Searching online, there were very few results (hence this short note) - just previous unrelated Linux kernel issues. I found someone with the same problem on Fedora, but no solution, so I started off by filing a bug report with Debian.

Of course, then I found the Arch user who had filed the same bug on Launchpad, and had discovered that resetting the BIOS to its default settings fixes the issue. If only that page mentioned the keywords "Ericsson", or "Lenovo"...

So after all that, it was just some weird BIOS issue. I hate hardware.

I couldn't figure out how such a dramatic reversal could have happened, until I asked Mithaldu on IRC; the admins of the old Leeds tutorial have added a (delayed) redirect. So, Google has interpreted that as a 302 status, and given perl-tutorial.org all the old inbound links, presumably.

Perhaps there is hope for Perl yet. :)

Last year, a bit of a fuss was kicked up in the Perl community about the low quality of search results for the phrase "Perl tutorial". Various ideas for fixing this were proposed, including the handy Perl tutorial hub, but kicking Leeds University off the coveted top spot is going to be a real challenge.

The problem is, most Perl tutorials on the internet were written for Perl 4; modern Perl doesn't get a look-in. It's a miracle anyone manages to learn Perl at all...

While thinking over this problem, I was reading Mithaldu's original criteria for the "content creation" option. "Community effort"... "github repo"... "exported to HTML regularly"... if only Perl had some central site where you can publish documentation... that all Perl hackers can access and update... like CPAN.

So although my documentation-writing skills are pretty weak, I proudly introduce the Perl-Tutorial CPAN dist and github repository. The great thing about writing Perl documentation using POD is that you can link to other CPAN references so easily - as the basics get filled out, they can guide the user towards how to learn more about each topic. Everyone who's anyone knows how to send a pull request on github, and there seems to be far more of a community feel to CPAN these days.

Version 0.001 is just "Hello, World!" - but watch this space. :)

Next problem: we want to both edit the site. Okay, so I create a group, make it the default group for both users... and now I need to set the umask to 002 so that all group members can edit all files. There's no option in the client...

Skimming Debian bug #496843 (closed Apr 2010, thanks Colin Watson!) we can set this in sshd_config these days - no need to mess about with wrapper scripts. Very easy:

Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server -u 002

Now all content created through the sftp client is group-writable, and owned by the default group of each user! See 'man (8) sftp-server'.

There's just one small catch: they haven't released a server to go with the client. Oops. Apparently the internal systems are too tightly integrated to make that possible.

I have hacked up enough stubs of a BITE server in Perl to get the client to "log in" and show off some features. (Warning: it doesn't actually do anything useful yet.)

So far, I have learnt:

• To get BITE to point at your dev server, you need to edit bite.options.constants.ServerChannelOption in the file src/options/constants.js (as documented on the serverhandlers wiki page) before compiling it.
• To get a bug template to apply to all URLs, you need to use the string 'all' as the URL, which is hardcoded in 'templates.js' in the client.

Or just apply the handy Debian update, of course.

• The cost of living in the UK is much higher than in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• I feel much better about life when I am being a fun and exciting person, compared to boring and cynical.
• My laptop is not well-suited to travelling - poor battery life, and poor wifi. However, I have mastered the art of taking only hand luggage.

I have quietly resolved to spend more time doing things that I enjoy, that maximise the use of my skills, and which help other people; and spend less time on the opposite.

So far, I have tidied up various outstanding commitments that were weighing on my mind, and offered mdbtools for adoption. I started doing some RC bug NMUs again, because on a good day they hit all three of my criteria. Some ideas are already forming in my mind of other things to do, so I shall never be short of tasks.

Getting here was fairly painful; a flight from Split was delayed, so I had to get a later bus than planned from Zagreb. Still, I met a bunch of DebConf attendees getting the same bus, so at least there was conversation.

Packaging-wise, I have been working on adding KiokuDB (and associated backends) into Debian. I wrote a patch for libossp-uuid-perl yesterday to fix a bug with its Data::UUID compatibility; this probably means I'll drop the Data::UUID ITP. Having looked at the code, I don't see how it can be easily fixed for multi-user systems.

The Perl team's forthcoming move to git has come as a pleasant surprise; I've been trying out the new workflow.

Earlier in the week I went running with bubulle et. al. - I must have missed the bit in the email where the very steep hill was mentioned. And the rain. So I had to slow down and turn around, and probably didn't quite do 15km in the end. :)

Beer is half the price of Coca-Cola here. Awesome.

So generally, I've been decompressing, and introspecting. The cafes are good for philosophical discussions; preferably when it's not raining. More later.

On the one hand, this is a shame - it removes an opportunity for other people to respond to what I might write.

On the other hand, the idea that this was any kind of two-way conversation was always a badly-maintained illusion. I didn't have any kind of notifications set up to tell me when comments arrived; so I rarely read them, and almost never replied. I don't want to build a commercial enterprise or a "community".

So for the moment, if you want to get in touch, email me. If you want to respond publically, write your own damn blog post. :)

In other news, I updated GNU Enscript.

Oh, and I filed an ITP for the real Data::UUID, and promptly found a symlink attack which I suspect I failed to disclose responsibly. Hmm.

I could write a lot more, but the short version is: I need a holiday.