Re: London.pm Dim sum Thursday 1pm: HK Diner
2008/12/16 Léon Brocard : > We've been out a bit west recently, so it's time to head back into > Chinatown and try a restaurant I've been meaning to visit. As I failed to point out earlier, today is also the 21st Birthday of Perl! $ perldoc perlhist | grep 1.000 | head -1 Larry 1.000 1987-Dec-18 So we shall be having a celebratory dim sum. Why not come and celebrate the cold winter days and the many years of hacking Perl we have done in the past and we hope to do in the future? Party hats optional. > London.pm dim sum is a social event where we meet up every Thursday at > 1pm at a different Chinese restaurant, spend about an hour (and about > £10 cash) eating tasty dim sum (steamed and fried dumplings), then go > our separate ways. > > HK Diner > 22 Wardour Street > Chinatown, > London W1D 6QQ > Leicester Square Tube Station > http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=W1D6QQ > http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/reviews/9306.html > http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?HK_Diner%2C_W1D_6QJ Who's coming? Léon, London.pm Dim Sum Mandarin
Re: Perl Christmas Quiz
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:54:40 +0100 "Philip Newton" wrote: > On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 02:47, Torsten Knorr wrote: > > Who is Haiku? > > Not who; what. > > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku Or maybe you'll find http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku more useful :) -- Paul "LeoNerd" Evans leon...@leonerd.org.uk ICQ# 4135350 | Registered Linux# 179460 http://www.leonerd.org.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: London.pm Dim sum Thursday 1pm: HK Diner
On Dec 18, 2008, at 8:10, "Léon Brocard" wrote: 2008/12/16 Léon Brocard : We've been out a bit west recently, so it's time to head back into Chinatown and try a restaurant I've been meaning to visit. As I failed to point out earlier, today is also the 21st Birthday of Perl! $ perldoc perlhist | grep 1.000 | head -1 Larry 1.000 1987-Dec-18 So we shall be having a celebratory dim sum. Why not come and celebrate the cold winter days and the many years of hacking Perl we have done in the past and we hope to do in the future? Party hats optional. London.pm dim sum is a social event where we meet up every Thursday at 1pm at a different Chinese restaurant, spend about an hour (and about £10 cash) eating tasty dim sum (steamed and fried dumplings), then go our separate ways. HK Diner 22 Wardour Street Chinatown, London W1D 6QQ Leicester Square Tube Station http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=W1D6QQ http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/reviews/9306.html http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?HK_Diner%2C_W1D_6QJ Who's coming? Léon, London.pm Dim Sum Mandarin Little bit of a trip from bank but I may be there :)
Perl Email Project wiki
I have a vague idea that this project is somehow london.pm related - so I hope this is a good way to report that since yesterday the main wiki page (http://emailproject.perl.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page) displays a database error: A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "SiteStatsUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction (localhost)". Thanks for the great Email related modules, Zbigniew Lukasiak http://brudnopis.blogspot.com/ http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/
Perl success stories
Inspired by this month's discussions about Perl community websites, we* have started Yet Another Perl Website. We're aiming to collect Perl success stories - similar to those O'Reilly used to gather here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/perl/news/success_stories.html The intention is to provide a recent/updated resource which can be used to counter the "Perl is dead" myth. If you have any tales of high-profile, large-scale, or otherwise interesting Perl systems you've deployed recently then we'd love to hear them. We're happy to link to existing content on other sites or to host original content. The site format is something like Slashdot (although not running on the Slash code as that requires an ancient version of Apache and mod_perl). I haven't linked the site here because we're currently waiting for permission from The Perl Foundation to use a logo based on the Perl onion (yes, it's another 'glass onion' theme from the Cult of Wardley), but if anybody would like to email me off-list I'll be happy to provide a link to the dev version of the site so you can take a look. Obviously there's not much content yet. Regards, Denny * Digital Craftsmen, aka Simon Wilcox (essuu), Adeola Awoyemi (dialog), Paul Orrock and myself.
Sharding, and all that
So, It's nearly the new year and the time for new projects. On my project radar for next year is "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." Now I understand the basic principles behind this and can, if needs be, implement my own wheel, but before I do I'd love to find out what everyone else is doing. Are there any good reference sites out there - MySQL sharding success stories if you will - and how did they do it? I'm pretty sure that everyone does it slightly differently but the more things I can look at before considering my own implementation, the better. Hot technologies (by which I mean what blogs and google have been throwing at me recently) include: - Spock Proxy - MySQL Clustering - Implementing it at the app level. What's the collective group think on these? Obviously (for this list, at least) the app that will be accessing the database is Perl based, so I'm only considering compatible technologies at the moment. Mark.
Re: Perl success stories
On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 10:06 +, Denny wrote: > If you have any tales of high-profile, large-scale, or otherwise > interesting Perl systems you've deployed recently then we'd love to hear > them. It's been pointed out to me that projects which were not started recently, and which are still going strong, are also good evidence that Perl "aten't dead yet". We'd like those too :) Thanks, Denny
Re: Perl success stories
Denny wrote: > Inspired by this month's discussions about Perl community websites, we* > have started Yet Another Perl Website. Sounds like a similar idea to http://proudtouseperl.org/. Dave...
