From dave at dave.org.uk Thu Jan 1 03:24:37 2009 From: dave at dave.org.uk (Dave Cross) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:24:37 +0000 Subject: Amusing Module Names In-Reply-To: <495B87B7.2030502@oucs.ox.ac.uk> References: <20081231105442.GA62182@eborcom.com> <495B87B7.2030502@oucs.ox.ac.uk> Message-ID: <495CA7F5.7080104@dave.org.uk> Oliver Gorwits wrote: > > 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! Maybe you need my Tie::Hash::Cannabinol :-) Dave... From tom at eborcom.com Thu Jan 8 09:21:42 2009 From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 17:21:42 +0000 Subject: Technical Meeting: Tuesday 13th January, 2009 Message-ID: <20090108172142.GA29347@eborcom.com> Milton Keynes Perl Mongers will hold our first technical meeting of 2009 at 7pm on Tuesday 13th January at the Open University in the same room as last time. This time we have many people talking for 5 minutes about various things they've been doing with Perl: Tony Edwardson: only Rod Norfor: Chart::Gnuplot Colin Bradford: memcached Jon Allen: Creating PDF files with Catalyst Peter Edwards: Exceptions Tom Hukins: Building your own Perl Jon has also offered to present his full length "Online Retail with Perl" talk that he gave at last year's London Perl Workshop: http://perl.jonallen.info/talks/online-retail Finally, remember to arrive at the OU for 7pm. Here's how to find us: First, find the OU campus as described at http://www3.open.ac.uk/contact/ Enter the campus (signposted Open University, not Open University East), via Brickhill Street (V10). Take the middle lane past Security (on the left), through the barriers, and then turn right on to Ring road East. Ahead you will see the road narrows to single lane on your side of the road, where there are no entry signs. Just prior to this is the entrance to a car park on the left (marked East parking extension on the campus map). Take this left turn and head to the top right (North West on the campus map) of the car park. The meeting is in Venables Building, specifically the section marked South East on the campus map. Take the path (marked in yellow on the campus map) East from the car park toward the centre of campus. Take a right under an archway in to the courtyard area bound by Venables South, East, and South East, keeping right (heading North East on the campus map), behind the building section marked South East. You will find a double door on your right, which is Entrance G at the South East section of Venables Building. We'll see you there, as these are usually access controlled doors, so you will probably need to be let in. If you haven't attended one of our meetings at the OU before, I encourage you to ask for someone's phone number in case you have trouble finding us. If you need a lift to the meeting, please ask. See you next week, Tom From jj at jonallen.info Fri Jan 9 01:35:41 2009 From: jj at jonallen.info (JJ) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 09:35:41 +0000 Subject: Travel to Tuesday's tech meet Message-ID: Hi, I'll be arriving by train on Tuesday - if anyone else is getting the train, do you want to meet at the station (or the Wetherspoons) and share a taxi to the venue? Or if anyone is driving from that side of town, would it be possible to get a lift to the venue? Cheers, JJ -- Treat your home, treat someone special, treat yourself... at www.pennysarcade.co.uk Join us on Facebook: www.pennysarcade.co.uk/facebook From peter at dragonstaff.com Fri Jan 9 04:06:19 2009 From: peter at dragonstaff.com (peter at dragonstaff.com) Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:06:19 +0000 Subject: Travel to Tuesday's tech meet In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090109120619.e6neg0ayz8ck808w@webmail.dragonstaff.com> Quoting JJ : > I'll be arriving by train on Tuesday - if anyone else is getting the > train, do you want to meet at the station (or the Wetherspoons) and > share a taxi to the venue? > > Or if anyone is driving from that side of town, would it be possible > to get a lift to the venue? Good plan. I'm coming up from Euston by train. If they're running. And if they can be vaguely on time (that's two days running I've filled out the "over 30 minutes late" London Midland ticket price reclaim form). Then I'll be driving to the OU so can give you and anyone else who wants one a lift. I'll aim to get to MK about 6.30 and will hang around the cafe. Quite happy to pick you up from 'spoons if you prefer. Cheers, Peter From jj at jonallen.info Fri Jan 9 04:17:41 2009 From: jj at jonallen.info (JJ) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 12:17:41 +0000 Subject: Travel to Tuesday's tech meet In-Reply-To: <20090109120619.e6neg0ayz8ck808w@webmail.dragonstaff.com> References: <20090109120619.e6neg0ayz8ck808w@webmail.dragonstaff.com> Message-ID: 