Re: Technical Meeting - 21st June
Leo Lapworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, Jun 18, 2001 at 07:15:32PM +0100, Dave Cross wrote: Oh... er... it's only three days to the technical meeting and so far I don't seem to have any talks for it. Thursday.. what, this thursday where does the time go. Assuming I can make it (have to check something), I'll give a little update on the new web site. Bugger. I definitely can't make it. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: (Open|Net)BSD local root exploit
Jonathan Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Now imagine a big field, with a treasure chest in the middle of it - this is your security. Now, imagine the chest is buried in the field, and no-one saw me bury it. This is my security. Snip enormous security through obscurity tirade However, after playing Baldurs Gate 2 all weekend, I'm obliged to say that really if you have a priceless artifact that you don't want found, the trick is to give to a peasant, because no adventurer is going to go round killing every peasant in the land to find the one with the treasure. See also the way diamonds are transported around Hatton Garden (i.e. in people's pockets, not in securicor vans). Don't remind me. I used to work in Hatton Gardenm, and bought Gill's engagement ring there. Well, that's not quite true, I bought the *pieces* of Gill's engagement ring there. Which is a story in itself that I'll tell at a London.pm social evening one time. The scariest bit was handing over £400 or so worth of gem + gold to the bloke who was going to turn it into a real ring. A bloke who I had never met before that moment. Who was going to do the work for 15 quid. And he looked surprised when I asked for a receipt. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: YAPC::Europe Registration
Richard Clamp [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 07:41:48PM +0100, Neil Ford wrote: So who's registered then? ;-) I have, now to write[0] the talks. I got lucky. They didn't want the Perl Proverbs talk (which I'd have to write), but they did want 12 step (which I busk). Result. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Some pretty pictures ...
Paul Mison [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 08/06/2001 at 12:30 +0100, David Cantrell wrote: ... and some not so pretty pictures. http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/london.pm/2001-06-07/ Bah. Too many of me. And not enough of you here: http://husk.org/perl/pics/ Warning: dislike of flash may lead to fuzzyness and light trails. Really pretty pics: http://www.well.com/user/pdcawley/misc_images/ But I may be biased. There are no London.pmers in those though. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Some pretty pictures ...
Paul Mison [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 11/06/2001 at 11:10 +0100, Piers Cawley wrote: Paul Mison [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://husk.org/perl/pics/ http://www.well.com/user/pdcawley/misc_images/ But I may be biased. Nah, they are nice. But you've been selective, Of course, first step towards being a decent photographer is learning to edit. When you're scanning off negatives and you don't have a bulk scanner then you *have* to be selective. Life is too short. I'm assuming (unless you've just taken seven photos in your entire life) whereas I just upload all of my photos (except the ones in NY), so they're all available for ridicule. I'd suggest building a page of 'favourites'. Just thinking about why they are your favourites and what you did to make the image will improve your general photography. Certainly my contacts sheets have got generally better as I've taken more photographs and gone through the editing process with them. Not very perlish I'm afraid. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Some pretty pictures ...
Tony Bowden [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 12:23:26PM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote: Just thinking about why they are your favourites and what you did to make the image will improve your general photography. Certainly my contacts sheets have got generally better as I've taken more photographs and gone through the editing process with them. Not very perlish I'm afraid. Learning what you do well by studying it, and getting better over time isn't perlish? Weird. I though that was part of the essence of perl. Hmm... good point. Time for a journal entry I think. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: [Possible Job] Perl, Linux
Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Piers Cawley wrote: I don't know about you, but I'm *definitely* fat. 4XL, innit? (Remembering you at yapc::Europe:19100 at the T-shirt stand, wondering whether even to bother looking at them.) 4XL Tall acksherly. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: [Possible Job] Perl, Linux
Dave Hodgkinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Piers Cawley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't know about you, but I'm *definitely* fat. Big boned. Nope. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: [Possible Job] Perl, Linux
Dominic Mitchell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, Jun 07, 2001 at 08:46:39AM +0100, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: Piers Cawley [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I presume that this is a permie thing? Yes. And I'd estimate that _most_ of you I know would be, um, a bit too heavyweight for them... You calling me fat, boy? I don't know about you, but I'm *definitely* fat. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: rewind elector
Mark Fowler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, jo walsh wrote: gah, i feel old and sleepy As does anyone who got home at 4am ;-) so nothing changes, but it was nice to realise that in the company of perlmongers. Yey. Thanks dave it was much fun, and I only inaproperatly fell asleep three times... Interesting ride home in the minicab with the driver not knowing where brick lane or highbury corner was...and me much leafing through his A-Z and attempting not to notice him getting flashed by speed cameras Every so often I like to be reminded of why I don't want to live in London. Thanks for that. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: JOB: Eng. Proj Management
Jonathan Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A reasonably reliable headhunter I've dealt with in the past is looking for technical project managers for new web company. Let me know if interested... Hmm... I wonder if I could morph... Bet that's a permie thing isn't it? -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Religion
Jonathan Stowe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, Jonathan Peterson wrote: The actions and spirit of paganism (say, wearing leaves and dancing round a tree in May) are good healthy things to do. What with this and Piers' earlier revelations and the ever present Unixbeard I have this feeling that maybe we ought to get a Morris Side together for next years Jack in the Green festival in Hastings, No way on this planet am I morris dancing. Not that I object to watching other fools doing it, but exercise and me don't go well together. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: General Election
Barbie [easynet] [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From: Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] I understand folk singers sometime place a finger over their ear whilst singing. Perhaps Mr Bragg should try that. I doubt it would improve his singing, but at least it would stop him twanging that guitar ... I don't think you could call Billy Bragg a folk singer. His more aptly titled moniker of Bard of Barking is probably more representative of what he does. Tells stories set to music. he might not be the best singer in the world, but then it never stop Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix. each to their own I suppose. Look, I'm not saying Bragg's voice is pretty. But his pitching is accurate, his tunes are good, his songwriting is immaculate and you can tell what he's singing. Same goes for his Bobness too come to that. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: General Election
Barbie [easynet] [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From: Piers Cawley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Look, I'm not saying Bragg's voice is pretty. But his pitching is accurate, his tunes are good, his songwriting is immaculate and you can tell what he's singing. Same goes for his Bobness too come to that. You can tell what Bob is singing! Most of the time, yeah. I had to get the Dylan Songbook to learn the words ;) Barbie PS: I have several albums by Billy and Bob, but I still don't class them as folk singers. Bob was definitely a folk singer once. The early acoustic stuff is definitely folk, and it informs the later electric stuff too. Bragg's usually not a folksinger, but he's a good singer of folk songs on occasions. The Houghton Weavers, The Spinners, The Knigston Trio, My missus now they're folk singers. Me, on a good night. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: General Election
Jonathan Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 10:32 01/06/01 +0100, you wrote: I suggest we leave the pub at about 9:30pm and get the tube back to mine, stopping at Threshers en route. Can't we just go to another pub that's got Peter Snow on the telly? There will, of course, be an entrance test. Anyone who doesn't know the first verse and chorus of The Red Flag will not be admitted :) Don't do that Dave. It's bad to drink alone. I'm not prepared to bet that he'll be allowing himself in. Does it count if you know all the verses to Raise Your Banner High instead? Can I blag a bed again, what with the Iterative meeting the next day... -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: crazy golf
Jonathan Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 13:27 01/06/01 +0100, you wrote: weather's awful. We [0] want June and July holidays how about US Quite the opposite!!! We need more winter holidays to cheer us up during those dark rainy months. We should have holidays for all the major Saint's days, and get rid of silly artificial things like Mayday. Or we should just not work half the time, like the French. Personally I'd rather get rid of the overtly christian holidays and stick with good old pagan stuff like May day. And not because of the labour movement, it's a *way* older holiday than that. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: General Election
Barbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There will, of course, be an entrance test. Anyone who doesn't know the first verse and chorus of The Red Flag will not be admitted :) Is this the modern doctored version or the traditional version? How about: The working class can kiss my arse I've got the foreman's job at last. Or The people's flag is deepest puce with fleurs de lys in pale chartreuse -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: General Election
Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From: Barbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 1:46 PM There will, of course, be an entrance test. Anyone who doesn't know the first verse and chorus of The Red Flag will not be admitted :) Is this the modern doctored version or the traditional version? The New Labour version starts like this: The people's flag is lightest pink, It's not as red as you might think. I prefer it sung to the original tune (The White Cockade) as opposed to the christmas carol dirge that is most used these days. Hmm... how the hell do you fit it to The White Cockade? No matter how I try it it still sounds bloody ugly. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: crazy golf
Redvers Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I find it strange that the only surviving English/British religion, Nah, you want an interesting old religion, look at the Celts. Drinking blood has gone out of style though... Assuming you're not a Masai tribesperson. And assuming that the Romans weren't lying about the Celts (Though why would they want to do that?) -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: General Election
Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, 01 Jun 2001, Cross David - dcross wrote: There's a fine version of it to this tune by Billy Bragg and Dick Gaughn on BB's mini-album The Internationale. undef error - Can't locate auto/Billy/Bragg/tune.al in @INC ... Then I suggest you try using your ears. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: bad greg
Neil Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 11:09:28PM +0100, Simon Cozens wrote: On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 05:55:39PM +0100, Neil Ford wrote: Mr Couzens Die, alien slime! My apologies was typed in a hurry on a tube train and I didn't double check before it got sent when I got home. 100 x I must check the spelling of people's surnames before hitting send I think you'll find that that only works if you do it the other way around. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: LAMP in Amsterdam anyone?
