These are my annotated tweets for the week of 10 August 2008. Follow my microblog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/conrad_halling, then come here for the expanded version.
Learning Perl, 5th Edition
2008-08-10: I’m steadily reading Learning Perl, 5th edition, and I’m finding many useful nuggets of information, including the new 5.10 features.
This is a good, clear book, although I think it doesn’t have the reader start writing code early enough. It has been a good review for me to read this book, because Perl is a large language, and I’ve missed learning some parts of it.
I Generate Most of My Traffic
2008-08-10: How I double traffic to my web site: I work on my blog. My multiple saves account for nearly all traffic on Sundays.
That is, hardly anyone reads this blog. That’s OK, because it’s more of a memory jogging device for me than a means of communicating to the outer world. I would blog a lot more if I had the free time.
Pillars of the Earth
2008-08-12: @LionEyes What is your opinion of Pillars of the Earth? I hated it, and I gave up 2/5 of the way through. The characters had no depth.
I don’t recommend Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett.
Dell Not Compatible With Dell
2008-08-12: New Dell display just worked with MacBook Pro. But with Dell laptop, I had to install a driver to set correct resolution. I hate Windows.
My new display is a Dell 22-inch Ultrasharp E207WFP, which has 1680 x 1050 resolution. My work-provided Dell Latitude 610 laptop, which is only 2 years 4 months old and which runs Windows XP with Service Pack 2, wouldn’t recognize the full resolution of the display until I updated the video driver and installed the display driver. On the other hand, my Apple MacBook Pro, which is 9 months old, and my Apple PowerBook G4, which is 3 years 7 months old, both had no trouble using the full resolution of the display as soon as I plugged it in.
In addition, both my MacBook Pro and my PowerBook G4 have digital video ports, whereas my Dell Latitude 610 has only a VGA video port. People complain that Apple’s computers cost more, but these are two examples where the extra money is worth it to me.
My Beddian Year
2008-08-13: Yesterday I reached my Beddian year. Given that, you can figure out how old I am and what year I was born.
Your Beddian year is the year in which your age matches the last two digits of the year you were born.
Searching for “C”, “R”, “C#”, “C++”
2008-08-14: @codinghorror complains that supporting searches for “C#” and “C++” at stackoverflow.com is hard. It’s even harder for “C” (and “R”).
I really hate it when I have to perform a google search for some R code. Searching with a key word that is a single letter long doesn’t work very well.
A Send-Off
2008-08-14: We had beers this evening at the Asgard in Cambridge to send off a co-worker who is leaving tomorrow for India to get married.
We find an excuse to go to the Asgard about twice a month for beer and appetizers.
idle.slashdot.org
2008-08-14: More amusement from slashdot: http://idle.slashdot.org/. I always thought everything posted on slashdot was from idle people.
Doing Battle With Perl
2008-08-15: I spent the day trying to make some badly documented Perl modules do what I needed, but without success. I battle again tomorrow.
The code is allegedly “self-documenting,” but I still can’t figure it out. When I encounter code like this, I add POD, and I always provide examples of how to use the code. In my experience, a good example is sometimes all the documentation that is needed.
Google Ad Confusion
2008-08-15: More google ad confusion. faceyourmanga.com: “Turn your face soon in [sic] a work of art.” Ads by Google: “Brick face for your home.”
If I were the advertiser, I would ask for some of my money back for improper placement of my ads.
Redbones Barbecue
2008-08-16: I ran six miles this morning, which is good because we’re meeting friends at Redbones (Davis Square in Somerville) tonight for dinner. BBQ!
Great food, great beer, great atmosphere. It’s always fun to go to Redbones.
Congratulations to Constantina Tomescu
2008-08-16: Great performance by Romania’s Constantina Tomescu in winning the women’s marathon at the 2008 Olympics. Very poor viewing for spectators.
Ms. Tomescu ran a great race in warm weather. The course was designed so that the spectators were often 50 feet or more from the course, which meant they couldn’t really cheer the runners on.
