Mark Keating
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Tweets
- @consttype they are separated to a certain degree, but I see your point. Hopefully we can all get to the same point of it not being stupid.
- @georgebharris thanks. I will find some more from my archives but I have about 60K in images going back almost a decade.
- @mart_brooks did they find you in bed with their dog?
- Will I find time to do this with all the other things at YAPC::NA? http://t.co/HpWusOfF May have to try and squeeze in a session or three.May 24, 12 from web Reply, Retweet, Favorite
- @georgebharris hi there. Finally got around to posting the first batch. Bit of a pain uploading them one at a time though :).
- Liquorice ice cream with Madagascan vanilla underneath. #foodporn (local small company freshly churned) http://t.co/BCNp23Vz
- Ben with the dandelion. We both ended up covered in seeds. #summer #flowers #thingsilove #kids http://t.co/hCN1khCC
- If religions have an issue then let them have their own -no legal status- unions and people be equal under a civil 'legal' equal partnership
- If the churches do not have the rights to marry -any- persons then they should not have any legal status to marry and all weddings be civil.
- @davepage_mcr I detest the fact that we need a vote at all. The legal situation is clear, it is inequality and that breeches equality laws.
- @suretec Shadowcat Systems has been proud to work in partnership with Suretec on sponsored Open Source development. #perl #opensource
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Photos
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Posts
- May 06, 12
The 7th Yet Another Perl Conference, Brasil, will be held on the 19th-20th October 2012 at R. Frei Caneca, 569 - Consolação - São Paulo, 01307-001, Brazil.
- Apr 25, 12
The Initiative The Send-a-Newbie initiative is being held once again, this year for YAPC::EU::2012 in Frankfurt and the applications are open. If you know of someone who would benefit from this initiative, and who qualifies, then please ensure they apply as soon as possible. We will be closing the period for applications on the 30th [...]
- Apr 11, 12
Prologue: Precepts Mark Keating is a Director, and Secretary, of the Enlightened Perl Organisation. The use of ‘we’ in this text might refer to either the organisational team responsible for the construction of the new Members and Donations site, or the organisation itself. It is never used as a Royal ‘We’. Introduction: A History For [...]
- Apr 02, 12
Refreshing the Perl AdServer I would like to encourage the further development of the Perl Ad Server. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it is an initiative by Gabor Szabo to bring community elements to a broader audience by a series of links that can be displayed on a website and [...]
- Mar 28, 12
The Event is on This weekend sees the QA Hackathon take place in Paris. The delegates will gather, converse, hack and generally further the field of Quality Assurance in Perl and its many libraries. Already I have seen the chatter and plans as they begin to assemble and combine their objectives and itineraries. Since I [...]
- Mar 22, 12
Last week there was a small discussion on Twitter about the Perl Review Community Calendar about adding events to this resource, thankfully brian d foy has made it a trivial matter to commit to this resource and you can get a commit bit from him or Renée Bäcker to do this. During the discussion we [...]
- Mar 17, 12
A Hack Attack Next saturday, 24th March 2012, the North West England Perl Mongers will be holding their first Hack Day of 2012. For the previous three years we have held hackdays as an annual event to create a local community day for fun and hacking on open source and community projects. it was decided [...]
- Mar 16, 12
So there has been a surfeit of vikings of late and that has made it the last that I can take.* So I have made the decision to block all comments on my site except for those that come from members of the group of per.ly people. If you want to make comments on my [...]
- Mar 12, 12
Damian Speaks If you have never heard of Damian Conway then allow me to introduce you to him(1). Damian Conway is a world-class trainer, speaker and presenter, he is also a programmer, author and educator. It is true that he is well renowned in the realms of Perl where he has been a contributor to, [...]
- Mar 06, 12
It is my great pleasure to announce that the Send-A-Newbie initiative will once again be run by the Enlightened Perl Organisation for YAPC::EU::2012::Frankfurt. The SAN initiative is aimed at introducing people new to a Perl event to this principal European conference, to Perl conferences and to the community. Applications can be made by anyone* with [...]
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Posts
- Apr 20, 12
So my head is currently wrapped by this notion that some people believe their relationship is more ‘modern’ than mine just because I got married, am monogamous, like my family and spend time with them, also I chose to have children.
They know nothing about my reasons to get married, or any of those other things, they just assume because they can label their sexual/personal relationships as ‘n’-gamy or ‘something’-sexual, or that they choose individual expansion in a complex and fluidly expressed environment and see that as a defining concept in a modern world, that it makes them 21st century and me some kind of troglodyte hitting women with a stick to drag them back to my man cave.
I have news for you all. They were doing the same as you in the classic periods and we have no real evidence to say different, but I doubt that primitive man had marriage and was probably pretty damn ‘n’-gamy or ‘something’-sexual
In other words, your notion that my marriage or anything else I choose is an anachronism, or archaic, or a primitive/simpler/traditional value, is in fact a huge pile of doo-doo.
I didn’t marry because of tradition. I married because of an educated discussion and deliberation with my wife. Yes, it sounds clinical (parts of it were, most of it wasn’t – there you go, we both also subscribe to that silly notion of love) but we ‘chose’ to get married. We discussed it and determined based on a number of factors, including Leigh’s love of the actual event and her belief in the good force that marriage represents and my belief that a promise is special and sharing that promise with family and friends shows how special it is to people (i.e. the event itself is special), to get married. Also, we really had a blast on our wedding day, if I had the money I would do it again and invite the same people they were all brilliant.
I think the fact that we both *chose* this, based on how we felt, and the other persons feelings means we have a modern relationship. Because our relationship is not just based on someones ability to define a term, or solely on some societal or cultural definition, it is based on an understanding of the other persons needs, desires and wishes.
We are both fully aware of many of the sociological, psychological and historical factors that determine relationships, interactions and traditions. We neither conform or reject them, we choose which ones are applicable to our status and what we wish to represent to others as our relationship. In some manner they shape that relationship by their existence, but they do not determine it and they do not define it.
Thanks.
(Oh, none of this is meant to indicate that your relationship isn’t modern, personally if you chose to do it, it is brand new and shiny, all of interaction is ).
* This was originally posted on Facebook, then i realised that many people I know are not on Social Media places and I have no ‘real’ control over it there, so I placed it on here.
- Apr 10, 12
(Twitter Etiquette)
Okay so I saw this tweet (I removed the names and some of the details):
“Please stop retweeting your ——. They’re spoiling my time line.”*
And my reaction is now, “frack you, stop following them”. So why do I have this reaction?
I guess it is because of a few reasons and just let me spill out my thoughts in a lazy edit of semi-stream-of-consciousness.
1. There is a sort of understanding that when you follow someone you may disagree with what they say, so you say so to them.
2. You chose to follow them, if they piss you off, choose to unfollow them.
3. Isn’t it rude to tell people what they can Tweet about? I see tweets from the profound to the moronic, and my decision on what determines their importance is just that, my decision. My level of engagement. My opinion. It isn’t the opinion of the tweeter, it shouldn’t be the opinion of the tweeter. They get to make that themselves, if I don’t like it…unfollow.
4. If it is a retweet, you can still argue back, or say you don’t like the comment, but telling them what they can or can not post is wrong.
5. It could be tedious, it could be highly offensive, but the world is a vast collection of those things and we all have our levels of judging them. I might find peoples evasive use of polite language which masks their inner true beliefs more offensive than hate rhetoric, I might hate anyone talking about Pokemon, it doesn’t matter, I should still allow them to have that opinion and choose whether I follow or listen to it. But I don’t get to decide if they have the rights to their opinions, no matter how much I might disagree or agree with them. Equality of opinion is a burden as well as a blessing, there are costs to liberties.
I am of the opinion that there is a ‘twittequette’, you can use the social medium to block and ignore some things and if they roll out more filters maybe you’ll be able to block more, and you can also scan and hide Tweets, so asking someone to moderate their responses just because you think it spoils something is just wrong.
I have in the past been accused of posting -too many- things. Once was a mistake in judgement and I was politely called on it, the second I warned that I was going to Twitter-Bomb a set of posts so people could choose to ignore me for an hour or so, the third wasn’t so nice. Frankly I was called up for not being interesting basically, and so i have this level of bile that wells up to Tweets like this, and I think that this is rude and you should consider what you are saying…or not, hell it’s your 140 characters
(end rant).
* btw, I think in this case the original tweeter was being sarcastic, but it still gave me my knee jerk response.
- Jan 27, 12
Okay so once again the train is delayed and this means I will miss a connection, I get really dis-chuffed when that occurs. Then I will blame privatisation. But this isn’t a random blame.
Privatisation was supposed to bring us:
Lower Fares. It didn’t.
More trains. It didn’t.
Better service. Debateable, more customer service bollocks that’s for sure.
Increased efficiency – well let’s look at that.How do we measure efficiency. Ask the operators and they may say number of people to destnation – in shortest time – on time. Ask the travellers and they would add a qualifier, they would put comfort while traveling as part of that.
Let’s face it, 150 mph in a boxcar with us jammed in like sardines would be efficient.
So comfort is a part of efficiency to the customer. Not just speed and on time, but do I get a seat, is there enough baggage space, etc.
Baggage Space, well that’s a joke, most trains have inadequate space and they now have no baggage car so there is luggage everywhere, especially airport trains which should have a baggage car, but that means an extra car, an extra person to manage it, loss of profit from fuel and personnel and time and oh gods that affects efficiency, so that’s a no go.
Seats. Even on regular routes with no issues there is often overcrowding and distressed persons, and this is compounded when there are delays that push extra people onto the trains. The solution is extra cars even if the figures do not justify it, but again this increases costs and yada yada yada.
So comfort is pandered to with a smiling smartly dressed staff member, who has no real power to alter anything, can only point at alternate routes, offer a form to make a complaint or request compensation or say sorry. There is no real method for change.
But this situation -could- be the same even if they weren’t private, I hear you cry…
Not the point, if they are making a profit at the massive expense of their customers there is an issue, and since we have no alternative that effectively is a monopoly, so I will complain and state that privatisation of the train industry was a joke that has led to nothing but a failure of promises.
There is an issue when we measure efficiency as a means test for quality, it isn’t. Efficiency is a test of just that. It never means quality of service, this thinking is applied to health, education and other large systems with the same failure. We want quality, we achieve that by measuring satisfaction of service, not by quantifiable metrics.
What a difference having power and a seat on a train makes to the mood of the weary traveller…so my argument about quality of service and amenities starts to gain more credence as my rage is ameliorated by the comfort i have found. I do however pity my fellow passengers who got on at Chorley and Bolton and are doomed to stand for the remainder of their journey, I doubt the delays and inconvenience are changing their moods at this present time.
Some of the trains are nicer though, so glad that we helped to pay for them with public funds!
- Jan 14, 12
In the beginning…
I had a strange, well odd, well interesting, well probably something… experience in the taxi to the station. Let me set the scene for you and hopefully try to work this through as I do.
