JT Smith

Post Every Day

2013-06-17T12:00:04Z

A couple years ago I ran a conference called YAPC, and I challenged myself to write a blog post every single day for a year about that conference. It annoyed a few people, but it taught me a valuable lesson about marketing…that daily touch point is important. If you run a blog, a Facebook page, or a Twitter account, you should attempt to post something to it every day. It makes it more interesting for the people that follow you. It keeps them coming back. And if you’re super busy like me, feel free to queue up some posts so that you don’t have to actually be there every day.

[From my blog.]

LacunaWax

2013-06-16T12:00:04Z

Jonathan Barton made this super cool new client for the Lacuna Expanse, that allows you to automate a lot of functions in the game, to make massive empire management easier.

]]> This is what Jonathan had to say about it when I asked him:

LacunaWaX is a wxperl app. I’ve compiled a regular Windows installer (using Cava Packager, which is pretty nice if you’ve never played with it), so normal people can use some of the features that have historically been for “scripters” only.

But the installer isn’t totally necessary. It’s definitely the format I concentrate on, but I run it as a Perl program rather than the installed .exe on both Windows and Ubuntu. Takes some setting up of modules, and getting wxperl installed is generally a bit more of a challenge than just “cpan wxperl”, but it’s certainly do-able.

Anyway, to the screenshots:

Intro screen:
  http://screencloud.net/v/oEtu
…the two connect buttons stay disabled until you use the Edit… Preferences menu to enter your credentials.

Post login screen:
http://screencloud.net/v/dtYv

Planet glyphs manager panel:
  http://screencloud.net/v/e6qk
Just today I added a new control under “Push Selected Glyphs” to allow you to decided to keep a number of glyphs on the planet - so you can keep a few on your mission planet so you have them when missions requiring glyphs show up. I just haven’t pushed that change yet.

Space Station Propositions panel:
http://screencloud.net/v/1BIi

That same panel while a vote is being pushed through:
  http://screencloud.net/v/kPrr

Help documentation browser with Apache Lucy search:
  http://screencloud.net/v/jP4K
The docs are just HTML; the user can edit existing or create new pages as desired. Delete the search index directory (instructions on this are in the Help docs itself) and re-run LacunaWaX to re-create it and index your new files.

If you’re interested, and you’ve got a Windows machine lying around, the installer works like any other Windows installer -http://tmtowtdi.github.io/LacunaWaX/

If you don’t have a Windows machine and want to play with it anyway, you can grab the source from the repo: https://github.com/tmtowtdi/LacunaWaX - grab v1.14.2 (the tag) - I think that’s identical to master right now, but I was on a bit of a bughunt and a fight with the Windows registry the last couple days and the end result is that I’m not 100% positive what state master is in right now.

[From my blog.]

Stop Talking About Perl

2013-06-15T12:00:04Z

I couldn’t agree more with Genehack’s “Stop Talking About Perl” talk at YAPC this past week. We spend so much time venting hot air. That’s not going to attract new users. Instead, we need to build cool stuff. Whether you’re into building cool new ecosystems like Moose, Dist::Zillla, and Plack, or if you’re into building cool new apps like Lacuna and The Game Crafter, building cool stuff and talking about that is the way to get people excited about your language.

Actions beat words every single time.

[From my blog.]

Just Build Something

2013-06-12T12:00:03Z

A lot of people think that there is some magic to starting your own business. There’s not. Just make something cool, and sell it. Then you’re in business. Also, don’t worry about getting all your paperwork ducks in a row before you start to create your product. Build your product and then determine if it’s worthy of a business. Just build something already. Why are you still reading this? Get to work.

[From my blog.]

Files - MadMongers (Madison Perl Mongers) (Madison, WI) - Meetup

2013-06-10T12:00:03Z

Files - MadMongers (Madison Perl Mongers) (Madison, WI) - Meetup:

I’ve uploaded my presentations from YAPC::NA 2013 to the MadMongers presentation repository.

[From my blog.]

Wing

2013-06-09T12:00:04Z

Wing:

Wing - Next generation web services toolkit.

Woot. Just got my first non-Plain Black employee patch for Wing.

[From my blog.]

JT's New Blog

2013-06-07T17:26:53Z

A lot of people have asked me over the years if I had a blog or twitter feed that they could follow, and I've always answered with the blog or twitter feed of the various ventures I'm involved with. I've decided that it's high time for me to release my own blog and twitter feed for the things that aren't appropriate to any of those ventures.

If you're interested, you can subscribe to my new blog or my new twitter feed now.

I'll still be posting relevant Perl-related articles to blogs.perl.org, but I've decided to create a new primary blog, because I often want to blog about non-Perl topics such as creating startups and designing games. So if you want to follow more than just my Perl activities, please subscribe to my new blog or twitter feed.

