I’ve been itching to talk about this for a good six months. But now I have official permission from my editor, so I’m going to town. In March 2010, there’s going to be a new book on store shelves everywhere. It’ll have my name on it, and it’s called Web Development with the Mac. The book is part of a new series by Wiley, targeting Macintosh developers. The series includes books on Objective-C, Java, Cocoa Touch, iPhone Game Development and Snow Leopard Server.

I’m a big fan of O’Reilly. They publish great, nerdy tech books for people like you and me (no, not you, Mom). So when my name was pulled in a draw to win an O’Reilly book, I was elated. O’Reilly has a deal with Cocoaheads groups around the world, it seems, and our Toronto chapter has just joined the program. The book at issue, as you have no doubt deduced from the headline, is iPhone Hacks, by David Jurick, Adam & Damien Stolarz.

The Sunny Side of C4[3] There’s no doubt about it: C4 is a marathon of an event. For someone like me, a dedicated introvert, there can be no greater challenge than being put in the presence of 170 other people for 48 hours, and being asked to interact with them. But oh my, who those people are. If we were talking about your average crowd of slack-jawed, too-much-TV-watching, baggy-pants-wearing, Blackberry-wielding gum chewers, I would have taken a pass.

I’m back from C4 now, and as I come down from the adrenalin rush of a fascinating weekend, followed by a not-that-bad-yet-still-horrendous flight, one thing from this weekend has stuck with me. And I think it’s going to stick with me for some time to come. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen the movie Serenity: that feature-length conclusion to the television triumph that was Firefly. Perhaps, like me, you’ve only seen it once.