Perl Security
I'm extremely pleased to say that our Perl Security course notes have been released in full for personal use, and can be downloaded from the link near the top of the course description page. As for all our course materials, feedback is appreciated, and can be sent to contact@perltraining.com.au.

Perl on z/OS
I've been asked to give a presentation on Perl for performance monitoring at an upcoming conference, with a focus on Unix, Windows, and z/OS (aka OS/390). It appears my main audience will consist of administrators and managers of large mainframe systems, and are interested in how they can use Perl and other open source tools to both improve their performance monitoring and pay less in proprietary software costs.

While I'm sure I can engage the audience on using Perl for performance monitoring under Unix and Windows, I'm a complete weenie when it comes to z/OS. So I hope to do what I normally do when I encounter difficulties — cheat.

If you happen to regularly do performance monitoring on z/OS using Perl, then I'd love to hear from you. I'd especially love to hear from you if you're using Perl on z/OS with open source or home-grown tools.

Children's Garden
Emily, the daughter of my very good friends Andrew and Kat, recently turned three. Her birthday was celebrated in the Ian Potter Fundation Children's Garden, which makes up part of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. I can highly recommend visiting the Children's Garden, even if you don't have a child as an excuse. The layout of the gardens are excellent, especially if you are playing hide-and-seek, tag, or laser games. If you are bringing a child, then equipping them with gumboots is highly recommended.