Dave Hodgkinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://www.jobserve.com/jobserve/JobDetail.asp?jobid=14094948 I've already sent in a CV for that one. Agent seemed a little perturbed when I guessed who it was after his (short) description of what the client did. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: wantarray and Tied Hashed
David Cantrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, May 25, 2001 at 12:36:59PM +0100, Cross David - dcross wrote: From: David Cantrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] I wonder, could you do some magic with the calling stack so that your FETCH can Do The Right Thing? Or, I could just accept that I'm a BAD MAN who is trying to PERVERT PERL in NASTY WAYS. No, you're confusing yourself with Damian :-) [FX: points to Symbol::Approx::Sub] Are you *quite* sure about that? -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Tie::Hash::Regex vs Tie::RegexpHash
Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 02:18 PM 2001.05.25 +0100, Dave Cross wrote: [1] Hmmm... note to self - see if you can come up with a tied hash that abbreviates to T::H::C. Semi-plausible: Tie::Hash::Complex Not-plausible: Tie::Hash::Cannabis Might see the light of day?: Tie::Hash::Conway Presumably this will lead to a load of gags about not wanting to go too far from his stash? -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Email Style (was: Re: Election Manifestos)
Damian Conway [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Damian is so cool... The next version of Text::Autoformat (which should be out before TPC5) will also leave header lines and sigs unmolested, making it truly useful for email tidying. Huzzah! -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: [Announce] Hackspoitation film fest
Mark Fowler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 24 May 2001, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: Simon Wistow [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I also have D.A.R.Y.L (Data Analyising Robot Youth Lifeform) but I thinkt hat's pushing it a bit. If that counts, then Weird Science counts too! That's more geeksploitation or nerdsplotitation... If you're doing that, then you need _Revenge of the Nerds_ too. And if anyone has a half decent copy of _Better Off Dead_ (early John Cusack film) I'd be *very* happy to see it again. Even though it's not quite in this genre, and I won't be making it to the film fest anyway... Er... -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: [Announce] Hackspoitation film fest
Mark Fowler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Piers asked: The sure thing Ooh. Not seen that one. Is it any good? And that's Anthony TopGun, Northern Exposure, ER Edwards to you. Any good, any good? It's only my all time favourite film of all time[1]. Where frat movie meets romantic comedy, on a road trip. Quite a few good one liners. John Cusack being John Cusack very well. Zuniga being Zuniga, also very well. Oh, hang on. Has it got Tim Robbins in it as well? If so I *have* seen it and it's bloody good. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: London.pm List Weekly Summary 2001-05-21
Redvers Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://www.maff.gov.uk/animalh/int-trde/misc/foot/flyer.pdf About that flyer... FMD presents no risks to humans but is a serious threat to animal health. That is not strictly true... FMD is not a threat to animal health, the MAFF slaughters are. Well, up to a point. Dramatic reduction in yield + high chance of infertility == significant (indirect) risk to animal's health. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: O'Reilly Safari - anyone use it?
Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 23:30 21/05/2001, David H. Adler wrote: On Sun, May 20, 2001 at 08:28:24AM +0100, Dave Cross wrote: Don't think anyone writes technical books for money. If they do, then they're in for a big shock. ...and you can just imagine how much more true that is for editing technical books... :-) dha, used some of his editing money to buy a new guitar, though... ITYM used his editing money to buy some of a new guitar :) Hey, maybe it's one of those cheapo 'made in China' jobs. Of course, if it paid for a Martin or a Lowden or something else equally lovely, then well done Mr Adler. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: FHM Top 100 Sexiest Women
Neil Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, May 21, 2001 at 01:26:43PM +0100, Lucy McWilliam wrote: On 20 May 2001, Piers Cawley wrote: Neil Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just picked up the latest FHM to check out the above mentioned list... The interesting bits are as follows; The really interesting bit was Mr Ford dancing around in his living room crowing because Sara Cox had read his name out on the radio. Just exactly *why* had Sara Cox read Neil's name out? I was going to stay out of this one, but in order to make sure the facts remain straight, I will answer this one. On her show on Friday she was going on about being No 68 on the list but she hadn't actually seen the magazine so didn't know what they had said about her. So being a sad muppet (there you go, I've said it), I typed up what was in the mag and emailed it to her. She read out the email and said Thank You. At which point Neil started sounding positively orgasmic. Yes! Yes! Yes! I've had my name read out on Radio 1! -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: TPC talk practice / technical meet
Leon Brocard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Seeing as TPC slides for talks are supposed to be in at the end of the month, I've got a quick technical meeting together. The idea is that we'd practice our talks (make sure the timing / level is right etc.) and get constructive criticism from people before handing them in. YAPC talks also welcome. When: Saturday 26th noon onwards Place: state51 (thanks again guys) I will present an hour-long Instant Compilers talk (I'll spare you from another Graphing Perl talk ;-). It looks like Simon Wistow might talk about Perl-Flash. Other speakers welcome! Of course, you don't need to be talking to come - it'll be slightly different from a normal technical meeting but interesting and informative nevertheless. Hmm... I may come down, sounds interesting. I could possibly use some people to bounce some ideas about YAPC talks off. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Sara Cox - was Re: FHM Top 100 Sexiest Women
Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 00:06 20/05/2001, James Powell wrote: On Sun, May 20, 2001 at 12:00:38AM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote: Neil Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just picked up the latest FHM to check out the above mentioned list... The interesting bits are as follows; The really interesting bit was Mr Ford dancing around in his living room crowing because Sara Cox had read his name out on the radio. Ahh Sara Cox - as deserving of her position in the FHM top 100 women as she is of her £750K out of the license fee for two years blathering. I'm sure I'm really in the minority here, but I can't be the only one who finds all this discussion of the FHM list distasteful. I've never really understood why intelligent men find it acceptable to objectify women in this way. Indeed. I just thought Neil's reaction was funny. And besides, since when could you work out how sexy a woman (or man) was simply by looking at a photo. With you all the way here. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: [gnat@frii.com: Damian Conway's Exegesis 2]
Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Leon Brocard ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Coo, coo, see the fabled perl6, remark how it looks just like perl5, wonder if anything's different and if there's a point to all this ;-) Blasphemy ahead .. I don't think Perl 6 can be a tremendous leap forward, not because of RFC's along the lines of `Perl must stay Perl', but because the next leap forward is VisualPerl which will be as much about IDE as core language. Now lets not get hung up on the IDE bit of that statement, its more about how people build programs than the interface they use, the IDE merely focuses them towards a certain methodology of building software. And just to complete my final blasphemy, Visual Basic, may have a shit language behind it, it may have performance problems, it may be very limited and may force you to implement the guts as of any serious program you write as C/C++ DLLs but is still the most impressive implementation of a programming language/dialect that I have ever seen, barring one or two domain specific languages, such as the visualisation software which I have forgotten the name of. I tried to use VB once. I kept thinking Why isn't this as good as Interface Builder is on NeXTSTEP? Actually, I find myself thinking that when I use almost any IDE... -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: [gnat@frii.com: Damian Conway's Exegesis 2]
