So, in 2002 I attended my first
SPUG meeting. Also in attendance were
Randal,
Tim,
J.P. (I think) and quite a few of the other usual suspects. The guest speaker was the inestimable
Dr. Damian Conway. This night might be the single most important event in my career as a builder of the internets. I was already set in my ways regarding my
operating system, and I knew enough perl to get by, but I wasn t in touch with any users groups until then.
The crown jewel of the night was Damian s recital in full of his poem, I Am The Very Model of A Poster To CLPM (sung to the tune of
that song from Pirates of Penzance). I must admit that I d never heard of CLPM and that it all sounded like gobble-de-gook at the time. If I recall correctly, this happened just after he took about 10 minutes to teach us all to pronounce the name of then-
Pumpking,
Jarkko Hietaniemi. This was the same year that the following video was made
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XkU_GQVOCqo" width="420"></iframe>
With that in mind, there s one more thing I need to share with you before disclosing the lyrics. This piece was developed during a time when it was common for members of the perl community to flame one another on news feeds, take their anger and frustration out on newbies and generally be the bane of most of the internet. I like to think that it helped to shape me into a kinder, gentler perl programmer, debian user and general netizen over the years. I would also like to think that it will do the same for future members of our communities.
And so, without further ado, Damian Conway s
I Am The Very Model of a Poster to CLPM
Now everything I need to know about the Perl community
I learned in kindergarten when I was a little lad of three
And in these next few minutes I ll relate those five apothegm
For I am the very model of a poster to c.l.p.m.
The first truism I was ever taught upon my mother s knee
Was that our dad s a better dad than their s could ever hope to be.
His name is Larry Wall, and that s determinism nom native
Since of the mural attributes he demonstrates proof positive.
He s eight feet tall and ten feet wide; of granite-like solidity.
He wards us from the serpent s tabs and coffee bean s stupidity.
He guards us from that Gallic tower s B&D urbanity,
And makes sure we don t see sharp code that might cut loose our sanity.
He watches over each of us, like Odin of the Norse belief
The stern All-Father figure and, at times, the comical relief.
So, if you vaunt our patriarch s supreme linguistic acumen,
You are a model sychophantic poster to c.l.p.m.
The second tenet that I learned concerns, of course, the fairer sex
And why they are in short supply, while geek-boy JAPHs are multiplex.
As every schoolboy knows each conversation has single aim:
To raise one s own significance, whilst razing others down in flame.
And thus good men and true who hold this principle as sacrosanct
Will all pursue beligerence as though they were from Mars. Or tanked.
It is the tenor of your newgroup posts that she from Venus flies:
Because most threads devolve into comparisons of ..meanness, guys.
When every post affronts their own collaborative sorority
It must exasperate them, for it renders the majority
Of female Perl geeks absent, till we re forced to rename blonde Dutch men
To act as female models of a poster to c.l.p.m.
The third grand aphorism that was drummed into my youthful head
Was: if you can t say something nice about someone, you should instead
Say every nasty thing you can impart, imagine, or invent
In any public forum that it happens you should both frequent.
This goes especially for the young, and new, and shy, and innocent.
To flame a newbie is a joy, t will make you feel omnipotent.
To watch them squirm and bleat and bleed and scurry back into their hole,
The surge of ecstasy it brings is worth the way it eats your soul.
So never hesitate to turn the wrath of your vocabul ry
Upon the hapless supplicant for Perl epistomology
And if you flame each FAQ, and every question that s beneath you then
You ll be the very model of curmudg nly R.T.F.M.
The next point I should like to make s the obverse of the previous
For while it s true that to be newbie is a sin most grieveous
It ain t as bad as being old and greyed and staid and tedious
And sitting at the keys all day dispensing thoughts invidious.
What right have you to tell me not to ask about my CGI???
I thought that Perl was all about website development, and I
Expect that you d extend to me the simple human courtesy
Of dropping everything so you can do this homework now for me.
The Internet exists so I need never read the manual
And so my inane questioning can form a stream continual
While pleading for an email since I never read this group, as well
As posting them in jeopardy, in caps, and in HTML.
The rule I learned in kinder that explains where this approach springs from
Is fundamental to a certain class of Gen-X hackerdom
The single principle that guides their Internet activity
Is: me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, ME!
So if you are prepared to treat the Net as your god-given right
And suck the newsgroups dry like some goodwill-devouring parasite
And use them as a help-desk and a perldoc substitute, well then
You are the very model clueless poster to c.l.p.m.
The final precept that my pre-school inculcated in my head
Is one I would commend as antithetical to all I ve said.
It is a noble concept that once used to garner more elan
The idea that, when I grow up ..I want to be a fireman.
