my $pm = new Parallel::ForkManager(20);

for my $i (0..$#itemstoget) {
        $pm->start and next; # do the fork
        my ($id,$url,$title,$excerpt)  = @{ $itemstoget[$i] };
        my $user_agent = LWP::UserAgent->new;
        $user_agent->timeout(30);
        my $request = HTTP::Request->new('GET', $url);
        my $response = $user_agent->request($request);
        my $dbh = connectdb('blogdb');
        if ($response->is_success) {
                unless (isforeignlanguage($response,$title,$excerpt,$url)) {
                    my $html = resolve_charset($response->content);
                    # if the html meets the criteria for at least one client that claims it, extract the text
                    my $itemok = checkhtml($dbh,$id,$html);
                    if ($itemok) {
                        inserthtml($dbh,$id,$html);
                        print "OK  $id ",substr($url,0,50),"\n";
                    }
                    else {
                        print "SKIP     $url\n";
                        dosql($dbh,"update blogitems set getattempts=999 where id=$id");
                    }
                }
                else {
                    print "FOREIGN  $url\n";
                    dosql($dbh,"update blogitems set getattempts=999 where id=$id");
                }
        }
        else {
            print "FAILED  $url\n";
            dosql($dbh,"update blogitems set getattempts=getattempts + 1 where id=$id");
        }
        $dbh->disconnect;
        undef $user_agent;
        $pm->finish;
}

$pm->wait_all_children;