Paul Makepeace [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 10:06:22PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: And just to complete my final blasphemy, Visual Basic, may have a shit language behind it, it may have performance problems, it may be very limited and may force you to implement the guts as of any serious program you write as C/C++ DLLs but is still the most impressive implementation of a programming language/dialect that I have ever seen, You clearly haven't used Delphi. It is *streets* ahead of VB. Not only that they provide source to their components. Not only that, Object Pascal is possibly one of the best practical OO languages in existence. Their component model just rocks. And their editor is fantastic. Delphi rules. Still not as good Interface Builder + Objective C + AppKit + NeXTSTEP... -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: BOFHs requiring license
Jonathan Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 16:41 13/05/01 +0100, you wrote: * Dave Cross ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: At 15:27 13/05/2001, Simon Cozens wrote: if only the SNP covered the whole of the UK Err, they do. Insert rant about the obvious injustice of having Scotland vote on the affairs of England and Westminster but not vice versa I thought the Scots Nats were vaguely good about not voting on stuff that didn't affect Scotland. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: BOFHs requiring license
Simon Cozens [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 10:37:23AM +0100, Cross David - dcross wrote: Here's a pretty fundamental issue. Why do so many people seem to think that low taxes are good? Rule one, man, rule one. What? Always be wary of smiling old men? -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)
will [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: How do you suggest we train our workforce when schools (which are funded by tax) can't afford more than a couple of rooms full of archimedes? I respectfully suggest that we don't train the little buggers in schools. We teach them stuff. Then, when the come out with (one hopes) a good general education tending towards a specialisation in the subjects they are interested in, their employers invest some money training them to do the specific job that they're employed to do. Wanders off muttering about the idiotic downgrading of 'academic' teaching in favour of generic vocational training... And while I'm about it, can I please kill anyone who complains that our universities are 'too elitist?'. Excuse me? I thought that was the whole point. Ahem. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)
Matthew Byng-Maddick [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, 14 May 2001, David Cantrell wrote: On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 12:11:13PM +, Steve Mynott wrote: Well one advantage of BP or Shell is if you don't like either company then you can simply choose not to purchase their products. So how, pray, do I opt out of the international oil companies' cartel? use the tube and electric trains? Most power stations aren't oil fired AFAIK. No, they're gas fired. And who owns the gas rigs? -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)
Roger Burton West [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 02:10:56PM -0400, Piers Cawley wrote: And while I'm about it, can I please kill anyone who complains that our universities are 'too elitist?'. Excuse me? I thought that was the whole point. Oh, that's easy. - Being employed is a good thing. - People with degrees are more likely to be employed, and to have higher salaries, than people without. - Therefore everybody should have a degree, and miraculously they will all be employed and have higher salaries. Well, it's thinking like that that keeps the skills gap nice and wide. Hmm... can't be all bad then. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)
Dave Hodgkinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Martin Ling [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Exactly. This is the same population that brought you 'Hey, why are there loads of schools with below average results!' That was a direct quote. Tory education minister. We want to raise standard so that more than half of schools get above average results. Depends on which average. It's *possible* for more than half the schools to get results above the mean. But it does mean you need some really AWFUL schools to pull the average down... -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)
Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, 14 May 2001, you wrote: But it does mean you need some really AWFUL schools to pull the average down... AIUI suitable arrangments have been put in place to enable this to happen. I intended to leave that implicit. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: O Brother (was Re: Buffy musings ...)
Nathan Torkington [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Piers Cawley writes: I'm trying to work out if I was bowled over by 'Go to sleep pretty baby' because of the song or the visuals... Ob Porn: You can see a nipple and curve of a breast through a wet shirt if you look in the right place. Actually, I bought the soundtrack and listened to that track without the visuals. It's still stunning. And vaguely threatening Go to sleep pretty baby. Go to sleep pretty baby. Come and lay your bones on the alabaster stones and be nobody else's baby. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Movies (was Re: Buffy musings ...)
Nathan Torkington [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Greg McCarroll writes: And while we are on the old films chestnut, my current recommendation is 'O Brother, where art thou?', excellent film. I loved it. I've seen it twice. Of course, I'm a bluegrass music nut. Bluegrass is okay, but I prefer the gentler, old timey stuff. I'd rather hear a banjo played clawhammer style than plucked any day of the week. Sara Gray is about the best player in this style I've heard over here... -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Traditional music (was Re: Movies (was Re: Buffy musings ...))
Nathan Torkington [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Greg McCarroll writes: I think `man of sorrow' will be a good ambassador for bluegrass Yup, it is. I'd just like to add that I saw it performed by the real band (i.e., not George Clooney lipsynching) one week ago. It was bloody brilliant. I think I even have a photo on the digital camera of them around the microphone doing the harmonies. No fake beards, though:-) There are rumours of a Soggy Bottom Boys tour in 2002. There was a big concert of the music from the movie last year, and it was recorded by some famous documentarian. I'm looking forward to the release of that. DA Pennebaker. On the subject of music (despite the Subject: of movies) ... anyone here into trad. Irish instrumental music? I prefer trad English. And I really prefer trad. English vocal, preferably without instruments... -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Movies (was Re: Buffy musings ...)
David H. Adler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 08:55:16AM -0600, Nathan Torkington wrote: On the subject of music (despite the Subject: of movies) ... anyone here into trad. Irish instrumental music? [raises hand] Actually, Celtic in general, more than *just* irish... So you don't like English traditional music then. Shame. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Dim Sum?
Leo Lapworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 02:30:13PM +0100, Dave Hodgkinson wrote: Leon Brocard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dave Hodgkinson sent the following bits through the ether: Anyone up for Dim Sim at 1 O'clock? Yes. New World, Gerrard Street. I may be very on time. ARGH! Sorry, I got PHB-ed. Well, lucky I turned up then wasn't it.. or it'd have been poor Leon on his own in a strange town. You also missed the best Dim Sim ever, they liked us so much we got free saki and a 50% of the meal. This is the New World. We know what it's like. And the women they provided (hmm, think I'm going too far ?) Yup. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Irish music (was RE: Movies (was Re: Buffy musings ...))
Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From: Nathan Torkington [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2001 3:55 PM On the subject of music (despite the Subject: of movies) ... anyone here into trad. Irish instrumental music? Well, I prefer stuff with lyrics, but enjoy almost any kind of Irish (and English) folk music. What are you doing between TPC and Y::E? You sound like the kind of person who would really enjoy the Cambridge Folk Festival http://www.cam-folkfest.co.uk/. Do any possible folk festival you can, but avoid cambridge. Too rock and roll nowadays. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Irish music (was RE: Movies (was Re: Buffy musings ...))
Matthew Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dave Cross: You sound like the kind of person who would really enjoy the Cambridge Folk Festival Or, indeed, the Holmfirth Folk Festival: on this weekend for all your real ale, finger-in-ear, set-in-summer-wine-country needs http://www.riceholm.demon.co.uk/ We decided not to go. Worked on the website instead. What fun. Not. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: see attachment
Leon Brocard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Greg McCarroll sent the following bits through the ether: Somehow I see b-movie horror mixed with independence day style computer geek saves the world. Buffy meets Real Genius meets Hackers meets Spaced meets Seven Samurai meets Pi meets Office Space meets Blade Runner meets Austin Powers? meets Buckaroo Banzai. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: see attachment
Martin Ling [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Sat, May 12, 2001 at 04:38:08PM +0100, Simon Cozens wrote: On Sat, May 12, 2001 at 04:08:27PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: Aha - some dark evil force creates a website (BIG FONTS) that attracts young people from the world and has lots of flashy stuff on it (ok it would be flash, but this is a movie, so its just going to be BIG FONTS AND SWIRLING STUFF) that is actual fact brainwashing the teenagers to worship the website Snow Crash, essentially. I was thinking recently about how well it would work as a film. The first three pages, up to the line about pizza, cut slightly and narrated in a deadpan style against some suitably badass footage would make an absolutely superb start to a movie. They make a pretty spiffing start to a book too. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Buffy musings ...
Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Piers Cawley ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And while we are on the old films chestnut, my current recommendation is 'O Brother, where art thou?', excellent film. Oh yes. Truly fantastic. Must buy the soundtrack album. ah yes, and the soggy bottom boys' `hit' is particularly good Well, yes. but the version of 'O Death' that the big KKK chap sings, and the version of 'I'll Fly Away' that crops up somewhere are both pretty spectacular too. I'm trying to work out if I was bowled over by 'Go to sleep pretty baby' because of the song or the visuals... -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: sing if you're happy that way
Matthew Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Wisty - next T-shirt please: use strict is gay Hey, that's perl6 compliant. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Buffy musings ...
Nathan Torkington [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ... I wonder how hard it would be to get Faith or Charisma Carpenter or one of those other minor characters to do a meet'n'greet at TPC. I suspect they're hard to dislodge from LA, but it might still be worth a try[1]. I'm tracking down their agents now. For the London.pm bof I take it? -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Apocalypse Two
Richard Clamp [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 09:48:46AM +0100, Jonathan Peterson wrote: And much, much more! we'll switch to using . instead of - Yay!! p6-languageBut then what do you use to concatenate?/ :) Don't miss the smiley, I don't actually care. I'm really looking forward to apoc9, multi-dimensional slices makes my brain water. Properties are already looking pretty scary. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: More revolting natives
Andrew Bowman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [1] If he weren't such a twit he'll compliment you on your ability with the English language once he realises you're not American! (As in the American lady who struck a conversation with my mother - after a few minutes the American lady said Gee. You come from Scotland. And you speak English so well!). ;-) My wife's aunt married a GI. When she was introduced to some of his relative she was complimented on how good her English was. Yes, I learnt it on the boat coming over. And they believed her. -- Piers Cawley www.iterative-software.com
Re: Native Code Experts
Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Thought you might be interested in this post from our frind the Hereford
Killer. Someone posted some code that used for(;;) loops. And this was bk's
response:
begin_quote
Erm, My eyes keep darting to your FOR loops. For is mainly used in
javascript, and perl doesnt handle them, mainly because of the semicolons
used to split the operations. Instead of for, use foreach, because thats
close to the perl equivalent of for. I'm not sure exactly what that would
translate to into perl, but if you want to do something in a foreach loop,
it would look like
foreach $ArrayItemYouNeedToChange (@TheArray) {
#do this
}
Remember, for loops are for JS, not perl. You cant use semicolons in perl,
unless theyre before a carriage return.
end_quote
And this from someone who describes himself as a PERL Master.
I haven't laughed so much since Date::MMDDYY...
--
Piers Cawley
www.iterative-software.com
Re: Komodo
Paul Mison [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 18/04/2001 at 16:36 +0100, Dean wrote: Does OS X come with GNU tools like GCC and make then? Yes, but they're not installed by default. (I can't remember if the 'BSD subsystem' is installed by default either though.) It comes on a seperate CD within the OS X shrinkwrap box- you also get OS 9 and OS X base install. You also get ProjectBuilder IDE. http://developer.apple.com/tools/projectbuilder/ Which is very nice. Or at least it was, back when it was NeXTSTEP. -- Piers
Re: The Natives are Revolting
Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Remember the Liz Castro BBS that I was talking about a few weeks ago. Simon mentioned that a couple of the natives were getting restless and seemed uncomfortable with me being there. Well, one of them has finally snapped and is currently having a real go at me. If you want to take a look, read the thread that starts at: http://www.cookwood.com/cgi-bin/lcastro/perlbbs.pl?read=4453 Shame your solution ignored the locking problem... -- Piers
Re: Komodo
David Cantrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 10:56:51AM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote: Paul Mison [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You also get ProjectBuilder IDE. http://developer.apple.com/tools/projectbuilder/ Which is very nice. Or at least it was, back when it was NeXTSTEP. I had a little play with it last night, and it's still not bad. Only supports C/C++/Java though. I can't figger out how to get the Interface Builder to work with my project, so will have to read the docs. Works with Objective C too. Which is still (for my money) the best way of messing with the NeXTSTEP object model. -- Piers
Re: Komodo
Simon Cozens [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 11:02:03AM +0100, Piers Cawley wrote:
Then you're missing half the fun. Seriously. M-x compile was the
reason I started using emacs in the first place.
And I \N{WHITE HEART SUIT} M-x gdb
Oh, yes, baby. And M-x ediff and friends are pretty good fun too.
Especially when you're playing with revision control stuff, makes
integration almost fun.
--
Piers
Re: The Natives are Revolting
dcross - David Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From: Piers Cawley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 11:34 AM Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Remember the Liz Castro BBS that I was talking about a few weeks ago. Simon mentioned that a couple of the natives were getting restless and seemed uncomfortable with me being there. Well, one of them has finally snapped and is currently having a real go at me. If you want to take a look, read the thread that starts at: http://www.cookwood.com/cgi-bin/lcastro/perlbbs.pl?read=4453 Shame your solution ignored the locking problem... The concept of locking is so far beyond the grasp of these people that I conveniently ignored it :) There is that. Actually, I'm considering downloading the source of the web board software that's being used and doing a hatchet job of a code review on it. Maybe it'll surprise me and be well written... -- Piers
Re: (Don't Laugh) Buying PGP
dcross - David Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: PGP isn't free for commerical use. You're supposed to buy a license. When our purchasing department here approached NAI to buy one, they were told the the Unix (server) version was 27,000 and the Windows version was 657. Stick it on a Win2K box. Stick ActivePerl, PerlScript and IIS on there. Write a PerlISAPI (or whatever the IIS equivalent of that is) script to accept a file and pass phrase over an SSL link and return (over the SSL link) the unencrypted file. On the Unix side, write your funky commandline script to use the IIS box as an RPC server via IIS/SOAP/whatever. For bonus points, write it so that it's commandline equivalent to PGP and will just drop in as a replacement... Thumb your nose at NAI. Sorted. -- Piers
Re: BBC was Re: Beginners Guide
Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think it likely that the licence fee will go. It would be a popular move with the Great Unwashed. ( who seem happy to spend 400 quid a year on a Sky subscription ), so I can see the BBC being released from its licence fee. This would have huge knock-ons in the commercial TV world. The advertising cake is only so big, if the BBC suddenly started taking adverts then I doubt many of the commercial stations would appreciate the 50% drop in revenue. Assuming the BBC could decure 50% of the current TV advertising cake they would be significantly better off than they are now. Personally I would rather pay a licence fee and have a (largely) independent public service broadcaster than yet another commercial station that can't say various things in case it upsets a major advertiser. YMMV I'd be happy to pay a 400/year voluntary sub for a BBC with no adverts during programs. I'd probably be prepared to put up with adverts between programs a la FilmFour. But if they ever start running ads on Radio 4 then they can whistle for my money. But for that they're going to have to stop producing so much crap. I want more stuff of the quality of Clocking Off and Walk On By, and less of the vets in kitchens making your home look horrible cheap shit. -- Piers, who can't remember the last time he watched anything on ITV.
