Today we were docked in Skagway all day, allowing us to focus more on Alaska and less on Perl. There were some interesting excursions in Juneau yesterday afternoon, including a wedding on Mendenhall Glacier.
The trips varied from helicopter rides (departing from the helipad practically on the docks), to hiking, ferry rides and bike rides. This afternoon, I bumped into tchrist, and he asked me if I wanted to go on a walk. I must have momentarily forgotten that he lives in Boulder Colorado, and that he hikes daily.
His "little walk" was actually a wonderful three hour hike through some of the hills surrounding Skagway. By the time we got back to the inlet (slightly less wide than the Hudson as seen from Manhattan, or the Thames, as seen from the Tower Bridge), we were surrounded by some of the most beautiful tree-lined, snow-capped mountains anyone can imagine. As for the weather, it was bright, sunny and slightly warmer than yesterday.
That was but one of the many shore excursions passengers made today. Rather than go into excruciating detail, let me just say that the day was just packed.
Returning to the boat, just before dinner, John Clutterbuck talked about how Perl saved the Scottish Land Registry System -- a computer application that tracks and parallels the movement of physical case files around a national government office. Strangely enough, they are using Perl to write graphical, client-server database applications. (not enough buzzwords? Just add "n-tier", "distributed" and "intranet" as appropriate.)
Here, we saw described a system that is typically written in C++, Visual Basic or other "4GL"s for use on Solaris and WinNT clients actually being written with Perl/TK and DBI. I guess Perl isn't just for CGI hacking anymore.
Tomorrow we will be cruising scenic Glacier Bay, watching the blue ice cleave into the sea. Perlish events resume as we nurse our sore muscles and switch back to a more geekish mode of existance.
Until tomorrow, Z.
