Earlier I had blogged about my forays into Crystal Reports, so I ended up getting a copy of Brian Bischof's Crystal Reports .NET Programming book, which is 500+ pages on using Crystal Reports in a .NET environment. I've yet to have a chance to read the book, been swamped with non-CR tasks as of late, but expect the book to be invaluable once the priorities shift back to CR, especially with some of the more complicated CR reports that are in the pipeline. As I work through Brian's book, I'll be sure to post a review on my blog.
For those interested in writing, Brian's story is a unique one in the computer trade book industry. Brian originally started writing his CR book for a publisher but the book got nixed due to the publishing company going out of business, IIRC. Having invested the time into creating the majority of the book, Brian decided to self-publish the book. I met up with Brian about 13 months ago, back when he was living in San Diego, and learned about the economics of self-publishing, as shared in this blog entry. After talking a bit with Brian, I think I'm going to give self-publishing a try (eventually).
Of course, I shouldn't go on promising too much. I've already promised myself I'd start writing fiction before the year's end, and that's looking less and less likely with looming deadlines both on the consulting side and book-writing side. We'll see how the consulting gigs progress through the remainder of this year...