Re: The Most Boring Thread Ever on London.pm : Cool Letter Heads
Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ooh .. that reminds me .. the Census man has just dropped a form in .. I didn't reallise it was this year .. excellent .. now dont forget .. your religion is 'Jedi' ok ? putting jedi is a bad idea its you letting the shoreditch lot win Viral marketing doesn't work. Tell all your friends. -- Piers
Re: Technical Meeting - 19th April
jo walsh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Last Thursday I bullied^Wasked some people to consider doing talks for us, but I can't remember who they were. This is your opportunity to step forward. i recall promising to do 20 minutes on '101 fun things to do with Tangram', or something like that. Swear at the maintainer who *still* hasn't put some stuff to allow for schema changes during development without losing data. -- Piers
Re: Torvalds not impressed with OS X
Jonathan Stowe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Chris Devers wrote: At 08:22 AM 9.4.2001 +, Robin Szemeti wrote: personally the ultimate task of any minimise/restore function should be to get a window on or off the dispaly as fast as possible ... slowly attempting some graphical wizardry whilst chewing up CPU resources its not one of the things I lust after .. but YMMV :) Alternate genie effects [for OSX] The "genie effect" is what happens when you click the yellow "minimize" button. You'll see your window get sucked down into the dock, as though it were being drawn into a funnel. While quite cool the first few times, some people (me!) have found it a little annoying after a while. Those with slower machines may also find it something of a CPU hog. Luckily, Apple included a way to change the genie effect, but chose not to put it into a GUI tool at this time. I'm sure someone will have one written within a week, but for now, here's how you do it. Open a terminal session (the Terminal application is inside Applications/Utilities), and type one of the following: defaults write com.apple.Dock mineffect genie Java !!? More likely netinfo. -- Piers
Re: sub BEGIN {}
David Cantrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 07:10:02PM +0100, Simon Cozens wrote: On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 02:54:25PM +0100, Martin Ling wrote: Grr. I don't *want* to turn into an elitist wanker I seem to solve this by being one all along... 'Elitist' implies to me that one is applying unreasonable, arbitrary criteria. It does? I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Now, where'd I put the OED data disk? Well shit, if despising scum is unreasonable and arbitrary, then sign me up! You bofh. Me bofh too... -- Piers
Re: Mmm... Perl 5+i
Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Piers Cawley wrote:
I'm really liking Damian's work on this. Favourite so far:
%new_hash = map {yield munge_key($_); munge_value($_)} %a_hash
^
Looks like someone's been doing too much Ruby to me
Yield in coroutines is way older than Ruby. And note that yield in
this context is not mucking about with default blocks and all that
stuff...
--
Piers
Re: Torvalds not impressed with OS X
Paul Makepeace [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://www.msnbc.com/news/555930.asp Sadly, lacking on details. Paul, who still likes it. Certainly from the play I had with it at Neil's, it looks pretty good. Now, if I can just get someone to give me a G4 Titanium PowerBook I'll actually have something to run on it. -- Piers
Mmm... Perl 5+i
I'm really liking Damian's work on this. Favourite so far:
%new_hash = map {yield munge_key($_); munge_value($_)} %a_hash
That's glorious that is...
--
Piers
Re: Buffy
Leon Brocard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Robin Szemeti sent the following bits through the ether: was there not a recent thread regarding a module on CPAN and someone said somehting along the lines of ' we need review of modules before they get onto CPAN...' :) OKOK, and you'd have a "joke" category, into which silly things such as Q::S, Bleach, Buffy, and Symbol::Aprox::Sub would go... You know, I'm not entirely sure that Q::S is a joke. I think it may have morphed into something vaguely serious now. -- Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Robin Houston [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:08:00PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote:
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Paul Makepeace wrote:
Can Perl do distributed database transactions?
probably .. simple multi threaded app, fork a few child processes,
establish the odd DBI connection, execute a query each return when the
last child is reaped ... 100 lines?
I think the key word in Paul's question was "transactions".
In other words, you have more than one database, possibly
in different physical (and network) locations, and you need
to perform a transaction - an _atomic_ transaction - across
several of them.
No partial failure allowed, it has to either succeed completely
or fail completely.
eval {
$fulfillment_dbh-do("BEGIN TRANSACTION");
$payment_dbh-do("BEGIN TRANSACTION");
do_the_payment_thing($payment_dbh);
do_the_fulfillment_thing($fulfillment_dbh);
$payment_dbh-do("COMMIT");
$fulfillment_dbh-do("COMMIT");
}
if $@ {
$fulfillment_dbh-do("ROLLBACK");
$payment_dbh-do("ROLLBACK");
}
Hmm... not quite sure what happens if either of the COMMITs fail. And
I'd bemused as to how Java would handle it too...
--
Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Piers Cawley ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Hmm... Given that big business seems to have bought some of the ideas of 'Just In Time' stock holding and delivery type stuff, maybe the time has come to start pushing Perl and open source programming as being 'Just In Time Development'. I'm not sure this is a good image for Perl, we want to get away from the last minute solution image. I'm sure I don't agree with you. If your solution isn't ready (and tested and all that stuff) at the last minute and no earlier then you should be using the spare time generated to make the solution better, right up until the last minute. -- Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Matthew Byng-Maddick ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Greg McCarroll wrote: * Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 08:47:03PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: I suggest (with Dave Cross' blessing), that we form the London.pm certification. NetThink and Iterative will sign up to teach to a given level of skills (or several levels). Fuck it. Let's do it. Firstly, mod_perl passim. Well as a fairly independent person in this matter, i will volunteer to coordinate this. Unless there are any objections - i already TIMTOWTDI kind of screws things up. Different people will code in different styles. How can you evaluate this? it doesn't matter how they achieve most things, as long as they can do them ... reasonably have a reasonable plan og how to achieve this _quickly_. I can Please share this it's too late tonight, i'll try and remember tommorow, the plan is more how to get it organised and do all the dull procedural stuff quickly the actual content is up for debate, although i think levels of perl `skillz' would suck, i'd much rather see a ``core'' perl certification, and slowly secondary skill certifications being developed and registered, however at launch, probably WWW and DBI spring to mind as two secondary ones that will be there from the word go - however they will be focused quite tightly on their areas Start with Core Perl, covers the basics of being able to program in Perl. Maybe an add on for OO Concepts in Perl. Certifications should be competency based rather than being 'complete this course, here's your certificate, which leads to problems of qualifying as an assessor, but it's worth worrying about. Once we know what the competencies required for a given certification are, then the various training houses can come up with training material and assessment services to help people reach that level of certification. Gill's got a good deal of experience in dealing with Competency based qualifications... -- Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
At 21:24 28/03/2001, you wrote:
On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:58:36PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote:
Also i think the lack of Perl certification, is one of the biggest
problems with Perl work in london,
Are employers there too stupid to read CVs? Or too lazy? Or is
there some other benefit certification bestows besides having you
laughed at in the pub because you ("one", not personally of course :)
automatically rank alongst all those other "paper" Perl programmers?
http://www.tekmetrics.com/ aka brainbench seems to still be going
strong.
