The late Mr. Fenwick
What an interesting evening. Jacinta rang me from Spencer
Street train station asking if I could cycle in and give her
some papers that she left at home. Sure, I said. The
train didn't leave for another 25 minutes so I thought I had
plenty of time.
I arrived with a whole 20 seconds before the train left, and
despite me running up and down the length of the train
looking through the windows, I couldn't spot Jacinta. :(
Money, Money Everywhere, But Not A Bank That
Thinks
To top the evening off, I discovered that my new ATM card
wouldn't actually let me access my account. I don't see
what logic the bank sees in issuing me with a card that
doesn't actually do anything, and being the holiday season I
suspect that I won't be able to find out until Wednesday.
In the meantime I have the sum total of $11.90, all of it in
small change. The rest of my money I spent on coffee --
very good coffee -- which more than makes up for my lack of
hard cash.
(read more...)
Warning: This diary entry is really boring unless you
care about the board-game Diplomacy.
Diplomacy
It's been a long time since I've had a good game of Diplomacy, and
so I briefly ventured over to The Diplomatic Pouch to see
how the community was faring. A while ago Hasbro purchased
Avalon Hill (the publishers of the game), and there was some
concern that on-line
games might get the chop. I'm glad to
see this wasn't the case.
Read an excellent article on Eliminating
the Paradox in Diplomacy, and skimmed over the response
to it. Lots of good arguments on both sides, but I won't
mention them here.
I've been thinking of seeing if anyone's interested in
playing a low-turnaround Diplomacy game at work, with maybe
one `turn' (Move+Retreats) per week. Ian keeps telling me
how much he loves strategy games, so I expect he will join.
(read more...)
Perl 5.6
Finally got around to reading about the
new
features of perl 5.6. Being a bit of a perl nut, some
of the new features really tickled my fancy.
By far my favourite new feature is weak
references, which looks like it might be an effective
asprin to memory-leak headaches. (Use only as directed. If
pain persists, please see your debugger.)
The new our
syntax for global various is very cute, and I like it a
lot. Using
subroutines as lvalues seems weird and bizzare,
incredibly powerful, and slightly dangerous.
Finance::Quote
Brent made
a number of excellent changes to Finance::Quote,
particularly in relation to his TIAA-CREF function, and has
even added regression testing checks for his changes. I'm
now quite certain we're going to get along well as a
development team. :)
(read more...)
Advogato
Back up to Journeyer again thanks to a certification from
egad. :)
GnuCash
The latest news is that commercial interests have decided
that GnuCash is a good thing, and that some of the lead
developers will be getting paid to add new features. I
think this is wonderful news -- other people will be paying
to improve a package that I now use on a daily basis.
Finance::Quote and SourceForge
There seem to be a few hiccups with SourceForge and Brent's CVS
access. I hope these will get sorted out quickly, as I'm
eager to get a new release out soon, and I'd like Brent's
changes to be included.
(read more...)
Advogato
Still an observer, despite the Journeyer status before. I
guess I'll have to make new friends and influence people.
Finance::Quote
Had a slew of mail regarding Finance::Quote recently,
including another potential developer. Brent has
joined the project at SourceForge and looks like he'll stick
with us for a while. Our second developer is interested in
doing an OO-rewrite (which I'd also like to see), although
he has a few hesitations. Hopefully he'll like us enough to
join
Money transfers
Had a very long and problematic time getting my money
transfer. Every overseas traveller this side of Adelaide
seemed to be at the Western Union office, and I had to wait
a considerable time in the queue. When I finally got served
I had to prove who I was. I don't drive, I don't have a
passport, and they didn't seem interested in any other form
of ID. After much searching I found my old expired
learner's permit which they accepted.
In the future I might accept payment in other forms, like
Perl Journal subscriptions or books.
Holidays!
Holidays! Holidays! Hooray! Hooray! I have no work until
Thursday. A whole week off. Yay!
(read more...)