I was getting ready to fly to Orlando, part of this is that I was up earlier than usual (by about ninety minutes) but I hadn’t gone to bed any earlier, in fact due to a compression of things to do I went to bed later so I was already a little out of sorts and I had started on caffeine.
I called the taxi and set a time, the taxi was 20 minutes early and they didn’t call the phone as usual but knocked on the door which surprised me and I had a last minute panic rush to get ready – meanwhile the taxi driver had the clock running eventhough he was early. I can see his point as he was given the job by despatch, but that wasn’t my problem and I object to being charged for something that was out of my control, had they been a few minutes early I would have been ready, but 20 minutes is a bit too early. I only think about this now and I don’t believe it affected me at the time as I only figured out the increased cost when we got to the end of the journey.
The taxi driver himself was fairly chatty, he was either up early or more likely on the night shift so had been quiet for him until then. He was however a little critical of things, he had a strong Liverpool accent which was familiar to me and reminded me of when I used to live in Warrington.
A difference of perception/behaviour
We chatted about where I was going and he tried to up-sell me a taxi ride to the airport which felt a bit odd, he discovered I was going to a conference and then claimed I could just charge it to the company (not knowing I run the company). I mentioned that the company had already paid for the flight and hotel so cost frugality was to be respected. His words were that I should lie (to myself) and claim that there were no trains. Even if I were working for someone else that is not a wise behaviour especially as it is an easy thing to verify. One can also grab historical train delays if that is your lie of choice, so it is unwise even if your specific mores let it be ethical to engage in such behaviour. Especially if it is to yourself.
He asked about my line of work, I did my usual enquiry into his level of knowledge about computers and the computer industry, I didn’t wish to bore, patronise or confuse which is so easy to do. He reassured me it was good so I said we worked on “infrastructure” software as it was close to giving some idea. He wanted to know if it was like Apple, so I mumbled no and gave a simple explanation of Perl and OSS and left it at that.
Feeling odd and weird…
I felt odd during the conversation though, a little detached and not fully engaged. I usually pride myself on being able to talk to people and so it could have been the tiredness that was making me feel disconnected.
But I have had other occasions where I feel the same way, where I cannot connect as well as I have in the past. It is as if some of my register specific phatic communion skills are rusty. I find it hard to engage in small talk and need to be warmed to it, or rather I find it hard to engage in a specific type of small talk.
This could be the particular levels of socio-cultural groups and people I am engaging with and their standard forms of communication. Added to this is my increased use of text as a form of communication in online life such as irc, text message, email etcetera. This is perhaps dictating a particular social interactive model and providing the impetus for my interactive passivity and failure.
Finding reasons…going forward…
In all honesty the introduction of a child into my life has probably added to this in many regards, further dictating modes of thinking and interaction. It is very easy to fall into the trap of all ‘parent talk’ about things that affect your child social age group and future. To discussing their development and the particular habits you engage with them. There are fascinations based upon these and I think a good number of parents follow them. I wonder however if we can generalise and say all parents are like this?
Back to my social skills however and it will be interesting to see if I can practice and regain some of the inter-social dexterity I once felt I had. This will of course mean that I will once again have to try and talk to people more which fights against my natural shyness.
Yes I am shy. I hide it well by being an extrovert and consciously pushing communication, it is part of why I am loud, boisterous and gregarious, some of what makes me want and crave attention is to hide my brains immediate pull back and hide a little then they wont see you for what you really are…
Okay, too close to psychological triggers of behaviour there…
But I am shy, and I often feel I am being awkward and don’t know what to say or how to ask and continue talking, I can rant on and on about the minutiae of things that interest me, but have trouble getting people to want to continue talking to me…
More thinking required and examination needed…
Thanks for the time.
(I had no idea how to end this…)
…
Sorry for all the elisions…
- Jan 13, 12
I follow the UKMinisters Twitter feed that follows all of the ministers who tweet. There is a pattern that happens every Wednesday.
Prime Minister’s Questions occurs and all those on the PM’s side will state how magnificent he is and how he destroyed poor Red Ed. Whereas on the opposition it seems that Ed annihilates and embarrasses the PM on a regular basis.
Both of these cannot be right.
I have even watched this and tried to compare what I am seeing with what they are tweeting, and although sometimes I can kind of get what they mean, mostly they don’t match what is happening that I can see.
I could just be unable to follow the subtle interplay, but I consider myself fairly well educated and savvy enough about language, if I struggle I would gamble that many do also. Maybe this is why the tweeters cannot agree or even vaguely represent what has occurred.
There is only one solution.
We need a cage fight, that will give us a real winner. If this is too extreme they could always lean across the boxes for a game of ‘slaps’ or maybe a quick round or two of wink murder.
- Jan 13, 12
So while flying to the US I encountered what I thought was a rude bloke, it could be me who is just too sensitive, or maybe with my attitude I am rude, here are my thoughts as I travelled.
–START RANT–
A bloke sat to the right of me on the flight has a loud cough, obviously it is irritating him, I just wish he’d cover his mouth more with his hand or with a handkerchief when he is hacking up a lung, or maybe just get it over with and die already.
So that was written three hours ago, since then he has munched on M&Ms with his mouth open and constantly coughed spraying germs liberally into the air, there is the occasional half-hearted effort to cover the mouth, but most of his loud and violent explosions are done unmasked. I have headphones on and listening to loud music and I still don’t drown him out, time to just kill him with the foldaway table I think.
Okay, 40 minutes later and he has a spare chair as the bloke who was sat next to him has moved, maybe to jump off the plane rather than be next to him, and so he has placed his feet up on the seat, that’s not a crime, leaving the shoes on however is just plain awful. I am not being prissy but there is something deeply wrong with shoes on furniture, I dislike it, take your fracking shoes off. Especially if they are boots, this just compounds a social sin.
I wonder if this piece will be used against me in court…
And as we land he takes off his belt while we taxi and turns on his phone to check his messages, please slam on the brakes so he flies face first into the seat back…
–END RANT–
- Jan 13, 12
Flying to the United States I decided to do some writing and since I wanted to drown out an odious nearby person and the drone of the planes engines (which I normally tune out from but the odious man was too irritating – ranty post to come). I therefore went to the music channel and was delighted to find some albums that intrigued me as they were by artists I wasn’t familiar with playing compositions I didn’t know that well (aside from the Liszt).
This is what I heard…
Works for Cello and Piano
Mendelsson – Watkins Brothers
This was a new experience for me, I have not heard many of Mendelsson’ s works done before and have never encountered the very talented Watkins Brothers. Very delightful to listen to while writing on the flight over the Atlantic.
The experience was only ruined by the imposed-by-software pause between tracks which meant that several of the multiple-movement pieces had nasty breaks in their reproduction making it jar quite horridly several times. The worst being a piece split into about five sections by track number with each piece being only a minute or so in length. Ugly cutting and easily avoidable with a fully digital reproduction and playback system, that should be a software switch.
Liszt: My Piano Hero
Lang Lang
Also heard some interesting interpretations of Liszt by the clearly talented Lang Lang, not come across this young Chinese man either though the pieces by Liszt were all familiar to me. For the most part I loved the way he had interpreted them, in fact it is an album I may have to pick up. Wonderful orchestral accompaniment, especially on Piano Concerto No. 1, by Valery Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic.
Interesting that the first exposure this young man had to the works of Liszt was via a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Cartoons are probably where I heard the majority of my first classical pieces. In fact T&J did a wonderful pair of ‘toons where they used Gershwin and Jazz symphonic to great effect.
Debussy and Ravel: Music for two Pianos
Vladimir and Vovka Ashkenazy
And the introductions continue as I then heard Father and Son play a magnificent series of pieces on two pianos. The synopsis states that Vladimir “the flamboyant pianist turned conductor returns to the piano alongside his son” and this is “powerful, fiery and spellbinding”. Not being familiar with either the musical pieces in question or the performers all I can say is it was breathtaking.
En Blanc et Noir (3 movements) is a brilliant introduction to these two men and is a great build into the stunning Jeux, and the rest of the album is filled with similar brilliance. A well thought out collection masterfully played. I was very delighted as neither Debussy or Ravel have been on my listening list much, I had a thing of not liking Ravel because of Torvil and Dean, so this was wonderfully new.
- Jan 04, 12
<rant>
“Of course I know that there will be many people watching this who are worried about what else the year might bring. There are fears about jobs and paying the bills. The search for work has become difficult, particularly for young people. And rising prices have hit household budgets. I get that. ”
So said cameron as part of his new year address, and my response to this is bollocks.
He gets what it is like to come from a broken home with a mother who divorced twice.
He gets what it is like to come home to the house you were born in, that you were raised in, to see all that remains of your possessions strewn on the street because the baliffs have repossessed your house and most of what you own.
He gets what it is like to spend 30 months on the unemployment lines because you are inexperienced, too young and without a career or even a direction in life.
He gets what it is like to live on a ‘sink’ estate where the evening activites are alchohol, drugs, misplaced violence, arson and burgalry.
He gets what it is like to be hit in the face with an iron bar so that you are mugged having 12 pence in your pocket.
He gets what it is like to make the choice between having a low skilled job or placing yourself in debt for 17 years because you put yourself through full time education.
I experienced all of those during the reign of Margaret “Iron Lady (trickle-down neo-Liberalist POS)” Thatcher, and now I have to witness the same retarded policies, the same excuses, the same sick, twisted logic applied 30 years later.
He gets that. Because he has personally heard about things like that. Of course neither he, the arsonist also known as Clegg and the wealthy little suck-puppy Osbourne have never experienced any of these. They have in fact been spooned a rather indulgent life when compared to many of us, so the idea that the “get” anything about the personal experience of many people brought up during the previous Tory social destruction (80s), and that they know how hard it is for anyone in the UK currently suffering under their mismanagement of the country is ludicrous.
We are all in this together which is why top earners had a wage increase of 49% on average last year and the rest of us got thoroughly shafted by the coalition.
So, Mr Cameron, please stop saying you “get that”, you don’t fucking get it, you are unlikely to fucking get it and you sound like a complete twat when you attempt to emote with something that is alien to you. I will believe you, Clegg or Osbourne, if you all give up your lifestyles and live on a council estate on the minimum wage/benefits for 12 months. Do that and I think you might have some chance of getting it. Until then stop with the hypocritical bollocks.
</end rant>
- Dec 31, 11
The BBC are warning us that there is a lot of fake booze for sale, particularly Vodka as it is easy to make clear spirits as that’s the normal colour of distilled drink. The issue it that you don’t end up with the right type of ethanol, you may get methyl-ethanol or meths/methanol – which is poisonous and potentially fatal as was highlighted by the recent issues in India.
The Beeb have a handy little guide to see if it is fake:
I’d like to add a couple of items to that. Such as:
Don’t buy it at a ridiculously low price;
Don’t buy it from a mate’s car;
Don’t drink if your mate is saying “try this I know the guy who makes it, it’s brilliant”;
Basically an ounce of common sense is all that’s actually needed in this regard, if you are at all unsure then avoid like the plague and drink something else.
