transfixed but not dead! » Blogging

Blogging Milestone

draegtun — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:13:06 +0000

When I started this blog my “ideal” scenario was to post weekly. However my “pragmatic” operand was to at least post every month.

So with a broad grin of achievement I see that yesterday I passed the milestone of posting a blog entry on every single month for a whole year!

Always nice to give one self a little pat on the back from time to time. But I also have to thank Perl Iron Man for providing the required stimulus at the right moment

I’ll try not to rest on my laurels so I will see if I can raise the gears up a few notches over next few months (surely I can become more than a paper man!).

Before I go a couple of recent blogging changes that I can’t take any credit for whatsoever are:

WordPress syntax highlighting as changed again. Perl code is now is a more subtle nicer looking font
iPhone / iPod Touch users will now see a tailored rendering of this site. Looks very snazzy.

/I3az/

Perl Blogs

draegtun — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:45:18 +0000

Tim Bunce posted about Perl Blogs last week talking in part about the sorry state of results
that comes from Google when you perform a “perl blog” search.

To help rectify this Tim has added the phrases “perl blog” & “perl programming” to his blog page.
I’ve also done the same to my sidebar and hopefully more Perl Blogs can follow Tim’s lead to help get rid of Google sickly results.

Of course there are additional motives behind all this. Now whether your concerned about Perl’s position in TIOBE results or not it is annoying that they have a few flaws in their processes which can paint a very inaccurate picture.

Clearly it is a concern to The Perl Foundation because Richdard Dice (President of TPF) in a recent interview in $foo magazine mentioned about opening up some dialogue with TIOBE.

Perhaps the TPF can do something about it. And we can also help by doing our little bit.

However more can be done. Here’s are some Google search results which you may find interesting….

    site:cpan.org                       1,070,000 results
    site:cpan.org perl                  495,000 results
    site:cpan.org +"perl programming"   1260 results!

If I’m reading this correctly then only 0.12% of all the CPAN pages have the phrase “Perl Programming” in!

TIOBE use +”perl programming” in their searches. Now imagine if a phrase like….

CPAN – The Perl Programming Archive

was added to every page on CPAN

NB. And remember that CPAN pages are also mirrored on other websites!

I think it makes sense that every CPAN page is included by TIOBE in their analysis. If pages like these don’t show the popularity of a language then what does!

Bumping your TIOBE ratings like this isn’t new because do you recall the rise of Delphi from end of last year? Well this was due in part by the Delphi community making a similar concerted effort. Also it was due to fact of an emergence of a shiny new Google product and TIOBE having “Chrome” has part of the Delphi search criteria

/I3az/

PS. On a slightly related note I have also added a Perlsphere badge to this blogs sidebar.

Big in Japan

draegtun — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:46:07 +0000

I regularly skim through a Delicious.com RSS feed of Perl tagged sites/pages.

Often a few gems crop up that might otherwise have been missed. What consistently jumps out is the high number of Japanese blogs about Perl which often contain high quality modern examples of Perl code & usage.

This shouldn’t really come as a shock because YAPC::Asia is the biggest Perl conference in the world and the recent formation of the Japan Perl Association only confirms the presence of a thriving community.

Below is a list of Japanese Perl blogs which I now follow:

/I3az/

PS. Unfortunately I don’t speak Japanese. However I do find that Google Translate does a reasonable job (though it does tend to muck up the Perl code a little bit).

Transfixed & Iron Man

draegtun — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:32:05 +0000

Have you read this Enlightened Perl Organisation blog post called Iron Man?

If not then please do. (Warning: strong language used)

This got me off my proverbial backside to do the following….

Write yesterdays blog post about London.pm tech talks before it became stale.
Move blog to use transfixedbutnotdead.com domain directly ($10 per year with WordPress)
Added transfixed URL to Perl5 Wiki Blog page.
Also while there added a few other Perl blogs that I knew about.
Cleaned up Transfixed blog categories & tags and amended all my old posts accordingly
Submitted Transfixed blog to Perlsphere The Perl firehose!

Now if I think I can post a blog every week then I might just enter Transfixed blog into the ring

/I3az/

Image is by Mark Keating EPO. Seeking permission

Another new blog theme!

draegtun — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:31:46 +0000

Didn’t feel comfortable enough with last change and this new free Vigilance theme seemed far more appropriate.

/I3az/

PS. Logo image is a morning summer sky in Wicklow, Ireland courtesy of the Father-in-Law.