Re: Forthcoming Meetings - Summary
Sun 25th Feb Emergency Social Meeting (Damian Conway) Mon 26th Feb Emergency Technical Meeting (Damian Conway) This could be worth having a holiday for. See you there :) Barbie
Birmingham Perl Mongers
If anyone is ever in Birmingham on the second Wednesday of every month, the Birmingham Perl Mongers (there are a few at the moment) will be glad to indulge in a few pints with you. For those interested, the next meeting (10th January) will be after 5.30pm in The Hogshead on Newhall Street (just round the corner from St Phillips Cathedral on Colmore Row). Have fun! Barbie
Re: Grammar (was: Re: Linux.com Online Chat)
Right, well there's the difference then. I'm 29 this year and I was schooled during the seventies. Was anyone else of a similar age *not* taught proper punctuation and grammar at school? Back in those days, teachers actually taught you, as opposed to writing long essays to justify performance-related bonuses, or running around like headless chickens to prepare for OFSTED visits. Quite. I'm 35 and was given a good basic education at Primary school of the english language, together most of it's idyosyncrasies. I was lucky enough to go to a Grammar (when there were still such things) so probably faired better than most. They went on strike quite a lot back then, too. Living in the wilds of Cheshire we had regular blackouts. The local candle factory did a roaring trade back then. Anyway, back to the point. Many of my peers and friends who were taught exactly the same punctuation stuff as me just ignored it and used things like "could'nt" and "samwich's" and so on. I reckon it's less to do with it being taight in schools and more to do with how much someone reads. If you read a lot, you see the correct forms a lot and it sinks in. Similarly with grammar, I reckon, although I have absolutely zero evidence to back that up. Personally I think it stems from laziness. There are too many hip and trendy words slipping into our regular vocabulary these days, that even TV presenters are falling foul of correct english. Not a good example to the kids me thinks (says he now a responsible father of 5 months. okay forget the responsible part). RANT My other half was a Reception teacher and the farce they went through with OFSTED was beyond belief. Then the actual report was even worse, all wrapped up in management BS that can destroy a career after only ever having seen one 30 minute lesson. /RANT Barbie. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [my new homefor now]
Re: Grammar (was: Re: Linux.com Online Chat)
From: "Dave Hodgkinson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Barbie" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Quite. I'm 35 and was given a good basic education at Primary school of the english language, together most of it's idyosyncrasies. I was lucky enough to go to a Grammar (when there were still such things) so probably faired better than most. Fared? *ducks* Senility is setting in early. I thought it was bit strange my message not appear after posting Wed, 4 Apr 2001 13:01:32. Looking at the header it's certainly dome the rounds! Barbie.
Re: Komodo
From: "Jonathan Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anyway, I thought all this stuff about non-standard kinds of Win32 Perl was sorted out years ago. Activestate Perl is the same as anyone else's Perl, shurely? All the brain ache surrounding PPM and CPAN modules and XS is not strictly perl related is it? I mean how the hell do you install CPAN packges on EPOC perl or Mac Perl or any other platform that doesn't smell of Unix? I've I'm wrong and Activestate Perl is full of unreleased modifications to Perl itself or the core libs I'd like to know if it... Unfortunately there is a difference between PPM and CPAN modules, which is why you need to check whether the module you require is in the ActiveState repository or the Package List. If you want anything extra curricular (e.g. Template Toolkit) you'll need nmake and hope it works under windows from CPAN. The good thing about PPM is that it does all the installation for you. the bad thing is that it doesn't run any tests. Then again seeing as they've done the job of porting the package you'd hope it was tested at their end. At least that's what _I'm_ hoping. Barbie.
Re: next social meeting vs tube strike
From: "Steve Mynott" [EMAIL PROTECTED] why don't you have the social meeting a day earlier so that everyone can "work from home" with their hangovers the following day? That would work for me. I might be able to get down to London more often. Being in charge of baby while missus goes off practicing with her band can be a pain sometimes. Barbie
TPC5 Attendees
Just had a look at the registration for the forthcoming TPC5, and notice a fair few London.pm'ers are attending. Nice :) However, also had a look at the Hotel costs. Thankfully I wasn't drinking anything at the time. Seeing as I'm having to pay for this years trip out of my own pocket, would anyone be interested in sharing a room with a Birmingham.pm'er? Or know of any other hotels (within walking distance from the conference) that are cheaper? Barbie.
Re: Good Accountants
From: Chris Heathcote [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 27/4/01 11:08 am, Rob Partington wrote: about all things Manc on a London.pm list?! Given the number of people I've seen from Manchester Uni at the technical meetings, probably not... Y'see I was a Salford problem kid... I always knew Manchester was the centre of the Universe. Shame about the footballs teams though. Barbie.
