Sydney Sydney Sydney Sydney, Mushroom Mushroom!
Of the last two weeks, one and half was spent in Sydney teaching. I was elected (as the sole applicant) to Melbourne.pm secretary, even though I was interstate during the AGM. I had a great time catching up with the members of Sydney.pm, who all seemed more than willing to keep buying me drinks at the local pub. A good time was had by all, with door-prizes for everyone, including wooden planes, regexp coffee mugs, and books.

Saturday was spent with friends who recently got an Eye Toy, a small camera that takes the place of a game regular controller, allowing the user to interact visually with the console. Much time was spent playing air-guitar, dodging balls, and showboating balance skills. Overall a great gadget, although one that needs a lots of space and lighting for correct operation.

Sunday was spent mushrooming, hunting for Chanterelles. While our regular mushrooming ground wasn't available this year, we found a number of excellent patches nearby. The evening was spent cleaning mushrooms, freezing mushrooms, pickling mushrooms, eating mushroom soup with fried mushrooms, and playing Space Hulk.

The week ahead is going to be spent playing catch-up before I travel again for another interstate trip. Luckily I'll be prepared for this trip with a box of miniature paints and a copy of The Sims 2, which I'm using to help me research an upcoming conference paper. Honest!

Great Perl classes
I teach a lot of classes, and while it seems the students always enjoy themselves and give fantastic feedback, there are some courses that I've enjoyed much more than others. My class last week in Sydney fell into this most-enjoyable classification.

The course started with me being a little worried; one attendee was absent on the first day due to a sick child, and I was later informed of a last-minute booking that would be arriving at lunchtime. Students who miss material are often playing catch-up for the rest of the course, and I was concerned that extra coaching for two late arrivals may have me spread a little thin.

As it happened, our late arrivals were very talented, and not only recovered quickly but began to lead the class in asking excellent questions and experimenting in new techniques. However the highlight for me was me asking the late-arrivals why they were learning Perl, so I can provide more meaningful examples throughout the course.

Our last minute booking answered that she was learning Perl because she had a potential job lined up, and apparently they were using Perl extensively as part of their business. That's not an unusual answer, but the exciting part was when I asked which job. The answer? Sony Online Entertainment.

I didn't know that SoE used Perl very much, but it kept getting better. Our late arrival was being interviewed to become an EverQuest II game developer. Sweet!

As it happened, half the attendees seemed to be gamers of one sort or another, and on the third day of teaching I was presented a map detailing all the comic-shops, games stores, miniature houses, and sci-fi/fantasy bookstores in Sydney. That evening I was even invited to play wargames next week, but unfortunately the time clashes with the next Sydney Perl Mongers meeting.

All up, a most enjoyable time was had by all. One student even suggested on their feedback form that we release a new course on how to talk like a pirate using Perl. Arrr...

Space Hulk
When I was much younger I spent some time playing Space Hulk, a boardgame by Games Workshop set in the Warhammer 40k universe.

Unfortunately Space Hulk is well out of print, and Games Workshop themselves describe the game as long gone. One would think this would pose a challenge to a gamer who wants to play again, but doesn't own a set. Thankfully, it doesn't.

Games Workshop have been wonderful people and made the old Space Hulk tiles available for download. Using a colour printer, a glue-stick, some cardboard, scissors and a lot of patience, I managed to put together my very own Space Hulk board pieces.

Armed with an inventory of what was originally in the box, I managed to find enough tokens from other games to use as blips, and a friend brought over a box of Hero Quest minatures and doors. Combined with a compednium of old rules from another gamer, first edition Space Hulk lived once more!

All the other cool kids are doing it. Of course, I'm running for Melbourne Perl Mongers secretary, and not The Perl Foundation president. The original copy of this announcement can be found in the Melbourne.PM archives <hr/>

G'day everyone,

I'm afraid that I won't be able to attend the Melbourne.PM AGM on the 10th of May, as I have a prior commitment to be in Sydney teaching people how to use Perl. As such, I want to apologise for my absence in advance.

However, Melbourne.PM is an organisation that I care about very much, one that I've been heavily involved in since it resurfaced in December 2001. If you've been to a few meetings or spent some time on the mailing list, then you've probably seen me speak or post. As you are no doubt aware, I'm deeply passionate about Perl, and about the Perl community. That's you.

I'm going to be running for the position of Secretary at the Melbourne.PM AGM, and I want to let everyone know why. In particular, I want people to have the chance to also stand for the position of secretary if they disagree with me, and for the membership to have a choice as to who they elect.

My primary goal as Melbourne.PM secretary is obviously to ensure that Melbourne.PM grows as an organisation, is rewarding to its members, and encourages and supports participation in Perl and the Perl community. I started using Perl more than ten years ago because it was a fun language, and I want to make sure it's fun to be involved in our user group.

However I also have a few goals with regards to the organisation of Melbourne.PM itself. I want to try and make it open and transparent and accessible as possible for all members. I'd like to encourage everyone to become involved and have a hand in its running.

In particular, I'd like for the committee itself to become a lot more open, and a lot better defined in its roles and responsibilities. I want to make sure that people who want to help have the opportunity to do so, and those who want to take a greater hand in running the group can, even if they're not elected members themselves.

In particular, I'd like to work towards implementing the following for the new committee:

University degrees
I've been doing an awful lot of teaching these last few weeks, and part of it has made me think a little more about university degrees, and whether or not they're useful.

I had a great time at university, and am very happy with both what I had learnt in my degree and the social connections that I made. However I also have a number of friends and associated who are very successful and skilled, but have no tertiary qualifications at all. Indeed, my first year computer science teacher explained that if we really wanted to make money we should have left school at sixteen to become bricklayers. There's a shortage of bricklayers, and by the time we would be graduating our bricklaying alter-egos would be running their own tax-effective business and own three houses.

So, is it really worthwhile spending three or more years of your life to get a piece of paper? For the individual I really can't say, but for a trainer with a class filled with postgraduates, the answer is yes. Hell yes!

My class of recent graduates learnt much faster than any other class I can remember. We covered four days worth of material in a mere three days, and spent the extra day covering extra theory and object oriented design in Perl. Regardless of the rewards to the attendees, it was a very rewarding experience for myself.

Now, it could just be luck that I had a particularly smart class, but I think the fact that most were fresh out of university was a factor. If nothing else, holding a university degree shows that you know how to learn and absorb knowledge, and are able to adapt to new situations. I know that should almost be self-obvious, but it's not something I had encountered in such a stunning way until recently.

Perlish dreams
I have strange dreams sometimes, and usually I forget them. But last night's one stuck in my head. I was at a conference, and Audrey Tang was giving a presentation. Not just any presentation, but the best presentation I had ever seen in my life. It was truly spectacular, and used many new presentation techniques I had never before encountered.

I was saddened by the end of the presentation, not only because it was so good, but because if I took my new-found techniques everyone would know that I lifted them directly from Audrey's keynote. They just won't be as cool.

It took me 90 minutes after waking up to realise that the whole thing was a dream, and that I could use these great new techniques and have them appear original!

My happiness lasted but a few mere seconds before it also dawned upon me that unicode doesn't have frozen bubble glyphs. And even if it did, "&penguin; &penguin; &orangeball; &igloo;" probably wouldn't be a valid Perl 6 program, regardless of how much cool stuff it did in my dream.