Recently, I was browsing through Powell's Technical Bookstore here in Portland, Oregon, when my eye fell on a copy of the Pink Camel. After retrieving my eye, I grabbed the book and started reading through it. First published in 1991, this book by Larry Wall and Randal Schwartz (a.k.a. merlyn) is a classic. I had to buy it and at only $9.95, it was a steal (well, to me at least).

Some of my friends and I had a blast sitting around and reading choice passages from it. Nostalgia can be a Good Thing. Because I want everyone to share my joy, here's page xix, explaining how to get Perl via anonymous uucp (I hope this is covered under Fair Use laws or something like that!).

You can get Perl via anonymous uucp from the site osu-cis, thanks to J. Greely <jgreely@cis.ohio-state.edu> or <osu-cis!jgreely>

You should use the following lines in your L.sys or Systems file:

  #
  # Direct Trailblazer
  # The modem is occasionally unavailable.
  #
  osu-cis Any ACU 19200 1-614-292-5112 in:--in:--in: Uanon
  #
  # Direct V.32 (MNP 4)
  # dead, dead, dead...sigh.
  #
  #osu-cis Any ACU 9600 1-614-292-5112 in:--in:--in: Uanon
  #
  # Micom port selector, at 1200, 2400, or 9600 bps.
  # Replace the ##'s below with 12, 24, or 96 (both speed and phone nu
+mber).
  #
  # The following is really one line.  Just don't type the
  # backslash-return that we've added to make it fit this book
  osu-cis Any ACU ##00 1-614-292-31## "" \r\c Name? ocu-cis nected \
  \c GO \d\r\d\r\d\r\d\r\d\r\d\r\d\r in:--in:--in: Uanon

[download]

Of course, you may need to modify this information, as appropriate for your site, to deal with your local telephone system. There are no limitations concerning the hours of the day you may call, and the only charge is your long distance call.

You should probably get these two files first:

  osu-cis!~/GNU.how_to_get.
  osu-cis!~/ls-lR.Z

[download]

This will give you a listing of all the sources available at that site. However, the current Perl distribution is in the files:

  osu-cis!~/perl/4.0/kits@19/perl.kitXX.Z (XX=01-40)

As noted above, this information is subject to change, and may be out-of-date by the time you read this book.

At any rate, if you have trouble, you can send e-mail to osu-cis!uucp.

To obtain sources from uunet, call 1-900-468-7727 and use the login "uucp" with no password. The Perl distribution is in the file ~uucp/gnu/perl-4.0.10.tar.Z. The examples from this book are in ~uucp/nutshell/perl/perl.tar.Z. As of this writing, the cost is 40 cents per minute. The charges will appear on your next telephone bill. The Perl distribution is about 700,000 bytes, compressed, so don't do this unless you have a Telebit Trailblazer or other very high speed modem.

Cheers,
Ovid

Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: (OT) Blast from the Past: The Pink Camel
by rattusillegitimus (Friar) on Aug 28, 2002 at 17:24 UTC

    Believe it or now, the Pink Camel is still my bible. I got it for Christmas many years ago, and I've still not had the requisite book budget to upgrade to a more recent edition. I still find it useful, too, in part because I tend to know exactly where everything is in it and in part because of my archaic need for printed documentation. Perhaps I should look into a leather binding for it and have the Camel embossed on the front in gold leaf...

    As an even further OT aside, big ++ to O'Reilly for making durable books. I'm pretty rough on my tools, and any book that can stand up to years of heavy-handed use, precarious stacking, and lying open (face up and face down) on the nearest flat surface (not to mention surviving spilled drinks, etc), is a marvel of modern engineering. I've not lost a single page, and the cover is only a little frayed about the edges.

    -rattus
    __________
    He seemed like such a nice guy to his neighbors / Kept to himself and never bothered them with favors
    - Jefferson Airplane, "Assassin"

[reply]
Re: (OT) Blast from the Past: The Pink Camel
by kschwab (Vicar) on Aug 28, 2002 at 17:36 UTC
    I bought mine in 1993, and it included some tear-out business-reply postpaid cards from O'Reilly.

    The cards have a spot to put your email address, with this handy note:

    Email Address ________________ (Internet or Uunet)

[reply]

      My copy still has the cards, but my email address field has a slightly different description:

      Internet or other email address (specify network)

      Wow! You mean email isn't part of the World Wide Web? I thought that was the Web's killer app ;)

      Cheers,
      Ovid

      Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.