MadMongers: A New Way To Build Web Services Apps

2013-01-14T19:33:51Z

Tomorrow (Tuesday, January 14th), I'll be giving a talk at MadMongers about a new technique for building web-services enabled web apps. It is the core technology we developed to create The Game Crafter, and we now use it in all apps that we develop both internally and for customers. With it, you can build web-services enabled web apps in minutes rather than months, and I'll be demonstrating that live at the presentation. If you are within driving distance of Madison, WI I encourage you to join us. The presentation begins at 7pm at the Essen Haus.

Announcing TheGameCrafter::Client

2012-10-21T19:39:22Z

I've been publishing simple web service wrappers on CPAN for other people's web services for years, but for some reason I never got around to writing a wrapper for my own web services until now. I'm pleased to announce TheGameCrafter::Client. It is just a light-weight wrapper around The Game Crafter's web service API so that you can get down to the business of writing your app and not worrying about how to make requests and serialize/deserialize data.

Deep Cloning

2012-09-18T18:58:29Z

I've been using Storable's dclone for years, but there's a module on CPAN called Clone that is said to be much faster. However, it doesn't seem to work.


use strict;
use warnings;
use Clone qw(clone);
use Data::Printer;
use 5.010;

my $a = { blue => '#0000ff', one => 1 };

say "A";
p $a; 

my $b = clone($a);

say "B";
p $b; 

$b->{car} = 'Ford';

say "B";
p $b; 

say "A";
p $a;

Given the above code, I'd expect $a to retain it's structure, but $b to have the added new element of car = Ford. That's what happens when I use dclone, but for some reason it doesn't happen using clone. Am I doing something wrong?

]]>


A
\ {
    blue   "BLUE",
    one   1
}
B
\ {
    blue   "BLUE",
    one   1
}
B
\ {
    blue   "#0000ff",
    car   "Ford",
    one   1
}
A
\ {
    blue   "#0000ff",
    car   "Ford",
    one   1
}

Business::Shipping clobbers your Log4perl config

2012-07-30T00:35:22Z

Just an FYI, if you're using Business::Shipping in your app and also Log4perl, then Business::Shipping will clobber your Log4Perl config with it's own. A quick work around for this is:

use Business::Shipping;
Log::Log4perl->init($your_own_config_file_path_goes_here);

Basically clobber Business::Shipping right back.

If I get some round-tuits I'll submit a patch to fix this problem. If the author of Business::Shipping were using something like Log::Any then he could spew out his logs, and the consumers of Business::Shipping could simply load the appropriate adapter rather than having Business::Shipping clobber the Log4perl global config. I guess technically this could be a bug in Log4perl using globals too. Anyway, this little work around should get you by in the mean time until a patch can be authored to remedy the problem.

Meetup.com Event for The Perl Foundation Community Symposium

2012-07-27T04:00:09Z

Meetup.com Event for The Perl Foundation Community Symposium

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Perl Social Event, Tuesday August 7th, Downtown Chicago

2012-07-25T20:00:07Z

The Perl Foundation is having a Community Advocacy kick-off event in Chicago on August 7th. It’s going to be a fun, social event with talk about community. A “symposium” (check out the dictionary definition). It will be in a nice Irish pub with room for 72 people in a private upstairs area. Food and drink will be available, possibly some sponsored.

Contact Yaakov Sloman <yaakov@perlfoundation.org> with your questions.

As we have more details we’ll keep you informed.

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]

Lacuna Expanse Goes Open Source

2012-07-06T15:15:39Z

The Lacuna Expanse is a massively multiplayer empire builder game written in Perl. Long ago we open sourced the iPhone and web clients for the game, today I'm pleased to announce that we're open sourcing the server as well.

Some of you may be asking, "Why would you do that?" and "Does this mean you're shutting down the server?"

No we're not shutting down our server! As long as it's at least paying for itself, we'll continue to host the server and all related infrastructure forever.

The truth is that while the game is profitable, it is not profitable enough for us to keep an entire team of developers working on it. Rather than see the game languish at the slow pace we can afford to put resources into it, we thought we should turn it over to it's loyal fans, so they can continue to improve it. The revenue that we do get from running the game will go toward funding the infrastructure. We'll also continue to invest in art assets for the game as needed so it can expand.

We've also not stopped working on the game just because we're open sourcing it. For example, we have a big patch we're working on that adds 20 new planet types and 5 new asteroid types to the game. It will also redraw the universe in a few new interesting ways.

Another reason we're doing this is because it was one of my original stated goals for The Lacuna Expanse. I wanted to bring more people into Perl by creating a game in Perl. I think we've done that nicely as there are a lot of people learning to do a little Perl so they can automate tasks against the game. However, by releasing the server (which is 100% Perl), we can potentially reach even more people.

If you're unfamiliar with Lacuna and would like to know more about how it came about, and a little about it's architecture and internals, watch Graham Knop's talk about it at YAPC::NA 2012.

YAPC::NA 2012 Survey Closes Friday

2012-07-05T20:00:10Z

The YAPC::NA 2012 Survey closes on Friday. If you have not already done so please go fill out the survey. It will help next year’s organizers plan a better conference. Check your email, you got an invitation with a code to fill out the survey. Fill it out now!

[From the YAPC::NA Blog.]