use Perl

I made my second RCR last night out on rubygarden. I was trying to get the length of a pack() template but it seems that Ruby doesn't allow you to call pack on an empty receiver. In Perl, if you call pack() on an empty array it will return the length of the template (assuming that you've provided one). Thus, my RCR is to get similar behavior in Ruby.

I've also joined the effort to get rubynet developed, which hopes to be Ruby's cpan, only better. It seems that we're going to use a RESTful architecture, and Sean Chittenden is leading that effort. I'm not exactly sure what I'll contribute, but I've at least been able to educate a few people about the existence of cpan and how to use the cpan shell, so that they get an idea of some of the functionality that we should have.

This weekend I may run out and buy a laptop. I've always kinda wanted one, but I could never justify it. Since I'm planning on giving a talk at RubyConf this year, I figured it would be nice to have one. I'd also like to be able to sit out on the patio when it's nice out if I'm going to play on the 'puter. Nothing fancy - I'll probably go for a low end laptop, and try to make sure that Linux runs on it alright. :)