I’m just finishing my sixth week using the planning mechanisms I described in my last newsletter, and I’m very impressed by the difference they've made to my working day. I have a lot of progress to tell you about. And we’ll get to that, but first, I have a couple of speaking engagements that you might be interested in.
On Wednesday, 21 October (that’s next Wednesday, from when I’m writing this), I’m giving an online talk called MCP - Model Context Protocol in Perl: From Web App to AI Tools for Perl Maven. I’ll explain how I made the data that drives my Line of Succession website available to your favourite AI tools. There are already a ridiculous number of people signed up, but I’m sure there is room for a few more.
And then, a month later, we have the London Perl Workshop. The workshop seems to have fully recovered from its post-COVID interregnum—this is the third consecutive year that the event has taken place. And this year it’s at a new venue, the Zoopla offices in Shad Thames. I’m not sure what I’ll be speaking about yet, but I’ve proposed a few talks and left the choice in the hands of the organisers. But even if they don’t select any of my talks, I’m confident that the day will be packed full of useful and interesting information for Perl programmers.
With that out of the way, let’s look at what I’ve been doing.
Data Munging with Perl [2ed]
Lots of progress here. You can see exactly what has changed by looking at the updates section on the book’s website. I’m going to read the book through completely over the weekend and come up with a (hopefully very short) list of things that need to be fixed before the book can be published. The plan is that I’ll be able to bring some copies (real paperback copies!) with me to sell at the London Perl Workshop.
But if you can’t wait until then, you can still buy the Work In Progress version from LeanPub, which will allow you to update to the completed ebook once it is published.
It’s good to get to complete a project. And publishing this will leave a large, book-writing-shaped hole in my schedule. I already have a few ideas about what might fill that hole.
Perl School
Working on Data Munging with Perl led me to think a little more deeply about Perl School. At first, I was just publishing books by myself, but that has expanded and we now publish books by four different authors. I started to wonder what it might look like if Perl School turned into more of a “real” business (whatever that means). And, obviously, it means more books by more authors. But it also means running the business in a more professional manner. Which is what I’ve been trying to do over the last few months.
I’ve had conversations with a number of people, which have led to potentially four or five new Perl School books to be written over the next year
I’ve set up a mailing list for people who want to keep in touch with what’s going on with Perl School (you can subscribe using the form at the bottom of every page on the website)
I’ve created the first draft of an author agreement, which forced me to think a bit more deeply about what Perl School is and how it works (related to that, I’ve also rewritten the “Write For Us” page on the website, so it better explains what we offer for authors)
I’ve written software that takes sales and royalty data from both Amazon KDP and LeanPub and combines that in a database that makes it easier to produce statements, telling me how much I owe authors
I’ve written production software that takes a book written in Markdown and produces an EPUB and two PDFs (one A4 with no blank pages for sale through LeanPub and a version for the Amazon KDP paperback print-on-demand system, that implements dozens of nice little formatting tweaks that make a print-on-demand book look more like a “real” book
We are never going to be O’Reilly (or even Manning). But I think I’m building the basis of a nice little business. I just need people to buy a few more books.
Line of Succession
Line of Succession is my most successful project. That is, it’s certainly the website that gets the most hits each month. But currently, it’s completely unmonetised. I ran Google Ads on in for a while, but I made almost no money and I don’t think they went well with the general ambience of the site. So I’ve been thinking about that.
I’ve turned on paid subscriptions for the Substack associated with the site. No-one is paying yet though
I’ve got into more of a regular rhythm of posting to the Substack once a week. And I’ve moved away from covering just the current British royal family
I’ve fixed a few niggling little bugs on the site and made some improvements. For example, people who are excluded from the line of succession are now included in lists on the site
I’ve improved how the site’s Model Context Protocol server works. I’ve been able to connect Line of Succession to both ChatGPT and Claude’s chatbot. It was an exciting day when that worked
But my biggest play on the site is demonstrated by the image at the top of this section. I want to sell personalised prints of the line of succession on a certain date. I’m thinking there will be three price points: a digital image, an unframed print (maybe in multiple sizes) and a framed version. There’s a page on the site where you can see how it would look for a date that is meaningful to you in some way, but I’ve yet to work out the payment path or how to connect to a print shop that would print and ship the print.
And everything else...
Those are the three projects that have taken up most of my time over the last few weeks. But there are plenty of other things that I’ve been working on. Here are a few of them.
Oneirina: I’ve been experimenting with AI-generated music for a while now, and I’ve created a virtual artist called Oneirina. She has released a few songs on the usual streaming services, but getting people to listen to them is a completely different challenge. I’ve been experimenting with creating short music videos for YouTube and TikTok, using a combination of AI video generation, ElevenLabs and CapCut. It’s been a lot of fun (and occasionally frustrating, particularly when TikTok decides to mute the music in a music video—when it’s my music on my video!) I’ve also just submitted a short video message from Oneirina for Spotify Wrapped 2026. I have no idea whether any of this will result in more people listening to the music, but I’m learning a lot along the way.
The Story Cupboard: Another experiment with AI-generated video. A while ago, I wrote a children’s story called George and the Smart Home. I’ve now turned it into a short animated video, complete with narration and music, and published it on YouTube. I’ve created a new channel called The Story Cupboard for this and similar projects. The next video will be based on another children’s book I’ve written, Digital Woodland ABCs. Again, I have no idea whether anyone will watch these videos, but it’s interesting to see just how much you can achieve with tools that didn’t exist a couple of years ago.
The Horsell Transmissions: Over the first half of this year, I wrote a science fiction serial called The Horsell Transmissions, which I published in instalments on Substack. I’ve now edited the whole thing into a book and published it as a paperback on Amazon. It’s nice to have another finished book out in the world. Of course, now I have to work out how to persuade people to buy it. I’m beginning to see a pattern here.
NonProphet: This is another project that uses AI to generate content. It’s a system that produces short, daily social media posts about religion, scepticism and critical thinking. I’ve built the first version of the software and set up accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Bluesky and YouTube. The content generation is working well, but building an audience is proving rather harder. It turns out that automatically creating content and getting people to look at it are two very different problems. Who knew?
Perl Hacks: I’ve also found some time to return to Perl Hacks, my long-running Perl blog. I’ve made a few improvements to the site and published some new posts. One of the most recent was a look back at the history of WWW::Shorten, a Perl module I first released over twenty years ago. It’s slightly alarming to realise that some of the software I’ve written is now old enough to have its own history.
So, is the planning working?
Looking back over everything I’ve written here, I’m actually rather surprised by how much I’ve managed to get done over the last six weeks. And that’s before mentioning all the smaller things that haven’t made it into this newsletter.
I don’t think I’m working any harder than I was before. I’m certainly not working longer hours. But I am spending less time wondering what I should be doing next, and more time actually doing things. Having a plan for the week, and knowing which projects I’m supposed to be concentrating on, seems to make a real difference.
Of course, there’s still a problem. I’m very good at coming up with new ideas, and I’m getting better at turning those ideas into finished projects. What I’m not particularly good at is persuading people to pay money for the results. That’s probably something I should spend a bit more time planning.
But, for now, I’m going to count the last six weeks as a success. I’ve made progress on several projects, finished a few things that have been hanging around for far too long, and learned some interesting new skills.
And all it took was a little planning. Who knew?
That’s all for now, see you next time.
Leave a comment telling me what personal projects you’re working on,
Dave…