The fire-fighter s job s to help, despite the inconvenience
And spare the inexperienced the cost of their own ignorance
And put out fires when the flames ignite the common living space
And through it all maintain an air of competence and skill and grace.
And this, my friends, I recommend to all of our community
That rather than a careless match or carefully lit incendiary
You spray out knowledge, patience, and a gentle stream of good advice
And save the newbies from themselves, and oldies from their prejudice.
And be yea more as Larry is, a fire-Wall against the threat
Of ignorance and arrogance, with both of which we re still beset.
For if you choose to help your fellow JAPHs instead of scorching them,
You ll be the next burnt offering we spit-roast on c.l.p.m. ;-)
[edit]
As seen on reddit: an old Bill Joy quote
often banded about as part of the (largely synthetic) vi-vs.-emacs holy war
starts as follows:
Steve McIntyre has been contributing to Debian since 1996, 2 years before I joined! But I quickly stumbled upon Steve: in 1999, he was struggling with getting his debian-cd script to produce 2 ISO images (it was the first time that Debian did no longer fit on a single CD), I helped him by rewriting debian-cd with a robust system to split packages on as many ISO images as required.
I remember those times very well because Steve was very supportive of my efforts and it was a real pleasure to get this done. His friendly nature probably also explains why he got elected Debian Project Leader twice!
Anyway, enough history, check out his interview to learn more about the great work he s doing nowadays. My questions are in bold, the rest is by Steve.
Raphael: Who are you?
Steve: I m a professional software engineer, 37, living in Cambridge
(England) with my new wife Jo. I studied for the EIST degree at the
University of Cambridge, then (like many people here, it seems) I just
forgot to go home again afterwards and settled here. I spent more of
my study time playing with Linux than working on my degree, so I
guess I m lucky that it worked and I found a career in that area!
Raphael: How did you start contributing to Debian?
Steve: During my time in college, I started hacking on software in my free
time, using Slackware as my first Linux distribution from the middle
of 1994. After encountering more and more problems with Slackware, I
was encouraged by a number of friends to make the jump over to Debian
and in October 1996 I did. The installation process back then was
much harder than anything people see today, but after
a long weekend I finally had my Debian system up and running.
I was already one of the main upstream developers for the Mikmod music
player at that time, so that very same weekend I applied to be a DD so
I could maintain it in Debian too. Back then, the NM process was much
simpler: I just mailed a key to Bruce and he set me up with an account
almost immediately!
I then found that Joey Hess had beaten me to it and already packaged Mikmod. Grrr! 
Raphael: What s your biggest achievement within Debian?
Steve: Without a doubt, my proudest achievement within Debian is being
elected Project Leader for 2 years by the other developers. It s a
great feeling to have earned the trust of your friends and peers, and
also a great responsibility to go and help Debian where needed:
talking to the press about Debian, assisting wherever problems crop
up, etc. The DPL job is certainly a lot of hard work, and I have
nothing but respect for anybody who volunteers for it.
After dist-upgrading my main 
Since I am currently working on a Windows machine at work I am looking for ways to make this thing work in a sane way. The latest insane thing is the fact that I wasn't able to log on a CVS server at work from WinCVS (which uses CVSNT) with my regular credentials, while the cached password in Cygwin did work with the Cygwin CVS.
new year, old hobby: trying to fix an RC bug per day, & reporting about
it. here's the first episode of 2012:
Recently I've been wanting to replace my old point and shoot camera, a 
That time of the year comes where I summarize my running
activities. It's now 4.5 years that I resumed running, after nearly 10
years without active sports. Apparently, things continue to improve,
though I'm logically reaching my limits in some way.
I finally missed the 2500km mark by 14 kilometers, mostly because of a
cold I had during the last 2 days of the year.
The grand total is thus 2486 kilometers run, in 237 hours (9 days
21hours), at about 10.5km/h. The climbed height difference is 27700
meters, so about three times the altitude of Mount Sagarmatha..:-)
This was achieved in 294 "activities". That seems to be a lot (nearly
1 activity per day): indeed, there are days where I have up to 4
activities, when I run to/back work, which means two runs in the
morning (3+4km) and two in the evening. If I count the number of days
where I had at least one running activity, this lowers to 181.
In short, I ran about every 2 days. Indeed, along the year, the
biggest timeframe between two runs has been 7 days. In short, I ran
at least once every week during this year. The most active month was
July with 272km and the less active was September with 163.5.
When counted by distance, this summarizes to:
So there should be 
])
* This post is almost translation of my 
That s another topic, but I couldn t call Noopur/Anirudh for lunch etc due to that 
On my new