use Perl

Maybe I should just call this "The Book Column" as that's all I ever seem to write about :)

A few unrelated snippets...

• Genie has raised his ugly head again.
  For those that don't know, Genie thinks it's really clever to distribute pirate copies technical books to anyone who wants them. He's got a list of them on his website and there are a huge number of books there. I first heard of him when I found a complete PDF of DMP on his site (thank you Google for indexing PDFs). Manning asked him to take it down, which he did, but a couple of weeks later he was happy to email me a copy to me when I asked for it. Now he's just advertised his "service" on the Perl beginners mailing list. Something needs to be done about him.
• Perl books website.
  I'd been toying with the idea of setting up a Perl books website, where people can review and rate Perl books. I hear from reports of YAPC::NA that Uri Guttman is thinking along the same lines. I should probably contact him and offer my help.
• Better Perl Books.
  I've been thinking more about yesterday's journal entry - the bit where I suggested that we should contact the authors of bad Perl books and offer our help in making them better. I really think this idea is a goer. Perhaps it's something that we could coordinate from the Perl books page. As I see it we would start by making a list of books that need our help. We would then write a detailed review of the problems in the books which we would pass on to the authors and publishers. We would then offer our services as advisors and technical reviewers to help get the problems ironed out for the next edition. I say "we", but I don't know who else would be interested in helping. Anyone fancy joining me?

YAPC::Europe are thinking of dropping one of my talks to make a room for a talk on POE. I'd love to hear a talk on POE, but I don't know which talk I'd prefer to lose.

I wish I was in Montreal.