Re: Sharding, and all that
2008/12/18 Mark Fowler > It's nearly the new year and the time for new projects. On my project > radar for next year is "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." I came across this and noted it for future reference: http://spockproxy.sourceforge.net/ - doh, just read the rest of your email - you've already found it http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/ - seems to know their stuff so you might find something in here. Leo
Re: Perl Christmas Quiz
2008/12/18 Paul LeoNerd Evans : > On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:54:40 +0100 > "Philip Newton" wrote: > >> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 02:47, Torsten Knorr wrote: >> > Who is Haiku? >> >> Not who; what. >> >> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku > > Or maybe you'll find http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku more useful :) Maybe, maybe not; check the domain of his email address. Cheers, -- Philip Newton
Re: Perl success stories
On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 10:25 +, Dave Cross wrote: > Denny wrote: > > Inspired by this month's discussions about Perl community websites, > > we* have started Yet Another Perl Website. > > Sounds like a similar idea to http://proudtouseperl.org/. So it does! Damn your prior art! :) So, people should send relevant content to both sites, please :) The more widely those success stories get distributed, the better.
Re: Perl success stories
Dave Cross wrote: Denny wrote: Inspired by this month's discussions about Perl community websites, we* have started Yet Another Perl Website. Sounds like a similar idea to http://proudtouseperl.org/. I guess it is. /me goes looking. I feel a bit deflated that we've done a load of work that is in essence duplicating this work but it does highlight the problem of a lack of visibility in fragmented projects. proudtouseperl isn't a site that a manager or other person deciding about perl is likely to come across. We need a success site that is very visible, linked from perl.org and high up on the search rankings. I don't really mind how that happens, do we work to push up proudtouseperl or do we push on with ours ? S.
Re: london.pm.org web site - facelifted (v2)
On 14 Dec 2008, at 18:33, Andy Wardley wrote: Léon Brocard wrote: Andy, care to put your changes live? All checked in. It'll need to be built on the target machine. What remains for this shininess to be made live? - Mark
Re: london.pm.org web site - facelifted (v2)
2008/12/18 Mark Blackman : > On 14 Dec 2008, at 18:33, Andy Wardley wrote: > >> Léon Brocard wrote: >>> >>> Andy, care to put your changes live? >>> >> >> All checked in. It'll need to be built on the target machine. > > What remains for this shininess to be made live? Well the only remaining impediment was my inability to determine from the logs that Andy was being blocked from the server by an entry from denyhosts. Having fixed that I'm sure Andy will get on and do it when he has a few minutes :-)
Re: london.pm.org web site - facelifted (v2)
On 18 Dec 2008, at 11:46, Jonathan Stowe wrote: 2008/12/18 Mark Blackman : On 14 Dec 2008, at 18:33, Andy Wardley wrote: Léon Brocard wrote: Andy, care to put your changes live? All checked in. It'll need to be built on the target machine. What remains for this shininess to be made live? Well the only remaining impediment was my inability to determine from the logs that Andy was being blocked from the server by an entry from denyhosts. Having fixed that I'm sure Andy will get on and do it when he has a few minutes :-) ok, just wanted to see if more tuits from someone other than Andy might help. - Mark
Re: Sharding, and all that
Mark Fowler wrote: What's the collective group think on these? There's a good series of articles on sharding starting here: http://lifescaler.com/2008/04/database-sharding-unraveled-part-i/ The conclusion I drew from it was that functional partitioning (where possible) was much easier to implement than horizontal partitioning. A
Re: london.pm.org web site - facelifted (v2)
Mark Blackman wrote: What remains for this shininess to be made live? The gate keeper of the London.pm fortress hath just this hour granted me access after much wrangling with the dragons of ssh and walls of fire. Verily now that I have entered shall I proceed to make shiny the castle walls. A
Re: Sharding, and all that
On 18 Dec 2008, at 10:19, Mark Fowler wrote: So, It's nearly the new year and the time for new projects. On my project radar for next year is "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." There's really good stuff in the Sybase Unleashed book on horizontal and vertical partitioning. And as people have said, you can partition by "kind" of data. "sharding" is a horrible term. -- Dave HodgkinsonMSN: daveh...@hotmail.com Site: http://www.davehodgkinson.com UK: +44 7768 490620 Blog: http://davehodg.blogspot.com Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davehodg
Re: London.pm Dim sum Thursday 1pm: HK Diner
2008/12/18 Léon Brocard : >> >> HK Diner >> 22 Wardour Street >> Chinatown, >> London W1D 6QQ >> Leicester Square Tube Station >> http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=W1D6QQ >> http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/reviews/9306.html >> http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?HK_Diner%2C_W1D_6QJ > > Who's coming? Léon, London.pm Dim Sum Mandarin In that case, I'll come along. Again. Make a nice change of pace from trying to troubleshoot email servers Dominic -- No train here, but still: The sign says: "Ready to Leave" Normal service, yes?
