An uninterruptible power supply can help get you through a short power outage without losing data or damaging hardware. A Nagios script written in Perl checks UPS health and initiates a controlled powerdown if the unit exhausts its battery capacity.

When foreign characters occur in program code or data, Perl programmers need a solution that avoids the tribulations of Babel.

Are you interested in storing, organizing, and searching instant messaging conversations on your IMAP server? The Perl script in this month’s column can help you do just that.

Today’s digital multimeters can do more than measure current and voltage. Multimeters also measure capacity and temperature. An inexpensive multimeter can talk to your PC via the serial port, and simple Perl scripts let you read and visualize data in neat charts.

When tackling something complex, such as a foreign language or Vim commands, digesting small bits of knowledge might be more effective than consuming a super-sized meal of information. This month’s Perl column gives you a method of serving up knowledge snippets by email.

Computer game programmers apply physical formulas and special tricks to create realistic animations. Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL), which is available as a Perl wrapper, provides a powerful framework for creating simple 2D worlds with just a couple of lines of code.

Let the nimble Perlbal web server keep your traffic in balance.

Linux versus Vista

Dear Perlmeister

“One or two years in the USA would be great,” Mike Schilli thought back in 1996. The “Perlmeister” has lived in San Francisco for 11 years now, and he’s been writing the regular Perl column for almost as long.

AJAX technology adds dynamic elements to enhance sluggish websites. All it takes is a server-side Perl program and some client-side JavaScript code.