use Perl

I went to search-beta.cpan.org and some things don't render properly. Looks like to css changes are needed. So at least this loan will have some use :-)

Today my iBook arrived on loan. I got all excited, unpacked it, configured etc. Only to find they did not send the wireless card.

So hopefully tomorrow I will get the card and the fun can begin

Well finally I got to release the new search site to the savages to see how it handles it.

So far the feedback has been good in that no body has responded with "This sucks".

There have been many small niggles, which is why this was put up alongside the existing site.

Up until now I have been using a FreeBSD box as an ipsec gateway. But I wanted to change this to be a Linux box.

The problem is that the other end of the ipsec tunnel is a FreeBSD box, using the usual esp/tunnel + gif interface to create the tunnel.

After a long time, probably too much time, read/searching the web and always getting the answer that FreeS/WAN does not support this, I thought what the heck, lets play.

So I just played with every command I could think of and finally I got it to work. All I needed todo was change the routing table in a way that the route command could not do, but iproute2 could.

So now I am happy again.

After years of saying I would write a book, I have finally found a co-author. Now it might actually happen.

Robbie Allen and I are planning a book of LDAP programming with perl.

Today we got a reply from O'Reilly, they are not interested in it. But the funny thing is, the response we got was identical to a previous response I got about another submission. It goes along the lines

"We did some research and we predict the audience is too small. However we have a book currently in the works where we may need some more authors....."

Ah well, next publisher

Well today I finally managed to get some more CPAN releases done. Net::SMTP finally supports AUTH proprtly by using Authen::SASL. And Authen::SASL now supports the LOGIN method, which many SMTP servers use.

Work on the new search site continues. I hope in a few weeks to have it running on chaos, so people can really see whats its like.

Well the code for the new search.cpan.org is almost there now. Most features are written, but there are probably many bugs.

I dont want to make the URL public as it is on my home machine, which is only a 366MHz on the end of a DSL line. But if anyone wants to test and give feedback then mail me at gbarr-tucs@mutatus.co.uk

Well I am finally getting back to doing more things perl.

To start with the rewrite of search.cpan.org is now well underway. I am hoping that it will be done before TPC this year (although I don't know if I will be there this year).

I am sure there are many people that have ideas for the site. And as soon as I get the site in a reasonable position I will be soliciting for them.

It was not something I ever expected to say, but due to my circumstances at the time the rest of my life just did not give any time.

Well recently things have changed a lot and I find myself in a much better situation and with a much happier family life.

So hopefully over the coming months I can get back to doing what I enjoy

Watch this space