Re: Sharding, and all that
2008/12/18 Dave Hodgkinson : > > "sharding" is a horrible term. > But the computing 2.0 neophytes have to have obscure neologisms - it would be an affront to their freedom of thought to use a term that everyone else understands.
It Shines! It Shines!
Behold! http://london.pm.org/ There's a few pages not building properly... working on that now. A
Re: Sharding, and all that
Mark Fowler wrote: "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." Is that when you throw it against the wall really, really, hard?
Re: Sharding, and all that
Andy Wardley wrote: > Mark Fowler wrote: >> What's the collective group think on these? > > There's a good series of articles on sharding starting here: > > http://lifescaler.com/2008/04/database-sharding-unraveled-part-i/ > > The conclusion I drew from it was that functional partitioning > (where possible) was much easier to implement than horizontal partitioning. Hmm - skimming these articles, I'm not hugely impressed. The chap(ess?) behind them is clearly a developer rather than a DBA. http://lifescaler.com/2008/06/database-sharding-unraveled-part-iii/ "I’ll give you a practical example. It involves a forum with about 150k registered users, 600k posts and about 10k unique visitors/day (peaks reaching 50k unique visitors/day). The DB server is a 8 dual-core XEON processors with 8gb/ram. The whole DB is about 1GB in size and the server is MySQL. When the number of simultaneous DB connections reaches a critical level (it’s variable), MySQL will freeze. That’s not all, as the sessions and posts tables will often get corrupted. The first solution would be to put the tables in memory, so as not to stress the HDD. This actually turns out to be the worst idea possible. So what to do?" Well, how about (1) connection-pooling and (2) running memcached using some of the 6GB of RAM you have free. Even if that only reduces your queries by 90% (and you'd expect better than that for a forum) you're not going to be seeing more than 16 simultaneous queries - which is the number of cores you have. While we're on the topic you've probably got too many cores and not enough disks (and I'm basing that solely on the fact that a DB server has been described *without* mentioning disks at all). Oh, and if you're routinely finding your tables are getting corrupted either (a) replace your hardware or (b) replace your database. "Split the database into smaller, specialized db’s. Use a DB for users, one for messanging functionalities, one for product orders, etc. Each of these databases must exist independently, that is, the splitting must be made so that I could, for example, create a new functionality (implicitly a new database), let’s say discussion board, and just take the users DB as a whole and use it, without affecting anything else." Brilliant! So now your messages don't necessarily have a valid user associated with them. That's OK though, because you're checking that in your application aren't you? Everywhere? Including any admin scripts? And manual interactions with the database? And you can prove that you've not missed any checking? This sort of stuff is very easy to get wrong. It's very easy to make the sort of mistake that isn't noticed for months when it's impossible to correct corrupt data. Now I know the likes of ebay and skype do it, but you can bet they wouldn't unless they had to. These articles seem to put it on a par with trying out a new theme in firefox. -- Richard Huxton Archonet Ltd
Re: It Shines! It Shines!
On 18 Dec 2008, at 12:39, Andy Wardley wrote: Behold! http://london.pm.org/ Lovely! -- Andy Armstrong, Hexten
Re: Sharding, and all that
2008/12/18 Martin A. Brooks : > Mark Fowler wrote: >> >> "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." > > Is that when you throw it against the wall really, really, hard? Or make the DBAs roll naked in a bathtub of broken glass until they sort the performance problems out.
Re: It Shines! It Shines!
Andy Wardley wrote: > Behold! > > http://london.pm.org/ Awful! It's barely readable on Netscape 2.0! Seriously - good work. Does the new site mean we'll all have to shave, wear polo-necks and drink frappucinos or some such? > There's a few pages not building properly... working on that now. Ah - you'll be wanting one of those animated man-digging icons. -- Richard Huxton Archonet Ltd
Re: Sharding, and all that
Jonathan Stowe wrote: > 2008/12/18 Martin A. Brooks : >> Mark Fowler wrote: >>> "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." >> Is that when you throw it against the wall really, really, hard? > > Or make the DBAs roll naked in a bathtub of broken glass until they > sort the performance problems out. You're already making them admin MySQL - rolling in broken glass is what they do to relax. -- Richard Huxton Archonet Ltd
Re: It Shines! It Shines!
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Andy Wardley wrote: > Behold! > > http://london.pm.org/ > > There's a few pages not building properly... working on that now. > > A > Brilliant stuff! Looks much improved! One thing I've just noticed is that I can't seem to select text in the main body of the page? Are you using some sort of overlay? Cheers, --James
Re: Sharding, and all that
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:19 AM, Mark Fowler wrote: > > So, > > It's nearly the new year and the time for new projects. On my project radar > for next year is "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." There's a bunch of articles on Flickr out there, this one seems pretty decent, http://highscalability.com/flickr-architecture P > > Now I understand the basic principles behind this and can, if needs be, > implement my own wheel, but before I do I'd love to find out what everyone > else is doing. Are there any good reference sites out there - MySQL sharding > success stories if you will - and how did they do it? I'm pretty sure that > everyone does it slightly differently but the more things I can look at > before considering my own implementation, the better. > > Hot technologies (by which I mean what blogs and google have been throwing at > me recently) include: > > - Spock Proxy > - MySQL Clustering > - Implementing it at the app level. > > What's the collective group think on these? Obviously (for this list, at > least) the app that will be accessing the database is Perl based, so I'm only > considering compatible technologies at the moment. > > Mark.
