Yesterday the first Perl 6 distribution was released. It’s named Rakudo Star:
Rakudo Star is aimed at “early adopters” of Perl 6. We know that it still has some bugs, it is far slower than it ought to be, and there are some advanced pieces of the Perl 6 language specification that aren’t implemented yet. But Rakudo Perl 6 in its current form is also proving to be viable (and fun) for developing applications and exploring a great new language. These “Star” releases are intended to make Perl 6 more widely available to programmers, grow the Perl 6 codebase, and gain additional end-user feedback about the Perl 6 language and Rakudo’s implementation of it.
If you’re interested to play with Perl 6 practically you may download the Rakudo Star here. Sure it isn’t stable and cannot be used in the real projects. But as the first step to Perl 6 it looks perfect.
If you like nature sound that service might be interesting for you. It offers a possibility mix four different tracks – sounds of beach, fire, rain or something else (not vuvusella, thanks God!) and save the result as a link to share with fiends or store it into file.
[via Unplggd]
Recently I moved from Fedora 13 to Ubuntu 10.04 on my work laptop. So, I faced again with problem to setup Oracle PHP interface. Oracle provides RPMs only and not DEBs. So, to install the client RPMs should be converted to the DEBs. It can be done easily using utility alien:
sudo alien oracle-instantclient11.1-basic-11.1.0.7.0-1.i386.rpm
sudo alien oracle-instantclient11.1-devel-11.1.0.7.0-1.i386.rpm
sudo alien oracle-instantclient11.1-sqlplus-11.1.0.7.0-1.i386.rpm
They can be installed then with sudo dpkg -i.
Don’t forget to install PHP interface to Oracle:
sudo pear install pecl/oci8
That’s it. I spent no more 15 minutes to setup PHP Oracle interface under Ubuntu. Thanks to that post!
CakePHP is a good PHP MVC framework. You can study it easily and start developing web sites very fast. But it has some disadvantages, of course. One of them is strange rules for transformation variable name when it set in the controller. Statement
$my_var = 'Hello world!';
$this->set('my_var', $my_var);
will make the variable $my_var accessible in your view:
<?php echo $my_var; ?>
The phrase ‘Hello world!’ should appear on the web page. But if the same operation is done using function compact, the result is not predictable:
$my_var = 'Hello world!';
$this->set(compact('my_var'));
Instead of ‘Hello world!’ you’ll see the warning about undefined variable on your web page. It happens because cakePHP removes underscore and makes letter, followed by it, capital. So, instead of $my_var you should use $myVar in the view:
<?php echo $myVar; ?>
Note that this bug appears in the cakePHP version 1.2. It’s already fixed in the 1.3.
There are two ways (at least) to rebuild Ubuntu package from the source.
Using Ubuntu diff file and dpkg-buildpackage
Using .dsc file and debuild
In both cases the development packages should be installed first:
sudo apt-get install build-essential devscripts
Bluetooth handset Plantronics Discovery 925 can be a really good Christmas present for web workers. It’s stylish and elegant. The headset offers a hight quality voice and adaptive noise reduction. But the most interesting feature in my mind is ability to connect to the mobile and PC in the same time. So, you can make mobile or Skype call using one headset.
The handset Plantronics Discovery 925 is available in black, gold, cerise, royal blush and majectic purple colors. So, it’ll suit both men and women. Its price an expensive a bit – $149.95, but it’s good investments.
If I’d travel a lot I’d buy the ACER Aspire 1410 notebook. It looks like netbook and costs the same. But instead of Atom processor it’s equiped with stronger Intel Celeron. The rest spec includes 11.6-inch LCD display with 1366 x 768 resolution, GMA 4500MHD graphics, a 6-cell battery, 250 GB hard drive, and up to 4GB of RAM. The Acer Aspire 1410 offers a bunch of communication options – 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet. Additionally it sports HDMI out (can be connected to the TV in hotel), integrated webcam (video chat with family, relatives and friends), 5-in-1 card reader and Dolby-optimized surround sound system with two built-in stereo speakers (have relax after meeting). It just misses optical drive but it isn’t so big deal I think.
The wight of the the Acer Aspire 1410 is just 1.35 kg, battery life is up to 6 hours and the price is €383. All of this makes that notebook the perfect choice for web workers who should travel a lot.
I just released a fresh version of IMDB::Film module to grub movie metadata from IMDB.com. There is not any new functionality in that release. Just bug fixes:
- fixed issue with plot retrieving;
- fixed retrieving of movie plot keywords;
- fixed parsing rating and top 250 or bottom 100 movie property;
- fixed issue with parsing AKA movie property;
- fixed bug with getting movie ID from cached paged;
- updated tests.
Many thanks for all who sent me bug-reports and patches. Grab that version and let me know if you find some problems there.