Re: TPC Travel
From: Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] Who's going to TPC? Shall we see if we can get a group together and perhaps get a discount on the flight? I'm not sure at the moment due to the cost involved. However, I have done some prelimary checking and there is a British Airways flight direct from Heathrow to San Diego for just over £680 for the month of July. Discovered that I can get an extra 20% off the cost of the tuts and stuff though, so an extra discount on the flight and some cheap accomodation and I'll be in for definite. Barbie.
Re: mod perl
From: Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] so what is the preffered debugging method for discovering what this little leak might be .. strip the app down and build bit by bit .. or is there a clever way of looking at heap contents? Would MJD's Memoize (http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Memoize) work here? Barbie.
Schroedingers Computer
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010503/010503-6.html So far, demonstrations of quantum computing have been limited to the most rudimentary of calculations, involving only two or three bits of information. I'm sure Damian could them straight on that one ;-P Barbie
Re: Monitors
Currently just Tux, who thankfully doesn't get used as Nerf gun target practice since leaving tw2. Barbie.
Re: Latest Perl Journal
From: Dean [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 01:19:36PM +0100, Robin Houston wrote: Thanks very much. It's one of my favourite jokes. It was trialed at a london.pm technical meeting some months ago :) What's the footnote on page 78, Dave? And is this a subscribers copy or one found in the wild? Subscribers copy. Arrived transatlantic this morning. Barbie.
Re: A look over the shoulder of an XP programmer (auf deutsch)
From: Matthew Byng-Maddick [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 16 May 2001, Barbie wrote: sysadmin, being the shortsighted Solaris guru that he claims he is, has deemed outgoing and ingoing ports that aren't for HTTP, FTP be blocked :( dare I enquire how you sent this mail, then? :) Oh yeah and them. Apparently it's stop people using newsgroups and Napster. We didn't bother explaining that most of us use mailing lists and use ftp to download mp3s. Barbie
Re: T-Shirts
From: Simon Wistow [EMAIL PROTECTED] ...and then sunny Birmingham .. You must have been dreaming! Barbie, currently sitting in a high-rise office block in rainy Brum.
Re: pc components
Thinking of big hard drives... http://www.dabs.com/products/compare.asp?action=selectedprodtype=14 Nice feature. Bugger I bought a 41.1Gb IBM Deskstar the other month from Dabs and now they've drop their price by £25. Barbie
Re: Sara Cox - was Re: FHM Top 100 Sexiest Women
From: robert shiels [EMAIL PROTECTED] According to a recent survey, men say the first thing they notice about a women are their eyes. And women say the first thing they notice about men are: they're a bunch of liars. That's not quite true. Women initial assume that all men are automatically lairs and work they're way up from there. Barbie.
MIME stuff - Am I missing something?
Using the code below, and calling the routine with a *.jpg file. Why does
the mime_type return text/plain? I've also tried using MIME::Head-read
with a filehandle and it returns the same. I would investigate CPAN further
for clues (and the examples that ActivePerl decided not to include), but it
doesn't seem to want to respond to me today :(
Barbie.
sub parseMIME {
$myfile = shift;
use MIME::Head;
### Parse a new header from a filehandle:
$head = MIME::Head-from_file($myfile);
### The content type (e.g., text/html):
$mime_type = $head-mime_type;
return split(/,$mime_type);
}
Re: MIME stuff - Am I missing something?
From: Dominic Mitchell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dunno about your MIME problem (sorry), but somebody on irc mentioned trying cpan2.org instead. Ahh! Got it. Thanks. Found the following: Due to nonuniqueness of MIME encodings, there is a very good chance that your output will not Iexactly resemble your input. So it seems it's taken a best guess, because it didn't understand the encoding. Back to the drawing board. Barbie.
Re: MIME stuff - Am I missing something?
From: Jonathan Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] I don't know if you are parsing mail or something else, Isolated file. If you are trying to figure it out magically based on just the file format or filename or something (e.g. just pointing it at a raw jpeg) I didn't think MIME:: would help. Could be wrong tho. Apache has some stuff that attempts to do this, but unless you fancy making your program a mod_perl handler that won't help you much. Unfortunately I have to rely on the standard install of ActivePerl and didn't want to make assumptions based on the extension type of the file. Never mind, I will have to investigate further for future use. Thanks for the help. Barbie.
Re: MIME stuff - Am I missing something?
