A new perl.org

A new design, complete with rewritten content for www.perl.org! Looks fantastic!

Joyful Perl 6

I was reading through the source code for proto over a beer this evening and came across this:



That's some serious Joy :)

Clojure: first contact

$ java -cp clojure-1.0.0.jar clojure.lang.Repl
Clojure 1.0.0-
user=> (+ 1 2 3)
6
user=> (. javax.swing.JOptionPane(showMessageDialog nil "Hello World"))
nil
user=>

Ooh ah! :D

Tired old monopolies...

I'm sick and tired of tired, old monopolies delivering me webpages like:

http://content.digitalwell.washington.edu/msr/external_release_talks_12_05_2005/14072/unsupported.htm.

All I wanted to do was view what looked like a very interesting presentation on software development at http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?fID=569&rID=9490.

I'm not going to even try to watch this now.

There's too much other good stuff out there.

Lawyers patenting precedents :D

"What would happen if lawyers would take out a patent on all the precedents every time they win a case, and someone cites that case, they have to pay a license fee to them, and so on..." - Donald Knuth.

Great line :)

From Questions Answered.

N.B. quote above is roughly paraphrased based on the video (link above).

Steve Jobs demos Apple Macintosh, 1984

Just read Why's Poignant guide. Last 3 or 4 pages were particularly poignant (yep) given his recent disappearance.

Awesome Programming Language resource

Wowsers. I just stumbled across this awesome programming language resource:

http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study/syntax-across-languages/Fnctn.html

Then I went back up to this:

http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study/syntax-across-languages/ (double wow)

Then I went back up to this:

http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel/language-study etc etc.

So, all in all, http://merd.sourceforge.net/pixel and related pages is very very interesting indeed!

Free Your Twitter

A very quick and dirty Perl script to export your Twitter. No need to critique the script, I know it can be improved :)

$ cat free_your_twitter.pl 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Modern::Perl;
use Net::Twitter;
use YAML qw(Dump);
use Carp qw(croak);


my $t = Net::Twitter->new(username => 'snarkyboojum',
                          password => 'yourpassword');

my @export_msgs;

for my $i (1..80) {
    my $msgs = $t->user_timeline( {page => $i, count => 200} );
    push @export_msgs, @$msgs;

    last if (scalar @$msgs < 200);
}

open my $fh, '>', 'twitter_dump.yml'
    or croak "Can't open file for twitter dump: [$!]\n";

print $fh Dump(@export_msgs);

close $fh;

Lispyness

Ooh-aah ;)

The contrast between function and procedure is a reflection of the general distinction between describing properties of things and describing how to do things, or, as it is sometimes referred to, the distinction between declarative knowledge and imperative knowledge. In mathematics we are usually concerned with declarative (what is) descriptions, whereas in computer science we are usually concerned with imperative (how to) descriptions.

1.1.7 Example: Square Roots by Newton's Method from Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

Self portrait series

Great series :)

Bronowski

Look him up - good show old chap.

The Ascent of Man - Bronowski - Knowledge or Certainty

Perl Ruby


$ perl -e 'print $ENV{HOME}, "\n"'
/Users/snarkyboojum
$ ruby -e 'print ENV["HOME"], "\n"'
/Users/snarkyboojum
$


:)

The thought-fox

Who reads this anymore? Who writes here anymore? :)

Well, for some reason the mood takes me to post here again. Lots of stuff has been happening over the last few months. I've been living in London for more than 7 months. I've worked on some pretty cool projects over here. I spent a great deal of time at Channel4 working in "New Media". Poncy name, but great team of guys and good work. I've met some very talented people. I've learned a hell of a lot. I've become harder, more cynical perhaps, more experienced. I've worked in Australia, New Zealand and the UK and learned a hell of a lot about consulting and contracting in the process. I've seen Ireland and the UK and parts of Italy. I'm about to head off to France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Fiji (:D). But my time is drawing to a close here. I've seen a lot of London in 7 months. It's quite a special place and Londoners are like no other (just ride on the tube during peak hour for week after week, month after month). But I've realised you could live here for years and still be discovering the place and I've realised I don't want to live here. It's a good feeling to see that.

I've been toying with Lift and Scala lately, and thinking about how I might one day work with it or even kick off my own business using it or other cool tech.

I've read a ton of books. I've read Kant, Popper, Wittgenstein, Russell, Heidegger, Plato, Aristotle, Joyce, Rousseau, Thoreau, Pound, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beckett, Nietzsche, Homer (this year) and all the other books I tackled last year on 52 books.

I've met so many new people, put myself in so many different and challenging situations; discovered new music, new food, new ideas, enjoyed incredible art, ogled awe-inspiring architecture, started learning a new language (Volim živjeti u Sydneyu!). I've fallen more deeply in love with an incredible girl. It's all been a beautiful experience.

I'm going to put more time and effort into www.mutteringmadman.com. A new blog engine I've written in Lift is going to be up there soon.

And that's it. Just had to put that out there. I'll miss London and the experiences I've enjoyed here. But it makes sense to not be here much longer.

Happy days :)