For Best Taste Drink By Date On Bottom Of Can
unixdown
unixdown at unixdown.com
Thu Jan 3 12:03:43 CST 2002
Pertaining to last night's meeting at lunkers:
Sex Chart: A simple idea that has grown to the point that it is hardly
maintainable. The idea is rather juvenile, but brings up an interesting
problem. The chart is ASCII, and has grown to an unexpected high amount of
people. They are looking for someone to code a script that would keep a
database of all the people on the chart, who they 'know' and then print out
an ASCII chart of the results. (The chart has always been edited by hand).
You can see the chart here: http://www.attrition.org/hosted/sexchart/
WIRED news article: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,48997,00.html
It appears that the person who started the chart was from the
Bloomington/Normal area (she has an ice.net email address in the early
versions). Also, if you ever spent much time on IRC back in '96 and '97,
you may notice the handfull of bloomington/normal usernames that appear
near the middle of the chart. The chart, I'm sure, would be fairly simple
with some of the graphing modules already available, but those usually dump
the results to a vector image, not ASCII. Anyway, someone with quite the
inventive mind, may want to take a stab at it (Although it looks damn near
impossible).
Perl news: http://use.perl.org
slashcode (http://slashcode.com) V2.2.2 was released yesterday.
Parrot: http://www.parrotcode.org/
What's Parrot?
Parrot is a virtual machine used to efficiently execute bytecode for
interpreted languages - specifically, Perl 6, although we would like to
keep the door open for other languages in the future. As such, Parrot will
be the core of the Perl interpreter; it will be the target platform to
which Perl 6 code is compiled.
2001 PERL Advent Calendar: http://www.twoshortplanks.com/xmas/
The Conway Channel: (http://yetanother.org/damian/) There damian lists
all the projects he is working on and writes about the life of a PERL hacker.
http://yetanother.org/damian/diary_December_2001.html#day_31 Here you see
his final message for 2001. Funding is underway to keep him programming
well into 2002.
It sounds like we will be meeting again next month (2002-02-06 07:30:00) at
lunkers? Perhaps someone should bring a digital camera to the next
meeting. Maybe some pictures on the site will create more of a sense of
reality and camaraderie, and bring in more people.
If anyone has any ideas for team projects, drop a message to the
group. Perhaps we could set up a CVS system on http://sourceforge.net (if
it is still free)
If the maintainers of the site want to move to a different server, drop me
a line with the user/pass you want. Since I doubt we have enough to fill
a slashcode site, you may also want to consider some time of a bbs. I have
set one up at http://accesspontiac.com Pay no attention to the jackholes
who post there, the site is low-traffic, and the people are less than
desirable.
That's all for now folks.
I'll close with a christmas poem, by Damian Conway:
'Twas the night before Christmas, and all round the Earth
Not a hacker was coding, except the Perl Serf.
All the Mongers were snoring in dishevelled beds
As visions of obfu-sigs scrolled through their heads.
And their mail apps were scanning their server's POP node
In the hope that some Perl content soon would download
When out on the Net arose such excitations
That they leapt from their beds -- with obscene protestations.
On their web browser windows they clicked in a flash,
To download the new data before Windows could crash.
When, what should their caffeine-shot eyes then peruse,
But a miniature sleigh, pulled by eight kangaroos.
And a miniscule river, with an accent so rough,
In an instant they knew it must be Perl's Mad Prof.
More rapid than T1 his modules they came,
And he pinged them, and scanned them, and grepped them by name;
"Now, Inflect! Now, Parse::Rec! Now, Class::Delegation!
On, NEXT! Bleach! Switch! LexWrap! on Superpositions!
Go, Balanced! Go, Reform! Go, Coy! Go Class::Contract!
Run, Lingua::Romana! Fly, Text::Autoformat!"
As they clicked on their reload, and the icon spun around,
Down their ADSL Damian came with a bound.
He was dressed all in leather, his wrapshades bodacious
Like a sawn-off Keanu (but far more loquacious).
He spoke many words, and he cut lots of code,
And gave lectures designed to make their heads explode,
And he worked on Perl 6, and wrote long explanations,
And travelled the world meeting JAPHs of all nations.
Now his work of the past year was finally completed
And the funds they'd donated were all but depleted.
He'd been busy, productive, had given his best;
Surely now it was time for their Villein to rest.
But his eyes -- how they gleamed with new code ideas wicked!
By design plans most fell how his face was disfigured!
The wild stare of his eyes and a shake of his head,
Soon gave them to know they'd still plenty to dread.
For he laughed when they mentioned his year was now done
And he asked why they thought that he'd stop at just one?
Were there not more weird modules that had yet to be authored?
And still plenty of minds he had not yet contorted?
So he sprang to his sleigh, to his 'roos gave a whistle,
And bounded away, till his next Net epistle.
But they heard him confirm it, their single worst fear:
"HAPPY HACKING TO ALL, AND I'LL BE BACK NEXT YEAR!
________________________________________
happyfunball: Mr. James creation on NewsRadio
Whiggity Whiggity Whiggity Whack.
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