Yesterday I edited a chapter of the PHP book that I've taken on as part of my O'Reilly editorial job. It was tough going, mostly because I needed to look up and check a bunch of stuff to fill in the gaps left by the author. I'm pretty sure that by the time I finish the book I'll be a journeyman PHP programmer, for better or worse.
I see that e-smith was acquired. That's the company that employs Skud and srl (both of whom I met for the first time at YAPC in Montreal, although I knew them through perl6 and #perl before then). Congratulations to them--hopefully it means they'll score lots of cheap Canadian healthcare, rather than having to port their Perl code to French. :-)
TPC preparations continue apace. I continue to feel mighty guilty that I *still* haven't nailed down the Perl Guru track. If I could exchange guilt for money, I'd be a rich man.
Terrifying Development du jour: Tiny COBOL
I like Miguel de Icaza a lot. This is from a recent message of his to the Mono mailing list:
About implementing the classes, here are a few rules:The reason for (2) is very simple, and the essence of the passion of programming: the more unknown a subject is to you, and the more complex it seems to you, the highest chance you have that it will be one new domain of knowledge of computer science that you will get to know and experiment. The joy of programming comes from doing new and innovative things. So if you fear a bit of code, it is probably the bit of code you will enjoy the most working on.
- Do not panic when you see something complex.
- Never stop working on something because there is a bit of unknowness ahead of you, or because you feel ignorant about a piece of software you will have to write.
Stupid idea of the day: Turn Salon into a vessel for syndicated shit stories from other shit media. If I wanted to read the Atlantic Wank Monthly, I'd subscribe to it. I want Salon, dammit!
The JabberCON schedule is set. Despite their odd presence at OScon last year (I had no idea what Jabber was, all I knew was that I wanted to kick the crap out of the stiltwalker), I've come to like Jabber. Like every online service, though, I just wish it was up more. :-)
I looked at because it had all the buzzwords (P2P and .NET) but damned if I can make any sense out of it.
Cool article on perl.com about encryption. By a #perler, no less.
Top 25 Internet "Properties" (most visited sites). Ugh. Disney? Lycos? And what the fuck is "eUniverse"?! My world is much different. Hmm. It'd be cool to write a simple proxy that logs websites visited, and then have a bunch of Perl folks install and use it for a week or two. Then anonymize the logs and send 'em back to Perl HQ so we'd get a picture of what's really popular with Perl people (probably pr0n :-)
I have no idea what this is, how it works, or why it exists. But I do know that it sounds highly questionable.
tom.com enters ISP business with TomNet. Is there really a sustainable business model in people named Tom?
Speaking of Tom Christiansen, I spent most of Tuesday with him in Boulder. He's doing well, obviously enjoying life way too much to want to hang out on #perl :-). Trust me when I say you won't recognize him when you see him at the Open Source Convention.
--Nat
