Last night I gave <a href="../perl/rewrite/RedFlags.rtf">a talk</a> [<a href="../perl/rewrite/RedFlags.ppt">PPT</a>] on Red Flags in perl (which was a condensation of the 2002 YAPC presentation by <a href="http://perl.plover.com">MJD</a>). The two central ideas are to remove repeated (did you make it by yank-put-indent?) code and to make your code (regexps, quoted strings, etc.) legible. 

<p>That was followed on by a talk on OO-php which devolved into python, segued into ruby, and ended up with me talking about finance for an hour. How's that for a perl meeting? ;)</p>

<p>To cap the evening off, I had another vivid dream. I was in the skyscraper section of a large city, looking at a huge multi-storey (like 8 or more) water fountain built like an obsidian ziggurat. Water thunders down from the top. As you watched it, you notice there are shapes in the water. Black horses are plummeting down the fall, legs sticking out at wrong angles, heads twisted. And it went on and on and on, and I couldn't stop watching it. </p>