Reminiscences of 2012, Foreshadowings of 2013

It has come again. This magic time of the year when, in-between the hangovers of Christmas and the hangovers of the New Year bashes, one takes a longing look back at the ending year, and make mad plans, wistful wishes and grandiose resolutions for the new one. So, for a moment, let me indulge in this tradition and let my gaze wander at the distances that stretch forward and behind, while my mind drift back and forth betwixt what has been and what shall be. But gently. ‘Cause lemme tell you, that was damn good eggnog (so please be kind and don’t click so hard with the mouse, will you?).

2012 - The One Getting Out of Scope

Faster, Tygercat! Blog! Blog!

I think I remember that one of my resolution of last year was to keep the blogging furnace hot and running. Well, that I daresay happened. Fourty blog entries have been churned in 2012 (fourty-one, if we count this one), coming out with a satisfying regularity. Although a significant dip could be observed in December. Because I was slacking? Well, not really. Rather because the Perl advent calendars were in full swing, and that I ended up contributing both to the classic Perl 5 and the Dancer calendars. Counting those, my blog tally for 2012 goes up to 51. Almost, aaaaaalmost a batting average of one per week. Not to shabby. Not enough to get me to level up from my Paperman status in the Perl Ironman Challenge, mind you, but I begin to suspect that only Isaac Asimov could ever have been able to keep up with that one.

Stress-testing GitHub

Of course, all that blogging is fine and dandy, but it’s only the soapbox on top of the iceberg. Blips on the radar indicating which projects were touched, which CPAN modules came to be and got improved on. As it is my habit, I got fairly all over the place. Dist::Zilla plugins, smoke testing, web services, Hadoop integration, Dancer stuff, event-driven daemons, database (both of the SQL and non-SQL variety) interfacing, and countless wacky ideas that just had to be POC’ed. My own little pet projects, like Galuga, Template::Caribou and XML::XSS didn’t get all the love that they deserve, but the work that went into them generate some non-trivial amount of yak shaving (and by ‘non-trivial’, I mean measured in metric crap-tons) and CPAN patches that (or so I like to think) benefit the greater community.

YAPC::EU

2012 was also the year of my first YAPC::EU. It being in Frankfurt was just too serenpendious to pass. YAPCs are, for me, an occasion to get the pulse of what’s happening in the greater Perl world, but mostly to solidify the strands of my social network. And I’m always surprised, even considering how I’m not the most outgoing person ever, and how YAPC only last three short days, of how well that works. Beside the myriad of nods, greetings and quick chats, I was able to hook with Martin Evans (aka, the guy you should thank for the lion share of DBD::Oracle’s work in the last year), Gabor and a significant subset of the Dancer crew.

Dancer

Talking of Dancer… I already had contributed a few patches to the project (both in its 1.0 and 2.0 incarnations), but those meat-space meetings at YAPC caused things to escalate. Shortly after my return from Germany, I was absorbed into the core Dancer crew and ever since, well, I try very hard not to make those delightful guys not regret their decision.

2013 - Namespace Just About to Autovivificate

So, what’s in store for 2013?

Well, it’s safe to assume I won’t shut up anytime soon. I aim for a blog entry every 2 weeks as a minimum, but breaching the one-a-week would be nice, just to keep the Perl Weekly well furnished.

… talking of which. My chats with Gabor at YAPC also bore fruits, and he’s in the process of recruiting me for an editorial dark alliance for the Perl Weekly. For those who missed the good ol’ Shuck and Awe days, rejoice, for I’ll be back aggregating Perl news for your everlasting pleasure.

And then there is Dancer 2, which I’ll make my foremost priority. The core is pretty much ready for prime time, but there is still work to be done on all plugins and template interfaces. Enough to keep me happy for some time, I guess. And once we’re done and Dancer 2 is out there… well, don’t repeat it to anybody else, but I entertain this quixotic notion of a Dancer 2 book. It’s not exactly like I have the time, nor like it’s going to provides me with endless riches, but… it’s not like any of those things stopped me before.

Beside that, I see in my crystal ball more of the same that we saw in 2012. More modules on CPAN, a few adoptions, a wheelbarrow-worth of mad schemes being played with, maybe one or two actually working out. I kind of hope that I’ll be able to make it to YAPC::NA, which will be in early June in Austin, but we’ll see.

So, yeah, 2013. It’s shaping up to be a fun year… See you there!