Re: [Boston.pm] Tech Meeting Followup
Next meeting: BioPerl. ;) On 7/14/06, Bob Rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ronald J Kimball [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 17:57:20 -0400 34 people came to Tuesday's tech meeting! I'm afraid I have an unfortunate postscript to add. I attended the meeting with a mysterious rash on my chest, which turned out to be herpes zoster, a.k.a. shingles: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000858.htm This is caused by a recurrence of the chickenpox virus. Fortunately, herpes zoster patients are much less contagious than chickenpox patients. However, adult-onset chickenpox is quite unpleasant, so if any of the other 33 of you has *not* had chickenpox or been vaccinated for it, you might want to check out the symptoms of chickenpox: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001592.htm#Symptoms My profound apologies for the hassle; I hope this is all academic. -- Bob Rogers http://rgrjr.dyndns.org/ ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] Ian - California
Dear Mongers, After a fun-filled five years in Boston, I'm off to a new job in California. Thank you for educating and entertaining me, and I hope that my new local Mongers group is as terrific. I'd ask politely for a spontaneous social meeting, but I'm out of time. I leave Sunday morning for a cross-country road trip via Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone and Yosemite. It's been fun :-) -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] boston.pm.org kwiki broken?
It appears that the wiki was restored from a backup at some point. Symlinks in the kwiki directory were pointing to a Fixed. -- Ian ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] boston.pm.org kwiki broken?
...were pointing to a non-existant directory, /backups. On 1/29/06, Ian Langworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It appears that the wiki was restored from a backup at some point. Symlinks in the kwiki directory were pointing to a -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] A webapp to build an XML file
When I was building a REST interface that spoke XML, I found that XML::Writer had the best combination of freedom and results. We did, however, abstract away the common and repetitive parts. On 1/24/06, Ranga Nathan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Given an XML schema, what would be the simplest way to build an XML file via a web app? For each element and attribute, I can speficy the HTML element type (input, radio etc). Rather than start from scratch I would like to leverage something that exists. -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Tech Meeting Followup
On 1/12/06, Ronald J Kimball [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The tip from this meeting: Avoid using ampersand on subroutine calls. In particular, mysub (ampersand but no parentheses) passes the current @_ to mysub(), which can be problematic if you're not expecting it. Perl Best Practices also mentions an edge case where the ampersand is treated as a bitwise-OR operator: =begin perlbp page=176 On the other hand, the ampersand itself is visually ambiguous; it can also signify a bitwise AND operator, depending on context. And context can be extremely subtle: $curr_pos = tell get_mask( ); # means: tell(get_mask( )) $curr_time = time get_mask( ); # means: time() get_mask( ) =end perlbp -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] LaTeX Perl environment?
The Scheme folks have a nice LaTeX environment that highlights syntax in code listings. Has anyone ever seen a Perl equivalent? -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Kwiki upgrade, new anti-spam plugin
By the way, I notice that the changes page is now sorted alphabetically rather than chronologically, which does not seem very useful. Is there any way to change it back so that the most recently changed pages are listed first? In reading this I immediately said, Oh, I forgot the -p option for cp. In a brief stretch of stupidity I simply re-copied the old wiki files, forgetting that folks might have made changes in the last thirty minutes. Ooops. I think the next meeting date is on the 13th, so I corrected it. Sorry. -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Boston.pm.org/kwiki/
I'm investigating what kind of success people have had with various anti-spam Kwiki modules: http://kwiki.org/?KwikiSpamCountermeasures I'd like to avoid captchas, or scrambled-word-verification images. -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Tech Meeting Followup
On 8/13/05, Uri Guttman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: perl testing - a developer's notebook. written by some moron named ian langworth and a doofus named chromatic. this is a useless waste of dead trees as i never need to test my code as it always works. but someone out there may want to use it for kindling or propping up a cockeyed litter box. (hi ian!! :). The love just *drips* off of you, Uri :) -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] eval not catching error
On 7/6/05, Andres Monroy-Hernandez [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One of the creators of Net::Z3950 mentioned that this error cannot be caught by eval because is not in the perl program itself, but rather in the interpreter, deep voodoo magic he said :-) Is there any other approach you can think of in order to catch something like this? I am running this in a CGI application; therefore die-ing like this is not very nice. Without looking at the source to Net::Z3950, what about writing a generating a temporary Perl program that makes the query and prints serialized data? It might not be that efficient for serving a bazillion requests, but you could trap the error code. Hint: Use File::Temp to generate temporary files, Storable or YAML to do the serialization, and $^X to get the path to the currently running Perl executable. -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] Looking for a 45W Powerbook G3 power adapter
My Powerbook G3 Pismo, lovingly known as Olde Sparky, is experiencing power problems again. This time the wire connecting the power brick to plug has worn out and my attempts have soldering have been useless. Does anyone have a spare Powerbook Flying Saucer 45-watt power supply they'd like to sell, donate, or exchange for beer? -- Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] next meeting?
