I'll be taking a couple of weeks off from hacking on my pet project as I'll be in the US for a friend's wedding, but in the meantime, I can still have ideas percolating in the back of my mind. What I'd like is some of your ideas percolating in the back of my mind.

Maybe you love adventure, you're bored with your home country, you prefer the politics of other countries, you want to travel, etc. Whatever your motivations, you probably have been annoyed trying to find "one stop shopping" for information about moving to other countries. Turns out it's a hard thing to do, but there's a lot of possibilities out there, if only you had the information.

Most Web sites dedicated to this topic restrict you to a single country or are old school sites like www.expatriates.com or hideous commercial sites like www.escapeartist.com with no social aspects.

I think it would be interesting to build an online community of world travellers (or would-be travellers) with an ability to share stories, experiences, tips, etc. Search for countries by ease of entry, languages spoken, government stability, job prospects, immigration laws, etc. If such a Web site appealed to you, what would you want to see in such a site?

For LJ readers:

Note that because the use.perl journal appears to have a bug in it where it does not allow me to post a journal entry where comments are disallowed, I'm posting this here and linking to it from there. Most of you can feel free to ignore this.

Having gotten a bit tired of seeing bad examples in OO code, I decided to write a tool which makes it easier to detect bad OO code in Perl. I call it Class::Sniff (also available on github). Currently it looks for and reports on the following:

• Overridden methods (not always bad, but you want to see if you've overridden something you didn't know about)
• Multiple inheritance
• Unreachable methods
• Exported subroutines (exporting croak into your class makes it available as a method)</p>
• Duplicate subroutines (experimental "cut-n-paste" detection based on op trees)

Those are often "code smells" and I explain each on in the docs. Sample report after the cut.

Got an annoying little problem. I wrote the following Greasemonkey script. What this does, when I go out to the Web site use.perl.org is ignore one particularly obnoxious user by simply erasing his comments.

// ==UserScript==
// @name           ignore.use.perl
// @namespace      http://publius-ovidius.livejournal.com/
// @description    Hide Annoying Users
// @include        http://use.perl.org/*
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    var user = 'some_user_name';
    var href = '//use.perl.org/~'+user+'/';

    var divs = document.evaluate(
        "//div[@class='full']/div/div[@class='details']/a[@href='"+href+"']",
        document,
        null,
        XPathResult.ORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
        null
    );

    for ( var i=0; i < divs.snapshotLength; i++ ) {
        var node       = divs.snapshotItem(i).parentNode.parentNode.parentNode;
        node.innerHTML = '<p><strong>Ignoring '+user+' via GreaseMonkey</strong></p>';
    }
})();

In other words, until they restructure use.perl, I will never have to see that user's comments again. However, the code is annoying the heck out of me. I had to write:

        var node       = divs.snapshotItem(i).parentNode.parentNode.parentNode;

That's because of how the XPath is written:

        "//div[@class='full']/div/div[@class='details']/a[@href='"+href+"']",

Because I have to descend several levels deep into the node structure, I have to keep calling parentNode to walk back up the tree. With Perl regular expressions, we have 'positive look ahead assertions'. These allow me to match text which is followed by some other text, but ignore that other text for purposes of capturing data. If I had that with XPath, I could say "match any top level node followed by other nodes, but ignore those other nodes. Then I wouldn't have that awful series of parentNode calls. Is this possible in XPath?

A while ago, the Lisbon, Portugal conference committee asked some programmers to make videos explaining why the next YAPC::EU should be in Lisbon, Portugal. I thought they were asking for something longer than what they were, so my video comes in at a minute and a half. They were happy with it anyway and apparently sent it with their proposal along with brian d foy's compilation. I might add that if you don't know Perl or the Perl community, some of this won't make sense, so there's a quick glossary after.

YAPC

Pronounced "yap-see", it stands for "Yet Another Perl Conference"

PHP

Another programming language with a friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly) rivalry with Perl

Greg

One of my brothers, who's far more intelligent than the video would suggest. I'm grateful he let me portray him as a complete idiot.

Still working out some work permit details, so I don't know exactly when I'll start at the BBC. One little issue is that once the permit is issued, I need to mail off my passport for another "Entry Clearance" (similar to a visa). Of course, I'll be on a cruise later this month, so that's not going to happen then.