From: Robert Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Roger Burton West [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] man 1 file man 5 magic less /usr/share/misc/magic # on many systems except anything written my MS of course... Which is precisely what this install of ActivePerl sits on. Luckily I have a Linux box too :) Barbie.
Re: [Announce] Hackspoitation film fest
From: Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] but he can also cook! Can he? I wouldn't know. I know nothing about him other than he appears in films that I have no interest in. Don't think I've seen a single film with him in. I remember going to see Executive Decision at the cinema and the whole audience cheering when SS got killed. I thought I was the only one :) Barbie.
Re: [Announce] Hackspoitation film fest
From: Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] I seem to remember an extremely soft porn-ish film with julie andrews at one stage, all i can remember is giant toy soldiers. I don't think porn is even the right title it was more just weird. You're thinking of the comedy S.O.B., where a film director decides his wife (played by Julie Andrews)should go topless to increase the film's rating and the director's flagging career. Oddly enough the film is directed by Andrew's husband at the time, Blake Edwards. Life imitating art or visa versa? Barbie.
Re: [PUB] Possible candidate
From: Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Simon Wistow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 10:15 AM Cross David - dcross wrote: pedant That's Doggett Coat and Badge - a pint to the forst person to explain the name. /pedant c.f previous mail The right to wear Doggett's Coat and Badge is the prize in a rowing race held yearly since 1715 between London Bridge and Cadogan Pier, Chelsea in London. It was initiated by Thomas Doggett to commemorate the coronation of George I. The badge is silver and shows the white horse of Hannover. The race is now held in July. Maybe I should have said a pint to the first person WHO WASN'T IN THE PUB LAST NIGHT LEARNING ALL ABOUT THE HISTORY to explain the name. Btw, the coat is red. Doggett's Coat and Badge one of the world's oldest continuing rowing races, held annually in England along the River Thames from London Bridge to Chelsea, a distance of 4 miles 5 furlongs (7.4 km). The race is a sculling contest between skiffs originally used to ferry passengers across the river. The boats are manned by watermen who have recently completed their apprenticeship. The contest was instituted in 1715 by Thomas Doggett, an English comic actor, to commemorate the accession of George I in 1714. Doggett provided for a cash prize and an Orange coloured Livery with a Badge representing Liberty to be awarded to the winner. Although the colour of the uniform has changed from orange to red and the cash prize is no longer awarded, Doggett's decree continues to be fulfilled. This internet thing is quite interesting really once you get the hang of it. Do I get half a pint for knowing the coat was originally orange? Barbie.
Re: [PUB] Possible candidate
From: Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] Btw, the coat is red. And for anyone bored enough, the coat looks like this: http://home.planet.nl/~pdavis/Doggett.htm Barbie.
Re: Windows Perl - how?
From: Mark Fowler [EMAIL PROTECTED] I supose the real question is a) Why don't activestate mirror the latest installer on their site, or.. b) At least link to it whenever you offer a MSI package to download (or at least on the 'downloads' page Last time I downloaded (build 623) they had both the explanation about the installer and a direct link to it on the M$ site. Even the install notes page makes no mention of it. Pretty poor if you ask me. Barbie
Re: General Election
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? Barbie.
Re: crazy golf
From: Paul Mison [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Isn't there an extra bank holiday next year for Golden Jubilee shenanigans?) Apparently so. Allegedly there is a move to bring the UK more into line with the rest of Europe with regards to bank holidays. Several European nations put us to shame when you compare us with countries like Germany (14 days IIRC). The Golden Jubilee is the first to be introduced, with another 3 added over the next few years. I guess the Golden Jubilee one will then be known as Coronation Day or some such. There was a link all about it on the bbc site, but that was earlier in the year when I was living that other life, blissfully unaware I was about to be made redundant :) Barbie.
Re: crazy golf
From: Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Paul Mison [EMAIL PROTECTED] Um. Bad example. Unfortunately May Day is at a *really* silly point, coming just after Easter and just before the 'Early Summer' (aka Whitsun) Bank Holiday. Besides, people have been celebrating Mayday for _far_ longer than Easter. I find it strange that the only surviving English/British religion, Paganism, is the target for being abolished. Mayday was traditionally the fertility festival. It would make more sense to embrace the Pagan holidays seeing as they are celebrated more evenly throughout the year. Plus they don't glorify death and have a healthy celebration for life. Barbie.
Re: General Election
From: Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 2:30 PM Subject: RE: General Election From: Piers Cawley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 2:27 PM Cross David - dcross [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [The Red Flag] 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. There's a fine version of it to this tune by Billy Bragg and Dick Gaughn on BB's mini-album The Internationale. If you haven't tracked down an mp3 by next week, remind me and I'll play it to you. Have it on virgin vinyl with free limited edition 7 thanks :) Barbie.
