The world's easiest guide to installing cpanm

A lot of the software I write is in Perl, and the easiest way to install it is almost always using cpanm. Here I present to you the world's easiest guide to getting cpanm up and running.

If you're in a hurry, just run these and you're done.

curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - --self-upgrade
~/perl5/bin/cpanm local::lib
perl -I ~/perl5/lib/perl5 -Mlocal::lib >> ~/.bashrc

Now start a new shell, and you're done.

Gamifiy your command line with HabitRPG

So, you're using HabitRPG to gamify your life, right? You should be; what could be better than collecting XP and gold for fixing bugs and doing chores and flossing your teeth, and developing a totally kick-arse character you'd want to show off to all your friends?

Oh yeah, doing all that from the command-line. ;)

So, I present to you hrpg, a command-line tool to integrate with HabitRPG.  It's still new, but it's very full featured.

Reimplementing the iDoneThis memory service

Photography by wadem, CC-BY-SA

There's an excellent website called iDoneThis.com, which implements the most simple yet brilliant of services. Every day, you record the list of things you've done, and it gives you a check-mark for that day. This was motivating in two ways: firstly, the desire to keep that chain of check-marks running (what's known as a 'chain calendar' or a 'Seinfeld calendar'), and secondly by emailing you your memories of what you were doing a year (or a week, or a month) ago.

For me, knowing what I was doing a year ago was really good. I loved waking up each morning to be reminding of something I might otherwise not think of again. The good memories I was emailed would make me feel good again, and bad memories? Well, they'd often make me feel good that I wasn't going through that anymore, or they'd be insightful if I was encountering similar issues now.

I loved the memory service, and so did my friends, even if they didn't use it. I'd often send them messages about what awesome adventures we were up to a year ago, and that would often make their day.

Unfortunately, a few months ago, iDoneThis discontinued their memory-posting service. I don't know why; I can only assume they're focusing on the more corporate part of their service, and the network costs of all the personal emails wasn't worth it.

Today, as part of a productivity spiral, I reimplemented the old memories service. The code isn't pretty—unfortunately iDoneThis doesn't (yet) provide an API—but I have a bot that can log-in and fetch a day's worth of data.  Best of all, that code is open source, and available from the CPAN, so you can download and use it yourself.

Banking Vigilence Fail: Unblocking A Card With Only A Surname

Photography by Andres Rueda, CC-BY

Every year I go travelling, and every year my bank suspends my credit card due to "suspicious behaviour". Luckily, it's easy to get the stops removed... too easy, in fact.

Today, when calling the bank to confirm that I had purchased a US phone service, I was asked only a single piece of identifying information, and that was my surname.  The bank's representative revealed—without my prompting—the last four digits of my credit card, and the full details of the transaction that was considered suspicious.

The thing is, if you're the one making fraudulent transactions on a card, then you probably already know the cardholder's surname, and you definitely know some recent suspicious transactions.

Facebook friends lists are now less private

Photograph by D Sharon Pruitt. CC-BY 2.0

Today started with breakfast. A breakfast so good that I decided to tell my friends on Facebook about it. Rather than telling everyone about my breakfast habits, I have a friends list that I use for the purpose. Actually, I have dozens of lists, with people categorised by interests, social circle, location, shared experiences, personality type, programming language, and all manner of other criteria.

Telling my friends about my breakfast shouldn't have been a big deal, except when I selected my breakfast list, Facebook informed me that posting to lists has changed, and now users will be able to see who else can see a given post. The pop-up cheerfully informed me that they won't be told the name of the list they're on, so everything's okay, right?