Yeah, I know what you mean. I found the book(*) "PDL: Scientific Programming in Perl" a useful, and fairly gentle, introduction - you can always read it in the bath sometime when you don't have a particular use for PDL - then when you do, you can fish the knowledge out of the back of your brain. That's my technique, anyway. :)

Best, andye

* An online book - not a printed 'book' book. I don't have the URL handy but I'm sure Google will find it for you.