2009/1/9 : > If they're running. And if they can be vaguely on time (that's two days > running I've filled out the "over 30 minutes late" London Midland ticket > price reclaim form). Then I'll be driving to the OU so can give you and > anyone else who wants one a lift. Nice one, thanks! > I'll aim to get to MK about 6.30 and will hang around the cafe. Quite happy > to pick you up from 'spoons if you prefer. Great, I'll meet you at the station for 18:30. Cheers, JJ -- Treat your home, treat someone special, treat yourself... at http://www.pennysarcade.co.uk Join us on Facebook: http://www.pennysarcade.co.uk/facebook From pm at flodhest.net Sun Jan 11 09:23:10 2009 From: pm at flodhest.net (Jan Henning Thorsen) Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:23:10 +0100 Subject: Perl Things I Have Found Useful In-Reply-To: <495A7771.7010408@oucs.ox.ac.uk> References: <20081230184323.GA53361@eborcom.com> <495A7771.7010408@oucs.ox.ac.uk> Message-ID: <1afcfe7a0901110923y7205ea0ao7218bdd6b90b5145@mail.gmail.com> > > 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" takes me > straight back any time. > It's not really a hack anymore. What you can do is: 1) Fill out all the variables in a form 2) Right click in the actual search-field 3) Select "Add a keyword for this search" 4) A new window pops up: * Name is the name you normally find in your bookmarks * Keyword is the word you write in your location bar, before your search. * I've added a search folder, that i select in the "Create in" dropdown 5) After pressing "Add", firefox will execute the "hack" described above The cool thing is that it will also remember the settings done in step #1. I got these keywords: cpan search.cpan.org d dictinary.com g google.com imdb imdb.com m skreemr.com w en.wikipedia.com maps (and "map", since i ofter forget which i have :P) maps.google.com ...and many more It's a timesaver! From tom at eborcom.com Mon Jan 12 03:33:45 2009 From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:33:45 +0000 Subject: Technical Meeting: Tuesday 13th January, 2009 In-Reply-To: <20090108172142.GA29347@eborcom.com> References: <20090108172142.GA29347@eborcom.com> Message-ID: <20090112113345.GA65982@eborcom.com> On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 05:21:42PM +0000, Tom Hukins wrote: > > Milton Keynes Perl Mongers will hold our first technical meeting of 2009 > at 7pm on Tuesday 13th January at the Open University in the same room > as last time. Hi, all. Here's a quick reminder that this takes place tomorrow evening. Please come along and join in the fun. See you tomorrow, Tom From tom at eborcom.com Mon Jan 12 05:22:50 2009 From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:22:50 +0000 Subject: Good Article About Modern Perl Message-ID: <20090112132250.GA66624@eborcom.com> Piers Cawley has written an excellent article about Perl's current status and its immediate future: http://www.heise-online.co.uk/open/Healthcheck-Perl-The-Perl-Future--/features/112388/0 It's well worth a read if you want a good overview of modern Perl, or if you would like to share such things with others. Tom From robbiebow at gmail.com Mon Jan 12 06:45:53 2009 From: robbiebow at gmail.com (Robbie Bow) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:45:53 +0000 Subject: Good Article About Modern Perl In-Reply-To: <20090112132250.GA66624@eborcom.com> References: <20090112132250.GA66624@eborcom.com> Message-ID: <973296c20901120645n5a23eba6x1a06d3844c0f1408@mail.gmail.com> It is, and duly dugg http://digg.com/programming/Healthcheck_Perl_The_Perl_Future 2009/1/12 Tom Hukins > Piers Cawley has written an excellent article about Perl's current > status and its immediate future: > > http://www.heise-online.co.uk/open/Healthcheck-Perl-The-Perl-Future--/features/112388/0 > > It's well worth a read if you want a good overview of modern Perl, or > if you would like to share such things with others. > > Tom > _______________________________________________ > MiltonKeynes-pm mailing list > MiltonKeynes-pm at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/miltonkeynes-pm > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jj at jonallen.info Wed Jan 14 02:28:05 2009 From: jj at jonallen.info (JJ) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:28:05 +0000 Subject: Last night's tech meet Message-ID: Hi Guys, Just wanted to say thanks for letting me gatecrash your meeting and ramble on about stuff, I hope you found it interesting. I certainly enjoyed all the other lightning talks! And cheers to Peter for the lift from the station, much appreciated. If anyone is interested in trying out the Catalyst PDF view, you can get the source code from http://www.pennysarcade.co.uk/opensource - any feedback will be gratefully received. Cheers, JJ -- Treat your home, treat someone special, treat