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I was following the conversion process for some time now, but the final switch was done today. The development of Perl is now maintained using Git.
The repository includes all released versions of perl up to the most recent 5.10.0 and will take 219Mb of your hard disk.
The best Perl book in recent years is now available as a free PDF download.
If you are a Perl programmer, even an experienced Perl programmer, you should read this book. Chapter 3 in particular.
Go and get your copy of Higher-Order Perl, by Mark Jason Dominus. And if you end up with your mind blown away, buy a copy.
My first day back at work will be spent reading about three weeks of email, and make sure everything still works ok.
Still 1700 unread messages to go.
The last week of silence was sponsored by an emergency surgery to my lower intestine.
Friday, the 28th I woke up with an abdominal pain. I have an history of stomach problems so I drove to the clinic where my father works and they diagnosed a small problem with my lower intestine, and I was back home later that day felling great.
But apparently it was the calm before the storm. Next day, Saturday morning, I woke up with the same abdominal pains, but this time they where the XXL version.
This time I only had the strength to drive myself to the emergency room of the nearest hospital. I was admitted and after a couple of morphine shots and other attempts at an solution, zee pain was still increasing.
I think I put quite a show, twisting and turning on the hospital bed, and I passed out a bit when they tried to stand me up against an X-ray machine.
Two or three hours into this, I was having my belly shaven (no, pictures are not available on request :) ...), and pushed into an O-R for an emergency "lets see what's going on in there"-surgery.
Three hours later I had a bad wake up from anesthetic (apparently the drugs they gave me on the E-R didn't play along with the ones they used to put me to sleep), and with a new 22cm scar north-to-south across my belly.
They found a couple of problems, but didn't do any permanent fixes because the root of the problem is still a mystery.
I was in and out of sleep for a day, recover at the hospital until Wednesday, and these last three days I've been at home trying to get a grip with the discomfort caused by the scar, plus the occasional pain while my intestines get to their proper places after being moved all over.
So this last 10 days, this was the first time I even opened up the computer... My NetNewsWire tells me that I have 1781 unread items, and haven't even opened up Mail (nor I expect to until Wednesday or Thursday next week).
I'll be mostly offline at least another week until they take out the staples that keep my insides inside. I'll try and catch up on my RSS feeds, but I still feel a bit tired.
So, to wrap up: I'm alive, they don't know exactly what is wrong, although they suspect a couple of things, 2009 is going to be a year spent on exams and most likely a second surgery, and I won't respond to mail for at least another week.
Are you ready to be an Iron Man? Join the challenge and find out! (what is the meaning of this little man?)