And last time I looked, they claimed I was the best Perl programmer
in London. Don't expect that to change soon either - as they've just
started charging for tests.
Do they still claim that I'm the best perl programmer in the UK? If so
it's completely bloody surreal...
--
Piers
Re: Perl Certification Drive
"Jonathan Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think the money aspect is very important. This isn't YAS, it's supposed to be a professional qualification for professional programmers. 300 sounds like a good number for me. "If it only costs a fiver then what good can it be" will be the PHB's attitude, I've seen this often. Yes, you are right. However, given the, ah, aversity of many perl programs to getting certified, I'd like to remove barriers to entry. If we can get the 'professional' stamp by sticking names like O'Reilly (Or Microsoft - why not?) on the certificates, and then charge less, I think that would be better. But if not, then I agree a charge (mayb more 50 than 300?!) can have a similar effect. If we can get the standard for competency accepted as a National Standard (will take a while), then any training that's based on those standard will attract government funding for the trainees. Which would be nice. -- Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
"Jonathan Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The recent .com crash has had many desirable effects as well as undesirable ones, and one of these is the devaluation in hype in .com related technologies. An awful lot of the value of the big packages is based on future value - "You don't need this software today, but you will in a year's time so buy it today and you'll be ahead of the competition and able to scale up fast when the orders start pouring in!". This doesn't carry much weight anymore. Hmm... Given that big business seems to have bought some of the ideas of 'Just In Time' stock holding and delivery type stuff, maybe the time has come to start pushing Perl and open source programming as being 'Just In Time Development'. [FX: Makes note in the 'you really should turn this into some real marketing literature' file.] -- Piers
Re: Social Meeting (fwd)
David Cantrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:04:56PM +0100, Greg McCarroll wrote: Hush now brother, contain thy enthusiasm, others are still not ready for the way of the heretic. We must consider them - they are the sheep that may prefer their 2 half pints of lager shandy in PO, and!, and if they are exposed to the intense mixture of heavy drinking and rapant flames that is heresy, their minds may be weakened to such a state that python seems like a `nifty' idea to them. I should confess that I recently installed python on one of my boxen. Excuse: something else needed it. However, I'd like to take a look at it sometime. Same goes for Ruby. More things for the to-do queue. I also installed Python on the Palm, cos I thought it was a nifty idea. I deleted it earlier today cos I thought putting Lovecraft books on there was a better use of memory. Considers doing a description of Python as a Lovecraftian Elder god. Decides against it. -- Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, you wrote: On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 09:26:38PM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: (my pseudo-transaction scheme for MySQL is basically : .. do this and return a closure to undo it if I to .. bung the closures in an array .. if something screws up then back it all off by walking along the array and executing the closures ... its not rocket science but it works .. sort of .. I used it for doing multiple inserts into a spread of tables I did something similar. It worked too, until not only did an insert fail, but when I was backing out, a delete failed too. There was much head-scratching. A week later, the hard disk died and the head-scratching stopped. ;)) .. Unfortunately, if you implement this sort of thing, mysql loses it's only advantage over other databases - speed. But I wasn't allowed to upgrade to (eg) postgresql for silly reasons which I forget now. well .. since in most web based uses of MySQL the 99% of queries are simple 'select * from blah where something=something_else' .. the speed is all you need .. every now and again there is reason to add a user or, very occasionally, someone buys something .. and those bits have the pseudo-transactions in .. yeah .. its slow, but I'd ratehr have that bit slow and the rest lightning quick than pretyy much anything else .. But the *REALLY IMPORTANT* uses of the database are the ones where you're moving money about and doing order fulfillment. And guess what, those *must* be transactional. -- Piers
Re: mmm ... toys ..
James Powell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 01:59:18AM +0100, Robin Szemeti wrote: mmm .. by some dint of fate I appear to be the proud owner of a rather nice new Dell laptop. Bit slow ( 850mhz P3 ) and 128 mb of ram is hardly enough to run Vi in is it .. a poxy 32Gb hard disc means I'll probably run out of space soon too. (thinks .. this is considerably more powerful than my workstation .. h..) Sounds acceptable to me, I'll have it if you don't want it. Alternatively if anyone has one of the titanium macs going spare? Mmm neeed... -- Piers
Re: Job: I'm looking for one..
Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: y* Simon Cozens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 11:41:33PM +0100, Aaron Trevena wrote: On Mon, 26 Mar 2001, Roger Burton West wrote: Just to let you all know I'm on the market again. Me too. er.. and me. Who was it that was saying that the contract market was great just now? i think it was me, i dont want to go into this too much, but i think that a general perl consultancy (you know who you are) can take these guys, be very clever at marketting yourselves and prosper Possibly. But given that our first client has just gone titsup.com before we actually did any work for them (thank heavens for small mercies,) I want to be in the position of having work lined up before I start recruiting again. Or were you talking about NetThink? -- Piers
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
Andrew Bowman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In Iceland they append 'son' for sons and 'dottir' for daughters - hence Magnus Magnusson is the son of Magnus, whilst Sally Magnusson would, in Iceland at least, be Sally Magnusdottir. I used to work with an Icelandic chap who told me that the Rekjavik phonebook is ordered by first name because they still use proper patronyms. -- Piers
Re: ISO8601 [was] Re: Pointless, Badly-Written Module.
