Plans for the next 2-3 months

In the past 6 weeks, since I came back from Oslo I was busy working at a client. I put in about 120% of the regular 9-hour workdays, plus 1.5 driving each day that did not leave much time or energy for any other activity. I barely was able to read blog entries and occasionally write a few lines. Now as we almost reached the dead-line at the client with an actually functioning system, starting from next week I'll be reducing my workload to about 40%. That leaves 3 week-days for other activities for which I have a lot planned. In order to make scheduling a bit easier I'll try to split up the time so every day I'll focus on one of the activities.

Here is what I have planned so far:

• Perl 6 In preparation to the classes in Lisbon (Perl 6 training in Lisbon in August) I need to restart writing my Perl 6 slides that will hopefully also include frequent posts on the Perl 6 Tricks and Treats list.
• Test Automation with Perl There are many updates I'd like to make to the materials of the Test Automation using Perl course. Part of those changes will be used as posts on the Test Automation Tips newsletter.
• Testing PHP I am also preparing a new training class called Testing PHP Applications for which a lot of material is still missing. I'll post parts of it to the Test Automation Tips list.
• Padre I also have lots of ideas in my head that need to be implemented in Padre. There are a couple of ideas for plug-ins such as the SQL plug-in I mentioned in Planning an SQL or DBI plugin for Padre but I'd also like to start to write a PDL plug-in (so it can compete with Matlab) and a local file history plug-in. I also would like to make sure we can build a working stand-alone executable of Padre at least for Linux. That would make it easier to get started with it. I am also planning to refactor the syntax highlighting code so it will be extremely easy to add another syntax with its own highlighter and it will be very easy to add several highlighters to the same code. For that I need to patch Syntax::Highlight::Engine::Kate and probably I'll also need to refactor the Parrot based syntax highlighter used in the Perl 6 plugin.

Hmm, counting that seems to be 4 items for 3 days and that did not include the sysadmin work I need to do, marketing my classes and working on CPAN::Forum and a set of other project. Oh yes I also started to think about a regular monthly daytime meeting for Open Source Developers under the name Open Source Developers Club though I have not received enthusiastic feedback. In addition I have some projects going on with the localization of the Perl documentation.

Oh well, is there a tree where time grows?