OT: base64 decoding

[Fairlight]

Is it just me, or did Bill Campbell say:
> IHMO, perl has far too much ``magic'', which makes it more
> difficult to figure out what it's doing unless perhaps one is as
> smart as Damian Conway, Randal, or Larry.

Well, to be fair, perl was done very organically and started earlier than
python.  It started off small, and after 5.0 and then the next 5.x release
(5.2?), it just grew.  they changed and added a lot.  So it's been a bit of
a tack-on job.  One can safely ignore 99% of the underlying stuff -until-
one has a memory leak and needs to learn the intricacies of
reference-counting garbage collection to make absolutely bloody sure that
all references are dereferenced to clean up the leak.  Usually this happens
on its own, but there are exceptions...

> Editor, vi(m).  I have tried learning emacs on several
> occassions, and have to admit I have never been successful.

And sadly, I used to use emacs every day for five years or so, and then
I ended up learning vi because emacs wasn't readily available on all the
systems on which I was working.  When I try to use emacs these days, I'm
limited mostly to navigation, minor editing (back and forward words, delete
words, etc.), and saving/exiting, quite sadly.  It's a really gorgeous
editor with a lot of features, but I'd have to go back and re-learn it
again to use it to any decent end.

And LaTeX and emacs is just pure awesome.  I remember it fondly.

But my command shell edit style will -always- be emacs mode.  Always.  I've
tried vi mode and I absolutely hate it with a passion.  So much so that
I'll take the time to change it if someone needs me to work on a system.
It saves me more time than it wastes.

mark->