly Charles, take one of your chapters in manuscript form and sit down with a tech writing instructor who doesn't know who you are and see what they say about your existing style. No one's too old to improve.

Alex

What conflict of interest? Writing rude-but-needed-to-be-said reviews gets him free books.

> I removed the closeup of Petzold's address last night, just in case.
> It's a fair criticism, although I don't agree with it.
> Better to err on the side of caution, I suppose.

Ahh.. thanks to the paranoid world we're living in, we now we have to use google cache to see the damn image, how annoying is that?

I am pretty sure, he will sell quite a few books more now. (so it is a quite cheap advertisment)

C.Petzold, a true WinAPI32 hero! I can still remember as a first year @ the university this >600 pages WinAPI32 manual! Ooh my God. C.Petzold's books were ok ...the real problem was WinAPI32 with C++!

I think some-one could write a post for that

How Not To Write an API :D

hehe I've been given a signed copy too! Now if only I was as famous as you Jeff ;)

http://runtothehills.org/rob/archives/56