Perl blog post #64

This week I posted on my Other Blog because I wanted to report on our trip last week to Las Vegas for this year’s YAPC (Perl conference).  Of course, since I took two of my children, it was also a bit of a family vacation, so feel free to check out the post even if you’re not a Perl person.  There’s a bit of technojargon, but overall it’s pretty comprehensible.  Enjoy.

Perl blog post #63

This week, I posted something over on my Other Blog.  So, if you’re a Perl person, check it out.  If not ... well, there’s always next week.

Perl blog post #62

About a week and half ago, I ran into a bug at work that I thought was pretty interesting, so I decided to write that up and post it to my Other Blog, which I did.  If you’re a fellow Perl geek, check it out.

(If not, try back in a couple of weeks.)

Perl blog post #61

Recently, I discovered what “literate programming” was, so I wrote a post about it.  Obviously, I posted that on my Other Blog.

Perl blog post #60

This week, unusually, I’ve done another post on my Other Blog—that’s two in a month!  Unheard of.  So, if you have any interest in the topic of hardcoding unit test data (e.g. whether or not you should), head on over there.  If that sounds totally boring to you, then you’ll just have to wait until next week.  (Or, more realistically, wait for two weeks for something substantial.)  See you then.

Perl blog post #59

After more than a year off, I finally return to my Other Blog for a Perl post.  You’ve certainly heard of the Y2K bug ... perhaps you’ve even heard of the Y2038 bug ... but have you heard of the Y2020 bug?  No, of course you haven’t, because I just made it up.  But go over and check it out, if you’re so inclined.

Perl blog post #58

This week, I return to my Other Blog after a brief absence.  If you know Perl, and you’ve ever wondered what a good use for the local keyword might be, head over there and check it out.  And, if you don’t know Perl, then I’d be very surprised if you’d ever wondered that.  But, hey: stranger things have happened.  Probably.

Perl blog post #57

This week I’ve done a full post over on my Other Blog as regards YAPC 2018.  Which I really should refer to as “The Perl Conference,” now that they’ve changed the name, but I will always think of it as YAPC.

This year was in Salt Lake City again, and we took the whole family (as I mentioned last week) and spent some time with the kids’ grandparents and one of their many uncles.  We didn’t do much as far as Utah sightseeing goes, but it was a chance to enjoy some quality family time, so it was good in that sense.  And we stayed in this wonderfully weird, creepy house which was built in 1889, and various doors kept opening by themselves and scaring the crap out of us, so that was fun.  Other than that, the only exciting thing we really did was go see The Incredibles 2, which was pretty awesome.  I think everyone enjoyed that.

So, now we’re back at home after a week away, including 4 days of 6 – 7 hours’ worth of driving, which is about all we could manage at a time.  We considered trying to make it straight through in one day (even only trying to do so one way), but, in the end, we figured that 5 humans and 2 canines in a car for 7 hours is damned plenty.  We stayed in a newish hotel in Mesquite, Nevada (right near the Arizona border).  I spent some of the driving days doing things (mostly Perl things) on my laptop while riding in the car, which I’m old enough to still think is pretty amazing.  My kids are all like, yeah, so?

Another thing we did while at the Utah rental place, in the company of grandparents, was to officially graduate my eldest child from homeschool high school.  We adopted the rough format of the Sudbury school where said child first attended school, which is that we asked for a thesis on why the student should be allowed to graduate: in order words, to what extent are they prepared to go out and be a self-sufficient adult?  And then there are some questions (occasionally even quite pointed questions, making the person defend the thesis), then there’s a vote (which is mostly pro forma) and then we proclaim them graduated.  So we did all that, and it was pretty nice.  It’s perhaps not the formal, hats-in-the-air ceremony that most get when they get out of high school, but I think it was impactful, and hopefully memorable.

But it’s nice to be back home, back in one’s own bed, with one’s one shower, one’s own recliner, one’s own TV, eating one’s own food instead of mostly bad-for-you fast food and whatnot, and so on.  As we get older, it gets harder and harder to be away from home.  I used to think that was because you just needed more crap as you get to be an old fogey: you need your medicine, and your special pillows, and all that sort of thing.  But now I think it’s more that, at my age, I’ve spent years and years working out what I need to have to be at my most relaxed and happy, and, when I leave home, I’m leaving all that behind.