yourself... at http://www.pennysarcade.co.uk Join us on Facebook: http://www.pennysarcade.co.uk/facebook From tom at eborcom.com Thu Jan 15 09:52:58 2009 From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:52:58 +0000 Subject: Last night's tech meet In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090115175258.GA3706@eborcom.com> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 10:28:05AM +0000, JJ wrote: > Just wanted to say thanks for letting me gatecrash your meeting and > ramble on about stuff, I hope you found it interesting. I certainly > enjoyed all the other lightning talks! Gatecrash? Not at all, you're always welcome. I'd like to second JJ's thanks to everyone who showed up: I really enjoyed the talks and the discussion in the pub afterwards. I've linked to the slides from our Web page: http://miltonkeynes.pm.org/ And I have briefly written about the meeting on use.perl: http://use.perl.org/~tomhukins/journal/38295 See you all soon, Tom From tom at eborcom.com Tue Jan 20 01:12:38 2009 From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:12:38 +0000 Subject: Goodbye Google Calendar Message-ID: <20090120091238.GA46889@eborcom.com> We have a Google Calendar and an associated iCal feed linked to from our Web page. It has become out of date due to lack of maintenance. I'll kill it off later today unless anyone would like to help maintain it (it's a very easy job to do so) on the grounds that an inaccurate calendar is worse than no calendar. While I'm on the subject of related sites, our group also has its own radio station and photo gallery that you might want to join in on: http://www.last.fm/group/miltonkeynes.pm http://flickr.com/photos/tags/miltonkeynespm/ Tom From pm at gavinwestwood.co.uk Wed Jan 21 10:56:45 2009 From: pm at gavinwestwood.co.uk (Gavin Westwood) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:56:45 +0000 Subject: Meeting: Tue 27th January Message-ID: <49776FED.1030801@gavinwestwood.co.uk> The monthly MKLUG/MiltonKeynes.pm meet-up is nearly upon us! As ever, it will be held at the Wetherspoons pub, near the railway station (not the one in the snow dome), next door to Chiquitos: http://miltonkeynes.openguides.org/?J.D_Wetherspoon%2C_Central_Milton_Keynes Starting from 8pm, and going on till the last people stumble off home. Feel free to bring your laptop/Linux device along if you want a hand/to show off. Sadly I'm working that evening, but I hope everyone has fun! Gavin From andyfrommk at googlemail.com Mon Jan 26 15:14:55 2009 From: andyfrommk at googlemail.com (Andy Selby) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:14:55 +0000 Subject: Flash video downloader in perl Message-ID: <27183a390901261514v59e1ef7fpcb9eed5173816b38@mail.gmail.com> I'm in the process of writing a program that downloads flash video from sites that, unlike youtube, doesn't cache the file at /tmp/Flash*, instead I'm having to visually search (because there are no line breaks) /tmp/plugtmp*/plugin-PlaylistInfoService-1.asmx to find the download link. Here is what I've got so far 1 #!/usr/bin/perl 2 3 use strict; 4 use warnings; 5 6 while(<>) #This will be replaced by a command to read /tmp/plugtmp*/plugin-PlaylistInfoService-1.asmx 7 { 8 while (/\"\>\;(http\:\/\/flash\.vx\.roo\.com\/streamingVX\/\d*\/\d*\/(\d*|\d*\-\d*\-\d*)\_\w*.flv)\</g) 9 { 10 print "$1\n"; 11 } 12 } What you need to do is go to a site that streams video but that video isn't cached in /tmp/ (such as www.the-sun.co.uk and www.gm.tv) in a browser and that will populate /tmp/plugtmp* with many files, the file with the links in is named plugin-PlaylistInfoService-1.asmx (I haven't been through the other files though, they're xml files which are a mess of no spaces and no line breaks). Then run the script thus ./myscript.pl < /tmp/plugtmp/plugin-PlaylistInfoService-1.asmx At the moment all it does is print out the download links but its late and I need to get up early tomorrow so that's as far as I got. If you have the time to test it can you please tell me 1. If the file paths are valid for your distro (I'm on Fedora 10) 2. If you find a stream from another site than flash.vx.roo.com 3 An altogether different|better way to do what I'm doing Thanks Andy That regex broken down (/\"\>\; #anchor (http\:\/\/flash\.vx\.roo\.com\/streamingVX\ #the base url, I assuming it never changes /\d*\/\d*\/ #directories (\d*|\d*\-\d*\-\d*) #datestamp of filename \_\w*.flv) #filename.flv \</g) #anchor From tom at eborcom.com Tue Jan 27 01:26:00 2009 From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:26:00 +0000 Subject: Flash video downloader in perl In-Reply-To: <27183a390901261514v59e1ef7fpcb9eed5173816b38@mail.gmail.com> References: <27183a390901261514v59e1ef7fpcb9eed5173816b38@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090127092600.GA80037@eborcom.com> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 