I recommend at _least_ a social meeting. Burgers just aren't the same without miscellaneous Perl trivia. On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 23:37:30 -0500, Uri Guttman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: we ain't had a meeting (tech nor social) in a goodly while. anything in the master plans? -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] perl6/pugs (ook!)
I like bananas and have been using the Ook programming language and Ook# .Net framework for a large number of corporate projects. For example, since the phone conversations of many younger teenagers probably consists of apeish grunts, it is entirely logical to write cell phone applications in a language designed to be written by orangutans. http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/ook.html On 28.Feb.2005 11:12AM -0800, Ben Tilly wrote: Ruby is easier for Perl people to get into than Haskell. By the same token, learning Ruby will expand your horizons less than Haskell. -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] perl6/pugs (ook!)
I like bananas and have been using the Ook programming language and Ook# .Net framework for a large number of corporate projects. For example, since the phone conversations of many younger teenagers probably consists of apeish grunts, it is entirely logical to write cell phone applications in a language designed to be written by orangutans. http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/ook.html On 28.Feb.2005 11:12AM -0800, Ben Tilly wrote: Ruby is easier for Perl people to get into than Haskell. By the same token, learning Ruby will expand your horizons less than Haskell. -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Debian + Perl (was: Install problems)
On Feb 14, 2005, at 3:39a, Uri Guttman wrote: i think another solution would be to just rip out debian's /usr/lib/perl5 and /usr/bin/perl and install perl from source using /usr/local/lib. then all cpan modules will be properly installed there and perl will be in /usr/local/bin. also then you get to build perl the way you want. Just to beat the topic to death, yes, replacing Debian's Perl with a custom-built one is a bad thing indeed. In my experience, I have found two ways to use Perl with Debian: 1) Use the dh-make-perl to create Debian packages (.deb's) from Perl modules and manage them with Apt, or.. 2) /usr/local -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] The shirt
http://www.panix.com/~comdog/moblog/20050208-2220.jpg -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Need to open a new window in perl
Alex Brelsfoard wrote: OK, so here's what I'm trying to do: 1. A link sends you to my script. 2. My script immediately sends that page back to where it came from. 3. My script creates a new window, and continues to do stuff on it. Have yourscript.cgi return something like this when the popup parameter is false: html titlepopup opener/title head ... script type=text/javascript function stuff() { window.open(http://example.com?popup=1;); window.history.back(); } /script /head body onload=stuff()/body /html I haven't tested this, but it's what comes to mind. -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Max hash key length
On 28.Dec.2004 01:14AM -0500, Tom Metro wrote: If you are concerned about the performance impact of long keys, and your application fits a write-once, read-many model, then you could always hash the hash keys. Say generate an MD5 digest of the key string, and then use the digest as the hash key. This might make a nice Tie:: module, if there already isn't one. But then again, tie itself is allegedly slow... -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] OT: Recommendation for mail server?
On 02.Dec.2004 04:48PM -0800, Ranga Nathan wrote: I am strongly advocating someone to get off Microsoft Exchange and move to a Linux based mail server. I found the previous responses interesting. Nobody mentioned Postfix or Exim. Postfix is still my personal favorite. It's what I install when setting up a new system. It's what's running on my colo, doing such fantastic things as SASL authentication and TLS with certificates. It's what's running on my Mac. Personally, I like the usually-single configuration file with its straightforward directives. Our college just switched to Exim from Postfix after a few years (dunno, maybe 10?) of use. From what I learned from our mail admin, Exim allows you to better split up the stages of email handling, which is preferred for a medium-sized community like ours. Valid users are checked against NIS, Mailman, a custom aliases file, as well as various anti-spam and anti-virus stages. -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] web hosting recommendations?
