The Pragmatic Bookshelf: The Pragmatic Programmer

The Pragmatic Bookshelf | The Pragmatic Programmer

Pragmatic Software Development Tips from the book [Link]

watching "Downton Abbey" "on the Internet"

"Downton Abbey" (2010)

season 3

• episode 1 – 2012-12-26
• episode 2 – 2012-12-27 
• episode 3 – 2012-12-27
• episode 4 – 2012-12-28
• episode 5 – 2012-12-28
• episode 6 – 2013-01-01
• episode 7 – 2013-01-01
• episode 8 – 2013-01-01
• episode 9 – 2013-01-...

season 1

• all episodes – 2013-02-02..03

season 2

• episode 1 – 2013-02-03
• episode 2 – 2013-02-03
• episode 3 – 2013-02-03
• episode 4 – 2013-02-__
• episode 5 – 2013-02-03
• episode 6 – 2013-02-12
• episode 7 – 2013-02-__ (not yet)
• episode 8 – 2013-02-__ (not yet)
• Christmas Special – 2013-03-__ (not yet)

son#1 left, his cat stayed

Son#2 is rather sad, that his elder brother left. He said he would return for New Year's Eve. But we learned, we cannot rely on such statements.

Suw Charman-Anderson: Amazon Is Ripe For Disruption - Forbes

Amazon Is Ripe For Disruption - Forbes

I came across this article through a tweet by Kathrin Passig.

TV series: "Downton Abbey" (2010...)

"Downton Abbey" (2010)

Rather interesting and entertaining.

film: Shutter Island (2010)

Shutter Island (2010)

I find it bad, that "we" did not have any chance knowing what really was going on until rather close to the end.

I watched it on DasErste.de : http://www.daserste.de/unterhaltung/film/filme-im-ersten/sendung/shutter-island-100.html

Brazilian music: Criolo - "Não Existe Amor em SP"

I came across this song listening to dradio.de/dkultur : "Meine Musik 2012:
Criolo & Mokoomba". It's from the album "Nó Na Orelha".
Criolo's home page: www.criolo.net.
Listen to more songs here!
Watch a few videos here!

During saturn.de's next discount period, I will get his album there!

emphases in the English language

• adjectives get pronounced on their first syllable; e.g. …; counterexample: …
• verbs get pronounced on their second syllable; e.g. to refer, to access; counterexample: …
• nouns get pronounced on their first syllable; e.g. the access, …; counterexample: …

film: Astérix et Obélix: Au service de Sa Majesté (2012)

Astérix et Obélix: Au service de Sa Majesté (2012) (French title)

film: Wreck-It Ralph (2012) aka "Ralph reicht's"

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

film: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

flm: Rise of the Guardians (2012) aka "Die Hüter des Lichts"

Rise of the Guardians (2012)

Characters:

• (an evil spirit known as) Pitch – I am not able to find a description of this character
• Jack Frost
• North, Santa Claus
• Tooth Fairy
• Easter Bunny
• Sandman

We quite liked the film. We didn't really know beforehand, that Jack Frost and Pitch are characters, that U.S. children are familiar with.

"Google Web Albums" AKA Picasa through "Google Drive"

Occasionally I am using the Google Drive application on OS X. Of course I like the way it integrates into the OS X Finder.

Why is this application not able to also deal with my picture files on "Google Web Albums" AKA Picasa? (I mean, it's all Google, so …)

IT jargon: ping (quoting "The Jargon File")

catb.org/jargon/html/P/ping.html

Through the label(s) you can find my main entry for "The Jargon File" resp. "The New Hacker's Dictionary" [link].

Baruch's cat Rysza – my only company for this afternoon

Rysza (sp?) is a word in Polish, and it means "red-grey" IIRC.

Baruch is my son#1; he is now off for the afternoon with João Gabriel (his brother resp. my son#1) and Cristina (J.G.'s mother) to meet "Brother Simion" and family in Berlin-Steglitz – friends of my Brazilian "sub-family". (I would rather point you to www.brothersimion.com.br, but apparently he abandoned that domain name.)

So I am having a few hours alone (apart from Rysza) at home on this 1st Christmas holiday (Dec. 25th), and I am rather enjoying it.

E-mailing, Facebooking, phone, listening to music on JazzRadio.net (and maybe other stations later this afternoon), …

I am sorry for being lazy doing something we that reflection in Rysza's eyes, the cats' version of red eyes.

I just removed the Google Picasa application from my Mac's hard drive.
Can you imagine, how easy it is to accidentally upload your whole private life in pictures to your Google Photo / Picasa page?!?? That rather frightens me.

The Prohibtion in the U.S.: the government poisoned alcohol then

The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition. - Slate Magazine

Of course I never heard of that before, and of course I am rather surprised.

how to remove DRM from Kindle documents

• the Python scripts around for this purpose seem to be defunct these days
• Kindle DRM Removal for Mac

"Homeland", a U.S. TV series on war, terrorist, al-Qaeda, heroes, …

Homeland (TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Overview and Reception are quite informative and worth reading, I found.

Perl Best Practices: Code Layout: Vertical Alignment

Perl Best Practices - O'Reilly Media

I came across this chapter a while ago, and I enjoyed the argumentation quite a lot. I think the Vertical Alignment idea applies to all sorts of code, not just Perl code.

I am personally a follower of the Vertical Alignment sect, although I think, that should be the main stream.

"The other day" I came across code not following the Vertical Aligment idea, and I was rather sad ("in a professional sense"). But I am rather aware of the different streams resp. sects, and of course, this is not meant as an insult but rather just a note.

