| SVFIG
Next Meeting -
Saturday, December 15th
at
Cogswell College
1175 Bordeaux Dr.
Rooms 197A and 197B
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
If you would like to have meeting announcements e-mailed
to you, send the message Subscribe SVFIG Meeting Agenda to:
George Perry
Wireless Internet access is anticipated (though not
guaranteed) at Cogswell, so bring your wi-fi enabled laptop.
Security
Notice
When attending SVFIG meetings,
please be aware that Cogswell College now locks its doors on weekends. To
facilitate your entry to the building, there will be an SVFIG member stationed
at the door from 9:45am to 10:15am to admit recognized SVFIG meeting attendees.
If you are attending an SVFIG meeting for the first time, please bring along a
printout of this agenda to identify your interest in Forth and to gain
admission. If you arrive after 10:15am, there will be a telephone number posted
for you to call to alert someone of your presence at the door. The front door
will also be checked at 20 to 30 minute intervals to accommodate individuals
without cellphones.
Do not under any circumstances
allow any strangers to enter Cogswell. Those who are authorized admittance have
key-cards.
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Agenda for December
09:45 --- Coffee and a Chat
10:20 --- Forth Day 2008 - Kevin Appert
Suggest a speaker or volunteer to speak!
10:30 --- What's Wrong with Forth Today? - Glen
Haydon
Glen has seen the evolution of Forth since the days of the FIG-Forth model and
has some comments on the twists and turns it's taken along the way.
11:15 --- What Were We Taking About? - All in
attendance
If time permits, we'll discuss topics, seemingly at random, of technical or
common interest. Some examples:
How Much is That Puppy Linux on a Thumb Drive?
Puppy is an older, interesting small Linux small enough to boot from a thumb
drive. (Or was it Damn Small Linux?) Are there better,
more modern thumb-drive implementations? How does one find, download, and
install them? How big a drive is required? A brief tutorial on installing
Feisty Fawn Ubuntu will be presented.
- USB
Ubuntu 7.04 Persistent Installation
The Allen Telescope Array
There is a "phased array" of 42 6-meter radio telescopes just north
of Mount Lason. Perhaps Ed Thelen can be encouraged to talk about it in
January.
- Hat Creek Radio
Observatory
- Allen Telescope
Array
- Allen Telescope Array
on Wikipedia
How Fast is It Anyway?
Is Firewire or USB 2.0 faster?
Repair and Restore using Live CDs
You can restore the bootstrap on a hard disk, reset the password, diagnose
network problems, and a million other things. We'll talk about the Bootable
Business Card, Finnix, and so on.
Noon --- Lunch
Some folks bring their lunch, some folks go to Togos.
13:00 --- Introductions, Announcements, Rumors, Random
Access
13:15 --- The Object-Oriented Analysis of Morse Code
to Text - John E. Harbold
John will present his very preliminary work (no PowerPoint slides), continuing
with the Morse Code theme from Forth Day. The problem of translating Morse Code
to text will be analyzed using the Executable UML method of Mellor &
Balcer. The problem will be broken into manageable objects and the
relationships between the individual objects. Objects can be passive or active.
Passive objects are those that just have data and methods that access them. On
the other hand, active objects have one state machine that responds to events.
Only analysis - no design or implementation - will be discussed.
14:00 --- The SVFIG Film Festival
Shannon Systems - Funds Transfer in Forth -
Larry Miller
In 1986 Shannon Systems was a start-up doing a dial-up modem secure (encrypted)
funds transfer system. This was a pretty ambitious project, and the software
was entirely Forth-based. Two "Famous Forthers", whom old-timers will
remember, Mitch Derick and Linda Baker, were major contributors to this
project. Larry will describe the system and show videos from "Completion
Day" and "Demo Day".
Masa's Clip - Masa Kasahara
Masa has a video he'd like to show, but at press time it wasn't clear what it
was or if he'll have time to prepare it.
Forth TV
We'll look for videos of Forth Day and other Forth-ish stuff on the web, such
as: old TV appearances, You-Tube videos, Google videos, and highlights from
Forth Day 2007.
You'll be Eaten by a Grue - MC Frontalot
We'll carefully analyze all the text-adventure references in the It's Pitch
Dark video.
16:00 --- Adjourn
How you can help SVFIG:
- Bring your speaker and topic suggestions to every
meeting!
- Your input for and participation in next year's Forth
Day is always welcomed.
Coming to SVFIG in the future (hopefully):
WAV File and Soundcard I/O Software Using
Win32Forth - Andy Korsak
This software was written for amateur radio applications. Andy has suggested
that it might be useful to look at his code in advance of his talk.
Contributions to this work-in-progress would be welcomed. You can download and
view his sound card software on the
Win32Forth
group (membership required), or here.
Please register your interest for these
topics:
- Viewing of Analog by Design shows hosted by Bob
Pease - list of shows
- The world's second Babbage Engine is coming to town.
Maybe we can have a meeting at the Computer History Museum to take a
look.
- Review and discussion of recent postings on
news:comp.lang.forth
- Review and discussion of interesting Forth projects and
many files at the Yahoo Win32Forth
Group
Off the table:
- There has been a lack of interest for a presentation by
a representative from Gumstix.
- There has been no success in contacting the author of
Propeller
Forth - written locally by Cliff L. Biffle
- A tour of TechShop
in Menlo Park is not planned at this time. If you would like to visit
the facility, please make your own arrangements. Check out their
talks, events, and instructional
classes.
If you have anything you'd like to talk
about in December,
please contact
.
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