|
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. |
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 Kevin
Appert. |