Re: Sharding, and all that
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:49 PM, Jonathan Stowe wrote: > 2008/12/18 Martin A. Brooks : >> Mark Fowler wrote: >>> >>> "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." >> >> Is that when you throw it against the wall really, really, hard? > > Or make the DBAs roll naked in a bathtub of broken glass until they > sort the performance problems out. > I thought after they "sharded" it in a particularly awful manner it just felt like rolling in a bathtub of broken glass, as per Richard Huxton's response... --James
Re: It Shines! It Shines!
2008/12/18 James Laver : > On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Andy Wardley wrote: >> Behold! >> >> http://london.pm.org/ >> >> There's a few pages not building properly... working on that now. >> >> A >> > > Brilliant stuff! Looks much improved! > > One thing I've just noticed is that I can't seem to select text in the > main body of the page? > > Are you using some sort of overlay? > I think you *can* select text but you just can't see you've selected it :-)
Re: It Shines! It Shines!
2008/12/18 Andy Wardley : > Behold! > > http://london.pm.org/ > Yay! That's groovy ;-)
Re: Perl success stories
2008/12/18 Denny : > On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 10:25 +, Dave Cross wrote: >> Denny wrote: >> > Inspired by this month's discussions about Perl community websites, >> > we* have started Yet Another Perl Website. >> >> Sounds like a similar idea to http://proudtouseperl.org/. > > So it does! Damn your prior art! :) > > So, people should send relevant content to both sites, please :) The > more widely those success stories get distributed, the better. Definately. A. -- http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
Re: Perl success stories
Denny wrote: > On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 10:06 +, Denny wrote: >> If you have any tales of high-profile, large-scale, or otherwise >> interesting Perl systems you've deployed recently then we'd love to hear >> them. > > It's been pointed out to me that projects which were not started > recently, and which are still going strong, are also good evidence that > Perl "aten't dead yet". We'd like those too :) I agree with Denny on that. That's why I am talking about the 10+ years old Human Genome project, and the 7+ years old Music Brainz server in my two last essays on ProudToUsePerl. But new projects are also a good thing. :) Maybe someone can point me at yet another big perl-based project that I can write about for this week's essay? Cheers! -- Luis Motta Campos is a software engineer, Perl Programmer, foodie and photographer.
Re: Perl success stories
Simon Wilcox wrote: > proudtouseperl isn't a site that a manager or other person deciding > about perl is likely to come across. We need a success site that is very > visible, linked from perl.org and high up on the search rankings. Thanks for that. You really gave me a lot more fuel to keep writing. Wasn't the fact that I gave my word to Mr Cross about posting once a fortnight, I would have stopped by now. > I don't really mind how that happens, do we work to push up > proudtouseperl or do we push on with ours ? I am already working on the Proud To Use Perl website and it would be nice to have some help. Post suggestions and more posting authors are a good thing. The Movable Type on which the blog is running could also use some administration work; the ability to post pictures and other small things need to be configured. Cheers! -- Luis Motta Campos is a software engineer, Perl Programmer, foodie and photographer.
Re: Sharding, and all that
Mark Fowler wrote: So, It's nearly the new year and the time for new projects. On my project radar for next year is "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." Standard consultant question: Why? "go faster/scale up" is not a good reason. If you just wanted to go faster you would have moved to Pg or similar :-) There is no magic solution - the DB and application and usage should be reviewed to see if some minor tweaks can make major improvements. Picking a solution without first knowing what the existing problems and bottlenecks are smells of "I wanna play" :-) Jacqui p.s. I have wanted to play with a Pg SSI over a OpenMosix image for ages but have yet to make the time. The original question sounds similar to the reasons for my wanting to play with Pg over OpenMosix (because it sounds like fun and May help scale up a app) - I had a good excuse a year or two ago but today with >16+ CPU servers, Hadoop etc there are better things to do with my time.
Re: It Shines! It Shines!
2008/12/18 Andy Wardley : > Behold! > > http://london.pm.org/ This is wonderful! Thanks for your hard work, Andy. Léon
Emergency (or regular?) social?
I will be in London for the first time ever between the afternoon of the 28th of December and the morning of the 4th of January. As Thrusday the 1st is a Social Meeting, I wonder if there will be one, or if I should ask around for some nice Londoners for an emergency social. Sad to say that I will miss the opportunity for a heretic social meeting on the 8th of January... :) sorry about that, Greg. I am staying at the Luxury Inn, 154 Tottenham Rd, and there will be Internet connection there. If you're interested in showing me some nice english pub and some nice english beers, please let me know. Cheers. -- Luis Motta Campos is a software engineer, Perl Programmer, foodie and photographer.
