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.

Sofie and Ian's baby
Sofie and Ian are having a baby (in five or six months time), and I've finally been told I have permission to tell the world. ;) Congratulations to them both!

Semi-retirement is hard work
In my last entry I proudly proclaimed that due to sound lifestyle management, investments, and business decisions, I only really need to do about 15 days of work each year. I could finally sit back, relax, and enjoy a peaceful lifestyle without undue pressure of complications. Therefore it's ironic that my relaxing lifestyle should begin with three months of non-stop, high-stress work.

This coming week I'm conducting a training course. The week after I'm doing the same, for another client. The week after that I'm conducting a different training course for a different client again.

Finishing my three weeks of teaching, I then have four weeks of consulting, followed by anything from 1-3 weeks of training in Sydney, and then a week of training in Darwin. Oh yes, I also have a conference tutorial or two that I need to write.

While I certainly can't complain about having the good fortune of getting so much training into such a short period of time, I am certainly looking forward to taking a break at the end of it.

Min-maxing enjoyment
My leisure activity of choice has recently caused me some confusion. Traditionally all my leisure activities have taken time, and many have taken money. One can convert the money component into a time component using a number of different methods, and thereby obtain an overall score in enjoyment gained per unit of overall time. I would hope that most people do this unconciously to some degree, thereby choosing forms of leisure that are most appropriate for their lifestyle and financial situation.

My regular forms of entertainment have been fairly static throughout my life. Games of all sorts are high on the list, including RPGs, boardgames, on-line games, and regular computer games. Competitive games feature highly, and somehow whenever I find myself playing a MMORPG I often find myself exploiting economic holes for personal gain, often though resource speculation and control.

Social interactions with friends are also a mainstay, although an increasing number of friends have got themselves lives, some going as far as partners, jobs, houses, and even children. Diving has been my high-expense leisure activity for the last few years; it happens infrequently, but it's worth it.

In the last month of two I discovered yet another leisure activity, but one that's been generating money rather than consuming it. The amount that it generates is only a fraction of even my poorest consulting work, yet its entertainment value is moderately high, and the overall income I've been gaining is equal to about half my normalised expenditure.

The downside is that my new leisure activity is socially dull. There's no social interaction to speak of, and nothing in the terms of interesting anecdotes that can be told afterwards. There are also learning curves and sweet-spots that have a significant impact on return-on-investment, so the hobby itself requires a reasonable time commitment to be worthwhile. I'm concerned that it will turn me into a very dull person.

I'm planning to combat this by organising a number of very social, and very geeky, gaming events with my friends once I finish my current glut of work. I'm going to try and tempt them away from their jobs and loved ones to indulge in some really serious gaming. I'd really love to have friends over for long weekend LAN-parties, but I need a little more space for this to do this properly. Perhaps we'll need to do some renovating to provide for more space, our backyard is certainly large enough that we could easily extend onto it.

Sofie and Ian's baby
Sofie and Ian are having a baby (in five or six months time), and I've finally been told I have permission to tell the world. ;) Congratulations to them both!

Semi-retirement is hard work
In my last entry I proudly proclaimed that due to sound lifestyle management, investments, and business decisions, I only really need to do about 15 days of work each year. I could finally sit back, relax, and enjoy a peaceful lifestyle without undue pressure of complications. Therefore it's ironic that my relaxing lifestyle should begin with three months of non-stop, high-stress work.

This coming week I'm conducting a training course. The week after I'm doing the same, for another client. The week after that I'm conducting a different training course for a different client again.

Finishing my three weeks of teaching, I then have four weeks of consulting, followed by anything from 1-3 weeks of training in Sydney, and then a week of training in Darwin. Oh yes, I also have a conference tutorial or two that I need to write.

While I certainly can't complain about having the good fortune of getting so much training into such a short period of time, I am certainly looking forward to taking a break at the end of it.

Min-maxing enjoyment
My leisure activity of choice has recently caused me some confusion. Traditionally all my leisure activities have taken time, and many have taken money. One can convert the money component into a time component using a number of different methods, and thereby obtain an overall score in enjoyment gained per unit of overall time. I would hope that most people do this unconciously to some degree, thereby choosing forms of leisure that are most appropriate for their lifestyle and financial situation.

My regular forms of entertainment have been fairly static throughout my life. Games of all sorts are high on the list, including RPGs, boardgames, on-line games, and regular computer games. Competitive games feature highly, and somehow whenever I find myself playing a MMORPG I often find myself exploiting economic holes for personal gain, often though resource speculation and control.

Social interactions with friends are also a mainstay, although an increasing number of friends have got themselves lives, some going as far as partners, jobs, houses, and even children. Diving has been my high-expense leisure activity for the last few years; it happens infrequently, but it's worth it.

In the last month of two I discovered yet another leisure activity, but one that's been generating money rather than consuming it. The amount that it generates is only a fraction of even my poorest consulting work, yet its entertainment value is moderately high, and the overall income I've been gaining is equal to about half my normalised expenditure.

The downside is that my new leisure activity is socially dull. There's no social interaction to speak of, and nothing in the terms of interesting anecdotes that can be told afterwards. There are also learning curves and sweet-spots that have a significant impact on return-on-investment, so the hobby itself requires a reasonable time commitment to be worthwhile. I'm concerned that it will turn me into a very dull person.

I'm planning to combat this by organising a number of very social, and very geeky, gaming events with my friends once I finish my current glut of work. I'm going to try and tempt them away from their jobs and loved ones to indulge in some really serious gaming. I'd really love to have friends over for long weekend LAN-parties, but I need a little more space for this to do this properly. Perhaps we'll need to do some renovating to provide for more space, our backyard is certainly large enough that we could easily extend onto it.

Retirement by 30
I've been talking about early retirement for years. I'm sure this has been a source of great amusement for friends, family, and peers. Given that the start of my third decade of life will be happening later this year, I thought I should give a status update about how I'm going.

Retirement, in the sense of 'never need to work another day of my life', simply is not going to happen in the next six months. That's okay, because retirement in the sense of 'only need to work fifteen days a year' has already happened. Yes, that includes covering all our diving expenses and a modest amount of savings.

After many years of working insanely hard, I'm finally at the point where I can get some relaxation. The factors involved in this are simple. Sound investment plans, sound business management, and sound lifestyle management.

I'm expecting to continue to work more than my required 15 days/year, primarily as a form of insurance. However for the moment I'm mostly working on maximising my standard of living, rather than maximising my total income. It's a very, very satisfying state to be in.