Michael Schwern is doing a fun talk about how perl isn't dead, but is so in public perception - largely because of increased competition from and mindshare of Python, PHP and Ruby. Let's see what he has to say about how to address the situation.

Larry Wall is still an awful speaker. He either doesn't prepare in enough detail or doesn't rehearse. Combined with shyness and not-so-good jokes, it makes attending his keynotes a mixture of interest in his technical genius and boredom.

It's been good to relax and enjoy the the long weekend. The stress of layoffs at work is behind me for now, and it's the first weekend where the weather feels like summer - time to enjoy myself.

Heidi and I got new bikes a few weeks ago, and this weekend I've really been using mine. In total, I cycled about 45 miles; most in Central Park, but I did one very different trip. I left home early Sunday morning, went down Second Avenue, across the Manhattan Bridge, through Crown Heights into Brooklyn Heights, then back across the Brooklyn Bridge and up First Avenue. Because of the time of day and the holiday weekend, there was very little traffic, so I could make excellent time on the avenues. Something to do again.

We got Mario Kart for the Wii last Friday, and we've both been playing it a lot. Heidi is already better after three hours of play than I will be in three weeks, but I'm still enjoying myself immensely among bouts of frustration. This is definitely the best Wii game I've played, with much better graphics than the other Wii games, so I'm looking forward to what else the game future brings.

I read Alistair Reynold's House of Suns on Saturday. It's pretty good - set in a different universe than usual Conjoiner books, spanning a much longer timescale, but in some ways much more human.. It makes me want re-read his other stand-alone novel, Century Rain, but given the book backlog that may have to wait awhile.

Tonight we'll have a simple dinner (salads, cold soup, maybe some pasta) and play more Mario Kart. Tomorrow it's back to work, where a crash project will soak up my time for the next few weeks. Once that's over, I'm planning to take a week off, hopefully when the weather is nice, and do a few days of long-distance cycling.

Yesterday at work, everybody was nervous as we saw the Bear Stearns meltdown. I work at one of their competitors, and we too have had big write-downs (and may well have more), and we too could well suffer from a crisis in confidence among our customers - and then we, too, would be gone.

For all the indignant talks on the web on how Bear Stearns is being bailed out, make no mistake - that company is gone. Its name may live on, but its days as an independent firm are numbered (and in the low double digits).

Wall Street is a small circle. We all have high-paying, high-stress jobs, and people move around from company to company, so everybody nows each other. Early last year, when the going was still good, some of my colleagues moved to BSC and got a nice raise out of that - I'm sure they are regretting this now. Some of my current colleagues moved in the other direction and are relieved not to be working at BSC right now.

This whole thing has also made me look at my finances again. I can live well on my base salary, and don't need a bonus (though it sure is nice in the good years); but a lot of my money is tied up in stocks and mutual funds, and if my employer goes down that'd be tied up for a while as well as being worth a lot less (or outright worthless). We keep about six months of expenses in savings accounts, but it looks time to spread those around multiple banks. But if everybody does that, or if people start taking out actual cash for emergencies, the system will fail.

Add to this the continued lay-off rumors (in my firm another round in two weeks, then a third one in May) and the mood is getting grim.

I got myself an iPhone two months ago and am generally loving it (pretty good iPod, pretty good PDA, nice web browser, great maps, acceptable phone, almost acceptable email, lousy camera). It's not supported at work and the reasons quoted were the lack of Exchange support and the lack of encryption/remote wiping if a phone gets lost.

Given that Exchange at work supports IMAP for all the Unix users (including myself), part of the reasons sounded fishy. But alright - I don't actually want to be tethered to work 24x7, so not having work email on it okay with me. Syncing calendars would have been nice though.

Yesterday's announcements eliminate most of the quoted reasons for not supporting the iPhone. Given our Exchange plant is run by Microsoft fanboyz, I'm pretty sure new reasons will crop up in the next two months why the iPhone won't be supported - so now it'll be up to sufficiently powerful users on the business side (i.e. investment bankers) to make the case. Let's hope they win, as I would like to see a CrackBerry to iPhone shift at work.

Our cat Ella is a six-year-old Maine Coon. She's a big fuzzy goofball, as is pretty standard for the breed. If you haven't seen a 15-pound cat that can chirp but not meow, and that likes to play like she's a three-month old kitten, then really you should meet a Maine Coon. (It's worth reading the wikipedia entry on the breed - whoever wrote about their behavior must have lived with one.)