Any Restaurant Recommendations for New's Year on London? And maybe some clubbing?
Hoy, Londoners. For the very first time since I started writing to this list, in 2002, I will be at London for the New Year's Eve. I am looking for a place to have dinner and see the fireworks near The London Eye, would appreciate if you can point me to a place where stills possible to make reservations for dinner for two. To be precise, I'm looking for a nice romantic place with a view over the London Eye and sourrounding area, where we can have dinner, champagne and a view of the fireworks. If I could get also a good club around for partying afterwards, that would be appreciated. As for the budget, heaven is the limit, up to 200-250 GBP. :) Many many thanks in advance for your knowledge of the terrain and advise. Cheers! -- Luis Motta Campos is a software engineer, Perl Programmer, foodie and photographer.
Re: It Shines! It Shines!
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 1:02 PM, Jonathan Stowe
wrote:
> 2008/12/18 James Laver :
>> On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 12:39 PM, Andy Wardley wrote:
>>> Behold!
>>>
>>> http://london.pm.org/
>>>
>>> There's a few pages not building properly... working on that now.
>>>
>>> A
>>>
>>
>> Brilliant stuff! Looks much improved!
>>
>> One thing I've just noticed is that I can't seem to select text in the
>> main body of the page?
>>
>> Are you using some sort of overlay?
>>
>
> I think you *can* select text but you just can't see you've selected it :-)
>
Aha, you're right on that. C-c works nicely for copying it out. It
even shows up nicely on the whiteish theme.
Quick investigation with firebug tells me that firefox thinks the
background the text is on is some darkish orange/brown so it chose a
nice white background to help it stand out... I assume it's some
bizarre div stacking bug.
Specifically the rule qq/ #page { background-color:#C66300; } / is the
one it objects to. Firebug claims this is line 280 in orange.css. If I
comment out that line, the only negative effect I notice is that at
the very bottom of the page there is no longer a darker orange/brown
band extending down, the bottom is the main background (bright)
orange.
I assume the same applies to the other two broken colour themes.
Oh, and it works fine for me without the fix in IE7, I assume IE6 is
equally ignorant of CSS standards in this respect.
Cheers,
--James
Re: It Shines! It Shines!
James Laver wrote: Quick investigation with firebug tells me that firefox thinks the background the text is on is some darkish orange/brown so it chose a nice white background to help it stand out... I assume it's some bizarre div stacking bug. Hmm... it appears to work OK for me on FF (3.0.4 Mac) I've explicitly added a white background to the #body div on top to see if that helps. But I'm playing blind here so you'll need to be my eyes. Oh, and it works fine for me without the fix in IE7, I assume IE6 is equally ignorant of CSS standards in this respect. I must admit, I've only just looked at the site for the first time on IE6 and IE7 (sorry, I was too busy punching myself in the face to get around to it :-) Imagine my great surprise and considerable relief to see that it looked OK (apart from a minor wrap-around issue in the menu bar, which is now fixed). I mean, I like to think I know a bit about browser friendly markup, but really, that's unheard of! I can only assume that somewhere else in the world, a number of cute and fluffy kittens were put to death in rather unpleasant circumstances in order to balance the karma in the universe. Happy days! Unless you're a fluffy kitten, of course. A
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
Luis Motta Campos wrote: > I will be in London for the first time ever between the afternoon of > the 28th of December and the morning of the 4th of January. As Thrusday > the 1st is a Social Meeting, I wonder if there will be one, or if I > should ask around for some nice Londoners for an emergency social. > > Sad to say that I will miss the opportunity for a heretic social > meeting on the 8th of January... :) sorry about that, Greg. No no no no. You've got it all wrong! The real, official meeting will be on January 8th (the day after the first Thursday of the month). The heretics meeting will be on January 1st. Unfortunately we don't currently have venues for either of these meetings. You can keep up to date with our meetings by tracking our Upcoming group[1] or our Facebook group[2]. Cheers, Dave... [1] http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/12343/ [2] http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2560427276
Re: It Shines! It Shines!