- Nov 27, 11
So having a small child changes you, for one thing you get to watch a lot more children’s television. Despite all your protestations that you will raise your child in a bubble of academic excellence and books only, you quickly start to use the excellent service that is CBeebies.
One of my favourite programs is ZingZillas,[1] but I have noticed an issue with this latest series, in fact they have taken what was a brilliant show and reduced it’s brilliance, they have taken the shine off and lost the awesome. Let me explain some of the changes.
- It is shorter and it shows as it feels very rushed.
- Because it is shorter the coconuts drop quickly so no sense of build or narrative tension.
- We have less story and virtually no character development or interaction which was a strength in the previous shows.
- The special guest performers are given less time and do not interact as much, they also have no place in the storyline.[2]
- The other characters, DJ, heads, chorus birds and Todd have virtually no place in the story, and less interaction with the main Zings;
- They added dress elements:
a. Zack has a cape that makes him look like a failed superhero;
b. Pansy has been given a feather boa because you know she’s either a stripper or a drag queen;
c. Tang has a cowboy hat that makes him look like he finally came out and just went full on camp;
d. Drum has the only costume element that makes sense. She has some, in character to her, butterfly wings.
The last big element is that the Zings’ themselves know it has become less, they feel that they have lost their cool and brilliant selves, they no longer state at the end of each episode “that was the best big Zing ever”.
I want my best big Zing back, I want genius episodes like the Wishes episode whose story and song were awesome. I want the return of narrative tension, storyline and characters entwined within the development of the stories. I don’t blame the writers or the production crew at all, and the songs are still great, but it is too rushed, it needs to be able to breathe not be throttled.
Give our Zingzillas their awesome back, that’d be the best Zing ever.
—-
[1] Visit some of the ZingZillas sites:
- ZingZillas Official Site
- BBC ZingZilla Official Cbeebies Site
- ZingZillas on Wikipedia
- Banks and Wag official site
[2] I am informed by the internet[3] that the actual ‘glade’ time and ‘performance’ time remains the same, and this I cannot question without examining two episodes, an old and a new. I am inclined to believe it remains the same but the ‘less interaction’ in the storyline, or less time spent developing the need for the guest performers to be there makes it feel as if they have less time.
[3] Specifically the creative force of Banks and Wag
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Posts
- Jan 25, 12
This is the fourth year for the North West England Perl Mongers, which was formed after the end of the London Perl Workshop 2008 by Ian Norton and Shadowcat's Managing Director, Mark Keating.
This year they have set themselves the challenge of growing the group and getting things done. They are doing this by:
- Having regular meetings, the last Thursday of each month;
- Having a regular form to the meeting;
- Encourage people new to Perl by having open discussion;
- having a regular meeting location (Madlab)
The group also intends to undertake the challenge of updating and refreshing sites such as ironman.enlightenedperl.org and presentingperl.org and making them more relevant and useful as sites and resources for the broader Perl community. These sites and others may be worked on as part of the four virtual Hackdays that will be held throughout the year. A full discussion of the dates of the meetings, location and the hackdays can be found on my per.ly blog where I discuss the NWE.pm Shape of 2012.
As usual Shadowcat Systems will be allowing people to gather at its offices during the day on the virtual hackdays to use the facilities (internet, snacks, coffee and general chat) - and hopefully we will be hosting the hackday in November.
Shadowcat will be continuing its support of its local Perl Mongers as much as possible throughout the coming year and we would like to encourage other local businesses to do the same. It is important that we all add badges stating our support or use of Perl on our websites and linking to community efforts such as perl.org and their local Monger groups.
If you are involved with a monger group as leader or member you might want to lead the charge in getting local businesses involved, many groups and businesses do to great success. I think a large participation in all parts of our industry will help build links in the community chain.
I spoke about this recently as part of my talk at the Manchester Free Software Society, Embrace Your Community, also in Orlando at Perl Oasis in my Adventures in Marketing Part two talk. I hope to be speaking and writing some more on the subject during 2012.
-mdk
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Chair of the Marketing Committee for The Perl Foundation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
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Mark Keating is the organiser of the London Perl Workshop (since 2008), has joined the organising team for the QA Hackathon in 2011, the TPF GSoC Mentors/organisers 2011, the Dynamic Languages Conference 2011. - Jan 16, 12
At the Manchester Free Software society meeting on Tuesday 17th January I am going to be talking about the value to using and working on free software both for and as a business.
With thanks...
I am, however, deeply indebted to a talk given by Stevan Little at the Perl Oasis in 2011. Stevan had the keynote and he used it to present a talk called Code for Free which was not only a great inspiration but was a good basis for what I wanted to talk about so was formative and highly influential on everything in my talk.
It is also great to be invited to speak at such an event. As a business we are always happy to be involved with the community but this feels extra special as we are asked to talk about the subject of Free Software and Shadowcat Systems and after that we have pretty much full reign. I could have just made a 40 minute advert for why we are so great. I haven't, however, in fact I have devoted the time to speaking about, involving yourself, and committing to the community that your software and your business are a part of.
It was, however, really great of Michael Dorrington to invite Matt and I to talk to the group.
Formation...
When I first thought about my presentation I did consider speaking more about our clients and some of the work we do with them and how we interact with them, but I realised this was going to handicap my talk. I would, naturally, have to restrict myself from any sensitive data and direct usage of names, ideas, business models or any core parts of their work. This leaves only a small framework to discuss within so I dismissed that.
But, I could discuss the way we work on Open Source and Free Software projects, how we encourage the use of open data and transparent applications. The more I thought about this the more I realised that I had some understanding of the benefits of that approach and I have experience of the community. So our clients are only spoken about in an abstract manner in relation to FLOSS as a product we use and libre as an ideal that we follow.
Libre...
When I think about 'libre' I like to understand it in a sort of philosophical way, in that it isn't getting something for free but "the state of being free" or "with little or no restriction".
So think on that, this is not 'gratis', I am not giving you something for free but that what we -all- have is in a state of being free, and that's free to use to whatever purpose we like as long as it is with 'little or no restriction'. Those restrictions are generally related to the talents, abilities, time or resources of the individual who exercises them. We are at liberty to provide services in this system for those who wish to reduce their own personal burdens and give up some of those freedoms in exchange for securities or duties that they do not wish to take responsibility for.
So you can get a piece of software, for example, and use it, look at the source, change it and intsall it or provide a service to install it for others who don't want to take the time to learn how to do that, or you can pay someone to do it for you, or exchange your skills with theirs or whatever else you want. You are mastering your own experience, you are in the 'state of being free' not being fed a freedom.
As Nicholas Clark has said this item is "free as in puppies".
That line...
In the Precis for my talk which was distributed to the wider world I used a specific line in which I stated that one way of looking at an Open Source and Free Software community of programmers is a "culture of collaborative one-upmanship".
Taken out of context to my personal feelings about programmers this might seem more than a tad disingenuous. But I can assure you that it is not meant to be that way. I have nothing but the greatest respect for programmers, not just those on my staff, or in the communities I mix in but in the wider world as well.
The task of coding, especially of creating new libraries, modules and complex systems is a creative one and the very best people in this field are more like artists than scientists. They work and see things in an abstract space where problems can sometimes be solved by applying a rigorous dance following strict rules and a pre-defined structure, or only countered with a free flowing ballet responding instinctively to a complex rhythm. This is a space where the rules are often mutable as is the manner in which you overcome a problem.
A project might be created, led, shaped or defined by an individual by force of coercion or by strength of purpose. There are truly collaborative projects but they are mostly formed for a common purpose or in the aftermath of a successful individual enterprise.
The individual often leads a complex solo dance as well as being a part of the chorus line which creates the whole performance.
This naturally attracts prima donnas, and tantrums are sometimes the result of this as are conflicts and resolutions.
These complex dances with their individual responses led by -some- people seeking centre stage will naturally lead to one-upmanship, brinkmanship, belligerence and egregiousness. But that is not always a bad thing. We need a little passion and fire so that we can melt out a solution, complex elements in a crucible will sometimes be the catalyst for destruction or the creation of something unique.
The important point of this is this state is collaborative, it is the 'melting pot of creation' and like a biblical tale we have a Tower of Babel, a collaboratively built, great structure, that reaches to the heavens.[1] A building in which everyone brings their own tools and materials, where someone takes a lead on a particular part.
Most of the collaboration is in fact healthy competition and good natured banter. There is also a lot of education and sharing of information in a free space that allows personal opinion and evolution of ideas.[2]
--------
[1] Now which industry giant who uses proprietary software do I cast as the angry God? Though if I continue the allusion, the God would be the project founder, and they are often the ones spurring on the building not trying to destroy it (well mostly not). So this allusion should have been killed at creation - I should have crowd sourced an answer.
[2] Which is a very long-winded way of saying it was a throw-away line that was meant to be alluring but not insulting, I could have just said that.
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Chair of the Marketing Committee for The Perl Foundation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
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Mark Keating is the organiser of the London Perl Workshop (since 2008), has joined the organising team for the QA Hackathon in 2011, the TPF GSoC Mentors/organisers 2011, the Dynamic Languages Conference 2011. - Jan 02, 12
We are always seeking to build balanced support that is consistent while helping projects to build towards independence
Welcome to 2012 and I hope you have all had good holidays, festive celebrations, or whatever your socio-cultural and environmental preference appreciates or allows.
It has been an interesting 2011 for Shadowcat Systems and we managed to brave the economic challenges that the world has had with varying levels of success that I will not dwell on at any length here, enough to say that once again we enter a new year with a hopeful heart and a keen eye on the challenges we wish to face and overcome. We are still moving forward with developing some internal systems and tools and working with a broad client base to help them achieve their objectives.
I would like to recap on some of the events that Shadowcat has been involved with this year in the broader community and what some of the staff have been up to as well. Hopefully some of the other staff will join in with their own recap of the year.
We started the year in firm style in January by sponsoring a team for the 2011 Platforms Competition, the three competitors were our own Matt S. Trout (mst) and Robert Sedlacek (phaylon) and they were joined by Florian Ragwitz (rafl). We also were the venue sponsors for the 2011 Perl Oasis conference held at the Four Points Sheraton in Orlando Florida.
Perl Oasis always prioritises Beer and then Go-Karts
(photo ©Copyright Mark Keating 2011, please ask permission to re-use)The Perl Oasis is the first of the American Conferences on the Shadowcat Calendar and one in which we have a close affinity both through our association with the Enlightened Perl Organisation, but also as long-standing friends with Chris Prather (perigrin) and Jamie Moorhead who are the organisers of this event.
In April Shadowcat sponsored Mark Keating's attendance and time at the Perl QA hackathon which was held at the office of Booking.com in Amsterdam.
QA Hackathon attendees getting down to work
(photo ©Copyright Mark Keating 2011, please ask permission to re-use)This important event focusses on improving the languages, projects and practices around Perl, it is open to students of all languages and anyone can work on any project that improves the QA of that thing, the focus however is on Perl and CPAN.
