i said:
>   last year i did this demo in perl.
>   wanna see those scripts?
>   (no, of course you can't have them.
>   but you can _run_ em.)

well, i did do some demos in perl last year...

so i poked around, to dig them out for paul,
because paul had said that he scripts in perl.

but those weren't the first things i did in perl.

so i decided to be curious, and see how far back
that i started doing perl.  i'm not sure even now,
but i was definitely actively using perl by 2007,
because i still have content dated february 2007.

and it's not even in an obscure location, either...

it's right off the main page of my z-m-l.com site.

>   http://z-m-l.com

which means that, in 2 months, it will have been
up on my site, available publicly, _for_5_years_...

and lordy lordy, it's basically the very same demo
which i am currently scripting in python.  get out!
no wonder i am feeling nostalgic -- i'm in a rut...
gonna have to take my game up a couple notches.

so paul, if you're listening to people who say that
i never produce anything, you should know that
_they_are_telling_you_lies,_speaking_untruths..._

and just so you know, paul, these were the demos
that made my antagonists realize they had _lost_
the little war they'd started against me, and thus
they had to sit by and watch in utter helplessness
as i showed the winning hand in our poker match
and started sweeping the big pot over to my side,
a pot which contained every bit of their credibility,
which they'd unwisely thrown on the pile in a wager
that proved to be _incredibly_ stupid on their part.

and thus a very loud silence fell over the crowd...

the moral is "never bet every bit of your credibility".

another good lesson is that it is always unwise to
bet the other guy on what he has in _his_ pocket.
he's probably got a much better idea than you do
about what _is_ in his pocket, and what is _not_...
even if he says he has a perpetual motion machine
or a time machine in there, be careful with that bet.

it's _safer_ to take a bet on what's in _your_ pocket.
because you can check, so you should know, right?
regardless, you still shouldn't bet _everything_ on it.
because when the time arrives for you to _prove_it_,
you just might discover your pocket has been picked.

-bowerbird