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 4:33 PM, Andy Wardley wrote: > Hmm... it appears to work OK for me on FF (3.0.4 Mac) > > I've explicitly added a white background to the #body div on top to see if > that helps. But I'm playing blind here so you'll need to be my eyes. > >> Oh, and it works fine for me without the fix in IE7, I assume IE6 is >> equally ignorant of CSS standards in this respect. > > I must admit, I've only just looked at the site for the first time on IE6 > and > IE7 (sorry, I was too busy punching myself in the face to get around to it > :-) > > Imagine my great surprise and considerable relief to see that it looked OK > (apart from a minor wrap-around issue in the menu bar, which is now fixed). > > I mean, I like to think I know a bit about browser friendly markup, but > really, that's unheard of! I can only assume that somewhere else in the > world, a number of cute and fluffy kittens were put to death in rather > unpleasant circumstances in order to balance the karma in the universe. > > Happy days! Unless you're a fluffy kitten, of course. > > A > I encountered that one on 3.0.4/WinXP (or if you're a fan of UA strings: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4). Anyway, you have the fix in my previous email if you do manage to replicate it. More than likely it's some lovely quirk of windows. Hateful Software! Cheers, --James
Re: Sharding, and all that
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:19:06AM +, Mark Fowler said: > What's the collective group think on these? Obviously (for this list, at > least) the app that will be accessing the database is Perl based, so I'm > only considering compatible technologies at the moment. We use Data::ObjectDriver which has built in support for sharding and memcache (somewhat unsuprisingly) plus MySQL with replication. The main advantages are that it's conceptually simple, resilient, flexible (especially with the ability to move entities between shards) and cheap to scale. The big question is whether to use a hashing scheme for shard selection (keywords: Consistent Hashing, libketama, DHTs) or whether to use a master lookup device (which is what I believe Flickr uses). As always, YMMV.
Sample answers to Christmas Quiz
Having written the quiz, and as actual answers seem to have faded to a trickle,
I thought I ought to offer some sample answers of my own. Apologies ahead of
time for any line break issues - but I have tried my hardest to avoid them!
1) Name as many different reasons Larry Wall has given for how Perl came to be
named (including where he has given them) as you can. Make up a brand new
reason of your own.
>From Wikipedia:
Perl was originally named "Pearl", after the Parable of the Pearl from the
Gospel of Matthew. Larry Wall wanted to give the language a short name with
positive connotations; he claims that he considered (and rejected) every three-
and four-letter word in the dictionary. He also considered naming it after his
wife Gloria. Wall discovered the existing PEARL programming language before
Perl's official release and changed the spelling of the name.
While the name is occasionally taken as an acronym for Practical Extraction and
Report Language (which appears at the top of the documentation), this expansion
actually came after the name; several others have been suggested as equally
canonical, including Wall's own humorous Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish
Lister. Indeed, Wall claims that the name was intended to inspire many
different expansions.
Perl gained it's name from knitting as it is often used to knit together data
from many sources.
2) Name all the built in file handles in Perl.
STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR, ARGV, ARGVOUT, DATA
3) Write a Perl function that takes two references to arrays and returns the
intersect of them. If an entry appears n times in array 1 and m times in array
2, the output should list that entry min(n,m) times. Bonus mark for one line
solutions.
Lots of good answers, but I'm going to republish Jasper's solution which has
the advantage of working plus looks appropriately unreadable and terse. I asked
the perl proficient guy next to me what it did and he has yet to get back to
me. I thought the use of "1x" was interesting and novel, albeit inefficient
especially when there are lots of duplicates, and the use of a comma to avoid a
semicolon obviously fudges the one-line bonus mark but nevertheless...:
sub intersect {grep(!++$_[2]->{$_},@{$_[0]}),grep 1x$_[2]->{$_}--,@{$_[1]}}
In the absence of the one line edict, which of course encourages bad style,
this is a more readable version of basically the same algorithm:
sub list_intersect_duplicates {
my($list1, $list2) = @_;
my %hlist2;
grep {$hlist2{$_}++ } @$list2;
grep {$hlist2{$_}-- > 0 } @$list1;
}
4) How many different variable types are there in Perl? Be as sensibly
voluminous in your answer as you are able.
I have been asked this in more interviews that I care to recall and generally
interviewers seem to be looking for 3 (scalar, list, and hash) but code,
filehandle, and format are also high level types.
You could also look at my, our, and local - and mention typeglobs, references
(which in turn can be subcategorised), and read-only constants.
You could then differentiate between file handles and directory handles - and
split scalars into the different ways they can be stored internally: e.g. as
integers, doubles and strings.
There is also the internal special purpose magical object which is used to
implement things like blessed objects and the various sorts of tied objects.
5) What animal is on the front of the Perl Cookbook (bonus mark for knowing
both the first and second edition)?
Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) on both editions.
6) What company was Larry Wall working for when he wrote Perl 1?
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at NASA. Did someone say rocket science?
7) What does the L in Randal L Schwartz stand for?
Lee.
8) Name a Perl module Leon (Brocard) has written (bonus mark if you've used it).
http://cpan.uwinnipeg.ca/search?query=Brocard&mode=author
9) When will Perl 6 be released?
Perl 6 is free so it doesn't need to be released.
10) Who was the most important pioneer of Perl Poetry?
Sharon Hopkins.
11) Write a limeric about Perl. Bonus mark for making it perl parseable.
<<_;
There was a perl hack from Nantucket,
Who wrote one-line scripts by the bucket,
He tried to write verse,
But twas longer and worse,
Especially since he didn't know any swear words.
_
12) What year was CPAN founded in?
1995
13) Think of a witty and/or interesting Perl Christmas quiz question and answer
it.
Which 1998 movie featured a snippet of code from the Perl FAQ?
Sphere.