On 27.Nov.2004 07:54PM -0500, Mitchell N Charity wrote: The objective is vanilla unix, ideally linux, shared web hosting. I just want someone competent. Hostway... well, this hasn't been the first problem. Exactly. I put my dad's business on Hostway and after a year or two we realized how much they suck. I've had a few years experience with NetNation, all of which has been pretty decent. (You can call their tech support and have a real, knowledgable human on the line in fifteen seconds.) Unfortunately, Hostway bought NetNation a year ago, but NetNation's service still seems to be stellar. -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Tech Meeting Followup
http://boston.pm.org/kwiki/ On 10.Nov.2004 09:38PM -0500, Timothy Kohl wrote: URL? I have posted more of my demo to the Wiki page. If Tim and Ron would do likewise. -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Social Meeting with Randal Schwartz, Tues Sept 28
On 27.Sep.2004 11:01AM -0400, Ronald J Kimball wrote: Please RSVP to the discussion list if you are planning on coming. If you need a ride let us know. I'll be coming with two other people. -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Help using LWP to change password Q's?
On 24.Aug.2004 12:02PM -0400, Dan Boger wrote: On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 12:25:43PM -0400, Gyepi SAM wrote: Note that since the action tag should either be fully qualified (begin with http or https) or be relative (begin with '/'). Neither is true in this case, so the browser has to figure out what to do. Aren't paths that begin with a '/' considered 'absolute'? And relative is anything else? An ACTION of ../form.cgi is a valid relative URI, isn't it? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Identifier#URI_Reference -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] Wiki
At the meeting, Uri suggested that we turn boston.pm.org into a wiki -- specifically, a Kwiki. I'd be happy to do so. Aye? Nay? -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Wiki
On 05.Aug.2004 10:19AM -0400, David wrote: [I know, that doesn't answer your question, but I'd kind of like to hear folks thoughts about various wiki implementations, and, being Boston.pm, especially their thoughts about various Perl ones] There are a few other wikis to check out: * Twiki (Perl) - twiki.org * AxKit::XSP::Wiki (Perl, AxKit) - axkit.org/wiki/ * PhpWiki (PHP) - www.phpwiki.org * PmWiki (PHP) - www.pmwiki.org * UseMod (Perl) - www.usemod.com These two issues may indicate that a wiki which allows an admin group and locked pages is essential. (Kwiki, at least when I was playing with it, basically allowed only one administrator who could lock pages) The larger the wiki community, the less security is needed. Personally, don't think wiki spam will be an issue for us. If there's ever a problem, it should take two clicks to undo changes, no matter what wiki you're using. Currently, Kwiki is indeed lacking in the security area, but only because nobody has written any yet :) -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Keyboards
I whined last night that I use a Playstation 2 Linux Kit keyboard, which is, in my opinion, the best keyboard layout I've ever used: http://playstation2-linux.com/Linux_kit.jpg Ctrl, Meta and Alt are next to the space bar on both sides and are all about the same size. Caps-lock is in the normal non-Sun position. It's got a really nice touch, too. Unfortunately, these keybaords only ship with the Playstation 2 Linux Kit and I can't find another. If you're a fan of laptop keyboards and on a budget, check out the ViewSonic Slim keyboard, as seen in the movie Paycheck. The feel is really good, however some of the key locations suck. The Delete and Insert keys are squished on the right side and there's a random second pipe/backslash to the left of the space bar, too. http://shop.store.yahoo.com/a-c/viewviewslim.html However, I really like the feel of the IBM keyboards and am strongly considering purchasing one of those standalone ones. -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] Linux cluster and configuration management
I can't speak for web-based management, but I can tell you that we're using Radmind and FAI for to manage our Linux workstations. As for monitoring, we might use Big Sister, but look into Nagios as well. http://crew.ccs.neu.edu/wiki/Linux On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 17:39:45 -0700, Ranga Nathan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I needs some open source recommendations for web-based Linux cluster and configuration manager. I know and have been using Webmin. Want to know if there are others out there that people are happy with. If it has performance monitoring built in, all the better. Thanks __ Ranga Nathan / CSG Systems Programmer - Specialist; Technical Services; BAX Global Inc. Irvine-California Tel: 714-442-7591 Fax: 714-442-2840 ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] flock() on Solaris