Still getting calls from recruiters and I think they're slowly learning that no, I'm not looking for work. I do, however, still get email from jobs.perl.org. This is great because of several things I can keep tabs on:

• What skills are employers demanding?
• Where's the work?
• How much does it pay?
• How much work is there? (very subjective, of course)
• What industries are using Perl?

Right off the top of my head, I can tell you that most of the work is in London, New York, Chicago, various places in California, etc. (That's an English language site, so there's a bias). The pay varies widely. Senior programmers in London earn roughly between £45,000 ($90,000) and £65,000 ($130,000) but that can go much higher, depending on the industry. New York is typically offering between $100,000 and $150,000 (these numbers seem high, but remember, these are some of the most expensive cities in the world -- though I often find that Java and C++ programmers get offered more for similar work). The industries are typically internet or the finance industry. Employers typically want strong Perl, OO, and database skills though, perversely, they often have a great deal of difficulty evaluating these abilities.

So it's fair to say that, off the top of my head, I've some idea of what's out there in the Perl world. That's why I was a bit surprised to see the following ad:

Posted: October 11, 2007

Job title: Quantitative Equity Research -- Developer / Programmer

Company name: Continuity Partners

Location: United States, New York, New York

Pay rate: $250,000 +

Travel: 0%

Terms of employment: Salaried employee

Hours: Full time

Onsite: yes

<snip>

That's right. Earn a million dollars in four years. Not even a leadership position. You'd just be another grunt. I've turned down really well-paying jobs (not this well paying) in the finance industry because so often they expect massive overtime and I think quality of life is more important, but damn! A quarter million dollars! I don't have the qualifications they're looking for and even if they did, I've no intention of leaving London, but damn! A quarter million dollars!

I need to do two things. First is to get a better camera. Second is learn how to use it. The following photos do a lousy job of showing off the beauty of Vienna. It's a lovely city which made me think "if only".

There are 39 photos behind the cut, so they'll take a bit to load. When photos were clearly featuring people, I made sure to explain that I was going to be posting said photos, but I can think of at least one individual I may not have mentioned it to. If you see your photo an would like it removed, please drop me a note. I'll happily do that.

Also, the writing's lousy. I'm busy catching up from a week off and can't be bothered :)

If you're not a Perl geek into testing, this won't make sense to you. I've posted this here for them to see since I can control the formatting here.

Here's the output from the latest version of my TAPx::Parser software, a testing tool designed to replace Test::Harness and the prove utility bundled with it.

work $ runtests -lcq
t/00-load..................ok     
t/cp_demo_lib..............ok   
t/cp_lib...................ok     
t/db_connection............ok   
t/dh_password..............ok   
t/dh_server................Failed 1/61 tests
t/domain_lib...............ok     
t/datacentre_install.......ok     
t/install_sql..............ok     
t/general_lib..............ok     
t/order_lib................ok       
t/platform_utils...........ok   
t/pod-coverage.............ok     
t/pod......................ok     
t/reset_vars...............ok     
t/rpc_action...............ok   
t/rpc_dedserver............ok     
t/server_stock_manager.....ok     
t/sql_stripper.............ok     
t/template_tree_process....ok     
t/test_class_tests.........Failed 2/186 tests
        (less 1 skipped test: 183 okay)

Test Summary Report
-------------------
t/dh_server.t                 (Wstat: 256 Tests: 61 Failed: 1)
  Failed tests:  52
t/pod-coverage.t              (Wstat: 0 Tests: 42 Failed: 0)
  Tests skipped: 3, 8, 34, 37
t/test_class_tests.t          (Wstat: 512 Tests: 186 Failed: 2)
  Failed tests:  2, 5
  Tests skipped: 3
Files=21, Tests=859, 32 wallclock secs (12.82 cusr +  2.90 csys = 15.72 CPU)

So I started writing a post about my "fantasy" Christmas list. One idea was the idea of buying a bottle of cheap whiskey and a pack of fags for the elderly mother of my long long adopted brother and sister. However, my present list got offensive enough that it offended even me! So I'll just say that after wrapping a few presents for family members, I am having a thoroughly pleasant evening drinking rum and Coke and working on Perl 6. All I can say is that Perl 6 rocks!

