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OMFG: i am on the cover of Dr. Dobb’s Journal #416 (Feb 2009)!

Back in October i briefly met Mr. Jonathan Erickson, editor of Dr. Dobb’s Journal, and spoke to him a bit about the presentation he had made at the Qt Developer Days conference in Munich, Germany (primarily about concurrency). After he returned to the States we shared a few emails and then went around our business. He had, in one email exchange, asked if i would fill out a short questionnaire for a column DDJ does now and then to briefly present random programmers they meet. Not one to miss a good opportunity to write, i of course answered. That was, incidentally, on October 30th (my father’s birthday and the two year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis), and i hadn’t given it any thought since then. But i just learned that all that time, Jon was busy plotting…

A couple hours ago my mother called me to tell me that (A) she loved me, (B) the latest edition of DDJ had arrived (my subscription is sent to her to save the overseas shipping costs), and (C) that i was on the cover.

What? i beg your pardon? i seem to have a small mammal in my ears, interfering with my hearing. i thought you just said that i’m on the cover of DDJ. The DDJ.

No, seriously. The cover is my face. It’s the same picture from my home page. Only a lot bigger. Huge, one might say. (For the curious, the picture was taken in Sylt, Germany, in August of 2006, by my girlfriend, Simone.)

The articles mentioned on the cover have absolutely nothing to do with me (nor i with them) except for the little blurb on the bottom/right:

Freelance Programmer Stephan Beal, see page 12

No, seriously.

My mugshot certainly isn’t going to help them sell copies, so why that picture for the cover, of all the lovely and beautiful images they could have used? Your guess is as good as mine. My only theory at the moment is the visual association of a cloudy sky (which is mostly cropped out of that copy of the image) with the headline article, entitled “Computing in the Clouds” (but, again, i’m not associated with that article). Well, and maybe because my clothes match the overall color scheme pretty well. No idea, really.

Unfortunately, the February edition of DDJ isn’t online yet, so i can prove to you not one word of what i just wrote. i can’t post the scanned copy my mother sent (for copyright reasons). So it’s my word against… well, against someone’s, certainly.

So here’s how we can settle this: if you’ll go to your favourite I.T. news stand right now, you might just find me waiting for you! If you’re a DDJ subscriber, i’m already there.

Happy hacking!

PS: Thanks again, Jon! That really made my day!