BarCampMelbourne and Social 2.0
In a week's time I'll be attending BarCampMelbourne. Registrations close on September 7th, so if you want to attend, now's the time to register.

Now, BarCamps are pretty cool, but I'm particularly excited about this one because I'm going to be doing a talk on something I've been playing with for a while, which is having an Augmented Social Life, or just Social 2.0.

In the last few years, social networks have flourished, and an unprecedented amount of private data is available on-line. I'll be demonstrating how to use modern social networks to improve your social life. That includes techniques on turning Facebook into beer.

However what I find most fascinating is from a privacy standpoint. Whenever I find a social network, I go looking for an API, and some APIs are more revealing than others. In particular, Facebook provides Facebook Query Language (FQL), which allows for some incredibly powerful queries. What makes it particularly scary is that with the default privacy settings, one can mine a huge amount of private information by having a friend who has installed an ethically bankrupt application.

I'll be giving some rather real-world examples of using and abusing facebook. Some are good, like reminding you which friends are in a city you're visiting, or which friends share a particular hobby. However many are more scary. I can demonstrate how to find people you've met at events, based purely on their first name. How to look into other people's past, and see what they were doing years ago. How to find out what applications your friends have installed.

Of course, I'll be doing all my examples in Perl, many using the excellent WWW::Facebook::API module.

Perl 5.10.1 released
I have a commitment to blog about Perl every week, and this week I was really worried about what I'd write. I've just returned from five weeks of International travel, and my scant time back in Melbourne has been spent taking photos at Manifest, rather than working on anything technical.

It's good that I haven't done anything newsworthy, because it would be completely over-ridden by the news that Perl 5.10.1 has been released. This release has a special place in my heart, as 5.10.1 includes autodie as a core module, and as most of you know, I'm very fond of autodie.

I'm in the process of writing a "What's New in Perl 5.10.1" summary, which will appear as a Perl Tip in the next couple of days. Subscribe by e-mail, Atom, or Facebook if you want to see the tip as soon as it goes out.

UK and Ireland thank-yous
I've spent the last few days travelling around the UK and Ireland, and it's just been lovely. By far one of the nicest things about travelling is the hospitality and generosity of the Perl community, and so I want to take a moment to say thank-you to a few special people who made my travels so enjoyable.

Thank-you to Drew, Kimberley, and Samantha for giving up their home in Dublin, driving around two crazy Australians, and picking us up when we get completely lost. An extra special thanks to Kimberley for some amazing cooking; it's not every day that we get to stay with a professional chef!

Thank-you to Murray and Becky for giving us booze, conversation, lodging, and wifi in their most amazing Edinburgh home. I really wish I got to spend more time in Edinburgh; both the city and its people are beautiful, and haggis is plentiful and tasty.

Thank-you to Andy Armstrong for driving us around the spectacular English countryside, putting us up for the night (and sleeping on the couch!), and then driving us on to Darlington. Given the cost of trains in the UK, Andy saved us a small fortune. Particular thanks goes to Andy for the trip to Hadrian's Wall and Vercovicium, which was spectacular!

Thank-you to my Great Aunt Jennie, who isn't at all involved in the Perl community, but gave us lunch, tea, great conversation, and acted as a guide for many miles of walking and photography around Darlington.

Thank-you to the charity shop five minutes walk from Great Aunt Jennie's house, which had an almost complete Space Hulk 1st Edition set with expansion cards for only £1.50.

Thank-you to Smylers, for putting us up in Leeds, and in particular for putting up with me running off around the city with my pirate friends.

Finally, thank-you to Léon Brocard for organising a London.pm meeting, and for Piers Cawley for the lift to the airport.

YAPC::EU 2009 microreport
I'm still travelling, and so I don't have a reliable sources of connectivity, time, or caffeine. As such, this report is much briefer than I would like.

I made it to YAPC::EU 2009 and survived. As my first YAPC ever, it was great to be at a conference where I could assume that everyone knew Perl. It was also great to meet a number of the people who I'd been working with on-line for years, but never met in person.

It seems that lots of people use autodie. That's good, because it's hard to gauge feelings and reactions on-line, but it's easy when a small group grabs one after a talk and asks detailed questions about its internals. There seems to be a lot of demand for autodie to provide the ability for third-party code to see if it's enabled, and also a lot of demand (not least for me) for Perl to call a special method on exception objects if they're about to kill one's process, as opposed to be caught and handled.

The conference highlight for me were the people. They were very warm, very willing to participate, and heckled only about things I could easily answer. I suspect that means they were also being very nice, since they were a very knowledgeable audience. Privately, everyone was extremely accommodating. Apparently travelling from Australia makes one special, and I felt very special indeed from all the attention.

Looks like I'm out of time for this entry already. I've got yet another flight tomorrow, so I'll try to squeeze out some writing on the plane.

Malaysia, London, Lisbon, oh my!
If I seem slow to respond, distracted, or exhausted, here's why...

15-18th July

Portland, Oregon

19-24th July

San Jose, California (OSCON)

25-27th July

San Franscisco, California

28th July

On a plane above the Pacific (yes, the whole day!)

29-30th July

Home in Melbourne, Australia

31st July

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

1st August

London, England

2-5th August

Lisbon, Portugal (YAPC::EU)

6th August

Madrid, Spain

7-10th August

Dublin, Ireland

11th August

Edinburgh, Scotland

12-13th August

Darlington, England

14th August

Leeds and London, England

15-18th August

Kuala Lumpur, Malayasia

Yes, that's a whole month of solid travel, averaging only about 2.3 days in any one place at a time. If you wish to track my trips (eg, to see if I happen to arrive in your part of the world), or if you're curious, you can do so via dopplr.

Right now I'm in Lisbon. I'm exhausted, and have talks to prepare for YAPC::EU. However I suspect a bath and a snooze is going to trump talk preparation for once.