From tom at eborcom.com  Thu Dec  4 03:46:50 2008
From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins)
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 11:46:50 +0000
Subject: Lightning Talks Required for Tuesday 13th January 2009
Message-ID: <20081204114650.GA3011@eborcom.com>

Our next technical meeting will take place on Tuesday 13th January,
2009.  This time round I want to do something a bit different.

As a group, we do all sorts of different things with Perl at all sorts
of levels of ability.  However, most of our talks have involved people
who use Perl for work talking about things we've done at work.

I think that's a shame:  I'd like to see a wider range of people
sharing their experiences and thoughts with the group.  But I know
it's difficult to stand up in front of people and tell them about
things they know more about than you do, as one of us recently
described:
http://use.perl.org/~oliver/journal/37984

So I thought we should have a meeting where everyone who attends talks
about something at least vaguely relevant: a meeting where beginners
share their experience with other beginners and remind the
professionals what it's like starting out, as well as experts sharing
cool tricks.

To make sure we don't take too long, no talk can last longer than five
minutes.  You don't need any slides or other fancy presentation tools
if you don't want them.  You can take less than five minutes if you
want to.

Please mail me privately before the end of this year to let me know
what you'd like to talk about.  Don't tell me verbally because I'll
forget, especially if we're in the pub at the time.

The meeting will take place in its customary location, the OU's
Systems Seminar Room.  Some of us usually offer lifts to and from MK
and its surroundings if asked nicely.

You don't have to talk if you really don't want to, but it might feel
a bit like showing up at a fancy dress party in your normal clothes.

Tom

From tom at eborcom.com  Fri Dec  5 01:13:20 2008
From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins)
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 09:13:20 +0000
Subject: Birmingham.pm 2009 QA Hackathon - The Dates
Message-ID: <20081205091320.GB15137@eborcom.com>

Our friends in Birmingham are organising an event next year that
should interest those of us interested in testing with Perl.

----- Forwarded message from Barbie <barbie at missbarbell.co.uk> -----

Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 08:26:32 +0000
From: Barbie <barbie at missbarbell.co.uk>
To: Birmingham Perl Mongers <birmingham-pm at pm.org>
Subject: 2009 QA Hackathon - The Dates
List-Id: Birmingham Perl Mongers mailing list <birmingham-pm.pm.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://mail.pm.org/mailman/options/birmingham-pm>,
	<mailto:birmingham-pm-request at pm.org?subject=unsubscribe>
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List-Help: <mailto:birmingham-pm-request at pm.org?subject=help>
List-Subscribe: <http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/birmingham-pm>,
	<mailto:birmingham-pm-request at pm.org?subject=subscribe>


Following the initial announcement at YAPC::Europe [1], Birmingham Perl
Mongers [2] are pleased to announce that the 2009 QA Hackathon will be
held over 3 days:

*** Saturday March 28th to Monday March 30th 2009 ***

Our wiki - http://qa-hackathon.org - is now live, so please feel free to
sign-up and add details about yourself if you want to be involved,
suggest projects or people for the event. We are hoping to attract about
15-20 people with plans to hack on various QA/testing projects, so if
you think you can contribute something, or would like to nominate
someone, please feel free to update the Attendees [4] page with contact
details, etc. Also if you think a particular project should be covered,
please add a page for it and tell us about it.

We are also looking for sponsors [5] for the event, and although we have
already contacted a few, we are eager to have more in the event we are
able to provide funding for more attendees, particularly from overseas.
If you have a contact for us, please send an email to
organisers at qa-hackathon.org with details. We are delighted to have $foo
Magazin [6] sponsor us, as well Birmingham Perl Mongers [2], who are
underwriting the complete event. 

Negotiations for venue and accommodation are ongoing, so we'll make
those known once they are finalised. We would like to have everyone
together, so if you're planning to bring your partner/family with you,
please add a note to your entry in the Attendees [4] page, so we can
make sure we allocate rooms for everyone. Expect more news regarding the
venue and accommodation in the new year. 

[1] http://www.yapceurope2008.org
[2] http://birmingham.pm.org/
[3] http://qa-hackathon.org
[4] http://qa-hackathon.org/wiki/Attendees
[5] http://qa-hackathon.org/wiki/Sponsors
[6] http://www.perl-magazin.de/

Thanks,
The Organisers.
-- 
2009 QA Hackathon - http://qa-hackathon.org




----- End forwarded message -----

From peter at dragonstaff.com  Thu Dec 18 03:46:53 2008
From: peter at dragonstaff.com (peter at dragonstaff.com)
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:46:53 +0000
Subject: Beer on Friday
Message-ID: <20081218114653.dp7ka4oq8oco48sc@webmail.dragonstaff.com>

There is an extraordinary social meeting this Friday 19th December at  
Wetherspoons near Milton Keynes railway station starting from 8 p.m.
There's a good chance that at some point everyone will move on in  
search of sustenance so if you miss us try our mobiles.