[reply]
Re: (OT) Blast from the Past: The Pink Camel
by tbone1 (Monsignor) on Aug 28, 2002 at 18:10 UTC
    At a family reunion last weekend, I met a third cousin who is a sysadmin and had just written his first Perl script. I mentioned that my eight-year-old copy of Programming Perl and seven-year old copy of Learning Perl, though heavily used, are still intact and in darned good shape. It's odd what can make a connection between people. We must have spent an hour talking shop, much to the annoyance of his wife.

    (On the other hand, if I'd started telling some of my bluer jokes, it wouldn't have made her any happier.)

    --
    tbone1
    As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

[reply]
Re: (OT) Blast from the Past: The Pink Camel
by sauoq (Abbot) on Aug 29, 2002 at 02:02 UTC

    Mine is a third printing with the same thing on the cards as kschwab's. I also have a pink Llama which I never really read, I don't think.

    Other jewels in my O'Reilly collection include: a fifth printing spiral bound copy of Unix in a Nutshell (for System V), The Mosaic Handbook (for the X Window System), and a Beta Edition of JavaScript: The Definitive Guide. That one actually has "BETA EDITION: FOR NETSCAPE 2.0 and 3.0B6" printed on a slant in big red type over the Rhino. "BETA EDITION" is also printed (also on a slant) in light pink over the description on the back of the book. The printing history lists only "August 1996: Beta Edition."

    I've noticed that older O'Reilly books list nuts@ora.com as their email address. Some also list uunet!ora!nuts for UUCP.

    -sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";
[reply]
Re: (OT) Blast from the Past: The Pink Camel
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Aug 28, 2002 at 19:33 UTC

    Oh boy! Pink Camel's too....I have enough trouble with Pink Elephants following me home on Saturday nights.

    What's this about a "crooked mitre"? I'm good at woodwork!
[reply]
Re: (OT) Blast from the Past: The Pink Camel
by clintp (Curate) on Aug 29, 2002 at 13:06 UTC
    My Pink Camel is on my "reserve" bookshelf. Well worn, badly tattered and still a fun read.

    But, my Pink Camel bit of nostalgia is a Pink Camel t-shirt. It's signed (cryptically) by Tom, Peter Prymmer, Randal, and Larry. That gets worn rarely, usually when I teach a long Perl class and run out of Con shirts to wear.

    The story (some is speculation) goes that in October 1996, the publication of the Blue Camel (1st edition) was Any Day Now. O'Reilly was supposed to have the first shipment of them at the LISA X conference in Chicago, and had a book signing scheduled for that night. Only one problem -- no books. Friends of mine and I scoured the city to find a Blue Camel and found that other people were doing the same and there were none to be had at any price. You could pre-order them from ORA (which I did), but not actually get one. So ORA has hundreds of anxious sysadmins and no books. Instead they crack open a crate of t-shirts and let the autographing begin.

    So the cover on the book in the shirt is Pink, but it was for the debut of the Blue Camel. Go figure. :)

[reply]
      The story (some is speculation) goes that in October 1996, the publication of the Blue Camel (1st edition) was Any Day Now. O'Reilly was supposed to have the first shipment of them at the LISA X conference in Chicago, and had a book signing scheduled for that night. Only one problem -- no books. Friends of mine and I scoured the city to find a Blue Camel and found that other people were doing the same and there were none to be had at any price. You could pre-order them from ORA (which I did), but not actually get one. So ORA has hundreds of anxious sysadmins and no books. Instead they crack open a crate of t-shirts and let the autographing begin.
      Yeah, what a fiasco.

      O'Reilly ships (I think it was) 10 (yes ten) copies of the Camel-2, to the premiere of the Camel-2, when there was an expected book signing, and knowing it was a convention of sysadmins (LISA), traditionally the strongest market for the Camel.

      Luckily, the Chicago bookstores had just received their allotments, so we actually bought books at retail to get them to the conference for the signing. Amazingly bad planning.

      The excuse I'd heard is "Well, we typically don't sell very many books, and it's expensive to ship the unsold books twice". {sigh}

      -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[reply]
Re: (OT) Blast from the Past: The Pink Camel
by cybear (Monk) on Aug 29, 2002 at 14:08 UTC
    UUCP !?!

    I read about that once in school. LOL :-)

    - cybear

[reply]

Back to Meditations