Re: [Boston.pm] teaching kids Perl
On Fri, 1 Dec 2006, Chris Devers wrote: Perl as a first language though seems like a risky idea though, almost along the lines of that old (Knuth?) line about people who learned on Basic being irrepairably damaged programmers :-) Hey! My first language was BASIC, when I was 11. And then I didn't program again for many, many years. Hmmm, you may have a point ;) I think Perl is probably a nice language to learn as a kid, because you don't have to worry about things like strict typing or memory allocation. - Ann ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
Alex wrote: Th only problem is that I am going to need to create different dataset and graph them on the fly. Writing files out and then shelling doesn't quite sound like the most efficient way of doing things. Or am I missing things? Basically I will have a HUGE collection of data to pull from, then viewers will select what of that data they want plotted. Then my app should plot it. Make sense? It's seeming kind of like I will need to try a few of these to see what will work. Do you all agree that starting with GD::Graph is probably the best way to start? I used GD::Graph for a project I did about a week ago. I've used it before, but this was the first time someone cared about how 'pretty' the output was, as opposed to simply how functional it was. My data consisted of an arbitrary number of items graphed along time (x) as a bar or a line. I found that if you are willing to spend a lot of time mucking around with the colours, and you can take steps to crop your data if it will make the graph too crowded, the results are not too bad. They are not beautifully polished, but they are presentable. Two problems in particular that I noted were that the legend sometimes obscures data on the right, and sometimes the calculations for the steps/height of the y-axis are just wacky (for example: steps of .25 when dealing with only whole numbers, or a top height of 2x the highest y-value). I recommend making your own calculations concerning Y and forcing GD::Graph to play along. Also if you have many different items, you may want to cluster them around your points at the X-axis for clarity by introducing an ignored element. This makes it much easier to see what is going on if you have (for instance) 5 elements being displayed at each point of x. - Ann ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Pretty Graphs with Perl
On Tue, 6 Dec 2005, Ricker, William wrote: (b) img href=/scripts/imagemaker?x=17y=42title=%22Foo%20Bar%22xname=Xyname= Y Put the code that decides what to do from the Request in a module, and call it from both the CGI or action module that generates the HTML page (which generates the img link) and the CGI or action module that generates the dynamic graphic (in response to the img link). Some amount of setup work (varies with app) would have to be redone or saved in DB or some other place (with unique names!), but at least the code is reused in a module. In this case, you put all the request parameters that the graph module needs on the IMG URI, or copy all the request parms to be safe if you don't know; since it's a module, it should know. One module, one script could do both Page and Image requests, with a arg difference (or HTTP context wanting text/html or image/*?) determining which to generate. If you opt for this solution, I strongly recommend not trying to pass serialized data to the script. Instead, store the data somewhere else and give the script the means to look up the data. Otherwise, it is quite likely, given arbitrary amounts of data, that you will find that your URL exceeds 2048 characters, which happens to be the maximum length of a URL in IE. Personally I prefer to just generate a temporary file if I have to store something temporarily (the data or the image). Here I am creating a file in a temporary directory, giving it a name with the datetime and generating module (useful for any developer who is looking at files), and a random string. Thius is quite adequate for our purposes, but of course it isn't suitable for all situations. I have an hourly cron job deleting all files in that directory which are older than one hour. - Ann ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] tech meeting?
I'll be in Boston next week, so if there's going to be a tech meeting in the very near future, I hope it'll be then ;) - Ann On Sat, 11 Jun 2005, Uri Guttman wrote: are we going to have a tech meeting some time again? it's been a good while. i have some swag from o'reilly to give out to book reviewers: the perl template toolkit and mastering regular expressions 2nd ed. both are well known and liked books so if you want them you just need to put up a review on some public site like books.perl.org, amazon, etc. uri -- Uri Guttman -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.stemsystems.com --Perl Consulting, Stem Development, Systems Architecture, Design and Coding- Search or Offer Perl Jobs http://jobs.perl.org ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] Favor requested - ADSL
Hello, I hope that some kind person can help me by providing a short loan of an ADSL connection and a telephone. I've recently decided to get Vonage because I call the US too much. I'm having everything shipped to a friend in Boston because I'll be there in June. However, I'd like to ensure that the system is functional while it is still possible to cancel the service. This ought to be done before I get to Boston. The friend that I am having it sent to does not have ADSL. He's willing to travel anywhere in the Boston area to test it (although near Brighton is best). The test would consist of using his cellphone to dial my number and seeing if the phone rings and then using the normal phone to dial the cellphone. My friend is not a computer person so it is a bonus if you are able to help him set things up. If anyone can assist me with this I would very much appreciate the help. I'll pass on contact details (phone number or email) to my friend (Neel Tummala) and he will get in further contact. Thanks, Ann ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] social meeeting in June?
I'm planning to be in Boston around 14-18 June. I'd like to join a social meeting if there happens to be one then. I know probably nobody has thought of June yet but I figured this could serve the dual purpose of alerting my friends in the area that I'll be in town. - Ann ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] social meeeting in June?
On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, Chris Devers wrote: On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, Ann Barcomb wrote: I'm planning to be in Boston around 14-18 June. I'd like to join a social meeting if there happens to be one then. Man, we haven't even figured out March^H^H^H^H^HApril yet. I have noticed that thread. Planning three months ahead -- is that even possible? Hence my disclaimer. I don't think that's possible. I've heard of it, but I don't believe it. Well, I've booked my flight, and that's not until June... Does that count as proof? ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