Cheers, Peter




From tony.edwardson at usa.net  Thu Dec 18 04:11:16 2008
From: tony.edwardson at usa.net (Tony Edwardson)
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:11:16 +0000
Subject: Beer on Friday
In-Reply-To: <20081218114653.dp7ka4oq8oco48sc@webmail.dragonstaff.com>
References: <20081218114653.dp7ka4oq8oco48sc@webmail.dragonstaff.com>
Message-ID: <052768ED-B260-4F19-A3AD-BA208E6482BF@usa.net>

Cool - I'll be there - any particular justification  ?
On 18 Dec 2008, at 11:46, peter at dragonstaff.com wrote:

> There is an extraordinary social meeting this Friday 19th December  
> at Wetherspoons near Milton Keynes railway station starting from 8  
> p.m.
> There's a good chance that at some point everyone will move on in  
> search of sustenance so if you miss us try our mobiles.
>
> Cheers, Peter
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> MiltonKeynes-pm mailing list
> MiltonKeynes-pm at pm.org
> http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/miltonkeynes-pm
>


From I.A.Cameron at open.ac.uk  Thu Dec 18 06:36:09 2008
From: I.A.Cameron at open.ac.uk (Ian Cameron)
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:36:09 +0000
Subject: Beer on Friday 
In-Reply-To: <052768ED-B260-4F19-A3AD-BA208E6482BF@usa.net> 
References: <20081218114653.dp7ka4oq8oco48sc@webmail.dragonstaff.com>
	<052768ED-B260-4F19-A3AD-BA208E6482BF@usa.net>
Message-ID: <E1LDJyz-00064O-LC@sloe.open.ac.uk>

Tony Edwardson said:
> Cool - I'll be there - any particular justification  ?

None at all!

See ya there.

-- 
Cheers, Ian.



The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt 
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).



From tom at eborcom.com  Mon Dec 29 03:26:30 2008
From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins)
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:26:30 +0000
Subject: Lightning Talks Required for Tuesday 13th January 2009
In-Reply-To: <20081204114650.GA3011@eborcom.com>
References: <20081204114650.GA3011@eborcom.com>
Message-ID: <20081229112630.GA35739@eborcom.com>

On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 11:46:50AM +0000, Tom Hukins wrote:
> Please mail me privately before the end of this year to let me know
> what you'd like to talk about.

It's almost the end of the year.  Please submit your talks soon so I
can announce the meeting next week.

Thanks to Tony, Rod, Colin and JJ for their submissions.

> The meeting will take place in its customary location, the OU's
> Systems Seminar Room.

I remember a few people suggesting improvements to the directions I
sent out last time, but I forget the details.  If you have
improvements, please review
http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/miltonkeynes-pm/2008-September/000478.html
and let me know what they are.

Season's Greetings,
Tom

From tom at eborcom.com  Tue Dec 30 10:43:23 2008
From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins)
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:43:23 +0000
Subject: Perl Things I Have Found Useful
Message-ID: <20081230184323.GA53361@eborcom.com>

Hi all,

There's been some healthy discussion about Perl on IRC, but we've
shamefully neglected it on this list for months.

As we reach the end of the year, I thought it might be fun to list a few
Perl modules I've found useful in 2008.  This isn't a list of new or
exciting modules, just modules that have helped me solve the problems
I've encountered.

So, here goes, in no particular order except (mostly) alphabetically:

DateTime:
I often take DateTime and its associated modules for granted.  Then I
find myself working with code bases that use other modules, or other
languages, and I miss it.  The power of DateTime::Format::Natural scares
me, but in a good way.

Devel::NYTProf:
Perl has had profilers for years, and sane people have never optimised
their code without profiling it first.  But this one just works better
and has more flexible options.  If I'm honest, I'm most impressed by the
Web interface with Devel::Cover-like colours and fancy mouseover
effects.

LWP:
It's 13 years since I first used LWP, and it's still a really convenient
way to communicate with Web servers.  LWP::Simple makes the simple
things very simple.  This year, I've found myself grubbing around in the
innards of LWP while fighting SOAP and its Perl implementations.  The
module has well structured code and has seen useful new additions this
year, such as transparent gzip encoding of data.