As always Shadowcat has provided a number of Sponsorship elements for the Enlightened Perl Organisation. Aside from encouraging the projects that this organisation supports we also sponsored the Send-A-Newbie initiative, provided web services, hosting and tools for the sites, newsgroups and associated elements of the organisation. Provided time for Shadowcat staff to work on Enlightened Perl projects and generally promoted and supported the organisation as well as paying for membership, Matt S. Trout and Mark Keating are both members of the EPO as well.
In June Shadowcat was involved, as usual, with the Yet Another Perl Conference: 2011: North America: Ashville ( YAPC::NA::2012::Ashville). Matt went to the conference to represent the company who sponsored time and speakers. At the YAPC::NA Matt once again delivered his, now annual, closing keynote for conferences The State of the Velociraptor.
In July we were honoured to host the North West England Perl Mongers' technical meeting special event in the shape of Jess 'Castaway' Robinson and James 'theorbtwo' Mastros who came to the Shadowcat offices and displayed their 3D 'Shapercube' Printer, gave us a talk and a live demonstration of the equipment and software.
James Mastros (Standing) and Jess Robinson (seated) presenting on 3D Printing
(photo ©Copyright Mark Keating 2011, please ask permission to re-use)In August Matt and Mark both attended the Yet Another Perl Conference: 2011: Europe: Riga. Once again Shadowcat were proud to be sponsors of this event as we have been since 2006. Matt and Mark both had several talks at the conference and we also provided monetary sponsorship. Shadowcat also provided cash to support the Send-a-Newbie attendees who went to this event.
Conference attendees milling before the conference dinner
(photo ©Copyright Mark Keating 2011, please ask permission to re-use)Once again Matt provided the closing Keynote with the State of the Velociraptor.
In September Shadowcat gave Matt the time and support to attend and speak at the Italian Perl Workshop as a guest speaker and in October they allowed Mark Keating to attend the Google mentor's summit as part of the Google Summer of Code again sponsoring time and support.
A café on the Google campus'
(photo ©Copyright Mark Keating 2011, please ask permission to re-use)In October Shadowcat Systems sponsored the clothing for the three attendees at the Perl stand for the Manchester Unconference, Mark Keating, Matt S. Trout (mst) and Ian Norton all attended and Matt and Ian both gave talks and lightning talks.
The Manchester Unconference is a free-form event
(photo ©Copyright Mark Keating 2011, please ask permission to re-use)In November Shadowcat was once again deeply involved with the London Perl Workshop 2011. Mark is the main organiser for this event, a position he has held for four years, and therefore devotes a large percentage of time to making it work, Shadowcat always affords him the opportunity to do this. Shadowcat also provided monetary and logistical coordination before the event. on the day Matt gave two excellent talks that were written almost exclusively for the event and Chris and Leigh provided administration support. Chris was also on the registration desk at the event with Claire who is partner to Ian Norton.
The audience applaud Mark Keating at the end of the London Perl Workshop 2011
(photo ©Copyright Mark Keating 2011, please ask permission to re-use)Ian is an occasional worker for Shadowcat giving us some network support hours and RT experience and as such is considered a 'special' member of our staff. Ian presented a workshop at the LPW2011 aimed at beginners and getting people familiar with Perl if they had little to no experience.
In November Shadowcat also hosted at their offices the annual North West England Perl Mongers' Hackday. This year we had a virtual and actual hackday and focussed on Presenting Perl and updating that site.
A virtual attendee on screens for the NWE.pm Hackday
(photo ©Copyright Mark Keating 2011, please ask permission to re-use)As always Shadowcat has provided a vast number of resources for the Perl community in the form of minor sponsorship, time, aid, tools and servers to support projects, communities and communication via irc, newsgroups and wikis. We are always seeking to build balanced support that is consistent while helping projects to build towards independence and evolutionary foresight.
Shadowcat have also provided support to the community by hosting sites such as http://www.enlightenedperl.org, http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org, http://send-a-newbie.enlightenedperl.org and http://www.presentingperl.org, Shadowcat also provided mark Keating's time to process and edit the videos from several events throughout the year and to place them on the Presenting Perl site.
Shadowcat has also been a part of some internal development on a number of new projects such as Web::Simple and Tak while being part of the Catalyst, Moose, DBIx::Class projects and also providing help and support to emerging 'big' projects such as Dancer.
Matt S. Trout presents Tak at the London Perl Workshop in November
(photo ©Copyright Mark Keating 2011, please ask permission to re-use)We have also started to cement some parts of the Shadowcat image, during 2011 we have evolved our old signature line which has been "sufficiently advanced technology" since 2005. it is a message that we would like to keep and to keep associated with our company but we have also evolved a new message and one that we will be carrying forward from 2012 onwards. I will be talking about that a little more in a future article.
For now I hope you all have a great year and that we get to see you at an event or meeting in the near future...
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Chair of the Marketing Committee for The Perl Foundation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
My Public Blog: Mark Keating's Personal site
Twitter Feed: Mark Keating on Twitter
Facebook: Mark Keating on Facebook
Flickr: Mark Keating on Flickr
Family site: Mark Keating's Family Site
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Mark Keating is the organiser of the London Perl Workshop (since 2008), has joined the organising team for the QA Hackathon in 2011, the TPF GSoC Mentors/organisers 2011, the Dynamic Languages Conference 2011. - Oct 09, 11
Matt's talk seemed to stun the majority of the audience as he elevated the tech level into low orbit
This was my first unconference and the first event that I have managed to make it to organised by FlossUK in Manchester. I was here, with Matt S. Trout and Ian Norton, as part of a contingent to represent North West England Perl Mongers and Perl in general.
Stickers from FOSS
The idea behind the conference is to get a group of technical people in the same location and allow them to present talks based on what everyone wishes to see. Ian had already decided that he would present a talk on Perl for Sys. Admins and a lightning talk about the North West England Perl Mongers hack day; Matt presented Iron mad and a lightning talk.
The original soft toy Tux hand made by one of the delegates parents wearing a Linux tie
I am not sure what I was expecting from the conference before arriving as the type of event was new to me and I had no notion of how it would run. As it was there was a mixture of elements, some people came with a great deal of knowledge and were able to talk confidently and freely on their chosen subjects, others seemed to be practice speaking and doing talks for the first time so the quality varied from speaker to speaker. The enthusiasm however was pretty constant with people happy to share their expertise whether presenting or just attending.
A robot on display from the HacMan
Seeing Matt do IronMad in 15 minutes provided me with the most smiles for the day and I think he easily won on joke/quip quotient, but there again any talk that is many talks and includes PhP, psychological examination of cats, forfeits, module discussion and ferrets has a lot of room for good, and also often odd in Matt's indomitable style, one liners.
One of the Conference Organisers
As usual the lightning talks provided a lot of fun with the audience providing feedback into the event, Matt's talk seemed to stun the majority of the audience as he elevated the tech level into low orbit and showed some very groovy, but content heavy, hackery.
Assembled Delegates
The day ended with an atypical wander to a local hostelry where sweet nectars were heartily consumed and shared with the odd comment and some truly strange television (watching Masterchef with subtitles was interesting and to be tried by all).
Ian Norton getting ready to present
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Chair of the Marketing Committee for The Perl Foundation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
My Public Blog: Mark Keating's Personal site
Twitter Feed: Mark Keating on Twitter
Facebook: Mark Keating on Facebook
Flickr: Mark Keating on Flickr
Family site: Mark Keating's Family Site
Flavor.me Combined Feeds: Mark Keating on Flavor
Mark Keating is the organiser of the London Perl Workshop (since 2008), has joined the organising team for the QA Hackathon in 2011, the TPF GSoC Mentors/organisers 2011, the Dynamic Languages Conference 2011. - May 26, 11
A pair of Perl persons pop along in person to print
North West England Perl Mongers Homepage
Thingverse
Follow North West England Perl Mongers on TwitterFor their July Technical the North West England Perl Mongers have invited the wonderful Jess Robinson (castaway) and James Mastros (theorbtwo) to visit them and demonstrate, discuss and promote their 3D printer. They will do this during the afternoon and evening of Thursday 22nd July 2011.
Shadowcat Systems will be hosting the event at their offices in Lancaster, also we will be sponsoring the accommodation for Jess and James.
This is a great opportunity for anyone who is a fan of 3D printing, or who is generally keen on hi-tech DIY tinkering to come along and see a 3D printer in action and to talk to a pair of enthusiasts who code for and design with the device. Jess and James not only built the printer but design unique items to print from it and will bring along a selection of those items and discuss how you can join in and build and design your own.
Jess and James will also be willing to print just about any item from the Thingverse on the printer either before, during, or after the event, a charge will be made to cover the time and materials and any shipping for larger items/multiple orders.
Places for the day will be strictly limited, so please contact Mark at m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk.
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Chair of the Marketing Committee for The Perl Foundation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
My Public Blog: Mark Keating's Personal site
Twitter Feed: Mark Keating on Twitter
Facebook: Mark Keating on Facebook
Flickr: Mark Keating on Flickr
Family site: Mark Keating's Family Site
Flavor.me Combined Feeds: Mark Keating on Flavor
Mark Keating is the organiser of the London Perl Workshop (since 2008), has joined the organising team for the QA Hackathon in 2011, the TPF GSoC Mentors/organisers 2011, the Dynamic Languages Conference 2011. - May 03, 11
Perl Foundation Homepage Enlightened Perl Organisation HomepageFor the last few years I have become increasingly involved with the marketing and promotion of Perl. This started as a need to promote Perl in connection with Shadowcat and then a growing desire to make sure that the image and information about the Perl world (Perlverse) be accurately displayed in an increasingly confused market place. For this reason I have been speaking at conferences and helped create the Enlightened Perl Organisation It is why I recently became attached to some of the efforts of the Perl Foundation, specifically in regards to the Google Summer of Code. Now it is my pleasure to become a member of the Perl Foundation Marketing Committee as its new chair.
As the Chair of the Marketing Committee I will, in the coming months, help to shape the promotion and marketing of Perl, and it is my wish to update some of the practices and procedures. I will be attempting to show how Perl has matured as a production-quality language, perhaps by including some of the companies who use Perl as a showcase for its quality of use in the real world. I will also be utilising the current Social Media tools to further promote the language as well as coordinating a cohesive strategy for news delivery, I will be approaching DuckDuckGo's new OS Community Manager in the short term to further discuss this with him and utilise his experience.
This is just the start, there will also be a move towards bringing more grass roots activity for Perl, by bringing it back into the universities and colleges and by supporting those who have already made those efforts. I will also be focussing on some of the new or successful projects in Perl, including (and most definitely not restricted to) the best practices,CPAN and the various clients, Perl SDL, upcoming projects such as CiderWebMail - Dancer - Mojolicious - Padre as well as the ever-popular Catalyst - Dbic - Moose.
