Base58 is a human-readable, protocol-safe encoding useful for case-sensitive encodings in cross-application situations such as urls, databases, file systems, full-text indexes and others. It was popularized by Flickr and also used by Bitcoin and Grokbase. Back in 2011, I open sourced Base58 libraries using the GNU MP Big Num Library (GMP) for Perl and Ruby
Open Source Conference Banners
I was recently surfing the net and came across an artistic and eye-catching conference banner for PyCon Argentina 2012. I thought it was good marketing so I wanted to think about ways these banners could get a wider distribution, sort of like the conference ribbons people put on their blogs. To get wider distribution, I
Base58: Fast Hashing with GMP
Base58 is an alternative to Base64 that is growing in popularity for case-sensitive encodings due to several characteristics including multi-protocol-safety and human-readability. It is used by Flickr, Bitcoin, and now Grokbase. The general characteristics of Base58 are that it uses the protocol-safe alpha-numeric alphabet (Base62) and excludes easy to confuse digits. Both Flickr and Grokbase
Confident Code Using Type Constraints
The other day on Hacker News, there was a good discussion of Avdi Grimm‘s talk on how to write Confident Code given at this year’s Ruby Midwest. He covers four areas: gather input, perform work, deliver results and handle failure. Here are links to the code example showing the initial, timid and final, confident code.
Explaining Why Moose is Awesome – The Direct Way
The Perl community knows that Moose is awesome as evidenced by the amount of talks at YAPC and the number of times it is mentioned on blog articles and discussion boards. However, to me, what often seems to get lost is why Moose is awesome and why it is relevant, especially to those outside the
Perl and Python – Two Nights in Silicon Valley
One of the well-touted advantages of living in Silicon Valley is that it is a crucible of talent. Along with colleagues, conferences and unconferences, there are many regular user groups in the valley, of which I’ve attended several. This past week, I decided to check out the local SF Perl Mongers and BayPIGgies (Python) which