"Jonathan Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This site seems to confirm it tho: http://www.saqqara.demon.co.uk/datefmt.htm Hmmm, 11 reasons to use this format: 5 of these reasons are "Because it makes it easier for me to write software if you do" which don't carry much weight IMNSHO However, in the spirit of standardisation, I'd like to suggest: 1. Please can we stop this silly 'firstname lastname' format. The most significant string (family name) should come first, with a standard delimiter (comma) before the first name (which should come last). This is what bibliographies and libraries have used for years, so should everyone else. Please use: LASTNAME, [FIRSTNAME|FIRST INITIAL] 2. The address format is a real mess, being least significant string first, and no clear guide as to whether comma or newline or both are the acceptable delimiters. Also, the location of the postcode string is arbitrary, and in any case the postcode repeats information and is often redundant. However, since postcodes can be easily fed into computer programs, and are language independant, they should replace all that other stuff. Please use: ISO planet code, ISO country code, POSTCODE, Building Number[, apartment number][, business name] Note also that country code is compulsory. In the past post offices assumed that addresses without a country code were local and assumed the 'current' country as the one required for delivery. This sort of assumption landed us in the Y2K mess where people foolishly assumed that a year was in the 'current' century, for some silly reason. Can I commend ISO 11180 to you? -- Piers
Re: Matt's Scripts
Mark Fowler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Finding out where perl is parody Stop, stop, this script archive is not ready yet! Where are the Hello world examples? Where are the detailed instructions? And why are you actually working on these scripts yet! /parody You're all getting ahead of yourselves. We need to write a set of helloWorld scripts that the script user can upload first to find out the basic facts about their server and check everything is working. a) You have multiple copys of the script with different shebang lines on the top. Only one of these will work and one of the things it'll do is print our is "The first line of programs you upload to this server should be #!/blah/perl" b) It checks your perl version is reasonable. Actually it probably should do this before a) in case there are several versions installed. c) It tests if you've got a borken version of CGI.pm (or CGI.pm at all) by looking at version numbers, etc. Same for other modules. d) It links to an image in the same directory as itself and explains that if the image isn't viewable then you do not have inplace cgi and the things you have to know about this e) It prints out the time, and GMT time thus highlighting to the user any problems they might have if this is wrong f) It prints out a hunk of diagnostic information (e.g. perl version, module versions, url, etc, etc) Ooh, 'configure.cgi'. If only we could assume that they had a working perl on the box that they were installing from then we could write a cunning installer script which uploaded configure.cgi to the ISP and interrogated it via a LWP::... client to get a bunch of configuration stuff, which could then be used to generate a list of scripts that could run on the user's ISP, and which could then go on and upload the scripts. Ooh... You don't even have to assume working perl on their box. You stick the interrogation stuff on the 'Not Matt's scripts' website. The punter then says "I want to run these scripts on such an ISP". NMS then checks to see if it has information about that ISP cached, and provides the appropriate scripts if so, or a copy of configure.cgi for the punter to upload. Once the punter has done the upload, he sets off an interrogation phase, which works out the capabilities of the particular user's environment and builds an appropriate script set. Hmm... it's just a simple matter of programming... -- Piers
Re: Damian's Diary
Philip Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dave Cross wrote: Damian's hectic world tour has now finished and he's had time to update his online diary. He says a lot of nice things about us here http://www.yetanother.org/damian/diary_February_2001.html#day_31. Not least of which, perhaps, is The presence of Piers Cawley, Dave Cross, Greg McCarroll, Lon Brocard, and Tony Bowden also meant that at that one gathering I was able to spend time with the contributers of over half my YAS grant. It was very humbling to think that this community of clever and competent people had shown such faith in me. Not some faceless American corporation, but London.pmers (with values of "London" including Belfast and wherever Piers lives). Well, London is where I tend to work. I live in Newark on Trent. Somehow I don't think Damian is going to manage to find time to visit me there though. -- Piers
Re: London.pm List Weekly Summary 2001-02-26
Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * Philip Newton ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Greg McCarroll wrote: * Simon Wistow ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: This summary has been bought to you by the letters Alpha, Beta and Gamma, the numbers 1,3,5,7 all superimposed and the colour Octarine. and 2, please 2, it'll keep me happy, then we can discuss if 1 is a prime number, ples I propose that 1 be prime if, and only if, 1 is not prime. No, definetly not. The partial set of prime numbers increases over the journey through integers. 1 is the logical starting point, and so it is added. This is the very spirit of primality. However this may be the rantings of a madman, it's just i feel like a jockey sometimes as i ride the sequence of prime numbers, jumping each new one and then feeling their occurence decrease. Go to (void). Go directly to (void). Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200. -- Piers
Re: Last Night
Dominic Mitchell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 04:38:49AM -0500, Dave Cross wrote: p.s. And don't get me started on my nightmare journey. I thought that all night buses went thru Trafalgar Sq - the N19 doesn't :( Ugh. At least I got on the right end of the train and ended upin Brighton... I think that connex just split the trains in two just to confuse people. :-( Well, I got home at 3am. Just missed the ~2200 train and the next one was at 2325. And you can't go to sleep on a train when you're getting off halfway through the journey... -- Piers
Re: lvalue subroutines
"Ian Brayshaw" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Hi,
Given the following lvalue subroutine
sub mysub : lvalue {
$value;
}
is there any way for mysub() to be able to determine that it
was called in an lvalue context?
No. If you need to know that sort of thing, you kind of have to tie
the $value that you're going to return, and use that as a proxy for
the *actual* value. If you're called in an lvalue context then the
tied object is going to have its STORE method called...
--
Piers
Re: geek football
Mike Jarvis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tuesday, February 27, 2001, 11:54:15 AM, Hamlet D'Arcy wrote: HDA As an American in the audience of Quantum::Superpositions last night I have HDA one question. HDA What in the world is a 'geek football pool'? Just be glad they didn't start playing "Slap the Yank". He was out of reach. -- Piers
Re: lvalue subroutines
Robin Houston [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 10:50:26PM +1100, Ian Brayshaw wrote:
Given the following lvalue subroutine
sub mysub : lvalue {
$value;
}
is there any way for mysub() to be able to determine that it
was called in an lvalue context?
Yeah there is, but you're not going to like it :-)
Oh! Yes! Baby!!!
That's almost as good as ()^0.5.
--
Piers, who confesses that he did find himself wondering what (-)^0.5
would do (that's 'square root of - not' BTW)
Re: lvalue subroutines
David Cantrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 01:46:49PM +, Piers Cawley wrote: That's almost as good as ()^0.5. I was thinking about that on the way to work. AIUI, square roots apply to numbers, so how can you have a square root of something that isn't a number, like an operator? You may as well say that you can take the square root of anything - like the square root of equals, or the square root of a pony. Calling that thing the square root of an operator is a bit misleading to say the least. OK, it may appear to have some properties of a square root operation, but a square root it ain't. I have to disagree. Part of the power of mathematics comes from looking at something, seeing that it works like something else, proving that, and then continuing to call it something else because that then gives you all the stuff you know about the 'something else'. And 'square root' is just an operation on something. If you can meaningfully do that operation to something that isn't a number (and in the maths associated with QM, obviously, you can) then go for it. (I not that, in the slide, ()^0.5 is refered to as U_SRN. Presumably because the idea gives the mathematicians headaches too, so they hide it slightly behind another symbol) -- Piers
Re: No http://london.pm/ :-(
Dominic Mitchell [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Feb 23, 2001 at 10:15:27AM +, Michael Stevens wrote: On Fri, Feb 23, 2001 at 10:06:07AM +, Paul Mison wrote: On 22/02/2001 at 16:24 +, Dave Cross wrote: IIRC we also investigated the possibility of registering pm.org.uk, but Nominet have a silly rule that prevents anyone from having third level domains with only two characters :( But organisations as diverse as the British Library, Parliament, the police and the NHS all get second level domains in the UK heirarchy. Grr. Argh. (The British Library can be found at http://bl.uk/ which is probably the shortest possible UK web server address.) That's for legacy reasons, IIRC. There's still a lot of suckage there. Do our beloved[1] leaders really need: gov.uk govt.uk parliament.uk ? There is a distinction to be drawn (which is kind of important, especially if you're a member of the opposition) between parliament.uk and gov.uk. Dunno what govt.uk is doing there though. -- Piers
Re: Testing .. but not as I know it
Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Tue, 13 Feb 2001, you wrote:
to wit, testing of object based modules. Firstly what do people generally
use for this? Test::Unit ?? or is there something more freindly out
there?
Test::Unit *almost* does the right thing, but looking through the code
there are some horrible things being done (by someone who doesn't seem
to understand the reflection/introspection and dynamic features of
Perl),
they didn't even understand 'use strict;' so I expect there are other
gaps too
since it does *almost* the right thing and I *almost* know what I'm doing
with it .. I'll hang with it then for now.
and the test suite it comes with doesn't seem to have
desperately good coverage of the various testing modules. Which is why
I'm working on it...
uh huh .. I noticed various bits of the Tk gui were a little err 'sub
obtimal' :) ...
lerrus know when you get it nailed down then.
secondly abstraction:
If I have , say a 'data' object
Why does the data object have to know how/if it's stored? Have a data
librarian object which is responsible for handling moving objects into
and out of storage. Then test the librarian to make sure that it can
retrieve stuff in the appropriate fashion, and do your data object
unit testing (possibly) without even having the librarian loaded up.
