I've been checking out Parrot over the past couple of days. Submitted one patch so far (easiest patch ever -- it was a MANIFEST file oversight), but looking to increase that number.
The problem is trying to find out what's needed. I don't necessarily feel like working on string functions, because I don't have Knuth handy (I just moved, so some of my books are still hard to find). I was thinking more along the lines of working in the ability to work with the environment (%ENV in Perl), so I could do some CGI programming in Parrot assembly.
My initial thought is to do it as a PMC based on PerlHash -- call it PerlEnvHash or something like that, and simply stuff the environment into it on creation.
I've also been tempted to write a scripting language that backs up onto Parrot, but that's the last thing the world needs -- another scripting language.
Speaking of which, I took a look at FScript, the Smalltalk-like scripting language for Cocoa. Or at least I looked at the documentation, because I don't have OS X 10.2. It seems stupid to tie it to 10.2 -- the nice thing about ObjC (which I'm guessing it's written in) is the ability to send messages to ids that might be nil and not have it crash the program. It's not like they changed that much from the developer perspective in 10.2.
Other stuff
I quit smoking again today. I had been smoking for the past month or so, partly due to giving in to cravings brought on by stress, and partly due to the fact that it helped take my mind off of my tooth. I'm feeling a bit jumpy, but I'm used to the quitting thing now, so I know it won't last long.
The tooth is being a bit nicer now. It was a little achy when I woke up this morning, but that fixed itself within a few minutes of getting vertical. I need to make an appointment with my doctor anyway, so I'll ask her for another run of antibiotics and pain killers just in case it flares up again before I manage to see a dentist (which will hopefully be soon).