It is my hope to help promote some of the better articles written about, or on, Perl and Perl development. I will be talking to many people in the Perl world over the next few months to work out the best way of continuing and supporting this practice and perhaps increasing the scope and amount.
Then there is the promotion of the Perl Language itself, for this I will be conducting conversations with those people at the core of development and design so that we can create a cogent analysis of the state of Perl for the use in analysis, description, marketing and promotion.
All of this adds up to a significant body of work and it is just the start as I begin the strategy, create a cohesive plan, and implement changes that will further promote the language we all use. I would like to thank the fellow members of the Marketing Committee for voting me on and as their chair and look forward to working with them. I will, as always, be discussing all of my activities both here and on my mdk perly blog. To contact me for marketing information, to suggest ideas or offer help/describe what you are doing with Perl and how this may fit with the promotion please contact me at mdk(at)perlfoundation.org, you can follow shadowcat_mdk on Twitter.
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
My Public Blog: Mark Keating's Personal site
Twitter Feed: Mark Keating on Twitter
Facebook: Mark Keating on Facebook
Flickr: Mark Keating on Flickr
Family site: Mark Keating's Family Site
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Mark Keating is the organiser of the London Perl Workshop (since 2008), has joined the organising team for the QA Hackathon in 2011, the TPF GSoC Mentors/organisers 2011, the Dynamic Languages Conference 2011, and the Marketing Chair for The Perl Foundation. - Mar 22, 11
"So what have I done thus far", you might ask if you used the same archaically-flavoured spin on language that I do
GSOC 2011 Site
TPF on GSOC 2011
GSOC 2011 Timeline
A5 Flyer for Perl participation
Perl Project Ideas
MDK's "Google Summer of Code"
MDK's "More GSOC"Last week I was asked by Rafl (Florian Ragwitz) to help out with some of the promotion for this year's Perl Foundation's (tpf) participation in the Google Summer of Code. I should note, right away, that the main coordination efforts and drive for this year are being undertaken by Rafl himself. His Basic need was to get the word spread around a little more and because he knew I was a keen supporter of Perl and the community and an avid(-ish) writer he approached me.
I, of course, was glad to help. The Google Summer of Code has always struck me as one of the finest Open Source events on the calendar, and no that isn't me Google-gushing, those people that know me would be able to regale you on my occasional rants about the giant "G" and people's misconceptions of them as a company. But, that aside, this event is a real stand-out winner for the OSS communities. The event allows student participation in an Open Source project, the student is paid for their time and the project gains some valuable working code. It also allows projects to seek out new participants and to further spread their visibility. Google monitor the whole event and provides support and guidance, it is a 'total win situation'.
"So what have I done thus far", you might ask if you used the same archaically-flavoured spin on language that I do. Well, to begin I have written a couple of blog posts, MDK's "Google Summer of Code", and MDK's "More GSOC" which get automatically spun to the Ironman Challenge website and from thence to Twitter. I have tweeted about the challenge, of course, under my @shadowcat_mdk username. I submitted a piece, at the urging of and edited nicely by Ranguard (Leo Lapworth), for the Perl News website. I have also mentioned the call for students on the various mailing lists I subscribe to and on the Public Perl group on LinkedIn. The latest element was to create an A5 Flyer for Participation by students and mentors that could be distributed to as many locations as possible. There are one or two more options I have yet to pursue that I will be doing so in the next few days.
(One could also add this blog piece, even though it is a discursive item it still counts as promotion in a certain light.)
The real challenge now is to see if we can pick up students to participate and match them to mentors who will guide them through the rest of the challenge. That will mostly be handled by Rafl and his team of happy minions who will no doubt spend a great deal of time in the coming months ensconsed in that task. The first date of importance is the 28th March when the call for participating students to sign up to the challenge starts. I have no doubt that I will be blogging/tweeting about events as they happen and any important news that wings its way to me will be related so there is a good chance that you may hear me "harping" some more.
As noted, in the many other locations, if you have any suggestions for further promotion of the Google Summer of Code and Perl's participation, can spare some tuits to repeat the information, or print out and distribute flyers (and if you can translate the flyer to another language so that a version can be prepared and made available in that language), then that help would be much appreciated. You can contact me, through this blog, my mdk blog, via @shadowcat_mdk on Twitter, or by many/any other means.
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
My Public Blog: Mark Keating's Personal site
Twitter Feed: Mark Keating on Twitter
Facebook: Mark Keating on Facebook
Flickr: Mark Keating on Flickr
Family site: Mark Keating's Family Site
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Mark Keating is the organiser of the London Perl Workshop (since 2008), has joined the organising team for the QA Hackathon in 2011 and Dynamic Languages Conference 2011. - Feb 15, 11
the event is a great benefit to the community and enhances a wide range of programmes
2011 Perl QA Hackathon
QA Hackathon Wiki
Sponsors
Latest NewsAs announced on the Shadowcat news page a couple of weeks ago I have joined the organisers for the Perl Quality Assurance Hackathon which will be held on the 16th-18th April 2011 in the European city of Amsterdam. The major sponsors this year are Booking.com who have provided generous funds and rooms in their Amsterdam offices for the event to take place. As in previous years the guests attending will have their travel and accommodation provided for them, the event seeks to bring the best talent together to focus on developing a higher degree of quality on a variety of systems and projects.
The latest announcement covers the fact that the call for participation has now ended are there are a total of twenty-nine participants for the event. Erica at Booking.com has now took on the task of finding suitable accommodation for those that need it and the other organisers have started to look for funds to cover the costs.
If you would like to become a sponsor then visit http://2011.qa-hackathon.org/qa2011/wiki?node=Sponsors, we seek sponsorship from organisations and individuals (no contribution is either too large or too small), the organisers have already approached YEF, Paris Perl Mongers, the Vienna Perl Mongers and the Enlightened Perl Organisation at this current time.
It is a great privilidge to work with the other organisers to bring this event to the community for a fourth consecutive year following events in Oslo (2008), Birmingham (2009) and Vienna (2010), the event is a great benefit to the community and enhances a wide range of programmes. I should be appearing at the event as part of the organising team with Shadowcat Systems sponsoring my travel costs.
If you would like to read the latest news about the Perl QA Hackathon then it can be found here http://2011.qa-hackathon.org/qa2011/news. There will be further press releases that will detail hotel, sponsorship and other details of the conference.
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
My Public Blog: Mark Keating's Personal site
Twitter Feed: Mark Keating on Twitter
Facebook: Mark Keating on Facebook
Flickr: Mark Keating on Flickr
Family site: Mark Keating's Family Site
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Mark Keating is the organiser of the London Perl Workshop (since 2008), has joined the organising team for the QA Hackathon in 2011 and Dynamic Languages Conference 2011. - Jan 20, 11
Smaller, frequent conferences, self-supported by local business and individuals is the way forward and will be a good grass-roots activity
Presenting Perl
Perl Oasis 2011 Homepage
I <3 My Community
User DetailsOnce again this year I travelled to the theme-park-paradise that is Orlando, Florida for the annual Perl Oasis organised by the superlative double act that is Chris Prather and Jamie Moorhead.
Shadowcat Systems were sponsors of the venue for 2011[1] and so I was treated with a great deal of love by the organisers. A part of this was that Jamie had managed to organise an upgrade to my room so I was on the twenty-first floor with a great view of the Florida area and in particular I could see Universal Studios[2]. We, the conference attendees, also had access to a hospitality suite which made a great base for social activities of the conference, so kudos to Jamie and Chris for arranging this.
The staff at Shadowcat, and in particular the directors, have always believed in the value of sponsorship, it enables the community and enhances the personal experiences of its members. It was brought to my mind even more this year when Robert of Pitsburgh Perl Mongers made an intertesting point, the Perl Oasis is held for around two-three thousand dollars, which is a very small sum of money (on a side point I have always managed to organise the London Perl Workshop so that it can be held with the same sums of money).
Robert mentioned that it is possible for there to be more small conferences like Perl Oasis, which made me think that perhaps it wasn't important to focus on large events but to ensure a greater number of smaller events that would encourage participation from the local community. Robert has a good point, in a country as large as the USA and in a region as large as Europe it is essential to have more small conferences. We are fortunate in Europe in that almost every country has a workshop or is close to an event each year, but in the States they have fewer events and it is sometimes impossible for people to attend due to time, money and other constraints. Smaller, frequent conferences, self-supported by local business and individuals is the way forward and will be a good grass-roots activity.
I presented a talk this year at the conference, Why I <3 My Community, after doing the keynote last year and then taking a break of a year for the birth of my first child, I thought I would only submit a twenty minute talk. I also did a quick lightning talk at the start of the lightning talks. Both of these should be made available on the Presenting Perl (http://www.presentingperl.org/) website in the near future.
I came back to the UK from my first conference of the year feeling refreshed and excited about the year ahead. I think I have a number of ideas and hope to fulfil them before Perl Oasis 2012 where perhaps I will talk about how much I was able to do and how it was enhanced by attending Perl Oasis 2011.
[1] I am proud to say that we will also be the venue sponsors for 2012 once again to be held at the Four Points Sheraton on International Drive.
[2] So for all you Harry Potter fans I could see Hogwarts from my hotel room.If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
My Public Blog: Mark Keating's Personal site
Twitter Feed: Mark Keating on Twitter
Facebook: Mark Keating on Facebook
Flickr: Mark Keating on Flickr
Family site: Mark Keating's Family Site
Flavor.me Combined Feeds: Mark Keating on Flavor - Nov 22, 10
There were so many people stacked around our table that we eventually ran out of chairs...
North West England Perl Mongers Homepage
Meeting Information
NWE.PM Wiki
Hackday 2010 Page
Project Oyster Page
Why Aim so Low - Mark Keating's Blog
Oyster Project - Osfameron's blog
Ian Norton's blog on last year's Hackday
Glasgow Perl MongersOn 20th November 2010 Shadowcat Systems was once again proud to host and to sponsor the North West England Perl Mongers' yearly hackathon. In this blog I want to talk about the shape of the event, I am hoping that the sterling effort done by Ian Norton on a hackday report last year, and Osfameron's Blog for this year, will be repeated and I will be able to link to those able bodies at a future date.
Pingu, the NWE mascot gets a little drunk on the evening beforeIn contrast to last year we had sign-ups for attendance on the Hackday at the "meat space" location by members of Perl groups and organisations outside of the North West. The wonderful Gabi came across from Germany and there were three members of the newly-formed (earlier this year) and impressively talented Glasgow.pm., alongside this were the virtual presences (who were no less impressive) of castaway, theorbtwo and getty. In total we had fourteen people in the office and three visitors including mdk's (Shadowcat's Mark Keating) son.
One of the youngest hackday attendees ponders his next moveIan Norton took charge of the day in his usual fashion by introducing everyone to each other, making a plan of people's names and where they sat and then organising the people into teams to start the work of coding. Mark as co-leader made sure the room was in respectable fashion with enough power points available, network access, wireless access, Amazon EC2 account setup, passwords and usernames available and beer and snacks in place.
