All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Silly use.perl.org tricks<nobr> <wbr></nobr>...

pudge on 2002-02-02T12:44:30

wickline writes "This just in:

Google and http://use.perl.org/ cooperate to force perl luminaries to make witty comments on use.perl.org users.

For details, put your username in the following URL:
http://wickline.org/ug.cgi?YOURUSERNAMEHERE

Examples:

wickline is all alone in the world. ... In such cases, immediate and radical amputation of the power cord is the only recourse. --Larry Wall

wickline's Journal (135). ... the desire to evangelize when you think you have good news.

wickline is either loved by all or just invisible. ... charitable, and call it a misleading feature :-) --Larry Wall

wickline has posted 27 comments. Below find the most recent 24 comments. ... feeling of just who would have to fix them :-) -- Jarkko Hietaniemi


YMMV as google's cache grabs new random quotes from use.perl.org pages.

-matt"

huh?

Sandor on 2002-02-03T02:06:29

I tried it but no joy.

Re:huh?

jzawodn on 2002-02-03T03:04:25

Yeah, I'm a bit puzzled too. What's the magic here supposed to be?

Re:huh?

vsergu on 2002-02-03T04:28:50

It only works if Google has indexed your user pages. The wickline.org stuff is really pretty irrelevant. All it does is redirect to http://www.google.com/search?q=Download+site%3Ause.perl.org+inurl%3AYOURUSERNAME +YOURUSERNAME (unless I'm missing something).

Re:huh?

Sandor on 2002-02-06T02:29:11

hrm. I was wondering about that. Thanks.

guess I'm just lucky

wickline on 2002-02-03T18:07:42

I should have tried it with other usernames before posting, I guess.

I've started getting spam on a couple of email addresses I'd used of perl-related postings, so I hopped over to google to see just how many places those addresses might appear on the web.

My first query was wickline perl which included two use.perl.org hits... my 'fans' and 'friends' pages. The Google page summary grabbed my name and some surrounding text, then grabbed "download perl" from the page footer, along with the quote of the day... and the combination happened to be entertaining.

So, I tweaked the query to pull up only those sorts hits. I used the word 'Download' instead of 'Perl' to have google include more of the quote of the day. I limited queries to use.perl.org, and only pages that had my username in the url and in the body of the page (without the body requirement, my name didn't show up in the page summaries).

The results were
entertaining, and so I whipped up simple redirect so that nobody else would have to type the google query, and posted the story.

Now that I'm reading folks' reactions, I can see that you have to be sufficiently like me in order for this to work. You have to have had your user page indexed by google, which means that you have to register and you have to have ether submited a story or a comment or had a recent journal article when google indexed use.perl.org (or have a link out there somewhere to your user page). You also have to be sufficiently invisible on use.perl.org so that there aren't a bunch of folks refering to your username and giving less entertaining hits. You probably also get less entertaining hits if you use your username in your own comments, as they will then show up as well. And for maximal entertainment value, you have to have no friends, no fans, and get lucky enough to get one of the quotes that fit google's context window.

basically, it turns out that most folks won't get as entertaining a set of results as I did. Many folks will get zero hits from google, and other folks will get hits that just ain't funny.

For what it's worth, here's some of the more or less interesting hits:

-matt

 

autarch is all alone in the world. I don't know if it's what you want, but it's what
you get. :-) -Larry Wall



autarch's Journal (914). ... d be really neat to somehow make CPAN.pm respect this



Fans of darobin. ... one) is to take over the world like English did. Er, *as* English
did... --Larry Wall



darobin has posted 24 comments. ... nroff,
that would be more challenging... --Larry Wall



gnat's Journal (29). ... to take over the world like English did. Er, *as* English did...
--Larry Wall



Herkemer's Journal (20). ... That's gonna be tough for Randal to beat... :-Larry Wall



Friends of Herkemer. ... grows in the programmer's head. This programmer cannot be fired.
--Mark-Jason Dominus



Herkemer is either loved by all or just invisible. ... didn't want to know anyway...
:-Larry Wall



YAPC::Europe attendees ... should be
simple and complex things should be possible. --Alan Kay



koschei's Journal (147). ... allows people to register for use of the server, clans, and
download any required patches and maps. It also has news, tournament rules



Matts is all alone in the world. ... it can be written in Perl.



sherab has posted 0 comments. Besides, I wasn't trying to help them understand.
I was only trying to help them think they understand. --Larry Wall



srushe is either loved by all or just invisible. ... will be part of the problem, but
not everyone will be part of the solution. --Larry Wall



unimatrix has posted 7 comments. ... it
pleases the Author of my story. --Larry Wall



Whammo has posted 11 comments. ... in."
--Larry Wall



Fans of Whammo. ... helpful little gnomes running around in the repository and fixing
bugs while we sleep, I don't know.. -- Jarkko Hietaniemi,



Fans of ziggy. ... Looks good enough for me. Then again,
I found haggis to be edible :-) -- Jarkko Hietaniemi



ziggy has posted 64 comments. Below find
the most ... sleep, I don't know.. -- Jarkko Hietaniemi,



erik is all alone in the world. ... a bad reason. In this case it's a good reason. :-)
-Larry Wall



Fans of erik. erik is either loved by all or just invisible. It's not really
a rule--it's more like a trend. --Larry Wall


Re:guess I'm just lucky

jonnosan on 2002-02-04T02:08:34

Works for me also...
jonnosan is all alone in the world. ... be tough for Randal to beat... :-Larry Wall
jonnosan has posted 2 comments. ... demonstrated, but I have this sinking feeling of just who would have to fix them :-) -- Jarkko Hietaniemi
jonnosan has submitted 0 stories. Of course, this is a heuristic, which is a fancy way of saying that it doesn't work. --Mark-Jason Dominus

More google fun

jonnosan on 2002-02-04T06:28:54

I've just been amusing myself verifying some of the Larryisms.

e.g. I just got this one:
If you want to see useful Perl examples, we can certainly arrange to have comp.lang.misc flooded with them, but I don't think that would help the advance of civilization. :-) --Larry Wall in 1992Mar5.180926.19041@netlabs.com

And here's the full context: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=1992Mar5.180926.19041%40netlabs.com

Re:guess I'm just lucky

koschei on 2002-02-05T02:45:23

Blimey. Didn't know my journal was so feature packed.

Re:guess I'm just lucky

chaoticset on 2002-02-05T05:16:19

I got a couple of ones I found humorous...but then again, I laugh at Rotten News, too. :\

... chaoticset has posted 59 comments. Below find the most recent 24 comments ... a misleading feature :-) --Larry Wall in <2609@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>

Perceptive ??

MeerCat on 2002-02-10T10:38:47

Hmmm, I get ...

MeerCat is all alone in the world. ... I would call it a work-around. Please show us what
a fix looks like, then

It's just like being an adolescent again....

T