Talkin' and Writin'
Making progress... slowly, but it's happening
A month after the last newsletter - maybe I’m starting to hit a rhythm. Or maybe it’s just a fluke. Only time will tell.
Still Munging Data With Perl
As I mentioned in a brief update last month, I gave a talk to the Toronto Perl Mongers about Data Munging With Perl. I didn’t go to Toronto - I talked to them (and people all across the world) over Zoom. And that was a slightly strange experience. I hadn’t realised just how much I like the interaction of a live presentation. At the very least, it’s good to know whether or not your jokes are landing!
But I got through it, and people have said they found it interesting. I talked about how the first edition of the book came about and explained why I thought the time was right for a second edition. I gave a brief overview of the kinds of changes that I’m making for the second edition. I finished by announcing that a “work in progress” version of the second edition is available from LeanPub (and that was a surprisingly good idea, judging by the number of people who have bought it!) We finished the evening with a few questions and answers.
You can order the book from LeanPub. And the slides, video and a summary of the talk are all available from my talks site (an occasional project where I’m building an archive of all of the talks I’ve given over the last 25 years).
Still writing Data Munging With Perl
Of course, I still have to finish the second edition. And, having found myself without a regular client a few weeks ago, I’ve been spending most of my time on that. It’s been an interesting journey - seeing just how much has changed over the last quarter of a century. There have been changes in core Perl syntax, changes in recommended CPAN module and changes in the wider industry (for example, 25 years ago, no-one had heard of YAML or JSON).
I’m still unable to give a date for the publication of the final version. But I can feel it getting closer. I think that the next time I write one of these newsletters, I’ll include an extract from one of the chapters that has a large number of changes.
Other writing
I’ve been doing other things as well. In the last newsletter, I wrote about how I had built a website in a day with help from ChatGPT. The following week, I went a bit further and built another website - and this time ChatGPT didn’t just help me create the site, but it also updates the site daily with no input at all from me.
The site is at cool-stuff.co.uk, and I blogged about the project at Finding cool stuff with ChatGPT. My blog post was picked up by the people at dev.to for their Top 7 Featured DEV Posts of the Week feature. Which was nice :-)
I said that ChatGPT was updating the site without any input from me. Well, originally, that wasn’t strictly true. Although ChatGPT seemed to understand the assignment (finding an interesting website to share every day), it seemed to delight in finding every possible loophole in the description of the data format I wanted to get back. This meant that on most days, my code was unable to parse the response successfully and I had a large number of failed updates. It felt more than a little like a story about a genie who gives you three wishes but then does everything in their power to undermine those wishes.
Eventually, I discovered that you can give ChatGPT a JSON Schema definition and it will always create a response that matches that definition (see Structured Outputs). Since I implemented that, I’ve had no problem. You might be interested in how I did that in my Perl program.
Other people’s writing
Paul Cochrane has been writing an interesting series of posts about creating a new map for Mohammad Anwar’s Map::Tube framework. But in the process, he seems to have written a very useful guide on how to write a new CPAN module using modern tools and a test-driven approach. Two articles have been published so far, but he’s promising a total of five.
Building
Map::Tube::<*>maps, a HOWTO: first stepsBuilding
Map::Tube::<*>maps, a HOWTO: extending the network
A spaceship has landed on Earth
Occasionally, when I’m giving a talk I’ll wear a favourite t-shirt that has a picture of a space shuttle on it, along with the text “A spaceship has landed on Earth, it came from Rockwell”. Whenever I wear it, I can guarantee that at least a couple of people will comment on it.
The t-shirt is based on an advert from the first issue of a magazine called OMNI, which was published in 1978. Because of the interest people show in the t-shirt, I’ve put up a website at itcamefromrockwell.com. The site includes a link to a blog post that goes into more detail about the advert, and also a link to a RedBubble shop where you can buy various items using the design.
If you’re at all interested in the history of spaceflight, then you might find the site interesting.
Hope you found something of interest in today’s newsletter. I’ll be back in a week or two with an update on the book.
Cheers,
Dave…