There was already a set list of tasks prepared on the Wiki for people to grab and start to plan on and the three projects had a roadmap of what they would like to achieve both on the day and going forward. The projects were Oyster, Presenting Perl and Ironman. On the day we managed to make a start on all three with Presenting Perl having a back-end code re-write from mst (Shadowcat's Matt S. Trout) and tasks hacked on by castaway and theorbtwo (Jess Robinson and James Mastros), there was also input and a start on the social linking by Getty (Torsten Raudssus). The Ironman project was being managed by Ian Norton with help from OCharles (Oliver Charles, aCiD2) and the multi-talented castaway, theorbtwo and getty. The rest of the teams worked hard on the Oyster project as proposed by osfameron.
The discussions start in the project groupsThere were so many people stacked around our table that we eventually ran out of chairs, the usual members of the Shadowcat team were also in the office so we had to give them their chairs back. Thankfully epitaph (Shadowcat's C. Jackson) did a noble effort and russled up some folding chairs from home.
The room got so full that people were forced onto the floor
We brought in extra chairs for a crowded hacking tableThe events of the day were sponsored by Shadowcat and so there was a plethora of snacks already available when the hard at work coders arrived, and during the day pizza was supplied to sustain the weary. There was a short lunch break where some of the group headed to buy pie and clear fuzzed synapses with fruitful discussion.
Hard at code?My personal feeling is that this years Hackday built upon the strengths of last year and added elements that made it more efficient. There were still lessons to be learned which with further discussion and planning we will take into next year and no doubt work upon. As co-leader I would like to publically thank everyone who attended and involved themselves in the day. It was a success as a Perl social event and that is one of my primary reasons for supporting such initiatives. I also believe that the Perl Mongers of the North West and their growing list of honorary members and friends are an awesome* group.
*I don't casually use the word awesome, in this context and of these people I am in awe of their abilities and efforts.
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
Comments
Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
Personal Site: Mark Keating
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
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Posts
- May 07, 12
The first video of the family and friends trip to Paris last year posted to Mark’s YouTube channel:
You can go to the You Tube Channel to visit new ones or videos of other things.
- Mar 05, 12
There was a short list, and a very short list it was, for Elliott’s name. We had a much longer list with Ben, but he did steal two of the names from that list that were our favourites with Benjamin and Connor. So with Elliott we kept the list short, using one or two from the list for Ben though the finalists were unique to Elliott himself.
The two final contenders were: Elliott and Wesley, both of them having favourite SF/Fantasy links to them, with Wesley making two of Leigh’s top favourite things in Buffy and Princess Bride.
But eventually we settled on Elliott. There were some compelling reasons for this and we did consider all of them to have encouraged and finalised our decision.
- Elliott actually looks like an Elliott. True he did look a bit like a Wesley as well, but he was more Elliott like.
- Elliott is the character from ET a favoured film for Leigh.
- Elliott is the name of the Dragon in Pete’s Dragon and Elliott was born in the Chinese year of the Dragon, always try and get a little recursion into your life.
- Elliott is a Scottish name and it means Ruler (King) of the Elves.
- Elliott’s second (middle) name is James and Elliott James Keating has a nice metrical feel to it.
And for those of you who are concerned at the spelling and the notion that it is also a girl name, well the spelling is traditionally Scottish and the usage of Elliott as a girl’s name is very modern. But to be honest Leigh and I both preferred the double l and t in the name so it was used.
- Feb 10, 12
- Jan 27, 12
Once again this year we built a Lego Xmas village on our display shelf. there was the addition of an extra Christmas set in the shape of the newly released Lego post Office but we also decided to add elements that felt Christmassy to us.
So….
There are some Harry Potter figures running around the place, a Star Wars figure or two to view, quite obviously there is the Doctor, Amy and Roman Rory and I do believe a special Santa.
Enjoy the pictures…
- Dec 24, 11
So, yesterday Ben got to meet Santa (in the guise of a bearded Welsh chap, real beard, actually Welsh) at a local playgroup near to his Great Nans.
Layla was happy to meet Santa and rewarded everyone with a huge cheery smile, Ben was less pleased. He did me proud (this is not sarcasm), Santa was a strange man who smelt of smoke and Ben was not impressed by that and tried to refuse the present. I am truly glad that he wasn’t lured in…
The present was chocolate (inner sigh) which is at least better than some age inappropriate toy or cheap geegaw that would be broken in a few minutes. Since we have yet to introduce Ben to chocolate his mother has gleefully pawned (to mean owned) them.
Images below:
and a gallery of images taken on the day as well:
- Dec 17, 11
This year Benjamin has shown an interesting prescience and drawn an xmas tree. Well, he did a drawing and we think it looked a lot like an xmas tree and it is being used in all of the Christmas cards that we are handmaking this year (a limited run of 29) for various family and friends. Other cards will be sent but we only make a short run of cards (it is a slow process). I will post a picture of the cards at a later date, but for now here is Ben’s picture.
- Dec 08, 11
The header images used on this site are all from a selection taken with a mobile phone. They are meant to illustrate elements from our day to day life and I like the grainy look and feel and random nature of the choices.
My markkeating.me.uk site has far nicer header images in terms of quality as they were taken with a higher performance camera and lens but that wasn’t what i wanted to achieve with the header on this site.
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Photos
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Repositories
- A copy of a .svn repo so be wary of what you delete and push3 forks / 3 watchers / Pushed Apr 03, 12
- Documents relating to various community projects - most free to share, some with CC licence1 fork / 1 watcher
- A copy of a .svn repo so be wary of what you delete and push3 forks / 3 watchers / Pushed Apr 03, 12
- Documents relating to various community projects - most free to share, some with CC licence1 fork / 1 watcher
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Posts
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Posts
My son is in the phase of life where there’s only a single question on his lips - “Why?”
At dinner, he was asking the customary endless chain of whys when it suddenly dawned on me that my five year old was doing Root Cause Analysis.
Root Cause Analysis, is a method of solving problems…
Cat prefers to drink from a tap. No, I didn’t faucet. #pets #cats #punstomakeyougroan two pubs of the same cat tonight. (Taken with instagram)
How do you find reactions from fans or kids to Loki’s character?
TOM HIDDLESTON: Mark Ruffalo’s son. I kind of dedicate my performance to his son, his ten-year old, because he was on set a lot. Joss Whedon and Kevin Feige, the producer, they were enormously supportive on set. They were very complimentary when they liked something that I was doing. I would do a take, and they would say, “Awesome. You got it. Let’s — “ And Kevin Feige would be like, “God, that was great. Let’s move on.” And you get on with the day. The days that Mark’s son was there, he was like, “Awesome job, Tom. We got it. Let’s move on.” Kevin would say the same thing, and then Mark’s son would say, “Oh, my God! Tom! That was incredible! That was the most awesome thing I have ever seen!” And I’m like, “I am doing this for you.” And, you know, there were days when Mark would come in with him just to watch, because he wanted to watch. He’d be like, “I’m sorry. We’re here again. He just loves you.” And then you realize that that’s the power that these films can have.
It’s such a beautiful thing. It’s a really amazing privilege.
- This has to be Sir Humphrey
This sounds like they stole it straight from the mouth of Sir Humphrey from Yes Minister:
“Our position on this hasn’t changed,” said one senior official. “The idea of a risk register is they are frank information for minsters on which to make decisions. If, instead of being confidential, risk registers are now effectively public documents, the nature of the advice would inevitably be different and not necessarily the advice we would require.”
You can’t have the public knowing what ministers know, there would be an outrage. The public know best when they are kept ignorant…
(Conversation is concerning the publication of the NHS ‘At Risk Register’).
Jesus, Apple even sound smug in their welcoming message. I guess this is all smugness squared which equals Applerfection - the Apple Perfection.
- Cash Dog can feck off
Dear cashdog.com stop spamming my phone with your shit offers. I don’t want a cash loan from untrustworthy shites like you who use crappy tactics.
Oh, also I will not text STOP and pay your unmentioned fee for that. Yet another way of screwing me.
Dear regulator, please grow some balls and implement a good an easy to access service to target shits like this.
Help me open my Gallery. #gallery #instacanvas #gotothelink instacanv.as/shadowcat_mdk (Taken with instagram)
How to keep a ratty child interested. The iPad of fun things. #kids (Taken with instagram)
It may be a wet bank holiday, he may be sick, but splashing in puddles is a given right. #kids #climate (Taken with instagram)
Got my Geek-face on today. Just because. #geekwear #geekchić notice the GCi t-shirt - I have mentor-wear (Taken with instagram)
Part of my Heronimus Bosch sculpture (a piece from The Temptation of Saint Anthony). #art (Taken with instagram)
Leigh found this in her pocket and has no idea who wrote it or why. Do you know? #weirdpocketfinds (Taken with instagram)
Ben wearing the new Jammies and dressing gown he got from Nana for Easter. #newborn #kids #notchocolatepresents (Taken with instagram)
Elliott and Ben sharing a trolley, mush to Elliott’s delight. #kids #newborn (Taken with instagram)
Fried white pepper duck on a dressed cous cous salad with a raspberry, port and chilli reduction. #foodporn #cooking - guess who decided to take the day off work. (Taken with instagram)
Cow and Sheep get tired of the farm and try their hand at firemen with Pooh. #toys (Taken with instagram)
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Posts
- Feb 12, 12
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Posts
- May 07, 12
Another video that has been posted of Elliott to his Daddy’s YouTube channel. This one is a funny and tongue in cheek video. Elliott was not harmed in the making of this.
You can go to the You Tube Channel to visit new ones or videos of other things.
- May 07, 12
This is the first video that has been posted of Elliott to his Daddy’s YouTube channel:
You can go to the You Tube Channel to visit new ones or videos of other things.
- Apr 18, 12
The week continued to decline as Elliott had his first Doctor’s examination. He performed very well, the development was on track for a child of his age (actually about 5 weeks since he was born at 37 weeks) His walking instinct was strong, though that could have been the rush to get away from the doctor. And the rest of the examination showed he was healthy.
- Apr 18, 12
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- Feb 12, 12
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Info
- Managing Director at Shadowcat Systems LimitedInformation Technology and Services | Lancaster, United Kingdom, GBSummaryI have worked as a designer and Internet Interface designer with several years experience of design software for print and online (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw, Inkscape, The Gimp, Flash etc.); I have a good working knowledge of HTML and CSS and will program using these languages from a text editor.
I also have worked as a project manager and small team manager with responsibilities for IT development and planning in a small business.
Currently I manage a small business focusing on software and open source project development and consultation. This has led to experience in management, training, accounts (including works payroll), project planning, scheduling and timetabling, promotion, marketing and research into community and joint project ventures.
My current goal is to develop my company into a more prominent publisher of open source and bespoke software and to instigate new projects and challenges.