_
Get a bird’s eye view of the world with Multimap
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/115454059/direct/01/
Re: Sample answers to Christmas Quiz
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Chris Jack wrote: > 4) How many different variable types are there in Perl? Be as sensibly > voluminous in your answer as you are > able. > > > have been asked this in more interviews that I care to recall and generally > interviewers seem to be looking > for 3 (scalar, list, and hash) but code, > filehandle, and format are also high level types. i would have said only two: scalar and list, since arrays and hashes are both lists. > 11) Write a limeric about Perl. Bonus mark for making it perl parseable. > > > <<_; > > > There was a perl hack from Nantucket, > > > Who wrote one-line scripts by the bucket, > > > He tried to write verse, > > > But twas longer and worse, > > > Especially since he didn't know any swear words. nice! p.s. damn. i really thought you'd tell us when perl 6 was going to be available. -- Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 04:45:37PM +, Dave Cross wrote: > The heretics meeting will be on January 1st. Please pay no attention to the DEVILS in our midst. All right-minded perl-mongers know that our OFFICIAL, ORTHODOX meetings are on the first Thursday of the month, and consequently there will be one on Jan 1st. It is vilest HERESY to believe that official meetings are on the day after the first Wednesday of the month. > Unfortunately we don't currently have venues for either of these meetings. We do now! Seeing that no-one will be working on that day or the day after, I've decided that we'll go a bit further afield this time, and visit this pub: http://www.thedorsetlewes.com/ It is in zone 94. Unfortunately because TfL hate people in south London, travelcards aren't available. The social will be preceded by a short Walk in the Countryside (if the weather is good), which I for one will need, to blow all the fuzziness out of my head from partying the night before. This will be from Glynde to the pub. Map here: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/idl.srf?X=543915&Y=109500&A=Y&Z=120&lm=1 -- David Cantrell | Reality Engineer, Ministry of Information I apologize if I offended you personally, I intended to do it professionally. -- Steve Champeon, on the nanog list
Re: Sample answers to Christmas Quiz
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 19:58, David Alban wrote: > On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Chris Jack wrote: >> 4) How many different variable types are there in Perl? Be as sensibly >> voluminous in your answer as you are > able. >> >> >> have been asked this in more interviews that I care to recall and generally >> interviewers seem to be looking > for 3 (scalar, list, and hash) but code, >> filehandle, and format are also high level types. > > i would have said only two: scalar and list, since arrays and hashes > are both lists. They can both be initialised from lists, but I wouldn't call them lists. That's like saying that '3' is a variable just because it's a literal that you can use to initialise a variable with. Lists are values, arrays and hashes are variables. Cheers, -- Philip Newton
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
On 2008-12-18 20:40, "David Cantrell" wrote: > > We do now! > > Seeing that no-one will be working on that day or the day after, I've > decided that we'll go a bit further afield this time, and visit this > pub: > http://www.thedorsetlewes.com/ No-one? Two of us will be playing scrabble in^W^W^Wattending^Wworking from the office at $current_work on the second. > It is in zone 94. Unfortunately because TfL hate people in south > London, travelcards aren't available. > > The social will be preceded by a short Walk in the Countryside (if the > weather is good), which I for one will need, to blow all the fuzziness > out of my head from partying the night before. This will be from Glynde > to the pub. Map here: > http://www.streetmap.co.uk/idl.srf?X=543915&Y=109500&A=Y&Z=120&lm=1 I'm told by some london.pmers that nothing exists north of Watford or south of Wimbledon. Surely, then, these maps are fantasy? After a quick investigation, I've found tickets are £19.10 for an off-peak walk-on train fare, which isn't unreasonable. Trains go from victoria or london bridge through brighton or lewes to glynde. Further details please. I might pop along. --James
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
On 18 Dec 2008, at 16:45, Dave Cross wrote: The heretics meeting will be on January 1st. For those without a passport and thus unable to attend the 1st Jan meeting abroad, if there are sufficient numbers (more than one) I shall host something in the north-western corner of Zone 1 with an amble round Primrose Hill, attending any or all of the fine hostelries in the vicinity (6 at the last count). -- Dave HodgkinsonMSN: daveh...@hotmail.com Site: http://www.davehodgkinson.com UK: +44 7768 490620 Blog: http://davehodg.blogspot.com Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davehodg
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
On Thu, 18 Dec 2008, Luis Motta Campos wrote: I am staying at the Luxury Inn, 154 Tottenham Rd, and there will be Internet connection there. If you're interested in showing me some nice english pub and some nice english beers, please let me know. insert mandatory plug for rgl. http://london.randomness.org.uk in particular. http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Category_Good_Beer_Guide http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki.cgi?Category_Restaurants -- Bob Walker http://london.randomness.org.uk - http://tech.randomness.org.uk http://rwc.randomness.org.uk- http://londonjoinery.com for great beery justice!- meh! bah! indeeed!
