use Perl

I happened to note that if you pass a PDF through imagemagick's 'convert', convert it strips out the PDF Encrypted flag.

I needed to merge several PDF files into a single document, and using PDF::API2 this is really easy. This was until I found that someone had accidentally set the PDF Encrypted on some of the files when they were generated.

pdfinfo is the natty little tool which told me they were encrypted. Then convert sorted the problem out for me.

PDF can be very picky and quite a few generators actually get it wrong, I've seen one file which when printed through windows corrupted some of the very small text, but when sent via CUPs actually crashed the printer (so windoz was somehow correcting, reminded me of bad HTML and browsers 'correcting').

It was eventually tracked down to the pdf2ps part, which did give warnings, once they were fixed (upgrading Cario and switching to pnm images) printing from either windoz or CUPs was fine.

Having said that I no longer fear having to generate something as a PDF and actually would go so far as to enjoy using them.

So lots of property sites have RSS - I bet they don't have Podcasts

Thanks to Leon and some Text to Speach and a bit of Perl we now have mp3 audio of our property descriptions.

My wife works for a big medical company as project manager; so she deals with their inhouse developers a lot and my work often comes up in conversation. She is always told "Perl is crap", "It's only for hackers", "Perl is hard to read", "Perl is used so you have job security" (as no one else can userstand it).

Now I imagin most of these developers have never seen much/any decent Perl / heard of CPAN or realise that you can do automatic tests so easily.

So where do I tell my wife to point them to so they can see the light? - I'm not trying to convert them (though that would be nice), but I also want to be able to arm my wife (figuratively) with a response.

I've said the first thing she should mention is that the World Health Organisatoin used Perl for it's CRM system; Amazon, BBC and Yahoo all use lots of Perl, and there are success stories out there.

What I'm after is a decent reprisal to all of their points - the main answer is you can shoot your self in the foot with any language if you do not write it well/document/test. Java and XML are NOT the solutions to every problem - I can do rappid clean development with Perl, but they're problably not going to take my word for it.

In response to Dave's post about there being too many modules on CPAN that do the same thing, but no clear reason why a newbie to Perl would use one over the other; and my personal annoyance at some of the pointless perl modules (where Authors haven't looked at existing modules). I am proud to announce http://perl.cuckoo.org/ - The ultimate Perl module list.

If you are looking for a module, you should look at this site first, only then should you check CPAN.

I did consider trying to use Kwality ratings etc, but at the end of the day I think it's about the modules that you use in day to day life that matters.

So, enjoy - I'll update it from time to time, I may even add tags and other external URLs, but the main point it there is now a single place where I can point people who are starting out in Perl and let them know the basic modules they should be aware of.

Once a year or so I go and have a look at the old websites I used to work on, interested in how they are doing and what's changed. Unfortunatly I've found that the quality of them more often than not seems to have dropped.

Most seem to have switched away from being Perl and are now asp or php, design seems to be a mimumal and it's very easy to see they are just there to make as much money as possible, rather than to give as good a service as possible (I like to think if you do the latter then you get the former).

One site which did Theatre reviews and Tickets, may still have the quality of review content (I can't really tell), but everything else has been farmed out, the tickets are through a branded version of another site, there is merchandise available through another site, and worse yet they're offering 'dating' links through to another site. To top is all off there is no consistency in the navigation as you are sent off to these other sites, and they've got little flashing 'new' tags next to the ticket section - which has ALWAYS been there.

We (London.pm IRC) then started talking about code, and how much of the code we've written is probably not used any more.

Nicholas then made an interesting point:

- I suspect that almost all the code I wrote between 1999 and 2003 has gone that way (not being used/deleted)

- sorry, almost all the *paid-for* code

And that's the same for me - although for me it's between 1996 and 2001 - the only code still around and in action is that code which I did in my personal time or which the company I was at allowed me to open source. I guess the main difference is that paid for code tends to be very domain (e.g. company/project) specific where as code which gets open sourced is more generic.

I think it's just interesting that paid for code doesn't last as long as open source code. I do wonder what would have happened if I was a PHP programmer, or an ASP programmer - would it have made any difference ?

So it's that time of year again where the internet steps in to make my life a whole lot easier - Xmas shopping, and on the whole it just works, you find stuff and you give your credit card details, and it gets delivered

Now this year I wanted to buy something for my brother, so used one of those price comparison sites (which are usually rubbish as you often can't order by price and more!), and found the store I wanted to order from. I go through the whole register process and then go to pay.

After entering all my credit card details (using a HSBC payment system) I get told that my card has been rejected and to contact the company, so the next day this is what I do. My phone call is answered by a very nice person who tries to be as helpful as possible, but tells me they don't have access to why my card was rejected, but that maybe it was the way I put my address in. I said ok, could I just pay over the phone.. and was told they don't accept payment except on the website!

I'm sorry... but if I was running a company I'd take payment in any way I could... I asked why and was told it was to help prevent credit card fraud! - as the person on the phone was so nice I gave their website another try, but my card was rejected again

I then went to a different company who would take my money, my order arrived 2 days later.

Moral for businesses... let people give you money!