A while back, I worked on a project with a company I’m working for and it eventually evolved into something I released to Perl’s open archive network, CPAN and chatted about for my first SPUG talk. Naturally, as the Conwaytistical Perl programmer I am, I figured why not write about it one more time for old times sakes. Generally speaking, Google has already found the documentation for the module which is all I really figure is necessary to explain it. The crazy thing is that people seem to be using this… a lot. Likely for the same reason I made it: there are no programmatic alternatives that I could find. With this unfortune comes the destruction of my inbox with questions and curiosities ranging from examples to the process I took for making this module in the first place. All things considered, I’m happy to see people using the module but it turns out I’m a little lazy and don’t like responding to strangers’ questions all that much. Born from that comes this page. When the forces of this are combined with the perldoc, I’m no longer needed and can feel much more at ease with the temperature of my shoulder as I ignore the trickle of emails that come to me. Lucky for you, I am a personal fan of direct examples that can be followed without the needless bloat of words, and this is what I’m going to (try to) do. The only predicate to this instruction set is that we will assume you are going to map the US. It’s possible to map the entire world, but we will only work with the US for now. Go USA!
July, 2009
7
Jul 09
In the beginning, there was Blog.
It’s sad enough to say I started a blog. I can still remember the day when I begged and pleaded with high members of the technical visionary squad at Washington State University that we shouldn’t waste our time with these blog things. Why in the world would anyone mindlessly write about what they did all day and show the entire world? In hindsight, I may not have been the best candidate to help startup a small company like Twitter (which, of course, is the same thing as a blog. Just “micro” and smells nicer). Good thing this was the only thing I’ve ever gotten wrong in my illustrious career. Regardless, a now decade long trend of vomiting the inane babblings found in the mind of the collective Internet has been joined by myself. Welcome, me!
I am all but certain this blog will be followed by few and each further and further from one another in terms of time that separates each. Yet, each will be a heartfelt melody of great wisdom passed down by (likely) myself. More than anything, the idea is to give a larger scope of visibility into myself sprinkled with a hint of a professional perspective combined with a glimmer of personal reality mixed in just for fun. In other words, I’m jumping on the SEO bandwagon by making a blog. Sue me. So whether it be talks, publications, public works or interesting tid-bits that parade themselves through the open streets of the vast web, there is a half-hearted chance I may take the time to mention them here as well. With that, I welcome you and hope you stay tuned as I am sure to make you more intelligent and less sophisticated all at the same time. Enjoy.