Perry's the guy that put this wiki up.

<sneak> and this is what he looks like http://www.feet.net.nz/gallery/raymondhomecoming/raymondshomecoming_042 </sneaky>

What Perry doesn't know about bash(1) isn't worth knowing.

Up until recently, Perry was the code maintainer for the UnderNet IRC network (rumours that he was kicked out for giving O-lines for drugs have been greatly exaggerated).

He is currently interested in writing a language called Ni (LanguageNi?) with JonPurvis.

JonPurvis, MatthewBrowne and PerryLorier came first in the ACM Regional Programming Competitions in 1999ish, went to Orlando in 2000, and after taking numerous pictures of the insides of JonPurvis's pocket, got an HonoraryMention in the World Finals.

Perry's also the co-maintainer of UnderNet's CoderCom :)

Perry wrote a SmallDoorGameSpecification once.

Perry's gpg-id is

pub 1024D/2F33F144 2000-09-23 Perry Lorier (Local network) <perry@coders.tla>

Key fingerprint = 0A5F E3C9 8CF7 7FB7 378D 3C1C 7008 11A7 2F33 F144

Author of WanDaemon, and creator of the MetaNet.

Perry's CodingHints

Pet Peeves

• People who demand CVS access. Send patches; sooner or later people will get sick of merging/committing them and will give you CVS access. This is a more specific form of people demanding access. Access is earnt, not a right. So EARN it DAMMIT.

List of ToDo?'s

I have lots of pet projects that I'd like to either write, or help someone else write. I never get time to write them all :/ If you're interested in helping me write one of these, ask and I'll be sure to help you out.

• A program that uses stabs debugging information in a .so file, to generate an IDL file that can be used with ORBit?, so any programming language can link against any .so file automatically.
• A program called "grab" (because that can be easily typed with the left hand while you're selecting URL's with the right. This program works like wget(1) perhaps using libcurl. However before it fetches any file, it looks for ".mirrors" in the current directory, and in each of the parent directories up until the root. It also consults a /etc/mirrors and /.mirrors file. The format of these file is "# comments" and "glob glob" (see glob(7)). A matching expression on the left can be replaced by "$1" etc on the right. A sample .mirrors file might be:

1. Mirrors

debian/* http://ftp.debian.org/debian/$1 debian/* http://ftp.nz.debian.org/debian/$1 gnu/* http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/$1 foo///* http://ftp.foo.org/$2/$1/$3

The program also keeps a file /.grab-hints which has the format "ip lastused cps". ip is the IP address of a server. lastused is the unix time that the server was last used, and cps is the bytes per second transfer rate that we got off that server last time. When selecting which server to d/l from it uses the one with the lowest "cps". The cps value should degrade over time, for instance "cps" every day since lastused, this should be tuneable. if an IP doesn't exist in this file it's cps should be assumed to be "0", so it will be used in preference to any other in the file. This will mean that if you start trying to d/l a whole heap of stuff off "ftp.debian.org" it should try each of the servers in turn, then it will use the fastest one, occasionally retrying the other ones to see if they have improved. Of course if it can't reach a server it should try the next best in the list. If a "MD5SUM" file exists, it should fetch it off one of the other mirrors - NOT from the same machine where possible and then verify the file and print a message like "file verified OK, or file FAILED verification. This should be default behavour. The program could also support rate limiting. This program could also distribute hits over the top "n" servers when d/ling. eg: when d/l'ing an ISO from say RedHat it could d/l 1mb from ftp.redhat.com, 1mb from ftp.nz.redhat.com, 1mb from another site etc. The first one finished of course d/l's another 1mb chunk. This requires information about which parts of the file have yet arrived. This could very quickly d/l a file.

• A MUD with a very very smart AI for NPC's. Based on Vampires, with PaulMounsey?.
• Continue work on UnderNet's IRC Server.
• Try getting WantedPages working in this wiki.
• Add gpg(1)/pgp(1)? signing to mailing list software, particularly mailman. All outgoing messages should be signed by the list, or, optionally at the users request, encrypted by the list. Email commands could be ignored if they aren't signed by that user. Incoming messages from users could be verified and rejected if they don't come from a signed key.