Dave Cross

I understand that some of you will have objections to this (for perfectly reasonable reasons), but this is all AI.

* Lyrics (ChatGPT - from an idea by me)
* Song (Suno)
* Image (DALL-E)
* Lip sync (Runway)

I think it's all pretty impressive.

My current hobby seems to be building websites about a pretty niche subject - with lots of Amazon Associates links and then SEO the crap out of them. Here's one I build over the last couple of days - Mercurial Albums.

mercurialalbums.com

Set of 5 Open Source Beer Mats | eBay UK Linux Lager. Apache Ale. The "Tim's Irish Ale" design on the top left of the picture is the reverse of all of the mats. They were given away at a number of conferences during that year. I have these...

I've had these old @oreilly.bsky.social promotional beermats listed on eBay for over four years. I saw them in a drawer a couple of days ago and thought, "Oh, no-one wants them - I should throw them away".

Today, someone ordered two sets.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/32474898...

Planet Perl Planet Perl: Your one-stop destination for the latest Perl blogs, news, and tutorials from around the web. Dive into the world of Perl with curated content from experts and enthusiasts alike.

I think that many people aren't aware of the existence of Planet Perl (it gets 4-5 visitors on most days).

Anyway. It exists. And I've just given it a bit of a redesign. You may find it useful and/or interesting.

perl.theplanetarium.org

YouTube video by J. Draper How We Beat The Fascists Last Time: The London History Show

This video manages to be both incredibly nostalgic for those of us who remember the Anti Nazi League and Rock Against Racism from the late 70s but also packed full of good advice on countering the rise of racism and fascism that we see today.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeHv...

Easy SEO for lazy programmers - Perl Hacks A few of my recent projects—like Cooking Vinyl Compilations and ReadABooker—aim to earn a little money via affiliate links. That only works if people actually find the pages, share them, and get decen...

New blog post - Easy SEO for lazy programmers.

perlhacks.com/2025/09/easy...

More than 100,000 join Tommy Robinson rally, as counter-protesters demonstrate Nine people are arrested as the Met say extra officers have been deployed to deal with

London today was full of people who don't understand our values and won't integrate.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A Radiohead story I’ve liked Radiohead for a long time. I think “High and Dry” was the first song of theirs I heard (it was on heavy rotation on the…

Why I'm not going to see Radiohead.

davorg.medium.com/a-radiohead-...

Honestly, it was a slightly dodgy conference hotel on the outskirts of the city. Very convenient for the airport, but we had to get a shuttle bus to do any sight-seeing.

Should really go back and see it properly.

Perl Vogue <b>Perl Vogue</b> is a light-hearted talk by Dave Cross that compares the Perl community’s module preferences to fashion trends. Highlighting the ever-changing landscape of popular Perl tools, he joki...

Yesterday, Facebook memories reminded me that it was 15 years since I had given my "Perl Vogue" lightning talk at YAPC in Pisa. I thought it was appropriate to add that talk to my talks site today - in memory of Matt Trout.

talks.davecross.co.uk/talk/perl-vo...

Oneirina [Oh-near-EEna, she/her] Oneirina weaves dreamlogic and glitch into intimate, three-quarter-time confessions. London-born but untethered, her songs drift through surreal electronica, whispered poetry,

The thing I love about AI music is that you can create stuff that is completely tailored to your tastes (both in style and subject).

So, anyway, here's Oneirina. She produces glitchy, dream-pop about London and quantum physics :-)

soundcloud.com/oneirinamusic

Today, I shall be mostly listening to "We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'N' Roll".

Hymns for Atheists Twelve original secular hymns celebrating reason, doubt, science, and wonder. Sacred music, without the superstition.

Interesting morning. I started by playing with Suno. And within a couple of hours, I had this!

hymnsforatheists.com

#atheism #humanism #secularism

Making progress Learning things I didn't expect to learn

Here's the newsletter that went out to my subscribers yesterday.

davecross.substack.com/p/making-pro...

When people have an unfortunate name and that leads to you getting an incredibly scary email :-/

Reform MP James McMurdock gives up whip over business allegations, party says He has made the decision amid allegations of business propriety during the pandemic.

How many MPs does Reform have?

How about now?

Or now?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

perldelta what is new for perl v5.42.0

Perl 5.42 was released this afternoon. Perl still has a major release every year (don't believe people who tell you it hasn't changed since Perl 5.0 was released in 1994). This is not your father's Perl.

Release notes - metacpan.org/release/BOOK...

Bank of England to redesign banknotes - and wants your help The first facelift in more than 50 years signals the possible end of historical figures on notes.

Or, maybe save the money this will cost and just continuing using the existing banknotes until the inevitable death of cash in the next 10-15 years.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Gábor recently ran a poll on Facebook asking which version of Perl people used. A surprising number said, "whatever comes with my OS". I had some thoughts on that.

perlhacks.com/2025/06/stop...

I saw someone filming outside Sainsbury's but I had no idea who it was

That was really not on my bingo card for today!

Chaos in Clapham: a visit to the most dangerous cycle spot in Great Britain Commuters share their views at the junction with the highest number of cycling accidents

Unexpected guest appearance in the video at the top of this Guardian story!

www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ju...

Yesterday, I mused that my CSS knowledge is horribly out of date. So I decided to do something about it.

modern-css.davecross.co.uk

State of CSS 2025 Take the State of CSS survey

Every year I do the State of CSS survey.

Every year I'm reminded that my CSS knowledge is stuck in the early 2000s

survey.devographics.com/en-US/survey...

Not enough people understand Perl slices.

perlhacks.com/2025/06/a-sl...

Deploying Dancer Apps – The Next Generation - Perl Hacks Last summer, I wrote a couple of posts about my lightweight, roll-your-own approach to deploying PSGI (Dancer) web apps: Deploying Dancer Apps Deploying Dancer Apps: Addendum In those posts, I describ...

I revisited my "Deploying Dancer Apps" project and rewrote it to use standard Linux tools.

perlhacks.com/2025/05/depl...

Who would be the best prime minister? May 2025 | YouGov We put the four main party leaders head to head

Some good news from YouGov.

Basically...

* Starmer beats everyone
* Davey beats everyone except Starmer
* Badenoch beats Farage
* Farage loses to everyone

yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Fifteen years since the BBC rendered my BBC streams page obsolete (which means it's over twenty years since I first created it).

blog.dave.org.uk/2010/05/bbc-...

I tried "vibe coding" (because all the cool kids are doing it). I built this using Vite and React in less than an hour. I know next to nothing about Vite and React.

davorg.dev/last-live/

AI programming assistance helps me write useful little utilities.

perlhacks.com/2025/05/turn...