Eventually I want to live near a beach and work from a laptop with a good wireless connection and a view of the sea :)Specialties: Salary negotiation and budget planning; css and html standards; internet development and planning; company goals and achievements; project scheduling; marketing and promotionExperience- Dec 2008 - Presentco-Leader / North-West England Perl Mongers
- Aug 2008 - PresentOrganiser, Supreme Overlord / London Perl WorkshopThe London Perl Workshop is the premier Perl event on the UK calendar, and known throughout the world. Mark has been the organiser for this event since 2008.
- Mar 2008 - PresentDirector/Secretary / Enlightened Perl Organisation
- Apr 2005 - PresentManaging Director / Shadowcat Systems Limited
- Apr 2005 - PresentManaging Director / Shadowcat Systems Limited
- Apr 2005 - PresentManaging Director / Shadowcat Systems Limited
Education-
1992 - 1995St. Martin's CollegeBA (Hons) in Literature, Education
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1991 - 1995St. Martin's CollegeEnglish
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1989 - 1991Padgate College, WarringtonEnglish Language, English Literature
Additional Information-
Websites:
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Repositories
- A copy of a .svn repo so be wary of what you delete and push3 forks / 3 watchers / Pushed Apr 03, 12
- Documents relating to various community projects - most free to share, some with CC licence1 fork / 1 watcher
- A copy of a .svn repo so be wary of what you delete and push3 forks / 3 watchers / Pushed Apr 03, 12
- Documents relating to various community projects - most free to share, some with CC licence1 fork / 1 watcher
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Wall
- Mark Keating has just announced the London Perl Workshop, to be held at the University of Westminster's Cavendish Campus on 24th November 2012. Once again Mark is the lead organiser for this year's event.
- Antique Perl: http://youtu.be/orALgaLKqPc is the latest featured video on the Shadowcat YouTube page. MST doing crazy and cool stuff with Perl.
- Shadowcat Systems posted a new favourite video: http://www.youtube.com/user/ShadowcatSystems?feature=mhee - Ian Norton (@idnorton) talks about converting 16 thousand mailboxes.
- Jess Robinson, @castaway on Twitter, has applied for a grant from the TPF: http://news.perlfoundation.org/2012/05/grant-application-improving-cr.html add comments now. Jess is the documents manager for many important projects and is writing the new book on DBIx::Class, she currently consults for Shadowcat Systems, #perl #theperlfoundation
- New featured video on the Shadowcat You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ShadowcatSystems - Stevan Little talks about "A Brave New Perl World" - Stevan is an engaging and entertaining speaker and this is a good talk about the roadmap for core Perl development.
- New news on Shadowcat Site: http://shadow.cat/news/archive/2012/february/yapcna/ - Matt S. Trout and Mark Keating to speak at YAPC::NA. Learn what we will be talking about this year and when you can see us. #yapc #Perl #ShadowcatSystems
- Latest news article on the Shadowcat site: http://shadow.cat/news/archive/2012/april/beer-matt/ - Matt S. Trout has a new promotional beermat for 2012. Make sure you grab him this year and demand your beermat from him :) #shadowcatsystems #promotion
- The new featured video on Shadowcat Systems Youtube Homepage is Mike Whitaker's Introduction to Moose. https://www.youtube.com/user/ShadowcatSystems/featured recorded at the Italian Perl Workshop. A really good introduction to this important development in Perl 5.
- Official Birthday Post from Shadowcat Systems: http://shadow.cat/news/archive/2012/april/hopi-bofdi/ - we celebrate and are happy to be working in the #Perl community.
- Shadowcat Systems is officially 7 Years Old today, lucky 7, what sort of gift should we get it?
- Zefram's awesome "Why Time is Difficult" video is the current featured video on our channel page: http://www.youtube.com/user/ShadowcatSystems/featured - This is an essential watch if you are fond of time, science, history, the evolution of ideas and how one works those out if you are to measure something as odd as time in an accurate manner. Pure brilliance, and i now need to watch it again.
- News item on SC site: http://shadow.cat/news/archive/2012/march/perlqa-sponsors/ looking forward to the Perl QA Hackathon - why we sponsored this important event and hoping the attendees have a great time.
- I have uploaded the final group of videos (2012) to the Perl Oasis playlist on the Shadowcat Systems You Tube channel: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL874E12D63A9D61AB&feature=plcp
- Videos from the first two years (2010 & 2011) of Perl Oasis that we sponsored and attended have been uploaded to the Shadowcat Systems You Tube Channel, 35 videos so far, 2012 will follow soon.
- The final batch (2009) of London Perl Workshop videos are now available in the Shadowcat Channel on You Tube in this playlist. Again there are some excellent talks amongst this group, though every speaker did the organisers proud.
- Second group of Videos (2010) added to the Shadowcat Systems YouTube Feed. Some real gems.
- Still one of the funniest Lightning Talks I have ever seen (or been mentioned in), Dave Cross' being wickedly satirical.
- We are changing the way we publish and promote the videos we take and present. This is a fledgling time so bear with us, we will likely be altering the whole concept, though this is under trial and things may revert to how they were before.
- Mark Keating (@shadowcat_mdk) and Matthew Trout (@shadowcat_mst) double head (one head follows the other) a presentation on Software and Community, all about Free Software. First presented at the Manchester Free Software Society meeting in January 2012. Mark's talk is first and is called Embrace Your Community.
- New news item on the Shadowcat site: http://shadow.cat/news/archive/2012/march/osd/ Shadowcat's Matt S. Trout (@shadowcat_mst on Twitter) will be speaking at Open Source Days in Copenhagen this weekend. His talk will be on Elegant Remote System Administration.
- New news item on the Shadowcat site: http://shadow.cat/news/archive/2012/february/cluj/ Matt S. Trout (Twitter: @shadowcat_mst) to speak at the inaugural cluj.pm meeting in March, sponsored by Evozon Systems: #ShadowcatSystems #Perl #Community
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Wall
- We are pleased to announce that Paul Johnson's grant application, Improving Devel::Cover, has been successful. The grant will be split in two phases, the second phase starting after the completion of the first. http://news.perlfoundation.org/2012/05/grant-accepted-improving-devel.html
- Jess Robinson, @castaway on Twitter, has applied for a grant from the TPF: http://news.perlfoundation.org/2012/05/grant-application-improving-cr.html add comments now. Jess is the documents manager for many important projects and is writing the new book on DBIx::Class, she currently consults for Shadowcat Systems, #perl #theperlfoundation
- If you are on Google + as well as Facebook, you can add The Perl Foundation to your circles: https://plus.google.com/b/114683895236011840735/
- Going to YAPC::NA - want to get into the VIP section of the Perl Foundation Nightclub party - read on: http://blog.yapcna.org/post/19732641022/we-will-be-having-a-perl-foundation-party-at
- If you 'like' this page you might also 'like': Perl Google Summer of Code (https://www.facebook.com/perlgsoc) - CPAN (https://www.facebook.com/pages/CPAN-Comprehensive-Perl-Archive-Network/215830365101437) - MetaCPAN (https://www.facebook.com/metacpan) - Presenting Perl (https://www.facebook.com/PresentingPerl) - Perl Weekly (https://www.facebook.com/PerlWeekly). You can also join the groups: Perl Mongers (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2331173193/) - Perl Developers (https://www.facebook.com/groups/100858186649890/) - Enlightened Perl Organisation (https://www.facebook.com/groups/37991304299/)
- I have given the skin for http://www.yapc.org a fresh lick of paint (i.e. a newer look) and I will get around to updating and revitalising the content - a small start has been made on this already.
- w00t! Andreas de Pretis becomes our 1,000th like. Welcome to all of you. So how quickly can we get to 2,000 :)
- New writing: http://mdk.per.ly/2012/02/06/gsoc-2012/ The Perl Foundation will once again participate in Google Summer of Code. We are seeking your help with ideas and maybe as volunteers to distribute media, sign as mentors and find students.
