User since: Aug 13, 2005 at 14:58 UTC (20 years ago) Last here: Mar 30, 2023 at 15:51 UTC (2 years ago) Experience: 16332 Level: Abbot (19) Writeups: 794 Location: Singapore User's localtime: May 18, 2025 at 08:04 CST Scratchpad: View For this user: Search nodes

It's occurred to me recently that in my forty-odd years on this planet I've been to a few places and done a few things that some people might find vaguely interesting. So I figured that I may as well inflict a few of those on any poor unsuspecting souls that stumble across this page. I may add to this list from time to time as I recall things.

• I've signed the visitors book in the Old Homestead Cave on the Nullarbor Plain.
• I've been to Utopia
• I lived for six months (twice) on a tiny remote Tropical Island, with only 3 other people (overhead pic)
• I've ridden a motorcycle (Honda XL600) across the Tanami Desert, 1100km from Halls Creek to Alice Springs (and back).
• I've seen Mt Fuji from the 47th floor of the Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo.
• I've also ridden a motorcycle through the Bungle Bungle's (same bike).
• I've done my weekly grocery shopping on the Tea & Sugar Train at Forrest (no trees).
• I've been to a Boat Race that was cancelled, because there was water in the river.
• I've been from one side of Australia to the other. I've been in the middle (all five of them),and I've been on the top. But I've never made it to the bottom.

I'm Australian, but I've lived in Singapore for the past ~567 years. I work for a company that does, er.. stuff. I used to manage their NOC, but now I do other stuff. It's kinda fun.

I'm not a professional programmer by any stretch of the imagination. I'm more what you would term a Perl enthusiast. Which of course means that I know just enough to be dangerous :)

Apart from being addicted to Perlmonks, I also devour Perl books. These are the ones I currently own:

• Programming Perl - 3rd Edition (Wall, Christiansen & Orwant). If you only ever buy one Perl book, then it should be this one. (And that's been scientifically proven :p)
• Perl Best Practices - (Conway). After The Camel, this is my 2nd favourite. Being mostly self-taught, and not really coming from a programming or development background - this book was a godsend for me. It taught me how to write code that others could read and maintain - even myself!
• Perl Cookbook - (Christiansen & Torkington). Another of my favourites. Plenty of useful stuff inside.
• Learning Perl - 4th Edition (Schwartz). Like many others, this is the one I started with.
• Perl 5 Pocket Reference - 3rd Edition (Vromans). Very handy for when you just need to look something up quickly.
• Advanced Perl Programming - 2nd Edition (Cozens). This one was not quite what I expected it to be. Rather than teaching advanced techniques, it focuses more on how to use modules to get various jobs done. Perhaps there's a message there :)
• Intermediate Perl - (Schwartz, foy & Phoenix). I only recently acquired this one, and I really wish I had bought it a year or so ago. All that time I spent tearing my hair out trying to grok references :/
• Perl Hacks - (chromatic, Conway & Poe). Great book!
• Programming the Perl DBI - (Descartes & Bunce). Okay, I'll admit that this is probably the only one I bought just because it had "Perl" in the title. And because it's published by O'Reilly. And because Tim Bunce is the co-author. What more needs to be said? It's gotta be a great book and I'm sure I'll find a use for it one day :)
• CGI Programming with Perl - (Guelich, Gundavaram & Birznieks). I do my fair share of CGI s‎crip‎ting, so this one was a must have.
• Randal Schwartz's Perls of Wisdom - (Schwartz). A collection of magazine articles from the wizard himself. I bought this one quite some time ago, before I was aware that all of his articles are available online. But I'm still glad I have it :)
• Higher Order Perl - (Dominus). I have to admit that a lot of the material in this book is way out of my league. I've been working my way through it for several months now. It's tough going.
• Web Development with Apache and Perl - (Petersen).
• Perl Core Language - Little Black Book - 2nd Edition (Holzner). This one I'm not so sure about. It's got plenty of good stuff, but some of the techniques seem a little dodgy. I don't know if I would recommend it - certainly not to somebody new to Perl.
• Mastering Regular Expressions - (Friedl). Not strictly a Perl book, but an absolute must have for any serious Perl programmer.

One day I'd like to become a CPAN author. I'm not yet, because:

• a) I don't consider myself proficient enough, and
• b) I haven't yet found anything I'd like to write a module for :)