[svfig-announce] Meeting September 25, 2010 -- off-site in AM --- SVFIG Meeting, Fourth Saturday, September 25 2010 --- _______________________________________________ *** BLDG. 550 WILL NOT BE ACCESSIBLE *** ***TO SVFIG UNTIL AFTER LUNCH!*** MEET US AT THE ELECTRIC CAR RALLY http://www.eaasv.org/rally.html (More below) _______________________________________________ *** AFTER LUNCH, THE MEETING PLACE IS SAME AS LAST MONTH *** The meeting will be held on the FIRST OR second floor of Building 550 (aka Peterson Building. Directions and map links are below. *** DO NOT ASK STANFORD STUDENTS TO LET YOU IN AND DO NOT ENTER THE BUILDING BEHIND STUDENTS *** Enter the building from the Panama Mall side. The door is labeled "Building 550 - Mechanical Engineering Design Group". If there isn't someone from SVFIG at the door to let you in, call the cell phone number on the sign. The Official SVFIG Announcement Editor's Parking Lot Recommendation is the lot near the intersection of Santa Teresa St and Lomita Dr. ***WIFI AVAILABLE*** To use Wifi, you will need a guest account. If you didn't have a guest account last month and you want to use Wifi, then email Dave Jaffe at: _______________________________________________ AGENDA For late-breaking updates, check the web site: <<>> At each lull in the action, between talks or before breaks we will be inviting folks to give short 5-10 minute 'quickies'. If you'd like to tell us about something, let Kevin know at the meeting and we'll reserve the time for you or take your chances that nobody else will grab the slot. 09:50 --- RENDEZVOUS AT STARBUCKS Kevin Appert will be at Starbucks for a few minutes at the corner of El Camino Real and Stanford Ave. in Palo Alto. The address is 2000 El Camino Real. Kevin's cell phone is 650.678.0532 It's far enough away so that it won't be affected by the Rally crowd. 10:00 --- Electric Car Rally and Show at Palo Alto High School The 38th Annual EV Rally will have production and converted electric vehicles on display (some available for test rides or ride-alongs). They'll also have EV component suppliers, solar panel vendors, local clean air organizations, and a solar oven display. <<>> <<>> Be aware of Rule 6: All two-wheel EV riders must wear helmets (we recommend you bring your own helmet if you think you'll be trying out two-wheel EVs, though vendors will have a few helmets available). And Rule 7: No poofters. 11:45 --- LUNCH We will rendezvous at The Village Cheese House across the street in the Town and Country shopping plaza. It will probably be crowded by noon! http://www.yelp.com/biz/village-cheese-house-palo-alto There are maps around the shopping center. The Cheese House is at the far corner of the property, farthest from the two major cross streets. Call Kevin at 650.678.0532 if you can't find it. Some may choose alternative venues (Hobee's, Kirk's Steakburgers). 13:00 --- INTRODUCTIONS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, DISCUSSION --- All Assembled This month we'll go around the room and each introduce ourselves. If you've read something interesting, tell us about it! 13:30 --- PREVIEW: FORTH MEETS SMALLTALK --- Doug Hoffman Doug will try out the Skype link and give us a quick look at an ANS Forth object extension which he'll describe at the October meeting. See Doug's bio here: http://www.forth.org/whoswho.html#doughoffman 14:00 --- Interesting Items - Volume 15 --- Dave Jaffe Dave will continue his survey of interesting newly-introduced microcontrollers, I/O peripherals, sensors, products, and gadgets that can provide useful and unique capabilities to Forth embedded systems. If anyone has come across anything that fits this category, pass it/them along to him for inclusion in his presentation. 14:20 --- Break 14:30 --- Gforth on eCos --- John E. Harbold John will give a give an update on his porting effort of Gforth to eCos. eCos is the embedded configurable operating system. It is open source, POSIX-compliant, real-time, multi-threaded with your choice of scheduler. http://ecos.sourceware.org/about.html 15:00 --- MPB: A MICROCONTROLLER PERIPHERAL BUS --- Samuel A. Falvo Sam will describe a set of challenges involved in having a mix of slow and fast devices on a bus. The solution he's investigating will support easy and cheap development of peripherals by hobbyists. It turns out, quite by accident, the structure of MPB resembles NuBus, and is similarly CPU-independent, so it has the side-effect of enabling professionals to make high-bandwidth peripherals too. 15:30 --- UNSUITABLE FOR CIVILIANS --- Samuel A. Falvo (If time allows) An orbital overview of Unsuitable presented as a tech-talk at the Ning, Inc. headquarters in Palo Alto. I also cover the rudiments of Forth for the benefit of those only familiar with contemporary languages. Some performance metrics are discussed as well. This talk will be available for download from the SVFIG website so if we don't get to it, you can watch it on your own. 15:55 --- Clean up before you go! 16:00 --- Ok, now you can go. _______________________________________________ Please note that the times listed above are precise but not necessarily accurate. We might go a little long or short on any agenda item or shuffle things on the fly with abandon. If you're desperate to see something at a particular time, please let us know! Remember that there are bugs in any non-trivial SVFIG meeting announcement. _______________________________________________ The schedule above may be reformatted or line-justified but please transmit verbatim or not at all. Any font you like is fine with me. No Newsgroup posts or other media distribution this month please! _______________________________________________ There is NO Public Wireless Internet access at Stanford. Email Dave Jaffe to request a one day guest account if you didn't have one last month. _______________________________________________ Coming to SVFIG: * FORTH DAY in November 2010! * Bring speaker suggestions TO EVERY MEETING! * Mitch Bradley's Forth in C (somebody needs to volunteer) * Blast from the past - a discussion of John James' CRC from his Xmodem implementation as enunciated in "Forth Dimensions". * Engineering TV http://engineeringtv.com/ Fifty engineering topic channels. Four new episodes per week. _______________________________________________ Check the SVFIG web site at http://www.forth.org/svfig/ for last minute changes to this schedule. The most up-to-date meeting information is at http://www.forth.org/svfig/next.html Many thanks to our wonderful Webmaster, Dave Jaffe. Preliminary agenda along with schedule updates and discussion may frequently be found on the SVFIG email list. To subscribe send email to geoperry_at_gmail.com Please let us know if this isn't your preferred email address for the SVFIG-Announce mailing list. Thanks for your patience. Please suggest a speaker or present at a SVFIG meeting. Please do not attempt to reply to svfig-announce@... send instead to forther_at_comcast.net _______________________________________________ NAVIGATIONAL ADVICE Enter the building from the Panama Mall side. (In the event that the building door is locked, there will either be someone on duty to let you in or a cellphone number to call.) - ***DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TRY TO PIGGYBACK IN THE DOOR BEHIND STUDENTS OR ASK STUDENTS TO LET YOU IN*** - Google Maps does NOT work very well on the Stanford campus, use this map: http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/map/ - Or the Searchable Stanford Campus Map: http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/map/ - There is open parking on weekends. Park in any A or C or metered space, no coins needed even if there's a meter there. The Official SVFIG Announcement Editor's Parking Lot recommendation is the lot near the intersection of Santa Teresa St and Lomita Dr _______________________________________________