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Wall
- London Perl Workshop 2012: Announcement #1 It is my great pleasure to announce the date of this year's London Perl Workshop (the United Kingdom's Perl Workshop), which will be held on: Saturday 24th November 2012 University of Westminster Cavendish Square Campus WHAT IS IT? The London Perl Workshop is a free one-day conference in central London, UK. LPW is the UK's Premier Perl Event and so is also known as the United Kingdom Perl Workshop (UKPW). In 2012 HOW CAN I ATTEND, OR PRESENT A TALK? If you would like to come then please log in on the site and click that you will attend, this is an important step for us and our sponsors so we can judge numbers for the events and activities. If you are not already registered with Act you can do so on this site, it is free and easy to do. If you have attended a Perl event recently, with the exception of YAPC::NA::2012 who maintain their own database, you will probably already have a login with Act, otherwise you will need to create a new user first. You can do this by using the links in the navigation menu on the website which will soon be live on http://www.londonperlworkshop.org.uk. If you would like to speak then please submit your talk on the website as soon as possible - the earlier you submit, the better for the organisation of the event. If you want to check on specific requirements or have an idea for a type of talk or event then please contact the organisers. IS THERE A THEME? The theme for the London Perl Workshop will be 25 Years of Perl, and will focus on the manner in which Perl is used in the commercial world and the strength of Perl for development in an enterprise environment; we would also like to see talks on the usage of Perl in the past 25 years and the evolution of the environment. You can use any aspect of Perl such as Camelia, Rakudo, Raptor, etc. Speakers are invited to talk on any subject that relates to this theme, though we will also accept talks on other subjects. WORKSHOPS? This year we hope to have access to three workshop rooms and would like to run as many workshops as possible to introduce new users to the world of Perl and to refresh the skills of those wishing to engage with the latest developments in the Perl world. If you wish to submit a workshop please use the same submission form as the talks, please note that workshops will typically be 60, 120 or 240 minutes in length. Proposal Deadline: Friday 19 October 2012 Speaker Notification: Monday 22 October 2012 There will be further announcements detailing the launch of the website, at which point the call for papers, login and further event details will be open. SPONSORSHIP Each year we are required to fund the conference rooms, lecture theatres and workshop rooms, as well as arrange and cover the costs for many other activities normally associated with the London Perl Workshop such as the famous sponsored beer after the conference. We will once again be hosted by the Department of Electronic, Communication and Software Engineering who have secured us a generous discount on the normal university room rates and who will hopefully play a greater part in the event this year with activities that coincide with the workshop. If you wish to sponsor the event we have several basic packages (others packages may be tailored to your specific needs), please forward this to all sponsors or persons you feel would be willing to help sponsor this event: All Sponsors (minimum sponsorship £250) will receive: * A page on the wiki; * Their logo on the website and in all related marketing; * A write-up by Mark in all advertising and related promotion; * A page in the Conference Booklet (A5); * Their logo in the back of the conference booklet; * Their logo on the Conference banner; Lecture Room Sponsors (Sponsorship cost: £500 each room, Minimum: 1 room) will receive all the above and: * The ability to brand the room with posters/banners advertising them; * A fifteen minute introductory spot in their room on any subject they wish; Workshop Room Sponsors (Sponsorship cost: £500 each room, Minimum: 3 rooms) will receive all the above and: * The ability to brand the room with posters/banners advertising them; * A fifteen minute introductory spot in their room on any subject they wish; Lecture Hall Sponsors (Sponsorship cost: £1000 each room, Minimum: 2 lecture theatres) will receive all the above: * Their logo given prime position on the Conference banner (Larger and near the top) * Brand the lecture theatre with their promotional material; * A 20 minute slot at the conference (in a lecture theatre) on any subject they wish; Coffee Break Sponsor (Sponsorship cost: £500) * Ability to brand the coffee area with posters/banners (needs to be negotiated for what will be allowed) Evening Sponsors (Principal Evening Sponsorship cost: £1,000, Minimum: 1 event needed) as 'All Sponsors' plus: * Ability to brand the pub with posters/banners (needs to be negotiated for what will be allowed) * A 10 minute slot to address the crowd (they will be drinking your beer and food so expect cheering/noise) Marketing Sponsor (Sponsorship cost: tba, Minimum: 1 needed) as 'All Sponsors' plus: * Their Logo given prime position on the Conference banner (Larger and near the top) * Their logo on the front page of the conference booklet - as sponsor of the booklet * Principal promotion opportunities to be discussed with the sponsor As always if more than one companies wish to join together and have a room together 2*£250 minimum, they will both be allowed to brand the room with posters and the time slot will be shared. We are also open to discussing other ways to integrate your promotion and ideas into the conference. We would be delighted if you wish to attend or promote your company further, run job advertising/recruitment. If you wish to sponsor less than the "minimum" sponsorship we can discuss an appropriate package to suit your sponsorship. My intention is to begin promoting the event as soon as possible to maximise the exposure of the conference and of our sponsors. We will also accept small donations from the community and more information on this will follow in a later release. OUR SPONSORS We have several sponsors who have already joined us at this time: antibody MX Contributor towards the evening event (as always :) ). AntibodyMX provides a hosted antispam and antivirus email filtering service based entirely on a proven open source platform. Perl being one very important component. Users of the platform see a near-instant, near-total reduction in the amount of spam, phishing and malware content arriving at the mail server. AntibodyMX also provides onsite mail filtering, white-label filtering solutions to ISPs and will soon be launching CellMX, a filtering service for remote and mobile workers. Enlightened Perl Organisation The Enlightened Perl Organisation is dedicated to the promotion of Perl (in particular Raptor Perl or Perl 5) as a production language that is suited to an enterprise environment. The EPO will be providing banking and organisation facilities for the London Perl Workshop for the third year running. Magnum Solutions Magnum yearly run a free training course in the morning during the LPW. We are initially keeping this open to UoW students only, in order to help promote Perl to new audiences. For full information on Magnum's training courses please consult their website. Shadowcat Systems Shadowcat Systems is a developer, sponsor of, and contributor to open source software projects including Catalyst, the elegant web framework, and DBIx::Class, an object-orientated database abstraction library. Shadowcat provides consultancy, training and support for these projects; systems management and automation; the design and implementation of network architecture; the development of proprietary and open source custom web applications; and offers Perl refactoring and project crisis management. Shadowcat Systems are based in the United Kingdom but we deliver solutions to a global community of clients via onsite supervision along with traditional and internet based communications. University of Westminster As last year we are graciously being hosted by Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE) at the University of Westminster. We cannot exagerate how grateful we are for their support of Perl and Open Source in London. CONTACT Organisational contact: Mark at m.keating(at)shadowcat.co.uk -mdk
- Second group of Videos (2010) added to the Shadowcat Systems YouTube Feed. Some real gems.
- All hail the most excellent @missbarbell for getting the LPW Survey results online :) http://t.co/VHc100vo
- London Perl Workshop videos are now live: http://www.presentingperl.org/lpw2011/ on Presenting Perl. Thanks to all the speakers.
- New writing on the London Perl Workshop: Reflections on the day itself http://link.shadow.cat/tOEXWM
- Note that on the day there will only be 150 sponsorship bags and limited numbers of items so the earlier you register the more chance you have to collect items.
- We have now passed 250 people registered for the London Perl Workshop: http://shadowc.at/vOjZnh
- There is a small news item concerning schedule changes on the site and maximum room sizes: http://conferences.yapceurope.org/lpw2011/news/796
- We have passed 130 people signed up for the conference this year, http://shadowc.at/vOjZnh
- Social Event after the London Perl Workshop 2011
- The London Perl Workshop schedule for the days' events is finally online. Please make sure that if you are attending a talk you mark so on your personal schedule so that we can judge attendance numbers and move talks between rooms if necessary.
- Over 200 people have signed up (registered) for this year's London Perl Workshop. If you want to attend please make sure you do so as well as it helps us to judge requirements eventhough we accept anyone who wants to walk in on the day.
- New news item: http://bit.ly/o17Np1 on the latest newsletter which is on the wiki: http://bit.ly/q9i9j2.
- There are some awful rumours of wifi being available at London Perl Workshop, oh dear, what can be happening? Find the truth out here: http://bit.ly/oHYFEe
- Net-A-Porter sponsor training session from Gabor Szabo at London Perl Workshop: news http://bit.ly/r4gn9n - the session will focus on writing tests and TAP (Test Anything Protocol).
- London Perl Workshop (#lpw2011) http://t.co/3GVWPKqE t-shirts now available online, various designs/colours.
- If you are attending London Perl Workshop http://bit.ly/rr9qEr make sure to register gauging numbers for free food, coffee and beer!
- London Perl Workshop 2011
- The latest newsletter will soon be hitting the email boxes but you can view it online at: http://bit.ly/pZ05Y7
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- logo-competiton/, MetaCPAn logo competition has only two weeks left to enter
- This is cool, thanks to all the people on Twitter shouting it out: http://mapofcpan.org/#/ especially Grant McLean: "grantmnz: CPAN - As Seen From Space! perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_… #perl"
- This is hot, visit: https://metacpan.org/ and see the future of interacting with CPAN via the browser. Still in beta but already turning heads and shaping hearts, visit, contribute, and 'Like'/'Share' - http://www.facebook.com/pages/MetaCPAN/167803619958967?ref=ts&sk=wall
- The website of CPAN now in new design
- Welcome to CPAN on Facebook a YAPFP :)
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- New writing on my Perly blog: http://mdk.per.ly/2012/03/05/gsoc-update-and-flyers/ More information on the The Perl Foundation's bid for GSoC 2012 and flyers to help spread the word. Please read, download flyers and print and distibute them, hopefully we can translate some this year into other languages and make this the best year for GSoC. We Need Your Help ;).
- New writing: http://mdk.per.ly/2011/12/27/google-code-in-fit-the-third/ the Perl Foundations efforts for the Google Code-in gets a second analysis. This time Mark Keating makes the effort of adding pretty pie charts to give broad stroke pictures to the figures.
- Originally posted by Marcus Ramberg: The GCI students continue to impress. Here's an excellent SQLite backed Mojolicious Forum example. http://t.co/xbPjvj8j
- I have been writing about our efforts for this year's Google Code-in, please take a look at http://mdk.per.ly/2011/11/22/google-code-in-fit-the-first/ - which describes the efforts and start of this year's initiative. Then look at: http://mdk.per.ly/2011/12/04/google-code-in-fit-the-second/ - which gives you an analysis of the first twelve days of student participation. We would also like to involve as many of you in our efforts and there are a number of ways in which you can still involve yourself.
- This weekend is the Google Summer of Code Mentor's Conference, there is still no word as to whether the program will be run again next year. However I do hope to sync and talk with the mentors from TPF and Parrot about this year's Google Code In (GCI) - now where is Wes...
- Help promote the efforts for next years Google Summer of Code and the Perl world. Forward these flyers or better yet, print some out and have them pinned up, handed out and generally distributed everywhere: http://www.perlfoundation.org/press_releases - colleges, libraries, universities, work notice boards, community shops, tech meetings...
- New events calendar tracking when reporta are made, when events occur and regular scheduled stuff: http://www.mdk.me.uk/GSoC/
- Congrats to Moritz Onken, Hugmeir, Marc Green, Tadeusz Sośnierz, André Walker, Carlos Sosa on being accepted for GSoC 2011 on behalf of the Perl Foundation
- Next set of deadlines to observe: APRIL 22: 1. All mentors must be signed up/student proposals matched with a mentor - 07:00 UTC 2. Student ranking/scoring deadline. 17:00 UTC 3. IRC meeting to resolve any outstanding duplicate accepted students - 19:00 UTC #gsoc See: http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2011/timeline
- Official student application process ends today at 19:00 UTC, just a third of a day away.
- There are just two days left to submit a proposal and potentially become a TPF student for GSOC.
- 67 monthly active users - 325 visits this week - Thanks to all supporters :)
- There are just 5 days to sign up to GSoC and work on perl for the Summer
- Post on mdk's per.ly blog: http://mdk.per.ly/2011/04/02/sign-up-to-perl-gsoc-now/ - caution this is a duplicate of the TPF blog post, please link to one or the other not both :)
- Guest post on TPF (thanks to RAFL): http://news.perlfoundation.org/2011/04/sign-up-to-perl-gsoc-now.html
- Guest Post on Gabriel Weinberg's blog: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/04/perl-submissions-for-google-summer-of-code.html
- Don't forget to 'Like' this page!
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- Feb 12, 12
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Posts
- May 07, 12
Another video that has been posted of Elliott to his Daddy’s YouTube channel. This one is a funny and tongue in cheek video. Elliott was not harmed in the making of this.
You can go to the You Tube Channel to visit new ones or videos of other things.
- May 07, 12
This is the first video that has been posted of Elliott to his Daddy’s YouTube channel:
You can go to the You Tube Channel to visit new ones or videos of other things.
- Apr 18, 12
The week continued to decline as Elliott had his first Doctor’s examination. He performed very well, the development was on track for a child of his age (actually about 5 weeks since he was born at 37 weeks) His walking instinct was strong, though that could have been the rush to get away from the doctor. And the rest of the examination showed he was healthy.
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Shadowcat, Lancaster
Shadowcat, Lancaster
- Lancaster, Lancashire LA1 4XQ, UK
...is married to Leigh and has two sons called Benjamin Connor and Elliott James, they all live in Lancaster, UK with a cat called Darwin and several tropical fish. He stumbled sideways into the magnificent world of Perl by way of linguistics, literature, a publishing company and an undefined close association with Matt Trout. He is a neophyte evangelist of modern Perl and an advocate of Enlightenment thinking.
He is a Writer, Photographer, Cat-Herder.
Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited.
Director/Secretary of the Enlightened Perl Organisation.
Marketing Chair of the The Perl Foundation Marketing Committee.
Marketing and PR for The Perl Foundation Steering Committee.
co-Leader of North West England Perl Mongers.
Organiser of London Perl Workshop (UKPW).
co-Organiser of the Dynamic Languages Conference.