Or, then again, maybe I’m just looking for excuses to avoid admitting that I’ve become the old fogey myself.  Either way, good to be back home.

Perl blog post #56

This week I decided to pop over to my Other Blog to write about some interesting code I ran across at $work the other day.  It’s been a while and I didn’t want my Perl homies to feel neglected.  This one’s pretty code-heavy, so, if you’re not a fellow Perl geek, you’d probably want to give it a pass.  But, hey: there’s always next week.

Perl blog post #55

As promised and/or threatened last week, this week I’ve done a new post on my Other Blog.  It relates to some long-awaited (well, at least I was long awaiting it) updates for my latest CPAN module, Date::Easy.  If you’re into that sort of thing—Perl, and CPAN, and dates, and whatnot—you should totally check it out.  If everything I just said is gibberish to you, you may have to wait yet another week for anything sensible to show up here.

Perl blog post #54

Today I’ve posted an update on a couple of my CPAN modules over on my Other Blog.  While it is somewhat technical in the later paragraphs—even including some actual code this time!—it also includes some introductory paragraphs where I ramble on about my tendency to be distracted easily and how I probably have ADHD and I probably won’t even make it to the end of this.  So you may wish to at least read the first few bits and then tune out once you feel like it got too technogeeky and your brain checked out.  And then you can feel just like I do when I get tired of my latest project.

But after that you’re on your own.  Okay, I’ll give you one minor suggestion: I did just finish Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell on Netflix, and I quite recommend it.  Eddie Marsan and Marc Warren alone would make it worthwhile, but the remainder of the cast, plus an excellent adaption of Susanna Clarke’s riveting story, makes it unmissable.  Just my 2¢ worth.

Perl blog post #53

Friday night I dreamt about time zones ...

This makes sense, as I have finally released an official version of my date module, which you can read all about over on my Other Blog.  So I’ve been drowning in timezone-related minutiae all week, which week I spent at YAPC, which you can also read about over on my Other Blog.  (Basically, I had two things to write about, and neither one was really a full blog post’s worth, so I just did two half-posts.  So to speak.)

As is becoming a (somewhat disturbing) tradition, last Sunday I was engaged in YAPC travel-related activities and completely spaced on the blog post again.  This pisses me off (at myself) because I knew that this was coming, and I knew that I always do this every year, and I knew that what I really needed to do was just write a quick blurb ahead of time saying that I was traveling even though I wouldn’t have been yet because I was writing this ahead of time, and schedule it to be released on Sunday, and then I’d have it covered.  I thought this to myself several times throughout the week, and I promised myself that I would do this thing, and yet I still managed to get caught up in preparing to leave (and also I was a bit under the weather, as my evil family finally managed to get me sick after 2 full weeks of trying) and, once again, totally spaced.  Classic me.

But back to my dream.  You know, often with dream elements, you sort of vaguely know where they come from, or else you have no clue and it’s just a super-bizarre dream that you can’t even remotely explain.  This dream was somewhat unique in that, while it was ultra-bizarre and made no rational sense, it was composed of very distinct and easily identified bits.  I don’t believe there was any deeper meaning in it—it was just my brain taking a bunch of mostly unrelated bits and swirling them together to make an incoherent whole.

In the dream, I needed to use a special timezone (see: date module) to move on to the next day.  I was thinking about writing my own code for this (see: YAPC), but then I realized I could just repurpose this existing code which told the story of The Comedian (see: Steve Agee’s joke on @Midnight, which I binge-watched on my return home: in response to a request for “comic book songs,” Steve quipped “All Along the Watchmen Tower”), explaining the timeline of his death, which would work perectly for my purposes, although my boss might have trouble swallowing it, because he was already suspicious of me for going rogue (see: The Last Coyote, a.k.a. the fourth Harry Bosch book, the audiobook version of which I both started and finished during my travels), and, in fact, I had to figure out which of several different versions of the timezone to use, some of which only covered one hour, but some of which covered several hours, which would of course be more efficient than having to write or rewrite several different one-hour timezones and, as long as it was going to cover the same length of time anyway, why not? and then I woke up and had to pee.  But then I went back to sleep again, and I think I may have had some similar-but-not-the-same dream but I don’t remember.