If you *do* find that you need to have the librarian loaded for some
of the data object's methods to work, think hard and see if you can't
find some way of removing that dependency.
uh huh ... sorta got that ... so basically anything with anything that
looks like sql or a $dbh handle ends up in the Librarian .. the outer
class has all the other stuff I aint sure about the 'without even
having the librarian loaded' bit .. surely you test the librarian and
then test the outer class with the librarian loaded iff the librarian
passes its tests? .. otherwise you end up having to write a dummy
librarian class that has every chance of not correctly behaving as the
real librarian .. or do you just run the librarian tests on the dummy
class as well?/ ... I though the idea was to build from ground zero, and
include tested base classes into higher order classes and then test them
as you go along .. or is that not it? ...
Okay, we're into 'ideal situations here', but here goes.
Consider a clothes catalogue, with, say, the following classes:
ProductLine (ie Levis 501s)
StockItem, inherits from ProductLine (ie Levis 501s, 32W 34L, stone
washed)
Then, to set up the objects we'd do something like:
my $levis =
ProductLine-new(category_name = 'Levis 501s',
description = '...',
stock_item_attribs = [...]);
$levis-new_stock_item(waist = 32, length = 34,
finish = 'blue stonewashed',
quantity = 100);
The new_stock item method would then create a stock item (possibly
with a weakref back to its parent productline, but that's dependent on
whether we're ever going to need to use that...), and one of the
product lines would have a list of stock items associated with it.
Then, we could write a method to find all the actual items in stock by
doing something like:
sub ProductLine::items_in_stock {
my $self = shift;
grep {$_-quantity 0} $self-stock_items;
}
Which wouldn't have to deal with the database at all.
If the librarian does the Right Thing, then we could say to it:
$librarian-store($levis)
and it would go away and store not only the $levis ProductLine object,
but also its associated stock items. And, when we come to reload the
$levis productline then it will either reload all its stock items, or
will place 'proxy' objects in their place which will trigger the
reloading of the real object when required. (Doing it this way stops
the reload of a single item doing a 'six degrees of separation' trick
and pulling in the entire object web.)
At a higher level, we could stick all our product lines into some top
level Catalogue object and simply stash that in the database, but it may
be that we should actually conflate the Catalogue with the librarian
to make for more memory efficient searches for products.
The point of taking this approach is that, when we want to test
ProductLine and StockItem there is no need to worry about how they are
stored, we can simply write a bunch of code that sets up a bunch of
productlines and stockitems and test away in that environment.
When we want to test the Catalogue, then of course we're going to need
a database standing by, but we can use a dummy, empty database, set up
a bunch of objects, store 'em and test that storage and reloading work
like they're supposed to.
Which is, admittedly, not the initial approach I mentioned to you in
private email, but I've thought about it some more since then.
The difference between a Unit test and an Acceptance test is that
Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall
Paul Mison [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 12/02/2001 at 19:59 +, David H. Adler wrote: On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 07:37:14PM +, Paul Mison wrote: On 12/02/2001 at 19:36 +, Greg McCarroll wrote: David H. Adler ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Well, now that you have something to work with, I can get the querying in motion... About how many people are we talking about? Any idea? i just sent a list of about 8~10 people ( i think ) Yeah, 10 +- usual errors (people who didn't know and have changed their minds, people running out of cash, etc, etc). FWIW, 10 is commonly the minimum for a "group". A group rate isn't the only way to go, but it's one option... Hmm. I assume group is cheaper, though. Well, of the list, I'd be surprised if that many dropped out, and I had stupidly forgotten Grep's interest, so that takes us up to 12. Which may be enough to guarantee a group. Aah, tricksy. Am I down as interested? If not, I am. Am I down as interesting? Er... -- Piers
Re: NY invasion, was Re: Conway Hall
"Mike Jarvis" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: David H. Adler wrote: On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 04:32:08PM -0500, Mike Jarvis wrote: When looking at cost, remember what hotel rates in NYC are like (almost as bad as London). You can easily pay US$250/night for a room that you would swear is in a crack house. But the crack is *great*! Rooms actually in a crack house will be significantly more expensive. But possibly safer too...
Re: Technical Meeting Sponsorship
Dave Cross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 22:26 06/02/2001, Jonathan Stowe wrote: Oi! Davorg! stop posting to the wrong list and confusing everyone :) You're the third person to point this out to me - and it wasn't me who started it. The culprit has been identified and told off :) I'm very, very sorry. -- Piers
Re: Last Night
Redvers Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It took me 3 hours to get home :-( It took me 2 hours (via Wong Kei, BBQ pork noodle soup, Hot Duck with plum sause). I'm more of a BBQ duck noodle soup and a plate of green vegetable in oyster sauce man myself. But Mmm... Wong Kei... -- Piers
Re: Consultancy company
Chris Heathcote [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: on 22/1/01 6:34 pm, Piers Cawley wrote: One of the things that I love about the iterative approach of XP is that during the process the client begins to learn exactly what she wants, and is taught to express that by the team. The idea is to create genuine collaboration. and a complete look of horror on the faces of clients when they realise they just don't have a clue :) Heh. But if we're good at our job we can pull them through that. -- Piers
Re: Consultancy company
Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, you wrote:
Heh. But if we're good at our job we can pull them through that.
uhh .. I have on occasion worked with clients that I reckon are the
exception to that rule ... some of them find lightswitches a
technically challenging problem.
I reckon the XP thing will work for clueful clients (or non clueful
clients who can be lent a clue for a short while) however I reckon
you need another layer of abstraction for totally clueless clients
.. there is a whole class of clients so clueless (' I just want one
of those dot-com things') that you probably need another level of
handholding ... they discuss the artistic and 'feelgood' bits of the
project in as precise terms as they can and then direct the XP team
as the customers representative.
A bit like employing an architect to design your new offices ... you
express your ideas, he produces a cardboard model, you say 'ooh very
nice make it so' and the architect liases with all the contractors
.. next time you see the thing is when they hand over the keys.
I know this goes against the XP idea but I really do think some
clients will not have anywhere near enough clue to work that way ..
or even the time or inclination to do it. I can see a role of
'architect' being needed on occasion.
I would say that part of the sales process should include weeding out
those kinds of clients. If it turns out that there aren't any we can
find with a clue, then the fun begins, but I'd like to think that the
market is large.
--
Piers
Re: Consultancy company
"James O'Sullivan" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Michael Stevens wrote: On Mon, Jan 22, 2001 at 08:47:35AM +, Roger Burton West wrote: Contracts _should_ say that the client pays for changes to what he originally said he wanted. Sometimes they do. It's quite rare, in my experience, for this payment actually to be demanded. (Usually some excuse along the lines of "it's a big customer and we don't want to annoy them".) This XP approach seems to require a lot more firmness I've also found a lot of customers are absolute *geniuses* at fudging the issue of what they did and didn't agree to, no matter how specific you attempt to be. All changes no matter how small should be passed through a change control process, normally put in place by the project manager assigned to that specific job. A change control document will normally be produced which will detail what the client wants, how much it will cost and what the effects are on the project timeline. This will need to be read and physically signed off by the client before any work is undertaken. This, in theory, should make the client think whether they really need this "small change" or if it can wait until a later date. It also gives you some ammo if the client changes their mind as there should be no ambiguity. The XP approach to this goes something like: Client: We want this. Team: Write it on a card. Client: Writes There you go. Team: This will take 'm' days to implement. We have n m days available in this iteration, do you want this in this iteration. or Team: This will take m days to implement. We have n m days in this iteration. If this goes in, which ones to we take out? And the client makes the decision. -- Piers
