Rant Archives

This is not tolerated

There had been several posts recently about disgusting sexist idiotic behavior on /users/sawyer_x/rant/index.html

One tricky thing when using local::lib - RESOLVED! :)

I love local::lib. You should be using local::lib.

The only thing that bugs me is when I want to run something that has to be under a privileged user (for example listening on ports under 1024), the privileged user is unaware of whatever was installed under local::lib. This includes both modules and scripts it installs. The "scripts" are usually actual applications that are installed via CPAN.

So I have to either reinstall these under the privileged user (which creates a problem because now I have two copies of the same thin…

Syntax police?

In a small script someone wrote at work I saw the indirect pattern of new Object, instead of the more correct form of Object->new. When I inquired (okay, I said "WTF?!"), he said that he just copied the synopsis of a module. Oh, right.. some of the synopses (plural of "synopsis", bet you didn't know that!) still have some outdated syntax examples.

I'm not gonna write about how we should all update our PODs to remove syntax that hasn't been (or shouldn't have been, at least) written for the last 10 years, even though I s…

Please provide a change log

I know, I know, it's all free software and open source - you shouldn't expect anyone to do anything. However, we do want our projects to succeed and we do put them out there in hope that it will be useful to someone.

So, you can be a jerk and provide a simple .pm file, without any documentation (because "it simply works"), no toolchain configuration (you "don't need any") and no tests (hey, if it works, it works, right?).

However, CPAN ain't like that. CPAN is (mostly) well structured distributions that adhere to community standards that include: bui…

Using CPAN Ratings as a bug report

CPAN Ratings are a great idea. Unfortunately it seems that in some cases they are either unused (in places where they should be) or misused (in places where they shouldn't be used).

While some distributions (which are very recommended to use by the Perl community) do not enjoy having ratings at all, I've noticed some people putting their personal gripes as ratings.

Theoretically you should be able to do that, true, but these ratings don't act the way you might assume they would. If you have a dist and I rate your first version as one star (for lack of tests, or becaus…

TIMTOWTGTDV!

I previously wrote a post called "Get the damned version". This post is tentatively entitled "There Is More Than One Way To Get The Damned Version" and speaks about the plethora of applications and modules to get versions. Brace yourself!

So, apparently I'm not the only one who hates how you cannot distinctively get the version of a specific module. We have various trickeries such as loading the module and printing it, trying to load an unknown - yet hopefully - non-existent advanced version and failing thus showing the version and a few other such odd possibilities... and then there …

Is it just me?

My Perl Android talk was accepted to YAPC::EU 2010 (!!!!) and I want to book the room reservation for my girlfriend and I.

Unfortunately, the hotel (MyHotel - where the conference is taking place) only accepts the credit card details via Email. I've suggested simply calling them and - once I've verified that I'm speaking to the right person - give the details via phone.

However, they insist on getting it via Email. They even suggesting sending two emails, one with half the details, the other with the rest of the details.

Now.. is it just me or is sending it via Email c…

What I would change about App::Genpass

If there is one thing that is more abundant than Hello World programs, it is password generators. Yet, one of the things I could never get right when working on my system administration job (all of them) was comfortable password generation.

There were various methods I've learned from people:


  • The lazy way: "1q2w3e", "qweasd", "qwaszx" and on it goes. A few of my passwords in the old age were exactly these. I've even seen this method used in at least one really big company where I worked. I know many of you might still have some of these pa…

Please do what I think you should do

Last Sunday, my brother and I had a discussion about Israel not allowing Noam Chomsky to enter the country because he is "a satanist nazi demon out to get Israel wiped off the map". It was mostly absurd but one point is worth mentioning: my brother claimed that Chomsky is doing a disservice to his goal of further expanding people's understanding of politics by lecturing where people already know oppression (Palestine) instead of where people are relatively oblivious to it (Israel).

While I know this is a touchy subject for most people, it still resounds in my head as the "I think you'…

Measuring the Progress of UI

Lately I've been learning ExtJS (which I might write about separately sometime) to try and create a UI for a small application I'm writing for a friend.

The application uses Dancer and KiokuDB. They're both easy to work with and I spent little time working on the backend. The problem lies in the frontend, where I need some UI. I've chosen ExtJS because it has built-in widgets.

I've played with tutorials, general documentation and (tried to) read the not-as-friendly-as-I-thought API. I was able to create a grid, a form and even a viewport. However, it kept feeling like it's stu…

About Sawyer X

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