Anyhow, if you’re not so inclined to pop over to the Other Blog and read either of the two half-posts I’ve provided for you (although I highly recommend the second one, even if you’re not techincally inclined, as it’s a bit of a travelogue and doesn’t have that much technobabble in it), at least you’ve now had a rambling run-on discussion of my latest weird dream to chew on.  You’re welcome.

Perl blog post #52

As promised last week, this week I’ve published another part of my long-ass series on my Perl date module over on my Other Blog.  This one doesn’t even have much of a non-technical philosophical thread running through it, so I won’t be offended if you’re a non-techie and want to give it a pass.

Next week I’ll see if I can drum up someting more interesting than Perl gobbledygook.

Perl blog post #51

This week it’s time for another installment in my date module series over on my Other Blog.  This time it’s all about eating your own dogfood and not being afraid to admit you made a mistake and totally change your mind.  Still a lot of techno-babble in it, if you’re not a technical person, but I believe there’s some general utility there as well.  Hop on over and check it out if you’re so inclined.

If you’re not, then you’re out of luck this week.  And possibly next week as well, since I hope to do some more work on the module then too.  My annual trip to YAPC is coming up again, and I really hope to have something useful by the time I go there.  I won’t be doing a full talk this year, but maybe I can whip up a lightning talk, or at the very least just talk it up during the corridor chatting.

So look for something non-technical in this space in a couple of weeks.  Or don’t.  That’s cool too.

Perl blog post #50

This week I’m putting up my 50th Perl blog post, over on my Other Blog.  This one happens to be yet another installment in my ongoing series about my new date module, but that’s not the important thing, from my perspective.  50 is a pretty healthy number.  Of course, here on this blog, we’re approaching 200 posts, even discounting all my “interstitial” posts (i.e. the posts where all I say is I’m not going to do a proper post).  But somehow 50 technical posts seems like a greater achievement.  And some of them are pretty long.

Anyhow, hop on over to the blog if you’re interested in seeing what’s going on with my Perl work.  If not, stay tuned for next week, when there might be a non-technical post here.  Mabye.  If you’re lucky.  Depending on your definition of “lucky.”

Perl blog post #49

After a bit of a longer hiatus that I’d meant to, I’ve finally gotten back to my ongoing Perl series about my new date module.  I really want to have this completed before YAPC in June, so I’m going to be spending a bit more time concentrating on it than previously.  Or that’s the plan at any rate.  This installment is about my adventures with CPAN Testers finding bugs in my code for me, helpful little devils that they are.  Hop on over to the Other Blog for lots of Perl-y goodness.  Or, you know, don’t.

Next week may well be another Perl blog post.  Just giving you a heads-up on that one right now.

Perl blog post #48

As promised last week, I completed the next installment in my latest Perl series.  Hop on over to my Other Blog to check it out if you’re so inclined.

I also completely forgot to post this pointer on Sunday.  So I’m just lying about the date on this post now.  Deal with it.

Perl blog post #47

After too long of a break, I’m back to my latest Perl series, which is about a new date module I’m working on.  If you’re technically inclined, hop on over to my Other Blog and check it out.  If you’re not ... well, there’s always next week.

Perl blog post #46

If you’re one of my technoreaders, rejoice!  Another post in my ongoing Perl series on the date module I’m developing is now up on my Other Blog.

Contrariwise, if you’re not one of my technoreaders, then ... I dunno, anti-rejoice?  Not sure what the opposite of rejoice is.  But feel free to do that.  Next week you’ll likely get something useful.  Probably.  If you’re lucky.

Perl blog post #45

This week I’m returning again to my ongoing Perl series on my Other Blog.  You may want to check that out if you’re technically inclined.  If you’re not, you’ll have to wait until next week for some more exciting bits here.  Well, as exciting as it gets around here anyway.  Try and control your anticipation.