11:14:55PM +0000, Andy Selby wrote: > > I'm in the process of writing a program that downloads flash video > from sites that, unlike youtube, doesn't cache the file at > /tmp/Flash*, instead I'm having to visually search (because there are > no line breaks) /tmp/plugtmp*/plugin-PlaylistInfoService-1.asmx to > find the download link. Normally, I'd say "that sounds like a job for WWW::Mechanize, but I don't think it makes life especially easy for getting at SWF files. However, you might find LWP::Simple (or perhaps Mech itself) useful for fetching the HTML rather than grubbing around in /tmp and making assumptions about where the browser happens to cache the HTML. I'd use HTML::Tree for parsing the HTML because it has a lovely interface and makes code more readable and robust than parsing HTML with regular expressions. > 6 while(<>) #This will be replaced by a command to read > /tmp/plugtmp*/plugin-PlaylistInfoService-1.asmx I'd use LWP::Simple::get() here. > 8 while (/\"\>\;(http\:\/\/flash\.vx\.roo\.com\/streamingVX\/\d*\/\d*\/(\d*|\d*\-\d*\-\d*)\_\w*.flv)\</g) A few comments on this regex: If you find yourself regularly escaping the '/' character use a different delimiter. m{http://} looks cleaner than /http:\/\//. Break your regex into multiple lines using the /x modifier. You don't write lots of Perl expressions on one line - you break them up into multiple lines and comment them. The /x modifier lets you do the same with regular expressions: http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/01/16/regexps.html > 10 print "$1\n"; At this point you could use LWP::Simple::get() to fetch the SWF file, assuming that's all you need. If the SWF itself tries to fetch other files, take a look at Firefox's Firebug plugin and use its 'Net' tab to see what other files get downloaded. Finally, I notice you haven't indented your blocks: if ($x) { if ($y) { print "x and y are true\n"; } } You may not have done this in your real code, but if you have, indenting makes your code far easier to read: if ($x) { if ($y) { print "x and y are true\n"; } } If you find your code has lots of indentation and moves too far to the right of the screen, that's a good sign you need to use subroutines. I'd consider using subroutines even in a short program like this as they help make each part of the program self-contained and self-explanatory. For example, the main shell of the program might look like: sub main { my $url = shift; my $html = get($url); my $swf_url = find_swf_url($html); get_store($swf_url); } main($ARGV[0]); LWP::Simple defines get() and get_store(). I might have got the get_store() call wrong. But the point is, you've made the high level code readable. Using subroutines makes it easier to write unit tests for your code, should you decide to do that, but that's probably another story for another day. There's no harm in making life easier for your future self, though, if it takes minimal effort. I hope you find that useful. Let us know if you get stuck. And, of course, I'll see you and everyone else in the pub this evening. Tom From peter at dragonstaff.co.uk Tue Jan 27 07:33:18 2009 From: peter at dragonstaff.co.uk (Peter Edwards) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:33:18 +0000 Subject: London Perlmongers Tech Talks on Moose at BBC White City Feb 19th Message-ID: London Perlmongers are holding an evening of tech talks on Moose, the postmodern object system for Perl 5. This will be from 6.30 - 9.00 p.m. on Thursday 19th February 2009 in the MC3 Board Room at the Media Centre, White City, London. Please sign up and find directions here if you'd like to come: http://londonpmtech.appspot.com/ More on Moose: http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Moose Regards, Peter http://perl.dragonstaff.co.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tom at eborcom.com Fri Jan 30 09:23:39 2009 From: tom at eborcom.com (Tom Hukins) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:23:39 +0000 Subject: Technical Meeting: Thursday 16th April, 2009 Message-ID: <20090130172339.GA34032@eborcom.com> We have the usual room booked for this date. We've gone for a Thursday to give people who can't normally attend the chance to show up. We currently have a grand total of 0 talks scheduled, so if you'd like to tell us about something Perl-related, please form an orderly queue in my inbox. Please queue early to avoid worrying me. If you give me a rough idea of what you're talking about and how long you want to talk for, you will make me happy. In other news, plans this year's YAPC::Europe has set dates and costs: http://yapceurope2009.org/ye2009/wiki?node=newsletter3 Their "Send a Newbie" program might interest some of this list's subscribers: http://www.send-a-newbie.com/ Have a good weekend, Tom