I help with Melbourne Perl Mongers.
I spend an awful lot of time talking about Perl, and have had my picture in the Australian newspapers with a camel. That's rather scary.
Facebook privacy - Instant personalisation and connections
Facebook has been announcing a number of changes recently, many of which will impact your privacy. While you may not have seen them hit your account yet, they will almost certainly do so soon.
Ada Lovelace Day (Part 2)
Today is Ada Lovelace continuation day; a day for continuing blog posts reflecting on the awesome contributions of women to science and technology. Here is my continuation from my previous post of my personal heroines.
Ada Lovelace Day (Part 1)
Today is Ada Lovelace day; a day for
reflection on the awesome contributions of women to science and technology.
Today, I would like to pay tribute to some of my personal heroines, and as
you'll see, there's quite a few of them. I've tried to list them in roughly
chronological order.
Kuala Lumpur, Day 0
After seventeen hours of travel, I've finally checked into my hotel in Kuala Lumpur. I'm here with Jacinta, and we're teaching Perl to a client next week, but we've arrived early to do some sight-seeing... and because we're insane.
Wear Sunscreen (and other thoughts for the year ahead)
If I could offer you but one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
-- Mary Schmich
Tightening up your Facebook privacy
I've previously discussed the new Facebook privacy system, what they mean to you, and some recommendations on keeping at least some privacy. If you haven't read this post, I suggest you do so now, as I won't be repeating those recommendations here.
New Facebook Privacy and You
Facebook are in the process of changing how their privacy settings
work, and today, I was given the option to migrate my account over
to the new scheme. These were
announced
on the facebook blog about a week ago, and sounded quite promising.
Unfortunately, I actually feel creeped out by the new system.
Perl 5.11.1
I've been behind in my blogging; time seems to fly when one is having fun, and I've been having a pretty good time recently. Most of it's involved working with people and science, rather than technology. After I finish my taxes (not yet overdue), this may change.
Teaching Perl in Sydney
I've just spent the week teaching Perl in Sydney. It was good. Actually, it was really good. My class were close in ability, asked intelligent questions, thought through problems, asked for assistance when needed, quizzed me about advanced topics during the breaks, and generally showed themselves to be awesome. It felt just like the good ol' days.
Fun with QR Codes and Perl
Short blog today, but cool tech. I've been playing around with 2D barcodes recently, and have just pushed a Perl Tip on generating QR Codes with Perl. Given how incredibly easy this is, I'm tempted to generate huge numbers of these and go sticking them around town for my own nefarious purposes.
Talk like a Pirate Day
This Saturday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, as well as Software Freedom Day. This year I sided with the pirates, donned a particularly swashbuckling outfit, and joined about
Rocking out at MXUG
For a while, Melbourne has been running MXUG, the Melbourne X Users Group, where X is a technology you're interested in. It has a nice format: 15 minute talks, timed, with five minutes for questions. Then beer, pizza, lightning talks, and a trip down to the pub.
Facebook Privacy talk at BarCampMelbourne
This weekend at BarCampMelbourne I gave a talk on Facebook privacy, and what information I was able to extract from the API using some reasonable simple Perl programs. Due to the incredibly fast efforts of Avi Miller, this talk is now available on-line. If you're reading this blog on my main blog, then you can also watch it below:
