February 3, 2010
Please, Help Me to Be Cool!

Recently there’s a very interesting thread in Planet Perl about marketing or we suck at web design:

I fully agree with those posts: the picture you show about your project is as important as the project itself. I think this is true in all the RoR projects I’ve seen so far. In fact, looking for a Trac substitute, I knew Redmine was a RoR application just for its appearance (well, I was lucky… it could have been a Django based application as well hehe).

How many times you have tried an application because of the screenshots? Yes, it looks cool, let’s make a try.

The problem is that not every developer has the skills or the good taste to make a cool website to support his project, and that sadly may affect the project success.

So, I bet there are good designers out there that want to contribute to the open source community. Would you adopt a project or developer?

PS: I would have liked to post a comment in the cited posts, but I don’t have an account. You guys should think about allowing comments of non-registered users.

by jjm on 4:39pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyL-SU3
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Filed under: Perl Design be cool website project success 
January 22, 2010
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems."

—

From Jamie Zawinski, on comp.lang.emacs.

Seems that the now they have two problems kind of quote can be quite adaptable (s/regular expressions/threads/), but today it’s as true as back in 1997.

The now they have two problems is one of my favourite, followed by History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as XML (a Karl Marx quote evolved).

by jjm on 11:22pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyKlZGN
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Filed under: XML Zawinski rules quotes regex Programming Perl 
January 18, 2010
About Broken Links

This is not my first blog, I’ve been writing a blog in Spanish since October 2003. It has some big numbers: 1280 posts, 2561 comments and 58 trackbacks.

And recently I noticed it had broken links. Lots.

So I’ve programmed a small tool to help me clean out the posts of broken links: linkcheck.pl.

I’m sure the tool isn’t perfect, but it has worked great with my blog and has found 4544 links, and 611 were broken. I say had and were because now they’re over thanks to linkcheck.pl.

The tool is simple: connects to your database and gets the posts. Then it looks for links and checks them, and if any URL it’s broken, it’s replaced with the text in the link. Simple and neat.

by jjm on 10:14pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyKMwEQ
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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: Perl Link linkcheck.pl broken clean blog tool 
January 7, 2010
Mojo. The web in a box!

An awesome presentation about Mojo.

by jjm on 2:44pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyJAviR
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Filed under: Perl Slides Mojoliciuos Mojo Use Perl 
November 12, 2009
Perl Website Redesign

I love the download part: Unix-like (included), Max OS X (included), Windows (download needed). Very often we forget that Perl is already there.

by jjm on 9:10pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyEQOyW
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Filed under: Perl website redesign 
October 22, 2009
Which editor(s) or IDE(s) are you using for Perl development?

I was wondering almost the same, and Gabor Szabo’s survey answers (by now) that vim is the big winner.

I will think about it, may be it’s the tool (tm) once again.

by jjm on 6:52pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyD7pP2
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Filed under: Perl IDE 
October 4, 2009
Yet Another URL Shortening Service

Today has been intense. Well, in fact these have been two intense weekends of programming, ending today with code release.

The problem is, after all this work, I wrote a very long post in Spanish, and now I’m too tired to make the same here. So I’ll be lean and mean.

After some years playing with web platform at work, I realize that I’ve never developed a web for fun besides my old and venerable blog (made in PHP in 2003, that’s ages ago).

I don’t want to talk about the idea I’d like to implement, because I know myself and maybe this will end in nothing, but the first step in my plan was to find the right tool. I don’t know yet if it’s the right tool, but I’ve found Mojolicious quite interesting so far.

Anyway, I’ve published a new URL shortening service (a simple project to start playing with a framework), and I’ve released the source code as free software.

It has all the must have in this kind of services, and it allowed me to try Mojolicious and Class::DBI (my first try ever with an ORM!).

by jjm on 10:32pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyCC68a
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Filed under: Perl Mojolicious ln.usebox.net URL 
September 21, 2009
Bootylicious, one-file blog engine software on Mojo steroids!

I’m very intrigued with Mojo Web Framework and Mojolicious, but I miss some real life example. I don’t know if on-file blog counts as real life, but sure it’s an example.

by jjm on 3:09pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyBXeDf
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Filed under: Perl Mojolicious MVC Blog Bootylicious 
August 27, 2009

Nautilus Flickr Uploader 0.01 Screencast

My English is not that bad, but I thought I would be a good idea that Alex made a little demo of Nautilus Flickr Uploader, because she’s not as geek as me and it would give you a fresh (different?) point of view.

The application is so simple and easy to use, but let’s say that was a nice excuse to play with recordMyDesktop (it’s awesome). And here you are 2:40 of pure Perl + GTK power in action!

Moreover she discovered a bug while she was recording the demo, so we can say two things: the demo was a total success and the application it’s buggy (but fully usable! believe me!).

Btw, I’ve setup a git repository at GitHub.

by jjm on 7:46pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyAKYWn
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Filed under: Demo Fedora Flickr GTK Perl Upload Video nautilus-flickr-uploader Screencast 
August 26, 2009
Nautilus Flickr Uploader Hits the Road! Hit the road Jack, and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more ♫. After about a month of development (not really), stealing time to rest, here is my first release of Nautilus Flickr Uploader. As its name states, it’s an application to upload photos to Flickr, programmed with Perl, GTK and some love. It’s not the first time I comment the idea here, and the motivations behind it. I delayed the releasing of a public repository too much, and now the code is fully functional. I think I’ll try GitHub, but right now you can download the application (if you dare!): Fedora 11 RPM: nautilus-flickr-uploader-0.01-1.fc11.noarch.rpm Source code: nautilus-flickr-uploader-0.01.tar.gz There are some things in my TODO list, and one of them is finding a nice icon for the program (may be a photo and something that suggest upload), and I’m totally unable to make it, so your help would be greatly appreciated! Update: Jose Fco. Irles contributed DEB packages for Ubuntu Jaunty/Debian Squeeze!

Nautilus Flickr Uploader Hits the Road!

Hit the road Jack, and don’t you come back no more, no more, no more ♫.

After about a month of development (not really), stealing time to rest, here is my first release of Nautilus Flickr Uploader.

As its name states, it’s an application to upload photos to Flickr, programmed with Perl, GTK and some love. It’s not the first time I comment the idea here, and the motivations behind it.

I delayed the releasing of a public repository too much, and now the code is fully functional. I think I’ll try GitHub, but right now you can download the application (if you dare!):

There are some things in my TODO list, and one of them is finding a nice icon for the program (may be a photo and something that suggest upload), and I’m totally unable to make it, so your help would be greatly appreciated!

Update: Jose Fco. Irles contributed DEB packages for Ubuntu Jaunty/Debian Squeeze!

by jjm on 7:32pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZPorZyAHEOU
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Filed under: Fedora Upload Flickr GTK Perl Nautilus nautilus-flickr-uploader