One drawback about our fuzzy angel is that's she is rather high maintenance. Most nights, she'll wake us up twice - once for feeding and once when she wants to play. Oddly enough, when she wants feeding (around 2AM), all she really wants is attention (petting, talk) while eating - she rarely needs actual new food in her bowl, as we top if off before we go to bed. In a similar manner, when she wants to play around 5AM, it seems more important to her that some somebody is awake and paying her attention than that we're actually playing with her - she has plenty of cat toys, there's lots of windows to look out of, and the playing she does (jump in and out of the tub, run up and down the living room) doesn't require human assistance. But ah well - it's a small price to pay for such a cute kitten.

We're planning to get her a little brother, also a Maine Coon, in three to six months; and while I'm looking forward to having a second cat, I am a little worried on what's this going to mean for ever getting a full night's rest again. When Ella was a kitten, she wanted to play every hour, all night long; so adding a kitten to a high-maintenance cat is likely to lead to even more chirps at 3AM, things being knocked off tables, and running around or chasing each other at 80 miles an hour. On the other hand, she'll be less lonely during the day, and hopefully they'll enjoy each other's company once they get used to each other. After the fighting dies down and the fur stops flying around, of course.

Valentine's day will always feel somewhat alien to me - I grew up in Holland, where it is a relatively recent and imported custom, mostly pushed by the gift-card industry.

Heidi and I have two anniversaries - our first date and the wedding day. Our first date was on Feb 11, so we perform the Valentine's day rituals then. As it is three days before Valentina's Day, it's easy to get reservations in good restaurants; though my friend Nat would say, three days later would be better as you can get a discount on the chocolates. Ah well.

We ended up going to Picholine, which was excellent as usual. I think the food and service is better than the Gramercy Tavern, priced very much the same, but it is much easier to get a reservation - a win all around.

It's hard to believe this was the fifth anniversary of our first date. Time flies when you're having fun.

Fall was really late this year - the leaves turned red only in the last three weeks. And today we had our first snow of the season - almost two inches. Let's hope we'll have a winter with a lot of snow, so Heidi and I can go skiing / snow-shoeing.

Since we moved last May, this was the first time we saw the building staff handle snow on the courtyards and sidewalks. As in most everything, they're awesome. A good change from our lazy and useless super in the old building.

And now back to my cooking - lasagna with tomato/wine sauce, zucchini, bell peppers and cheese. The kitchen smells of garlic, onions and tomatoes - hmmm.

I'm currently reading papersky's Ha'penny and enjoying it very much. I started with her book Farthing a month ago, and liked it; the NYPL had her older work, so I read her Sulien books, greatly enjoyed them, and bought copies to keep on hand and lend to other people. It's time to expand the 'W' section in my bookshelf.

I liked the Sulien books because it's Arthurian fantasy that has strong female characters without going all feminist-out-of-time or mystical like the Avalon books. It's gritty, the religions work well and are explainable, and the magic (accelerated healing, powers of the land) fits the storyline.

The Farthing and Ha'penny books are bleak, but appropriately so - believable dystopian. The policing part of the books remind me somewhat of Len Deighton's SS-GB, but that's unavoidable - and I should note SS-GB is one of my favorite books.

I am looking forward to my copy of Tooth and Claw, which should arrive next week. Following that, I'll have to wait for further books - it's a pity her backlist isn't longer.

Even though my mother is visiting from Holland for a few days, I managed to steal a few hours to spend on geek stuff. So today I installed my new Apple toys - the new wireless base station and the new OS release.

I'm somewhat annoyed by the need for a new base station. The old one (802.11G) works just fine, and would continue to be perfect if it weren't for the fact that over 15 of my neighbors also have a wireless network. The resulting interference causes continual drop-outs and slow connections even to other computers in my apartment.

The new base station does 802.11N in addition to G. This is a different frequency range that is, as yet, lightly used - so the N capable laptops will no longer have interference. My older computers, and the yet-to-be-purchased iPhones, are not N capable and will have to suffer. Sigh.

One of my colleagues downgraded his GF's computer to the outdated 802.11A technology. Nobody seems to be using that frequency and it's still faster than her Internet connection. She clearly lives in a building with even more wireless networks than I do.

Let's see how this technology progresses in the next few years. The next time I have to rewire speakers or similar in this apartment I'm putting in Ethernet just in case :-)