Apache PDFBox Command Line Utilities

Apache PDFBox - PDFBox Command Line Utilities

English grammar: commas and relative clauses

• "English in Use": Commas / Clarity
• "English in Use": Punctuation / Comma

Rule:

Relative that follows its antecedent:
When a relative (clause) immediately follows its antecedent, and is taken in a restrictive sense ("restrictive clause"), the comma should not be introduced before it.

The relative clause gets completed with a comma though. Of course it gets omitted, if there is a period anyway.

wikibooks on the grammar of the English language

• Subject:English language - Wikibooks, open books for an open world

Looks like the major entry in that list is this one:

• English in Use

O'Reilly Media book: Monitoring with Ganglia

Monitoring with Ganglia:
Written by Ganglia designers and maintainers, this book shows you how to collect and visualize metrics from clusters, grids, and cloud infrastructures at any scale. This hands-on book helps experienced system administrators take advantage of Ganglia 3.x.

O'Reilly Media book: Practical mod_perl

• Practical mod_perl - O'Reilly Media

O'Reilly Open Books Project

O'Reilly Open Books Project

Various o'Reilly books are listed and linked on that page:

• DocBook …
• Mason …
• mod_perl …
• Version Control with Subversion, 2nd Edition
• …

Also a lengthy list of out-of-print books.

• PNG: The Definitive Guide
• …

MH: slocal: .maildelivery etc

MH ...: .maildelivery etc

The .maildelivery file is a little like a poor man's .procmailrc.

O'Reilly Media book: Testing in Scala

Testing in Scala:
Testing in Scala starts with an introduction of the Scala programming language, explains why project infrastructure is critical, and provides compelling reasons to use Scala testing frameworks to not only test Scala code, but Java code too. This book introduces and explains the Simple Build Tool, the Scala answer to Ant, Maven, Gradle, and Buildr. It then explains in detail all the best tools for testing Scala and Java code today--ScalaTest, Specs2, ScalaCheck, and Borachio. Testing in Scala also gives insight on how to integrate coverage tools, continuous integration, web acceptance frameworks, and Java testing frameworks that you already know and love.

how to relocate to Israel – if you have an Israeli partner

step by step process for citizenship in israel | Relocation to Israel

A Ukrainian, non-jewish RoR devloper asked on israel.rb (the Israeli Ruby on Rails user group), how he could get a job in Israel (thread).
Somebody pointed him there to the above web page. Actually it sounded there, like there is no such restriction as "you do have an Israeli partner and …" – but there is. Maybe I would have to re-activate my Ex-GF in such a case ;-)

When I applied for an SAP R&D job in Israel a couple of years ago, I rather ran into a wall then. Well, yes, I have to admit: I don't have an Israeli or jewish partner, and I am a little hopeless proving the relevance of my grand-grandfather by the surname of Wassermann.

My comment on israel.rb on 2012-11-08 got removed the same day.

Postbank (Germany) goes XML: camt.052 (a part of ISO 20022)

Postbank (a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank) recently started offering the download of a BankToCustomerAccountReport AKA camt.052, which is a part of ISO 20022, the "universal financial industry message scheme".

According to their "full catalogue of ISO 20022 messages" [Link]:

• camt = Cash Management, camt.052 = BankToCustomerAccountReport ()

I would actually like to have that facility available as a web service: I authenticate, I give it a start and an end date, and it returns me the XML.

But right now I have to log into www.postbank.de and to navigate to the right place.

And of course, they keep changing that navigation. I have got some experience with that problem.

Another camt-Link.

PPT = Perl Power Tools: "Unix Reconstruction Project"

• http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/CWEST/ppt-0.14/html/index.html – maybe the best entrance to read up on the project
• metacpan.org/release/ppt

Welcome to the Unix Reconstruction Project.
Our goal is quite simply to reimplement the classic Unix command set in pure Perl, and to have as much fun as we can doing so.

I would really love to have a few more utilities in that collection:

• "seq" [link]
• …

Yes, the GNU coreutils do certain things much, much better, but still … – yet: you can install PPT privately and with a rather small footprint, which makes them rather suitable in certain corporate environments. 

Just a few goodies:

• tcgrep lets you traverse directory trees – more or less like ack (see below!)
• tail lets you follow multiple files simultaneously
• …

Parts of the collection with a separate life outside the collection:

• http://perl.plover.com/diff/
• …

A few utilities, that are not formally a part of this collection:

• metacpan.org/module/ack – grep-like text finder – more or less like tcgrep (see above!)
• …

TestAnything.org :TAP::Parser Cookbook

the cookbook

2013-02-05: The website is up again, but I can't get hold on the cookbook.

2012-11-19: When I tried to look a little around on TestAnything.org in November 2012, the web-site was rather broken. I looked the domain name up on whois.net, found Andy Armstrong and his e-mail address, and dropped him a note. This is how the error message looked like:

Test Anything Protocol has a problem
Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.
Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.
(Can't contact the database server: Unknown database 'testanything' (localhost))

TAP = Test Anything Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Test Anything Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CPAN: Test::Tutorial - A tutorial about writing really basic tests

Test::Tutorial - A tutorial about writing really basic tests - metacpan.org

I wrote some code to test a customer's perl code, not having (had) a look at Test::More or whatever beforehand.
After completing my task, I tweaked my code to make use of Test::More. Now it's optionally creating TAP.
My next step: reading and exercising.

• Test::More
• TAP::Harness
• TAP::Parser
• TAP::Parser Cookbook (currently (2012-11-07...) a broken link)