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Re: The History of Acme::Bleach and Acme::EyeDrops

by eyepopslikeamosquito (Archbishop)
on Apr 28, 2012 at 09:45 UTC ( [id://967787]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to The History of Acme::Bleach and Acme::EyeDrops

I've had some more time to mine the London.pm and Seattle.pm (SPUG) mailing lists for more detailed supporting references for this node.

First, we travel back in time to Feb 19 2001, the date of the historic Seattle.pm meeting that Damian was travelling to (or from) in Dr Tim Maher's car when he first thought of Bleach:

Special February Meeting:
Title: Whither Perl 6.0?
Speaker: Aussie Perl Guru Dr. Damian Conway
Indentured Servant #1 to Perl Community,
via Development Grant from "Yet Another Society"
Time: February 19th, 2001 (Third MONDAY), 7:00pm-9pm
Location: Union Bank of California Bldg, 5th Floor Mtg Room
NOTE: Usual location and time, but Monday, rather than Tuesday!

Yes, the truth can finally be revealed: I will actually be travelling *backwards* in time to have given that talk, which I will soon be having written from memory, perhaps at the very moment you will have had been being reading this. (Man, this transtemporal travel is tough on the tenses!)

Next, forward one week to Feb 26 2001 to attend the London.pm "Conway Hall" meeting at which Damian subsequently revealed Bleach:

London.pm proudly presents my birthday, on 2001-02-26, in the Brockway Room, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1R 4RL from 7pm. You may all get me very large presents. Oh, and Perl God Damian Conway will be doing his wonderful Quantum::Superpositions lecture there as well. You can meet him on Sunday in the Penderels Oak from 6.30ish too.

Then a surprise. Just two days later, on Feb 28 2001, one "Matthew Robinson" proposed a Pony module based on Bleach! And even had the temerity to post an implementation:

Although I didn't make it to the pub after Damian's talk I did hear from my sources that someone thought it would be 'useful' to convert Bleach.pm to print pony instead. So here it is Pony.pm, it isn't quite the same as Bleach but it produces a similar result.

Enjoy, Matt

package Pony; $VERSION = '1.00'; # MSR - 28 Feb 2001 $magic = "pony " x 4; sub pony { local $_ = unpack("b*", pop); s/0/ /g; s/1/pony/g; $magic.$ +_ } sub depony { local $_ = pop; s/^$magic//; s/pony/1/g; s/ /0/g; pack("b +*", $_) } open 0 or die; ($script = join("", <0>)) =~ s/^(.*^use\s+Pony\s*;\s*?\n)//sm; $header = $1; do { eval depony($script); exit } if ($script =~ /^$magic/); open(0, ">$0") or die; print {0} $header.pony($script);

Finally, on Apr 1 2001 we learn not only about the Buffy and Pony modules, but also the DNA module by Schwern, and the SuperPython module by MJD, all released on April Fools' Day 2001. With all that global namespace trampling on a single day, no wonder there was such a crying need to create the Acme namespace:

This week was fairly random, mainly because of April Fool's Day. I released a silly Buffy module (which, a la Bleach, converts modules into "BUffY bUFFY BUffY bUFFY bUfFy buffy..."), with example decss code. Schwern released DNA ("CCAA CCAA AAGT CAGT TCCT CGCT..."), mjd released SuperPython (" ..."), and David Cantrell released (late) Pony, a converter to "a lovely ASCII-art rendition of a pony".

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Re^2: The History of Acme::Bleach and Acme::EyeDrops
by davorg (Chancellor) on Apr 28, 2012 at 14:29 UTC

    It's worth pointing out that when Damian demonstrated to the module to London.pm, it was simply called "Bleach". BackPan confirms that version 1.000 of Bleach.pm was uploaded on 21 Feb 2001. It was only with release 1.012 on 21 May 2001 that it acquired its more recognisable name. So it looks like Acme::Buffy and Acme::Pony both beat it into the Acme namespace.

    All of which makes me wonder if Leon had more to do with the invention of the Acme namespace than Damian says above. After all, he's been using the nick "acme" on IRC since well before this all happened :-)

    --

    See the Copyright notice on my home node.

    Perl training courses

      All of which makes me wonder if Leon had more to do with the invention of the Acme namespace than Damian says above.
      Not as far as I know (though, of course, he may well have been mind-controlling me without my knowledge). I actually wrote to Leon to apologize for having chosen "Acme" and to ensure he was okay with that. He was, as always, extremely gracious and bestowed his most aranciate blessing on the choice.

      Damian

        he may well have been mind-controlling me without my knowledge

        That sounds likely to me. It's always seemed suspicious that Acme and Uri were the only Perl programmers with their own CPAN namespaces :-)

        --

        See the Copyright notice on my home node.

        Perl training courses

        He bestowed his most aranciate blessing on the choice
        I'd forgotten about Leon's worship of the colour orange. Thanks for reminding me. I remember now that when davorg visited Sydney.pm some years ago, he told us that Leon had decreed that he undertake a spiritual journey to the New South Wales city of Orange and granted davorg permission to bestow his most aranciate blessing on it and to further take photographs of this sacred rural town through a specially provided naranja filter.

      Well, I'm gaining the distinct impression that acme was (and remains) a formidable player "behind the scenes" -- I suspect he was egging on DrHyde behind the scenes to upload Acme::Pony, for instance. So perhaps he was similarly urging Damian to please, please choose Acme as the new joke module namespace. :)

      However, I believe that Acme::Bleach was the first uploaded Acme module, at least that's what I see:

      • Backpan DCONWAY shows Bleach released on 21 Feb 2001 and Acme::Bleach on 21 May 2001
      • Backpan LBROCARD shows Buffy released on 1 Apr 2001 and Acme::Buffy on 23 May 2001
      • Backpan DCANTRELL shows Pony released on 3 Apr 2001 and Acme::Pony on 20 June 2001

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