Re: Training anyone ?
From: Richard Clamp [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, Jun 13, 2001 at 01:15:17PM +0100, Simon Wilcox wrote: Just saw this linked from a hugely obvious banner ad on the Register : http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/courses/perl/for_the_register.html Great idea to tie it in to a success story I thought. Grumble grumble. At least they only claim to be the maintenance team. Almost like boasting about being the team sent in to fetch the team sent in to rescue the hostages. If on the other hand you want the dev team, I'm sure Barbie and I could figure something to tell you for the right amount of beer. Only just seen this! They probably could only get away with saying they maintain it due to the amount of complex stuff in there, and potential legal implications if they said they designed it. But I'll agree with The Goth here, do we really want to associate with the buggers? I'm half tempted to see what they'd teach me though... :) Seeing as they're in Bradford, perhaps how to make damn fine curries. That's it, you've convinced me, where do I sign up? Barbie
Re: Training anyone ?
From: Lucy McWilliam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Beer good. But Guinness is better ;) Barbie
Re: YAPC::Europe
From: Greg McCarroll [EMAIL PROTECTED] So how many people are bringing partners to YAPC::Europe? I did ask, but she doesn't fancy it. So I get to party :) Barbie
Re: Religion
From: Jonathan Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] I find it strange that the only surviving English/British religion, Paganism, is the target for being abolished. Is paganism a religion? Yes. Just because it isn't an organised religion with official buildings and the like or a registered charity it is relagated to the none of the above category. However, within the civil service it is the only such religion that has recognised religious holidays. Or does it refer to What Northern and central Europe did before the Romans? It was the religion in these here parts several hundreds of years before the Romans ever discovered this little island. Mayday was traditionally the fertility festival. It would make more sense to embrace the Pagan holidays seeing as they are celebrated more evenly throughout the year. Plus they don't glorify death and have a healthy celebration for life. This is all true. But Christian festivals are for the most part intellectualised versions of the non-christian ones they replaced. Easter is a fertility festival. Eh? Nope it was an attempt by the Christian faith to remove every possible existance of any other religion in the provinces they conquered. It has still been happening in this century within Africa and South America. The holidays might happen at similar times, but their meanings are far from the same. All souls day is the same as Halloween All Souls Day is a celebration of all things good. Halloween is the romantised version of witchcraft being bad and tantamount to devil worshipping. Again an effort by the church to ridicule other religions. The actions and spirit of paganism (say, wearing leaves and dancing round a tree in May) are good healthy things to do. The cerebral aspects of paganism are daft (If I wear leaves and dance round a tree the tree spirit will make me more fertile). If you read up on it a bit more, you'll see that there's much more to it than that. And anyway why is that any more daft than someone going to a church and praying for God to make them fertile. They're just a person's belief, the fact they you choose to ridicule another's way acting on that belief only allows the church to perpetuate the ridicule that is placed on other religions. Faith is a very personal thing, whereas a religion dictating that other kinds of faith are bad or inferior only serves to belittle themselves IMO. Perhaps one of the reasons why the Pope is making such an effort to apologise for past persecutions. To the extent Christianity leaves one alone and replaces the other, I like it. I agree that at times it hasn't done a very good job of leaving alone. But nothing's perfect... What like the Crusades? Jon, thinking Paganism and Christianity should co-exist happily as do Art and Science. One celebrates life, the other glorifies death. Art and Science are not so extreme. BTW I'm not a Pagan, just in case you're wondering. Barbie.
Re: crazy golf
From: Simon Cozens [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Fri, Jun 01, 2001 at 03:53:53PM +0100, Barbie wrote: the only surviving English/British religion, Paganism Nice try. Are you saying it isn't a religion or there is another one? Barbie
Re: General Election
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. Barbie.
Re: Religion
From: Jonathan Stowe [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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, This will be an amusing thing. Now I'd pay to see that :) Barbie.
Re: General Election
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! 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. The Houghton Weavers, The Spinners, The Knigston Trio, My missus now they're folk singers.
Re: Training anyone ?
From: Robin Szemeti [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Barbie wrote: They probably could only get away with saying they maintain it due to the amount of complex stuff in there, and potential legal implications if they said they designed it. But I'll agree with The Goth here, do we really want to associate with the buggers? I'm half tempted to see what they'd teach me though... :) hmmm .. whilst I don't know what their Perl skills are like I do know they are a generally clueful outfit .. ISTR one of the founders has his name on more than one UNIX book of repute ... Richard, The Goth and I were referring to The Register not the GBDirect people. Barbie.
