Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Switched Webquills.net to Movable Type

I recently made a decision to focus my Webquills blog not just on web development, but specifically on Perl web development. It seemed hypocritical to write a blog about Perl web development using a PHP blogging tool (or a Java-based service like Blogger). And when I heard that MT was going open source, it was the perfect opportunity for a switch. So this past weekend, I converted from Wordpress to MTOS. So far, so good. I still need to do a lot of look and feel customizations. But no at least my Perl blog is generated with Perl blogging software.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Declared CVS DTM

Finally migrated the CVS repository at work to SVN. Now all my revision control is under SVN. CVS is Dead To Me.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Had a good day

I slept in, got to work late, had a very productive day of coding (with a passing test suite to prove it), and started watching season 2 of The Unit. I'm in a good mood, and it's been a good day. Happens so rarely, I thought I would record it for posterity. Now I'm off to bed. :)

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Took some time off

The last few months have run me ragged at work. The result has been a large gap in posts to all my personal web sites, and a burned-out feeling. So last week I finally hit the breaking point and took some vacation, during which I did pretty much nothing but lie around the house. I'd like to say it felt good, but really it was more like just working out a cramp.



I have resolved to live a more balanced life (whatever that means) so as not to drive myself to an early grave. Let's see how long that lasts!



On a side note, a certain evil person has introduced me to sudoku, which I was trying hard to avoid. Now I'm dreaming about little squares filled with numbers. Argh!

Monday, June 4, 2007

Launched Webquills.net

Five years ago, I registered the domain name. For all that time, ideas have percolated, but never taken form. Now, finally, I have gotten off my rump and done it. (Well, okay, technically, I did while sitting down, but you get the metaphor.)


Webquills.net is "Brain food for web masters," a collection and constantly flowing stream of important knowledge for web professionals and dedicated amateurs. Because web mastery is not just about HTML, it covers the full gamut of web-related topics, including software development, system administration, design, and even writing.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Laughed out loud

Director Mike Figgis spent longer at LAX airport than intended. He'd arrived in Los Angeles, along with half the acting and directing world, for what is known as 'pilot season', when the big studios try out new scripts, directors and actors in a two-week frenzy of auditions and career make-or-breaks. When Figgis was being grilled by airport immigration, he was asked the purpose of his visit. Unthinking and tired after a long flight, Mike replied: 'I'm here to shoot a pilot.' After five hours in an interrogation cell (yes, really), he finally made it into town.


Via the Guardian

Paid Money for Music Downloads

I've been waiting for this one since they announced it, and now it's here. Today you can upgrade your iTunes client to version 7.2, and then you can upgrade (some of) your iTunes purchases to 256kbps, DRM-Free versions!



It's been said before, and those who know me also know my opinion, but for the record: DRM is bad, bad, bad. It's bad for artists, bad for fans, and bad for online music retailers. It's even bad for the media distributors who use it, although you may have a hard time convincing some of them of that.



EMI seems to get it, though, as their music is now up and running. I am not a big purchaser of music in general, but I have been saving up to vote with my dollars. As I write this, I am listening to my newly purchased, non-DRM Rolling Stones tunes. Wow this stuff sounds good!

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Admitted defeat

That's right, I give up. Despite having devoted the last five years exclusively to Perl development, my next project will be written in another language.



I am not happy about this, quite the contrary. I love Perl. I've learned so much of the ins and outs of Perl syntax vagaries that I feel like I've been married to it. But for at least a year I have been looking at the web development tools and frameworks in other languages and drooling. Where are the Perl tools that will double my productivity in web development? No, for two years I have spent most of my time building those tools for myself, because those available do not suit my needs and do not measure up to the tools available in several other languages. But of course, I'm not as smart as those other guys, so my home-grown tools are not as good, and not really useful outside my personal bubble.


Now, the Perl fanatics out there are going to start yelling about things like Catalyst and maybe Jifty. Hey, I know, because I am (was) a Perl fanatic myself. But Catalyst is unnecessarily complicated. In trying to be all things to all programmers, it creates more slow-downs in overhead than it does speed-ups in infrastructure. Jifty is pretty cool, and it even comes with a pony, but it just isn't there yet, and the community behind it is comparatively small. None of the Perl frameworks I've examined make it particularly easy to implement REST-based web services (it's certainly possible, but the frameworks don't make it any easier than doing it "by hand").


Now, if I had my druthers, based purely on language syntax and tools, I probably would go with Python, and a framework like Django. Django is a beautiful piece of work, in my mind the Python alternative to Ruby on Rails, and far superior in productivity to Zope or anything based on it. Also, Python's Universal Feed Parser is by far the best library for manipulating RSS and Atom feeds that I have found in any language.


