A NEW Perl Module?

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Bob

Lo and Behold – I think I’ve finally found something that I’ve been searching for a really long time now: A new perl module that doesn’t already exist, there is a need for and I’m actually interested in building! Wow!

What is this mysterious module, you ask? A perl interface to the Google Short Links API.

Anyone familiar with Google Apps or the various functions available through Google Labs is probably familiar with the goo.gl domain and the short links that it provides. What you may not realize is that anyone who has a custom domain with Google Apps services can also use Google Short Links on their own domain.

For example, on my SouthLAnd Site, we registered the domain sfc.me (short for Southland Fan Club, because we also own SouthlandFanClub.com/net/org/info/etc) about as short a domain as  you can get without paying a premium price. I then added the Short Link service to Google Apps for SouthlandTvFans.com via the Google Apps Marketplace, Google Labs service.

I added the domain www.sfc.me as the “short link domain” on Google Apps (you can currently only add one full domain – a minor shortcoming of the system) with a DNS CNAME pointing to ghs.google.com. For the non-www domain, sfc.me, I added a DNS A record pointing to my web server with a mod_rewrite rule redirecting http://sfc.me/(.*) to http://www.sfc.me/$1, allowing the short links to be as short as possible. This is necessary because Google (for some odd reason) requires that you use a subdomain for the short link service, so this work-around is the only way to do it with the shortest possible links.

All of that is well and good, with one minor exception: You must log into Google’s website to add or edit links! However, like most of their services, Google does provide an API for managing short links. There is even an example CLI script for using the API – but it is written in python, of all languages.

So my new project and first individual contribution to the perl community: A module to manage Google Short Links. I’m still not sure what the name of the module woudl be yet, as I need to do some research on CPAN for existing Google modules to see where it would best fit into the name space.

I’ve always said I wanted to write a perl module, if I could just find something that was needed, necessary and not already done by someone else. Finally, I’ve found that subject that is not only new, but something that will directly benefit me in my work at the same time. A total win-win!

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A New Start

Posted on January 22, 2011 by perldevgeek

OK, so it’s been a really, really long time since I posted here. Little things got in the way, like life and work so I never got around to writing about what I was doing in my development. That’s not to say that I wasn’t actually learning a lot! I was, believe me! You don’t work with the people that I’ve been working for the past 2 and a half years and NOT learn a lot!

So I’m going for a fresh start now. The business is off the ground, work is – as always – completely hectic. Personal life is, well, personal life. I’ve finally got this new WordPress MU installation up and running. None of that is ever going to change. Chances are pretty good that nothing I write here is going to be ground-breaking or earth shattering for anyone. More than likely, people will come look at my blathering a either go “duh, I already knew that” or laugh at the simplicity of it.

So what the hell – I’ll do it anyway! This blog will be for me, not for anyone else, or to prove anything to anyone. I’m not out to “educate” anyone on the wonders of Perl. I make no attempts to teach any new techniques or make any claims to vast stores of knowledge or wisdom on the intricacies of advanced perl programming. I am what I have always claimed to be – a simple developer who is, and always has been, working my way day to day through a complex language as best as he can and sharing my journey with others.

I hope you join me on that journey.

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Review: D-Link ANT24-0700

Posted on August 31, 2008 by perldevgeek

After moving to our new apartment here in Burbank I thought that we would have no problems with our WiFi signal, seeing as how the new layout is nice and open. Boy was I wrong! With the router being tied to the cable modem in my office, we started running into a huge problem with signal strength dropping to levels at or around 15-20% with the router being only about 20 or 30 feet away from us while sitting in the living room.

Unfortunately, in direct line-of-sight between the office and the living room, there is a big load-bearing wall that just happens to have most of the electrical wires and plumbing for the apartment in it. Add to that the stackable washer and dryer, a 28 gallon aquarium and a 10 gallon aquarium (with motorized magnetic pumps) and what you have is a big, huge WiFi brick wall.

Now I could have gone out and got an Access Point of some type to extend my service range in the apartment, but to me that’s rather silly. Why spend the extra money to extend the range of a router that should be able to service the entire unit as well as neighbors on several sides and a floor above and below? Not to mention the fact that the crappy Linksys router provided by T-Mobile doesn’t allow access points anyway (as far as I can tell).

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Refcards, or the power of memory loss

Posted on August 30, 2008 by perldevgeek

My favorite personal quote is “I never claim to know everything, but I certainly know where to look it up.”

With the information overload we have to deal with every day as developers, regardless of what your personal language of choice is, this is certainly more appropriate now than ever before. While some may have an encyclopedic memory and can pull obscure function parameters out of their brain at the drop of a hat, age and a diversity of programming languages has had its toll on me over the years.

Thankfully, our good friends in the Open Source community have gotten together to help us all out with those helpful references, without the need to have a wall of O’Reilly books on hand all the time. That help comes in the form of some very handy Reference Cards, or Refcards, that have been made available on the net in the form of PDF or PNG downloads. Of course being Open Source, they are available for free so you don’t have to go broke just to keep yourself in touch with common commands and functions.

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Review: T-Mobile@Home

Posted on August 24, 2008 by perldevgeek


When we moved to Burbank recently, I thought that since we were getting a 16Mbps internet connection, we might as well go ahead and get the new T-Mobile @Home phone service rather than pay $55-$65 a month to Ma Bell for traditional land line service again. After all, $10 a month for phone service with unlimited long distance? Who can beat that?

Signing up for the service was not too bad, considering the fact that the 3 guys at the T-Mobile store where I went had never actually activated @Home before. Amusingly enough, I actually had to help them in a couple of places, because they didn’t know what to put into the web forms that T-Mobile uses for all their paperwork now, but it made sense to me seeing as how I spend most of my days helping to build and update forms just like them.

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It’s Official – I’ve been Google-ized!

Posted on August 23, 2008 by perldevgeek

I guess it’s only fair to admit for my first official post here – I’ve been Google-ized.

I wanted to do a blog and website that I could use to separate my personal life from my developer life (i.e, not MySpace or Facebook) and I totally lucked out in finding the PerlDevGeek.com avaialble. In the past I have started to setup different blogging software on my own server but always ran into issues with maintenance and finding a decent software package that didn’t have all sorts of issues requiring constant tweaking.

Since I’ve been getting introduced to some of the tools from Google recently through work and I wanted to take advantage of some of the other features avaialble through Google Apps, I decided to just go whole hog and but the domain here on Blogger and take advantage of the whole suite. What the heck – it doesn’t hurt that I’ll also be able to get some hands-on experience twiddling with stuff like Analytics, Ad Sense, etc., while working on the site at the same time.

So far, I have to say that I’ve been pretty happy with it all. Setting up everything was a breeze, although I can see how it would have been a lot harder for someone who isn’t familiar with DNS or doesn’t run their own DNS server. Beyond the DNS setup, however, I must say I am impressed with Google’s setup instructions and admin interface in general, except for the fact that it does appear to be a bit disjointed. I would be nice if things were a bit more centralized instead of being spread out in so many different places. But that’s something I can live with for the ease of use advantage.

So now I can just sit back, enjoy the blog, calendar, email, docs, sites, hopefully ad revenue and whatever else comes along. If you were lucky enough, or polite enough, to stumble upon this blog – thank you! :) I hope you will not be disappointed.

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