Posted by Tom Moertel
Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:38:00 GMT
Last week I gave a talk on the R statistics
system and Perl for the Pittsburgh Perl
Mongers. The example that threaded through the
talk was something I have written about here before, extracting
useful information from the Internet Movie
Database.
If you’ve read my earlier blog
post
or have used the Grand Unified IMDB Movie Rating Decoder
Ring,
you might find the slides from the talk interesting. They provide
some more details about the R and Perl code used to analyze the IMDB data
and create the decoder ring.
You can get the slides here:
Posted in talks
Tags imdb, perl, R, statistics, talks
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:21:00 GMT
I have a bunch of LectroTest news. LectroTest, as you may know, is a specification-based,
automatic testing system for Perl. It may look like Haskell’s QuickCheck, but it tastes like sweet, sweet Perl.
LectroTest 0.3500 was released
This version adds automatic tools for recording and playing back
failures. Using them, you can automatically build regression-testing
suites and incorporate them into your testing plan. All it takes
is one new line of code:
use Test::LectroTest
regressions => "regressions.txt"; # <-- that's it!
See the docs on CPAN for more.
My thanks to Steffen Müller, who suggested the feature and is already
using it in cool stuff such as Number::WithError.
Slides from “Testing Tips with LectroTest” are now online
You can get the slides from my talk to the Pittsburgh Perl Mongers on
2006-06-14 here: Talk / Testing Tips with
LectroTest.
In the talk, I covered some of the newer LectroTest features, such as
regression testing and Test::LectroTest::Compat, which lets you mix
LectroTest with other Perl testing modules.
The LectroTest Emporium opens!
I have very little artistic ability. Nevertheless, alarming numbers
of people seem to love the fiercely metallic mascot I created for
LectroTest.
At the last Perl Mongers meeting, for example, people
actually told me (somewhat sternly) I should put the adorable LectroTest Robot on
t-shirts. I am now delighted to announce that I have taken their
advice:
Introducing: The LectroTest Emporium
Some important points:
- Yes, it’s a CafePress store
- I’m not making any money on these things
- I’m using direct printing, not heat-transfer printing, so
the Robot won’t crack, feel stiff, or suffer from a yellowish
transfer background. (CafePress has a comparison of the methods if you want the full details.)
Some items I have moral reservations about offering:
- LectroTest Robot Teddy Bear -
Who would be so reckless as to allow something as fierce and as powerful
as the LectroTest Robot to come into direct contact with a defenseless, cuddly
teddy bear?
- LectroTest Robot Baby Bib -
Actually, this is a great idea: your infant and the Robot
exist in a symbiotic relationship. When your baby gets food all over the
bib, the Robot will consume it (using a electrochemical process not
entirely dissimilar to our human concept of “digestion”). Thus is the
baby cleaned and the Robot fueled. It’s win-win.
- LectroTest Robot Dog T-Shirt -
I am fairly certain that the immense weight of the Robot would easily
crush any smaller animal. This product strikes me as a very bad idea.
The T-shirts, on the other hand, are the robot’s meow. Check out the
full collection at The LectroTest Emporium.
Posted in perl, fun stuff, testing, marketing, talks
Tags lectrotest, perl, testing
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Wed, 07 Jun 2006 17:29:00 GMT
At the 2006 Red Hat Summit, Eben Moglen and Cory Doctorow gave interesting keynote talks on freedom and software. Videos of both talks are available from the Summit’s video-download page.
Eben Moglen’s talk was like a locomotive, starting slowly but building to an impressive momentum. He argued (effectively) that free and open-source software are not expressions of strange, un-American ideas, as vendors of proprietary software would have the world believe. Rather, he argued, the ideas behind free software – in particular the harnessing of “individual ingenuity” – are the same ideas that made America so successful.
Cory Doctorow’s talk put DRM into perspective. Starting in the past with sheet music, he traced how each generation of the entertainment industry fought to preserve its dying business models in the face of the emerging competition, often by labeling the new competition as “pirates.” These “pirates” eventually became the new entertainment industry, which in turn labeled future-competitors as – you guessed it – “pirates.”
For example, the phonograph-record people were said to “pirate” sheet music because they would record live performances, frequently of published sheet music, and sell the recordings, making sheet music largely unnecessary. While this situation was indeed bad for the publishers of sheet music, the phonograph “pirates” launched a new, larger, more-profitable industry – the record industry – which copyright law was eventually adjusted to recognize. And so on for radio, broadcast television, cable television, the VCR.
But Cory warned that DRM is not merely the next step in that progression but a whole new evil that threatens to eliminate free and open-source software as a way to interact with media. In fact, he argued, DRM ultimately threatens to control how we live. (He gave some interesting examples.) How to fight it? Cory asked that you join the EFF.
Both talks are worth checking out. If you’re short on time, play them back at 200-percent speed; both are understandable at that rate.
Posted in privacy, talks, freedom
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Posted by Tom Moertel
Tue, 14 Mar 2006 22:39:00 GMT
Last week I gave a brief talk for the Pittsburgh Perl
Mongers about embedding domain-specific languages
into Perl. The slides from the talk are now available:
Embedding an XHTML template language into Perl.
Posted in programming languages, perl, talks
Tags dsls, perl, pghpm, talks
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