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-...

Yesterday, Facebook memories reminded me that it was 15 years since I had given my "Perl Vogue" lightning talk at YAPC in Pisa. I thought it was appropriate to add that talk to my talks site today - in memory of Matt Trout. talks.davecross.co.uk/talk/perl-vo...

The thing I love about AI music is that you can create stuff that is completely tailored to your tastes (both in style and subject). So, anyway, here's Oneirina. She produces glitchy, dream-pop about London and quantum physics :-) soundcloud.com/oneirinamusic

Today, I shall be mostly listening to "We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'N' Roll".

Interesting morning. I started by playing with Suno. And within a couple of hours, I had this! hymnsforatheists.com #atheism #humanism #secularism

Here's the newsletter that went out to my subscribers yesterday. davecross.substack.com/p/making-pro...

When people have an unfortunate name and that leads to you getting an incredibly scary email :-/

How many MPs does Reform have? How about now? Or now? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Perl 5.42 was released this afternoon. Perl still has a major release every year (don't believe people who tell you it hasn't changed since Perl 5.0 was released in 1994). This is not your father's Perl. Release notes - metacpan.org/release/BOOK...

Or, maybe save the money this will cost and just continuing using the existing banknotes until the inevitable death of cash in the next 10-15 years. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Gábor recently ran a poll on Facebook asking which version of Perl people used. A surprising number said, "whatever comes with my OS". I had some thoughts on that. perlhacks.com/2025/06/stop...

Unexpected guest appearance in the video at the top of this Guardian story! www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ju...

Yesterday, I mused that my CSS knowledge is horribly out of date. So I decided to do something about it. modern-css.davecross.co.uk

Every year I do the State of CSS survey. Every year I'm reminded that my CSS knowledge is stuck in the early 2000s survey.devographics.com/en-US/survey...

Not enough people understand Perl slices. perlhacks.com/2025/06/a-sl...

I revisited my "Deploying Dancer Apps" project and rewrote it to use standard Linux tools. perlhacks.com/2025/05/depl...

Some good news from YouGov. Basically... * Starmer beats everyone * Davey beats everyone except Starmer * Badenoch beats Farage * Farage loses to everyone yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Fifteen years since the BBC rendered my BBC streams page obsolete (which means it's over twenty years since I first created it). blog.dave.org.uk/2010/05/bbc-...

I tried "vibe coding" (because all the cool kids are doing it). I built this using Vite and React in less than an hour. I know next to nothing about Vite and React. davorg.dev/last-live/

AI programming assistance helps me write useful little utilities. perlhacks.com/2025/05/turn...

I saw a preview of "The Ballad of Wallis Island" last night. And I'll be very surprised if I see a better film this year.

I had another problem. I solved it with Perl. And I released the solution to CPAN. perlhacks.com/2025/05/refo...

I had a problem. I solved it with Perl. And I released my solution to CPAN. perlhacks.com/2025/05/clea...