Preface

I’ve written a bunch of code that deals with APIs behind OAuth before. I wrote code for the Twitter API and for GitHub and for others. I knew roughly what happened when using OAuth, but in general everything was taken care of behind the scenes. Now as I work on furthering the control of my programmatic day planner, I need to deal with web services that don’t have pre-built Perl libraries, and that means dealing with OAuth. So far, it’s been a big pain, but I think it’s been a pain that’s helped me understand what I’m doing, so I won’t have to flail around as much next time.

A few years ago I heard about the game Microscope and it sounded way cool. In summary: it is.

In Perl 5.10, the idea of a lexical topic was introduced. The topic is $_, also known as “the default variable.” If you use a built-in routine that really requires a parameter, but don’t give it one, the odds are good that it will use $_. For example:

I must have done something right when I attended YAPC::Asia 2011, because they invited me back this year. I was delighted to accept the invitation, and I’m glad I did.

One of the big new experimental features in Perl 5.18.0 is lexical subroutines. In other words, you can write this:

Having finished the Zork trilogy, it was time for me to continue on into the great post-Zork canon. I was excited for this, because it means lots of games that I haven’t played yet. First up: Starcross. I was especially excited for Starcross! It’s the first of Infocom’s sci-fi games, and I only remembered hearing good things. I’d meant to get started on the flight to YAPC::Asia, but didn’t manage until I’d begun coming home. On the train to Narita, things got off to a weird start.

I always feel a little amazed when I realize how many of the things that really interest me, today, are things that I was introduced to by my father. Often, they’re not even things that I think he’s passionate about. They’re just things we did together, and that was enough.

This post is tagged programming and dnd. I don’t get to do that often, and I am pleased.

Earlier this year, I lamented the state of “workspaces” in Chrome. I said that I’d settled on using Tabs Outliner, but that I basically didn’t like it. The author of the plugin asked me to elaborate, and I said I would. It has been sitting in my todo list for months and I have felt bad about that. Today, Gregory Meyers commented on that blog post, and it’s gotten me motivated enough to want to elaborate.