Log4perl:
People still write large applications without using a logging system.  I
wish they wouldn't.  People who log their code often write their own
logging systems.  I wish they wouldn't.  I like Log4perl because I can
see different types of log from my code by reconfiguring it, often
without much effort.

Test::Deep and Test::Differences:
I've spent too much time writing code that throws data around between
different systems this year.  When I need to check that I'm rearranging
data as I intended, these modules help.  Test::Differences gives me a
visual representation of failure that I find easy to understand:
Test::Deep lets me exclude certain parts of data structures or check
using regular expressions.

XML::Compile::SOAP:
I've been messing around with this in odds and ends of spare time,
working on an interface to a Web service I used in my previous job.  I
extended a SOAP::Lite wrapper for it that worked well enough for our
needs, but it felt clumsy and I spent too much time working around
SOAP::Lite's inadequacies.  With XML::Compile::SOAP, I've generated a
working interface quickly, even though the module very much still feels
like a work in progress.

How did Perl help you work and play this year?

Tom

From oliver.gorwits at oucs.ox.ac.uk  Tue Dec 30 11:33:05 2008
From: oliver.gorwits at oucs.ox.ac.uk (Oliver Gorwits)
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:33:05 +0000
Subject: Perl Things I Have Found Useful
In-Reply-To: <20081230184323.GA53361@eborcom.com>
References: <20081230184323.GA53361@eborcom.com>
Message-ID: <495A7771.7010408@oucs.ox.ac.uk>

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Tom Hukins wrote:
> How did Perl help you work and play this year?

Well the one thing I could not live without isn't a Perl module, but
a Firefox trick I got from the excellent "Perl Hacks" (O'Reilly) book...

Tom mentioned a module I didn't know, so I cut and paste that into
the Firefox location/awesome bar like "cpan Test::Differences" and
hit return. This hack takes me straight to the CPAN page.

Create a new Bookmark with the Keyword set to "cpan" and the
Location set to "http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?%s".

Alternatively, something like
"http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=module;query=%s" will perform a
search rather than jump to the module directly.

A bonus with the new Firefox awesome bar is that it remembers all
these prior hits, so just typing "cpan Test::Di<return>" takes me
straight back any time.

Great list Tom, and a happy New Year to you all!

regards,
oliver.
- --
Oliver Gorwits, Network and Telecommunications Group,
Oxford University Computing Services
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From andyfrommk at googlemail.com  Tue Dec 30 13:18:56 2008
From: andyfrommk at googlemail.com (Andy Selby)
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:18:56 +0000
Subject: Perl Things I Have Found Useful
In-Reply-To: <20081230184323.GA53361@eborcom.com>
References: <20081230184323.GA53361@eborcom.com>
Message-ID: <27183a390812301318t366b503i2d4938fc461230bd@mail.gmail.com>

> How did Perl help you work and play this year?

Chart::Plot was useful to me when GD::Graph fell short like, uh, I
don't know....Having the plot start at the Y axis!
Although in the end it wasn't needed
http://www.andy.abel.co.uk/images/chart.pl.png
There goes the dream of my price comparison site with graphs, or maybe
I've been reading to much xkcd http://xkcd.com/523/

Happy new year to you all

From tom at eborcom.com  Wed Dec 31 02:54:42 2008
From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins)
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:54:42 +0000
Subject: Amusing Module Names
Message-ID: <20081231105442.GA62182@eborcom.com>

On a different, but related, theme to useful modules, I've noticed a
few CPAN modules have inadvertantly amusing names.  Actually, Robbie
noticed one and it reminded me of another.

I'm not thinking of modules that have obviously silly names, but
modules whose names have another meaning you might not think of
immediately.

So far we have:
  Egg::Release
  Tie::Judy

Any others?

Tom

From oliver.gorwits at oucs.ox.ac.uk  Wed Dec 31 06:54:47 2008
From: oliver.gorwits at oucs.ox.ac.uk (Oliver Gorwits)
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:54:47 +0000
Subject: Amusing Module Names
In-Reply-To: <20081231105442.GA62182@eborcom.com>
References: <20081231105442.GA62182@eborcom.com>
Message-ID: <495B87B7.2030502@oucs.ox.ac.uk>

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Tom Hukins wrote:
> I've noticed a few CPAN modules have inadvertantly amusing names.

Well, some seem to find my module Catalyst::Plugin::HashedCookies
amusingly named, but I don't know what they could be on about!


- --
Oliver Gorwits, Network and Telecommunications Group,
Oxford University Computing Services
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