post-turkey coma

Well, Thanksgiving is over and I can still say I have zero casualties from my cooking. I was a bit disappointed that the tofurkey didn't arrive as planned only to have Veat in its stead. I love the name ...vegetable + meat = veat..but was really looking forward to trying the tofurkey. We have enough leftovers to feed a small country and the cranberry-apple pie has a magnetic appeal.

I just finished reading The Northern Lights an interesting and tragic story about a man whom time forgot, Kristian Birkeland. The book received a lukewarm review by the NYT but I think it was written primarily to revive the memory of Birkeland rather than be an exhaustive biography. He had such a fertile mind that a proper biography would be more than 1000 pages since not only did he study the Aurora Borealis and have revolutionary cosmological ideas, he also invented the rail gun and the first commercially viable method for producing ammonium nitrate [ saltpeter ] among a slew of others. He had an amazing passion for science and even worked to develop the fertilizer process in order to fund the research his university could no longer justify funding. He is the embodiment of the saying 'If you want something badly enough there is nothing that will get in your way.'

Another book I waded through, Perl for Web Site Management, is also well done. I read through it a few months ago for a tech review and found that most of my suggestions made it into the final product which is always a nice feeling to see that you've helped out in some small way. The author sticks to the pragmatic side of Perl instead of inserting things just to make himself look clever as so many tech books seem to be plagued with these days. The book is also mostly Unix-centric which is refreshing as well. The conversational tone and style makes it really easy to read. The layout, too, is easy to read since it would appear that troff has been forsaken in favour of better kerning, leading and type :) I still think the book should have introduced using mySQL or PostgreSQL with Perl for the web as static content is so 90s but maybe that can be a whole book on its own.

The Smithsonian Magazine December issue features and article titled Cold Comfort which has some stunning photos of the Ice Hotel that is high on my list of places I want to visit when we move to Helsinki.

And I'm hoping to finish updating the Perl history update since I updated the CPAN FAQ a few days ago before I slip into a soporific coma here on the couch after eating more turkey and pie.