Wow. I haven’t blogged here since April.
For a long time, I was writing weekly as part of the Ironman challenge. Then I dropped out, but still blogged occasionally. Then even that stopped.
It’s time to get started again. I miss the discipline of thinking about what ideas I have to contribute and crafting them for others. I don’t think I’ll be writing here all the time or about Perl all the time. I have some other things I want to talk about. This will continue to be my coding blog and I’ll find other places for other topics.
So… what have I been up to lately? Here are some of the bigger projects I had:
- I founded a startup, Bunchmail, which is consuming most of my energy and attention lately as I work to get it ready for launch. I also put out an email habits survey to support it.
- I finished my TPF grant, Cooking Perl with Chef, and launched the Perl Chef website to hold the tutorials, videos and code I created during the grant.
- I put out more releases of Pantry, a tool for managing Chef Solo-based automated deployment. (The latest release just last week now supports data bags.)
- I launched the perl-devops mailing list for people interested in the intersection of development, deployment and operations of Perl applications.
- I spoke at OSCON on Perl and Chef and gave a lightning talk on Scripting Screencasts with Perl.
On the personal front:
- My kids are 1.5 and 4. My son (the 4-year-old) is now potty trained. If you’re a parent, you understand why that’s an accomplishment. If you’re not, use your imagination. :-)
- I adopted a quasi-paleo diet and dropped nearly 15 pounds, with very little effort. (I do still eat some dairy, particularly full-fat greek yogurt, which is awesome!)
- I started working out with kettle bells and a pull-up bar regularly and might be in the best shape I’ve ever been in.
As just one example, six months ago, I couldn’t do a single pull-up. Now I can do two. Even if that’s not a lot of absolute progress, in relative terms, I’m infinitely better than I was. (A great resource for improving your health this way: Mark’s Daily Apple. And read this story, too.)
Assorted modules released or updated:
- App::Cpan - Interact with CPAN from the command line
- App::mymeta_requires - Extract module requirements from MYMETA files
- CPAN::Meta::Requirements - a set of version requirements for a CPAN dist
- Capture::Tiny - Capture STDOUT and STDERR from Perl, XS or external programs
- Data::GUID::Any - Generic interface for GUID/UUID creation
- Data::UUID::MT - Fast random UUID generator using the Mersenne Twister algorithm
- Dist::Zilla::Plugin::CheckChangesHasContent - Ensure Changes has content before releasing
- Dist::Zilla::Plugin::CheckExtraTests - check xt tests before release
- Dist::Zilla::Plugin::CheckMetaResources - Ensure META includes resources
- Dist::Zilla::Plugin::OSPrereqs - List prereqs conditional on operating system
- Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Test::ReportPrereqs - Report on prerequisite versions during automated testing
- File::chdir - a more sensible way to change directories
- HTTP::Tiny - A small, simple, correct HTTP/1.1 client
- Hash::Objectify - Create objects from hashes on the fly
- IO::Prompt::Tiny - Prompt for user input with a default option
- MongoDBx::Queue - A message queue implemented with MongoDB
- MooseX::Types::Path::Class::MoreCoercions::0.002 - More powerful coercion than MooseX::Types::Path::Class
- Pod::Wordlist::hanekomu::1.121370 - Add words for spell checking POD
- Various CPAN Testers Metabase implementation modules
I’ve you’ve read this far, you must be a fan, so thank you! I hope to share more of my thoughts in the weeks to come.
David