I've been using GitHub Copilot as a contributor to my CPAN modules. Here's how I do it perlhacks.com/2026/02/trea...

Started a GoT rewatch last night. Which, somehow, led to me building this... davorg.dev/got/got.png

Does anyone else buy more domains than they care to admit? I'm getting much better now... honestly! But you might find this tool useful. dev.to/davorg/i-bui...

I updated the "About" page on my Substack newsletter to better reflect what it has mutated into. davecross.substack.com/about

Usually, I trust Spotify to stick with the right vibe when I let it just play stuff. But it just interrupted a nice 70s prog session to play something by Sky (who I had forgotten about). If it follows that with Tomita, I'm cancelling my subscription. (Follow me for niche musical opinions :-))

That thing where you get an idea and can't concentrate on anything else until you publish it. davorg.medium.com/notes-app-lo...

Most of what I know about US political procedures comes from The West Wing, Bloom County (Meadow Party, 1984) or Howard the Duck (All-Night Party, 1976). I watched Trump's speech at Davos. How bad does it need to get before someone invokes the 25th Amendment?

Today I had lunch in the same restaurant as Dexter Sol Ansell - who is one of the leads in "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" (the new "Game of Thrones" prequel). Weird to think that was probably his last public meal before the show is broadcast on Monday and half of the population will recognise him

The World: Hey Grok, those sexual images aren't a good idea Grok: Oh, ok. I'll limit that feature to paying customers The World: You're really not seeing the problem here Grok: Ok. I've turned that feature off completely... The World: Good Grok: ...in jurisdictions where it's illegal The World: FFS

These blog posts (by James Duncan, an old friend from the early dotbom boom) are very good marketing for his new project. Good because they're clear and make great points, but don't (yet) give away anything about what it is. And leave you (well, me, at least) desperate to know more. page.love/blog/

I've decided to bring altogether all my old Perl training decks from the last 25 years. They might be useful to someone. And they might encourage more people to hire me to run courses for them :-) I made a (small) start on that today. It'll take a while! learn.davecross.co.uk/slides/

People have been talking about Perl's rather impressive improvement in the TIOBE index over recent months. I dug into the data. tiobe.perlhacks.com

I've just been (mildly) bitten by a Markdown gotcha. Who can work out what problem this commit fixed? github.com/davorg/davec...

I'm rather enjoying this conversation with a scammer (even though I know it's, ultimately, pointless) 🙂

I really don't want to come across as a lifestyle guru or some kind of finance bro, but I wrote down some things I was thinking about over the weekend. davorg.medium.com/retirement-i...

Here's the newsletter I sent out to subscribers on New Year's Eve. davecross.substack.com/p/books-and-...

A command-line program I use constantly. Maybe you'll find it useful too. perlhacks.com/2026/01/apph...

This week's entry in "The Horsell Transmissions" was published this morning. horsell.substack.com/p/extract-2-...

Maybe it's not the right day to mention this. But if you're planning some kind of "giving up a particular pleasure for January" exercise starting tomorrow, then Dave's Dry January tracker will tell you how far through it you are. davorg.dev/january/

I've written a little more about my new Substack project - The Horsell Transmissions open.substack.com/pub/horsell/...

A silly new project for the new year. The Horsell Transmissions: Recovered Mars–Earth transmissions from 1898, translated and annotated. Procedure, panic, and the planet’s smallest citizens. horsell.substack.com

In an end-of-year cinema rush, I saw "Hamnet" yesterday and "David Bowie: The Final Act" today. I need to see fewer films about death :-/

Happy Christmas, everyone. I'm not sure how I managed it[*], but I got to Christmas Day without being Whamaggeddoned. [*] Probably not going into a shop during the Christmas period was a big help. www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8gm...

For many years, I used this photo as part of the Magnum Solutions branding. It was on business cards, my website and talk slides. Google Photos "On This Day" has just reminded me that it was taken 20 years ago today. It's the Castlerigg Stone Circle, just outside of Keswick in the Lake District.

At the start of this year, Jekyll was something that I disliked so much that I started writing my own static site generator in Perl. Today, I uploaded my first Jekyll plugin to RubyGems. It's been a weird year. rubygems.org/gems/jekyll-...

