use Perl

Hello again.

I've been quite quiet recently. Work has been busy. I'm slowly getting into more Perl stuff though.

Yesterday there was a London.pm Heretics meeting. No, wait, "New Heretics" meeting. It's all quite confusing - the official London.pm meetings are on the day after the first Wednesday of the month, and the New Heretics meet when... wait. I'm sure this was clear when dumrats explained this to me in the pub last night. Very confusing.

Anyway, the meeting last night was quit riotous. A lot of beer was involved. And port. And wine. It got quite silly, and I think someone had a camcorder too.

I've been worrying about the current London.pm leader recently. Organising the herd of cats that is Perl Mongers seems to be taking its toll on him. He's been doing a great job, but perhaps something needs to be done. Hmmm.

How can people not have faith in a leader that is a stuffed camel?

I'm actually quite annoyed that there has been no discussion of the candidates. Granted, both candidates went for the same "hands-off" approach to leadership in their manifesto. I'm not sure people care enough. It'll be interesting to see how many people vote and, of course, how many votes either candidate receives. I wonder if we can start tracking metrics to see if the candidate is successful in the coming year...

May the best stuffed camel win!

I've just finished my election manifesto. Here it is (it'll be posted to london-list too). Oh, and I do hope hfb doesn't discriminate against me just because I'm differently-alive...

If I, Amelia C. Bactrianus, win the current London.pm election and
become leader of the group I promise to:

    Encourage complete and utter delegation. I myself do not have enough
    time to organise everything that the group should do. I will instead
    nominate members who seem capable, to organise

    Be the one point of contact for the group

    Encourage more stuffed, non-living members
    Represent London.pm's interests - the aforementioned delegation will
    mean that the group does entirely what it wants

    Encourage more trips to the zoo so that the group can understand the
    magical power of camels

    Encourage spreading the word of Perl throughout a) London's other
    groups b) Europe c) The World

    Encourage trips to restaurants to eat a wide range of foods (not
    including camel)

    Encourage more projects like NMS, but make sure that from the start
    the projects are open to all and have a short-term positive plan

    Encourage more drinking in pubs whose name contain the word "camel"

    Encourage attendance at technical meeting and Perl conferences

    Encourage social meets in large desserts (trifles, pancakes, etc.)

    Encourage more media hacking and publicity for the group

    Publically humilate camel violators

To summarise: A vote for Amelia is a vote for you!

Now, I know people may be prejudiced against me just because I'm a little Beanie Baby camel, but I have strong views on London.pm and I intend to fight the fair fight and try to be leader.

My owner, acme, told me that I need to get my manifesto out as soon as possible. And he mentioned that using beer to influence voters was wrong, but I haven't decided on my campaign strategy quite yet. It'll be exciting you can be sure. Stayed tuned...

Just thought I would say hello.

I'm a bit of a quiet Perl person and I think it is time I should get a bit more involved.

I program Perl in London, which means that I have gone to lots of London.pm meetings. They're very scary sometimes, but they're ok once you get to know them.

Tonight is a technical meeting, which is quite exciting as there is an election going on for who gets to be the next London.pm leader.

I think the meeting is going to be very interesting. I especially look forward to the OpenFrame and Benchmarking Perl talks. What is an application server framework anyway?

Not a lot of Perl content in this journal entry, but Perl isn't just about programming you know.

See you, Amelia.