EVENT
The Gecko Book and Compuserve Chat
- In August 1997, O'Reilly published Learning Perl on Win32 Systems, commonly referred to as the "Gecko" book.
- Incredibly, I was never actually informed by O'Reilly that this book was even in progress or being written.
- The very first I knew of the project was when a box containing my 20 complimentary author copies showed up on my doorstep!
- Shortly after the release, I was invited to host an online chat on CompuServe. I was told the chat was going to be about my original book, Learning Perl (the Llama).
- Only after the live chat had officially started did I discover that the event was actually about the Gecko book!
- As a result, almost all of the live questions from the audience were technical queries about Windows.
- This was highly ironic, as I have never once in my entire life owned a computer that came with Windows installed.
- When attendees repeatedly asked me how the Win32 book differed from the Llama book, I simply told them: "You'll have to ask Erik Olson about that... I wrote the parts that are the same, not the parts that differ!"
These facts are as Randal recalls them, but much time has passed for most of this. If you find a factual error, please email realmerlyn@gmail.com.