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Biography
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Blog
http://blog.timbunce.org/
Wishlist of PL/Perl Enhancements for PostgreSQL 8.5
October 05 2009
I’m working with PostgreSQL for my day job, and liking it. We’re fairly heavy users of stored procedures implemented in PL/Perl, with ~10,000 lines in ~100 functions (some of which have bloated to painful proportions). This creates some interesting issues and challenges for us. There’s a window of opportunity now to make… read moreOctober 04 2009
We saw Johnny Duhan in a very small, intimate, concert in Ennis last year. Last weekend we saw Christy Moore in concert in Limerick. This song, written by Johnny Duhan and sung by Christy Moore, has always struck a cord with me. I am a sailor, you’re my first mate We… read morePerl Myths and Mongers in Dublin
September 22 2009
Last weekend I went up to Dublin to speak at OSSBarcamp. I took the train from Limerick on Friday so I’d already be in Dublin the following morning, without having to get up at the crack of dawn. Dublin.pm Aidan Kehoe and I had a very small but interesting Dublin.pm meeting that… read moreSeptember 10 2009
I just added a concluding slide to my updated Perl Myths talk. I liked it so much I wanted to share it with you: Perl: has a massive library of reusable code has a culture of best practice and testing has a happy welcoming growing community has a great future in Perl 5 and Perl… read moreIs your Perl community visible?
September 04 2009
As I mentioned recently, I’m working on an update to my Perl Myths talk. (Which is really a review of the state of the art, state of the community, resources, and best practices. You could even call it marketing.) In recent months, and especially while researching for this update, it’s become… read moreCan you help me generate an alpha channel gradient image?
August 31 2009
Here’s an extract from a treemap generated by the perl Devel::NYTProf profiler: Notice the shading on the boxes? That’s done by setting the background color of the box to green, and also setting the background image to one that’s mostly transparent. The image doesn’t contain any color. It’s just an… read moreHelp me update my Perl Myths talk for 2009
August 13 2009
I’m going to be speaking at the OSS BarCamp in Dublin in September. Given the likely audience I think my Perl Myths talk would be a good fit. It needs updating though, and that’s where you can help… It’s a strongly fact base talk with lots of graphs, numbers, and references. A… read moreAugust 07 2009
I’ve had a great week at OSCON. The talks are excellent but the real value is in the relationships formed and renewed in the “hallway track”. I’m honoured and humbled to be able to call many great people my friends. My talk on Devel::NYTProf seemed to go well. This year I… read moreCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) systems in Perl
July 06 2009
I’m looking for a CRM system implemented in Perl. As it turns out, so are the Perl Foundation. So I thought I’d summarize my interpretation of the comments on that thread, as much for my own benefit as yours, and see if this post flushes out any further information. We’ll start with… read moreUnattributed copying of perl blog content via Planet Perl
June 15 2009
I recall other bloggers complaining of unattributed redistribution of their work. Now a site called rapid-dev.net has started redistributing Plant Perl posts, including mine, with an advert at the top. I wouldn’t mind if the page had clear attribution, but it doesn’t. In fact, at the bottom it says “Author: hoanatwho”. That… read moreHas NYTProf helped you? Tell me how…
June 05 2009
At OSCON this year1 I’m giving a “State-of-the-art Profiling with Devel::NYTProf” talk. It’ll be an update of the one I gave last year, including coverage of new features added since then (including, hopefully, two significant new features that are in development). This year I’d like to spend some time talking about… read moreFixing the POD synopsis in OSX – take 2 (perldoc, nroff and UTF-8)
May 19 2009
Ever copied and pasted a chunk from perldoc output and found you were getting mysterious errors from perl? I have. I’ve learnt to rewrite the ‘-’ characters because although they look like ‘-’ characters they’re really a unicode HYPHEN: U+2010. Some other chars get mangled too, but that’s the most frequent… read moreMay 17 2009
It is sad, but inevitable, that the TIOBE index of programming language “popularity” (sic) would be gamed. Once you start measuring something, and advertising the results, people with an interest in particular outcomes naturally start to look for ways to influence those results. (It’s the Observer Effect writ large.) The fact that… read moreThanks, Iron Man, for the good excuse to perl blog
May 10 2009
I’ve been thinking that I haven’t blogged much lately. Assorted half-baked ideas would cross my mind and then evaporate before I’d find the time, or motivation, to actually start writing. The folks at the Enlightened Perl Organisation have solved the motivation problem by announcing the Iron Man Blogging Challenge: in short,… read moreiPhoto - Removing redundant originals
April 27 2009
I recently came across this article on slimming down an iPhoto library by removing the ‘Original’ photo where a ‘Modified’ one existed. (That’s one part of what the free iPhoto Diet app does, but it seems that’s not being maintained and doesn’t support recent versions of iPhoto.) Inspired by the basic three-line… read more