But there are also disadvantages to choosing Django over PHP. PHP has the simplest deployment path, and is still the most broadly deployed of the open-source technologies on my radar. Django requires mod_python or FastCGI, and Rails similarly relies on FastCGI. These technologies are not widely deployed and not nearly as simple as just dropping a bundle of files into your document root.

But really there are two big reasons for me to run PHP: MediaWiki and phpBB. Both are excellent applications at what they do, and I need to run them both on my new web server for compatibility with previous deployments. And both are built with PHP. Since I have to have PHP installed anyway...


So in addition to Django, I will also give symfony a test-drive. This is a PHP web framework. I have no experience with it yet, but it looks more mature than the Zend Framework, seems fully capable of doing what I want, and happens to be the first hit on Google for "PHP framework", so there must be plenty of people who think it's good.


My relationship with Perl has not ended. I'm still building large-scale applications with it at my day job, and I have no doubt I will turn to it when the going gets tough in my sysadmin role at home. But it's time for me to stretch my legs, to look at some other languages in the hope of finding tools that will increase my productivity the way Perl did when I first started using it. Python and Django will be my first try, followed closely by PHP and symfony. And if neither works out, well, there's always Rails.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Added a Terabyte of Storage

Yes, there seems to be no end to my storage needs. First there was a 160GB drive. Then a second 160GB drive. Then I had to add a 300GB external drive. And finally even that filled up. So I just picked up a pair of 500GB drives and swapped them in for the 160s. So Gabrielle, my main desktop (Mac G5), now has 1.3 Terabytes of disk space. Hopefully that will last a little while.


Meanwhile, the two 160GB drives had nowhere to live, so I bought a few cheap parts and built myself a new Linux desktop named Joxer. I had a tough time deciding how to configure him, but I finally settled on Kubuntu 7.04 for the OS. I'm really liking the whole Ubuntu family of products. It's like the best of Debian, wrapped up and delivered fresh to your door every six months!

Sunday, February 25, 2007

FINALLY published "Film School in a Box for $25"

After years of threatening and a week of editing and composing (yes, it's sad), I finally published Film School in a Box for $25, a "review" of the DVD box set of the "Mexico" trilogy by Robert Rodriguez. He is my hero when it comes to art and creativity.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Got distracted by my day job

I've had my head so deep into my day job lately that I haven't done much in the way of personal stuff. Last week I added a quick post to Control-Escape about CSS Layouts with YUI Grids. It's not very detailed, but it doesn't really have to be, the documentation provided by Yahoo is plenty good. This week all I managed to do was tweak a couple of links and fix an environment bug that wasn't detecting Windows clients correctly. Just the same, page views look to be up about 20% over last month, and revenues are following. There's a possibility that the site will actually pay for its own hosting this month, an historical first.


I didn't post anything at Media Brothers this week. Mikey took up my slack with a nice review of Band of Brothers. I've got a few ideas floating around, but I can't seem to organize any of them into a coherent article.


Meanwhile, the post office can't seem to keep my Netflix queue turning over. I've been reduced to actually reading things on paper. If I ever finish one, I'll put a review on Media Brothers.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Had a multi-post week

Just couldn't stop myself this past week. I've been pouring content onto Media Brothers. I made a post about the AppleTV that The Steve announced at Macworld Expo. That's been getting some traffic from del.icio.us. Then I wrote a review of Ladyhawke, for no particular reason. Then I finally got inspired to drop a post about network neutrality. And according to FeedBurner, Media Brothers actually has some subscribers now too!


And yet, I still have not had time to write about my cataloging project, nor to write those articles for Control-Escape that I keep putting off. I don't get how so many "bloggers" have time to write ten posts a day. I really don't.

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Beat the Market - Sort of

I just did the math on my meager 401k investments to see how I did in 2006. The answer: not bad, and better than 2005 by a lot. My annual return on capital came in at 15.97%, a very respectable return. The Nasdaq 100 gained only 6.93%. The S&P 500 came in at 15.85%, so I just squeaked past it. But the Dow Jones Industrial Average whupped me at 18.91% return.


On the other hand, if you count 401k company matching funds as gains rather than contributions, that would give me a return on investment of 38.75%. Now that's what I call a return! And since contributions are made with pre-tax dollars, only about two-thirds of the investment is mine, the rest is a loan from Uncle Sam. He'll get his in the end, though. He always does.


My play-money portfolio actually dropped a bit this year (Texas Instruments, you big slacker!), but has a 50% return over two years, so I'm not complaining. I figure it picks back up this year.


If only that decimal place were moved to the right a couple of digits, I'd be rolling in money. Oh well. Time compounds all accounts.