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
David Cantrell wrote: On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 04:45:37PM +, Dave Cross wrote: The heretics meeting will be on January 1st. Please pay no attention to the DEVILS in our midst. All right-minded perl-mongers know that our OFFICIAL, ORTHODOX meetings are on the first Thursday of the month, and consequently there will be one on Jan 1st. It is vilest HERESY to believe that official meetings are on the day after the first Wednesday of the month. Even I know that and got the right date, Dave(+)... don't mind about Dave (c)... ;) Unfortunately we don't currently have venues for either of these meetings. We do now! Seeing that no-one will be working on that day or the day after, I've decided that we'll go a bit further afield this time, and visit this pub: http://www.thedorsetlewes.com/ It is in zone 94. Unfortunately because TfL hate people in south London, travelcards aren't available. The social will be preceded by a short Walk in the Countryside (if the weather is good), which I for one will need, to blow all the fuzziness out of my head from partying the night before. This will be from Glynde to the pub. Map here: http://www.streetmap.co.uk/idl.srf?X=543915&Y=109500&A=Y&Z=120&lm=1 If I may have a say about that, can we have something closer, and maybe more traditional? It might be quite a while until I have a good opportunity to attend a social meeting, and being this far away from London sounds a bit lame... :) -- Luis Motta Campos is a software engineer, Perl Programmer, foodie and photographer. (+) Cross (c) Cantrell
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
Dave Hodgkinson wrote: On 18 Dec 2008, at 16:45, Dave Cross wrote: The heretics meeting will be on January 1st. For those without a passport and thus unable to attend the 1st Jan meeting abroad, if there are sufficient numbers (more than one) I shall host something in the north-western corner of Zone 1 with an amble round Primrose Hill, attending any or all of the fine hostelries in the vicinity (6 at the last count). Heretic or not, unless Mr Cross changes the venue to somewhere consensus agrees to be in London, that's the one I will attend. Sorry, Dave, but I will not miss the opportunity to see the Londoners on their natural habitat. ;) Please put two more on your list, Dave. :) Dave, it's your move. ;) -- Luis Motta Campos is a software engineer, Perl Programmer, foodie and photographer.
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
On 18 Dec 2008, at 23:24, Luis Motta Campos wrote: If I may have a say about that, can we have something closer, and maybe more traditional? It might be quite a while until I have a good opportunity to attend a social meeting, and being this far away from London sounds a bit lame... :) srsly, do Sussex if you have the energy. -- Dave HodgkinsonMSN: daveh...@hotmail.com Site: http://www.davehodgkinson.com UK: +44 7768 490620 Blog: http://davehodg.blogspot.com Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davehodg
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
On 18 Dec 2008, at 21:12, James Laver wrote: [...] I'm told by some london.pmers that nothing exists north of Watford or south of Wimbledon. Surely, then, these maps are fantasy? They are mistaken. There is nothing north of Hampstead nor south of the Thames. Likewise, there are only dragons west of Richmond and east of Bank. The Sultan and Nelson Wines are thus just a figment of the imagination, mere delusions caused by sitting on southbound Tube trains for too long.
Re: Emergency (or regular?) social?
On 2008-12-19 00:55, "Peter Corlett" wrote: > On 18 Dec 2008, at 21:12, James Laver wrote: > [...] >> I'm told by some london.pmers that nothing exists north of Watford >> or south >> of Wimbledon. Surely, then, these maps are fantasy? > > They are mistaken. There is nothing north of Hampstead nor south of > the Thames. Likewise, there are only dragons west of Richmond and east > of Bank. > > The Sultan and Nelson Wines are thus just a figment of the > imagination, mere delusions caused by sitting on southbound Tube > trains for too long. If there's nothing south of the Thames then there's no Richmond. So there's nothing west of a place that doesn't exist. EBRAINHURTS. In any case there's a rather nice pub just east of Bank*, so I question the truths in what you are saying. --James * Or was I so drunk after visiting it that I thought it was east of bank?
Mobile broadband
I'm coming back to the UK in January and will be moving around a lot until we buy a house in May. Some of the places we'll be going won't have Internet access and I think I'll need it to work, (anyone know of any telecommute Perl contracts then, please let me know...) so I'm thinking about getting a mobile broadband thingy, partially for working on the move and partially to avoid starting and stopping lots of DSL contracts. Does this make sense? Anyone got any experience of mobile broadband providers? Any good ones, good deals, horror stories, don't-use-this-if-you-have-a-Mac stories, etc.? Simon
Re: Sharding, and all that
HI Mark, So, > > It's nearly the new year and the time for new projects. On my project > radar for next year is "consider (better) sharding our MySQL database." > > I think it depends on your write/read ratio. If it is read heavy then replication and/or memcache will probably do the trick - on the other hand if you expect more writes than reads then I saw an interesting technique for handling excess DB writes by using thousands of temporary MySQL MyISAM tables[1]. Writing to MyISAM files is quick - but the downside is locking - by using _lots_ of temporary MyISAM tables you can improve overall write capacity. NIge [1] These guys used 20,000+ MyISAM tables to scale writes http://en.oreilly.com/mysql2008/public/schedule/detail/592