On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:50:05 -0400, Andrew Langmead [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] The parent downgrades its | The child sleeps for 1 sec. lock from exclusive to shared | [snip] If you need for the parent to do the tests, then I think you will need to acquire the lock within the child, and do some sort of coordination between the two. [snip] Hrm, I guess the confusion is in the downgrading, as I believed that the parent was getting a new lock completely. Thank you for the walkthrough :) -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] flock() on Solaris
Does anyone know of any gotcha's regarding file locking on Solaris? Theoretically, the following should work, as the forked process should block until a lock is available. I've tried this on and off NFS, and this *does* work on Linux. Maybe a platform-specific solution involving fcntl() is in order. (?) -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] flock() on Solaris
On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 18:49:22 -0400, Andrew Langmead [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The example code that you imply would follow wasn't in your posting. Ooops. See below. ...I was always taught that locks are not kept across forks, that locks are designed to coordinate access among multiple processes, and once the fork happens, the child is an independent process.) Exactly my thoughts as well. However, in my (failing) example, a second lock is requested. Also, why do you consider the fcntl the unportable solution? The fcntl method is in the POSIX standard, BSD's flock and SysV's lockf were the conflicting system specific forms. The example of fcntl() and Perl I found had OS-dependant code to pack information sent to the function, that's all. -- use Test::More 'no_plan'; use Fcntl ':flock'; open ONE, foo or die $!; flock ONE, LOCK_EX or die Can't lock; print ONE line 1\n; fork and do { open TWO, foo or die $!; flock TWO, LOCK_SH or die Can't lock; is TWO, line 1\n; is TWO, line 2\n; is TWO, line 3\n; flock TWO, LOCK_UN; close TWO; exit; }; sleep 1; print ONE line 2\n; print ONE line 3\n; flock ONE, LOCK_UN; close ONE; -- -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] Re: OT - Skippy needs a home
Thanks to all that replied -- Skippy has found a new home :) And to answer questions to those that asked: 1. The MacQuarium was built using Andy Ihnatko's guide, The Original Macquarium, found here: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~ace/macquarium.html Having a dremel on hand really helps :) If you want to see what they're looked like, there are a lot of good pictures here: http://www.theapplecollection.com/Collection/MacAquarium/ 2. The fish, as well as appropriately-sized heater, filter and thermometer, were purchased at the Aqua World Acquarium on Tyler Street. They have a nice selection of fish in a variety of shapes and sizes.. Black tetras were only $5 per fish. Googling for aqua world boston will give you a map. Also, a Google Images search has a picture of what the place looks like from the outside. ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
[Boston.pm] OT - Skippy needs a home
The MacQuarium I built has become more and more tedious to maintain clean and I'll be moving come September. It would be easiest if my little black tetra, Skippy, could find a new home. A little background: Skippy is a 1.5 inch or so black tetra who enjoys swimming leftwards, swimming rightwards, and the occasional tropical fish food flake. He's easy to live with, keeps the music low, and has a generally quiet personality. Unfortunately, Skippy has very little knowledge of Perl and has been resistant to my repeated attempts at teaching. There's no cost. The small pump and heater would be provided. New gravel is probably needed and the existing MacQuarium is really crusty and should be replaced. --Ian Langworth ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] OT - Linux monitoring tools
I'll assume you mean a multi-host monitoring GUI. Take a look at: http://www.nagios.org/ On 19.Dec.2003 09:31AM -0800, Ranga Nathan wrote: We need a graphical monitoring facility for Linux. This needs to include realtime (at specified intervals) to show disk, cpu, memory usage and tasks that are stressing the system. The most I used before was 'top'. But this is to be used by our operations people who are mostly used to mainframe. I am not sure if MRTG or Cactus (?) would address this issue. -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
Re: [Boston.pm] proxy user agent
The Internet JunkBuster Proxy might be of interest: http://www.junkbusters.com/ijb.html On 01.Dec.2003 05:31PM -0800, Ranga Nathan wrote: Is there an open source / GPLed User Agent proxy for windows, that works with IE to help block popups and perhaps configure other parameters as well? -- Ian Langworth Project Guerrilla Northeastern University College of Computer and Information Science ___ Boston-pm mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm