My skunk-works project of the past month or so has reached the stage where I need some beta-testing feedback.

So I'm looking for some Perl people interested in taking a little time to look over a project related to Template::Benchmark, to find things broken and make suggestions for improvements.

You'll need only a web browser and email client, no Perl or coding expertise is required although the content of the beta is probably only of interest to a developer.

If this sounds like you and you're interested in Perl templating engines and their performance, please read the main article below and consider joining the beta.

For almost three months now, I've been writing as part of the Ironman Perl Blogging Challenge, so it seemed like a good point to pause and take stock, to recap some of my better posts for new readers and to see what's changed since I posted them.

It's also a good spot to comment on the experience of participating in the challenge and to vote on mst's Ironman forfeit.

Well, after 13(!) point releases, I'm happy enough with Template::Benchmark to make the first stable release.

v1.00 should be hitting a CPAN mirror near you sometime soon.

Now that it's officially released, I thought I'd go into a little more detail about what Template::Benchmark does, how it can be useful to you, what motivated me to write it in the first place, and some thoughts on where to take the project next.

I had hoped to post a somewhat more exciting article this week about a project I've been working on for a while.

Unfortunately, it isn't ready for announcing yet... but I do have the following teaser:

Maybe next week I'll be done...