25 years since Kirsty MacColl died. Still sadly missed. open.spotify.com/artist/6UlNI...

Today, I'm being annoyed by companies that see you browsing their site and use that as an excuse to send a "Did you forget something?" email. Looking at you, Grind

A peek behind the curtain at Perl School Publishing (maybe useful to other people who might want to publish an ebook) perlhacks.com/2025/12/behi...

Back in 1984, when "Resurrection of the Daleks" was first broadcast, I knew little about Shad Thames (it was "that dodgy area to the east of Tower Bridge"). But having spent a couple of years working at Zoopla, I now know it very well. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WAB...

David Bowie was my top artist in Spotify Wrapped - but not one of his songs made my top 100 playlist. Anyway, if you're interested in what I've been listening to this year, here's the playlist. open.spotify.com/playlist/37i...

I've been writing Advent Calendar posts about Pixie the Elf for a few years now. So I thought it was time she had her own website. pixie.perlhacks.com

I'm in the Perl Advent Calendar today. perladvent.org/2025/2025-12...

Five years ago today, the cables at the Arecibo Observatory went "ping" in a spectacular fashion. www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3AA...

I hinted that Perl School was about to wake up. I can now tell you that we've published "Design Patterns in Modern Perl" by Mohammad Sajid Anwar. More details (and Amazon and LeanPub links) on the page below. perlschool.com/books/design...

Interesting corner of British political history. It was 35 years ago today that Thatcher announced she was withdrawing from the Tory leadership election (and would, therefore, no longer be PM). The last 15 years have given me far more respect for her than I ever had at the time.

I have actual real work that I should be getting on with. But, first, I needed to get this out of my head. davorg.medium.com/ms-fnd-in-a-...

Thirty years ago today, the best Britpop album was released. (It's "Different Class" by Pulp - but you all knew that, right?)

The excited squealing you might hear from SW London is me celebrating after paying off my mortgage (it's the second time I've done it and I can confirm it doesn't get any less exciting with repetition 😃)

Good work by the Python Software Foundation for pushing back against the requirements that the (US, naturally) National Science Foundation tried to impose on them in exchange for a grant. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...

Perl School is waking up. Not only is the 2ed of "Data Munging with Perl" almost ready, but other projects are coming that I can't talk about yet. To make life easy for myself, I've written this web app to generate Perl School book covers. Which books would you like to see? cover.perlschool.com

I found some old USD travellers cheques (young people, ask your parents). I found Travelex would take them back and send the money to my bank. When they did it was about 17% less than expected. Seems they use a laughable FX rate. I built this to show just how bad it was: davorg.dev/travellers-c...

I put my song "London to Brighton" together with that BBC film of the train journey from 1983. I think it works pretty well. www.tiktok.com/@oneirinamus...

I understand that some of you will have objections to this (for perfectly reasonable reasons), but this is all AI. * Lyrics (ChatGPT - from an idea by me) * Song (Suno) * Image (DALL-E) * Lip sync (Runway) I think it's all pretty impressive.

My current hobby seems to be building websites about a pretty niche subject - with lots of Amazon Associates links and then SEO the crap out of them. Here's one I build over the last couple of days - Mercurial Albums. mercurialalbums.com

I've had these old @oreilly.bsky.social promotional beermats listed on eBay for over four years. I saw them in a drawer a couple of days ago and thought, "Oh, no-one wants them - I should throw them away". Today, someone ordered two sets. www.ebay.co.uk/itm/32474898...

I think that many people aren't aware of the existence of Planet Perl (it gets 4-5 visitors on most days). Anyway. It exists. And I've just given it a bit of a redesign. You may find it useful and/or interesting. perl.theplanetarium.org

This video manages to be both incredibly nostalgic for those of us who remember the Anti Nazi League and Rock Against Racism from the late 70s but also packed full of good advice on countering the rise of racism and fascism that we see today. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeHv...

New blog post - Easy SEO for lazy programmers. perlhacks.com/2025/09/easy...

London today was full of people who don't understand our values and won't integrate. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Why I'm not going to see Radiohead. davorg.medium.com/a-radiohead-...