  # P12 (**) Decode a run-length encoded list.
  #
  #     Given a run-length code list generated as specified in problem P11.
  #     Construct its uncompressed version.
 
  sub decode(*@list) returns Array {
      gather {
          for @list -> $elem {
              take $elem.isa(Array) ?? $elem[1] xx $elem[0] !! item $elem;
          }
      }
  }
  decode( [4, "a"], "b", [2, "c"], [2, "a"], "d", [4, "e"] ).perl.say;

And if you don't think I'm totally cool, just check out my "current music".

In other news, why the hell do I feel so guilty for not doing more to promote Perl 6?

Some of you may have heard of the infamous Black Perl poem. This poem, written for Perl 3, appeared on April Fools day, 1990 on Usenet and was purportedly from Larry Wall, though as I recall, the headers were forged. However, it's for such an older version of Perl that it hasn't been able to compile for years. So I tweaked it. It still doesn't do anything, but it compiles.

BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
     open spellbook, study, select it, confess, tell, deny;
write it, print the hex while each watches,
     reverse "its length", write again;
     kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
          unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),
sort the flock (then, warn "the goats". kill "the sheep");
     kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
     values aside, each one;
          die sheep, die, reverse system
          you accept (reject, respect);
next step,
     kill next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
     wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
     do it ("as they say").
do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
     exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,
     select (quickly) & warn next victim;
AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.
     wait, wait until time;
     wait until next year, next decade;
          sleep, sleep, die yourself and
          rest at last

And from a friend of mine, Sparky, for whom I wound up rewriting this because of a couple of misconceptions of his (email reprinted with permission):

I was at a dive bar tonight. They had a poetry reading, open mic. and allowed non-original poetry.

I got on the net and looked up Black Perl.

I read the version at http://internet.ls-la.net/comppoems/black-perl.html. (with full attribution of course)

BROUGHT DOWN THE HOUSE!

Before the read I asked, "Show of hands, how many here are computer programmers?". No hands went up. Then, "How many people here have heard of the programming language 'perl'?". A couple of cheers from the crowd.

I then told the crowd, "perl stands for 'Practical Extraction and Report Language', or, as those who actually program in the language call it, 'Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister'"

After explaining that the following poem was written by the creator of perl, I explained, "This poem is NOT written in English. It is written in the programming language 'perl' ", and read.

It won two awards, Best Nonoriginal Poem, and Best Poem of the night. I won Best Presentation. Kudo's to Larry, he made me look good. ;-)

After the reading I was approached by a person who said that the peom couldn't possibly compile. I invited him to download perl from ActiveState and download a copy of the poem written for the version of perl that he downloaded and test it for himself. He told me, 'That was a great poem and poems do not compile'. Then came the Zen moment, I said. 'That poem is not a poem'. From one atheist to another, I swear to GOD that is what I said!

He is probably still blinking. ;-)

Yes folks, I take requests. Thank you very much. I'll be here all week and don't forget to tip your waitresses.

retrofire thought it would be interesting to see superimposed graphs of Bush and Blair approval ratings, so I threw one together. The data are taken from the links provided in that post.

Full disclosure on assumptions made in the graph, since "news" organizations don't typically give this: the line for Blair (the lower, green one) is much smoother than Bush's line simply because I didn't have enough data. Also, note that the approval swings appear greater than they actually are because if the graph was fully from 0% to 100%, the lines would be smoother and you'd lose detail. Also, if the poll was taken over several days, I simply took the last date. You should also check back to the original sources to understand how the approval questions were phrased. I took a bit of liberty with them to make them fit together, but I don't think the graph is too far off.

If anyone can point me to quality, longer-term data for these two, I'd be happy to see if I can put it together similar to this chart.

Update: you might notice that the graph looks different. That's because someone spotted a bug in the date handling. I've fixed the bug and updated the graph.

I know a few Perl programmers read this blog and on the off chance that they read this and don't see it elsewhere ...

It's that time again! If you have an idea for doing some work for the Perl community and you think it's worthy of a grant, please send your grant entry to tpf-proposals@perl-foundation.org. Grant applications must be in by the last day of July and we will be awarding the grants at the beginning of September.

First, please read about how to submit a grant. Read that carefully as grants are often rejected if they don't meet the criteria. For example, if you want to submit improvements to a well-known project but there's no evidence that you have at least tried to work with the maintainers of that project, the grant will likely not be approved. You can also read through our rules of operation for a better idea of thee grant process.

On the off chance that any Perl folk read this journal instead of my technical journal and are interested in Class::CGI, you can join the mailing list to help contribute to its design and to ask questions about its use.