WYLUG Monthly Meeting: Monday 14 Jan 2008

January 7th, 2008

Talk:

Tom Hall: Why I love Python

A talk on the programming language Python, in 3 parts (feel free to leave in the interludes if you have had enough)

Part 1: Past, Present, Future.

A bit of history and the design of the language, a look at all the implementations available today, quick tour of built-in and commonly used modules and future plans.

Part 2: Language overview

A quick tour of the language: builtin types, control structures, using modules etc.

Part 3: Recent Magic.

Some relatively recent changes that make programming Python even more pleasurable. Decorators, Generators, List comprehensions, Iterators, Functools and anything else I can fit in. Again a whirlwind tour, but you should be impressed and want to read up on these some more.

Date:

  • Monday, 08 Oct 2007

Times:

  • 6:30 p.m. Tea and coffee and chat.
  • 7:00 p.m. First talk or presentation.
  • 8:30 p.m. (ish) Pub and more chat.

Location:

Active Learning Lab., (Level 9, near staircase 2)
E.C. Stoner Building (aka Physics/Admin)
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds UK

Directions:

WYLUG Monthly Meeting: Monday 10th December 2007

December 7th, 2007

Talk: “Why Linux doesn’t work on your laptop, and what to do about it” by Matthew Garrett

Laptops contain large quantities of weird hardware made by companies you’ve never heard of and assembled together with firmware written by a contractor in Taiwan. How can Linux deal with all this variation, and how can you help it work better.

Matthew has been a Debian developer since 2002. He is currently the leader of the laptop team at Ubuntu and is also a member of Ubuntu’s Core Development team and sits on their Technical Board.

His blog can be found at http://mjg59.livejournal.com/

Date:

  • Monday, 10 December 2007

Times:

  • 6:30 p.m. Tea and coffee and chat.
  • 7:00 p.m. Talk.
  • 8:00 p.m. (ish) Onwards – for food, drinks and more chat.

Location:

Active Learning Lab., (Level 9, near staircase 2)
E.C. Stoner Building (aka Physics/Admin)
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds UK

Directions:

WYLUG Monthly Meeting: Monday 12 Nov 2007

November 4th, 2007

Talks:

  • The XO Laptop from the One Laptop Per Child Project
  • The CMake buildsystem generator

The XO Laptop

The XO is a low-cost, small, durable, and efficient laptop computer. It will be shipped with a slimmed-down version of Fedora Linux and a GUI called Sugar that is intended to help young children collaborate. The XO-1 includes a video camera, a microphone, long-range Wi-Fi, and a hybrid stylus/touch pad. Human power is planned, allowing operation far from commercial sources of power.

Its design goals are:

  • minimal power consumption, with a design target of 2–3 W total power consumption;
  • minimal production cost, with a target of $100 per laptop for production runs of millions of units;
  • a ‘cool’ look, implying innovative styling in its physical appearance;
  • e-book functionality with extremely low power consumption;
  • the software provided with the laptop should be open source and free software.

Further details:

CMake

CMake is a cross-platform build tool like the autotools or SCons. Unlike the autotools (which generate makefiles for the *IXes) or SCons (which calls compilers directly) CMake generates buildsystems for a variety of IDEs (it can still do makefiles, though).

I will be providing an overview of basic CMake usage from both a user’s and a developer’s viewpoint, comparing and contrasting CMake’s behaviour with that of the autotools.

Date:

  • Monday, 12 Nov 2007

Times:

  • 6:30 p.m. Tea and coffee and chat.
  • 7:00 p.m. First talk or presentation.
  • 8:30 p.m. (ish) Pub and more chat.

Location:

Active Learning Lab., (Level 9, near staircase 2)
E.C. Stoner Building (aka Physics/Admin)
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds UK

Directions:

WYLUG Social: Sunday 21 Oct 2007

October 9th, 2007

What:

  • Informal social meet – all welcome for general geeky chat

Date:

  • Sunday, 21 October 2007

Time:

  • From 7pm onwards (probably until 10pm-ish)
  • (Some of us will get there around 6pm to eat first – feel free to join us if you want)

Location:

  • The Scarborough Hotel
    Bishopgate Street
    Leeds, LS1 5DY

Directions:

 

“Upcoming” event listing

WYLUG Monthly Meeting: Monday 08 Oct 2007

September 30th, 2007

Talk:

  • The Lua Programming Language: It’s Cool

Lua is a remarkably expressive programming language, given its strong focus on simplicity. Although not widely used, it has come into its own as a scripting language within applications, especially games. Its straight-forward C API makes it easy to embed within software written in other languages, and its small size and fast virtual machine make it an appropriate choice for performance-critical applications.

Date:

  • Monday, 08 Oct 2007

Times:

  • 6:30 p.m. Tea and coffee and chat.
  • 7:00 p.m. First talk or presentation.
  • 8:30 p.m. (ish) Pub and more chat.

Location:

Active Learning Lab., (Level 9, near staircase 2)
E.C. Stoner Building (aka Physics/Admin)
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds UK

Directions:

WYLUG Monthly Meeting: Monday 11 Sep 2007

August 31st, 2007

Talks:

  • No Volunteers, So Far

Date:

  • Monday, 11 Sep 2007

Times:

  • 6:30 p.m. Tea and coffee and chat.
  • 7:00 p.m. First talk or presentation.
  • 8:30 p.m. (ish) Pub and more chat.

Location:

Active Learning Lab., (Level 9, near staircase 2)
E.C. Stoner Building (aka Physics/Admin)
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds UK

Directions:

Social Meeting August 2007

August 13th, 2007

Subject:

  • August Social Meeting

Date:

  • Monday, 13 Aug 2007

Times:

  • 6:00 p.m. Early doors … Beer and chat.
  • 6:30 p.m. Food, including vegetarian options.

Location:

Victoria Hotel
Great George St, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS1 3BB
Tel: 0113 245 1386

Directions:

WYLUG Monthly Meeting Monday 9 Jul 2007

June 28th, 2007

Talks:

  • Tom Hall — The ZFS File System

Date:

  • Monday, 09 Jully 2007

Times:

  • 6:30 p.m. Tea and coffee and chat.
  • 7:00 p.m. First talk or presentation.
  • 8:30 p.m. (ish) Pub and more chat.

Location:

Active Learning Lab., (Level 9, near staircase 2)
E.C. Stoner Building (aka Physics/Admin)
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds UK

Directions:

Tom Hall will be extending his June talk on the ZFS filesystem to give us the full range of demos that we didn’t have time for this month.

I think that pretty much everone who attended the June meeting will agree with me that we had two of the most interesting talks for a very long time. So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank John Leach and Tom Hall, once again, for delivering them. Both were exemplary in quality and content. Indeed, I can’t remember the last time that two such topics generated so much ‘after-hours’ discussion in the pub.

I’d also like to encourage anyone who missed the first part of Tom’s talk to come along to see the demos. On the basis of June’s experience, I very much doubt that anyone will have trouble following and enjoying the demos, just because they missed the first part of the talk.

Appeal For Speakers and Topics

There’s still a slot open alongside Tom at July’s meeting, but I’d also like to remind everyone, that we have a lot of future meeting slots to fill.

Generally speaking it’s a lot easier for both presenters and organisers if we can plan things well in advance.

With that in mind, I’d also urge any member who doesn’t feel qualified to present a talk themselves, but is keen to hear someone else explaining a particular topic, to make suggestions on the wylug-discuss list.

WYLUG Monthly Meeting 11 June 2007

May 29th, 2007

Talks:

  • John Leach — Ruby on Rails
  • Tom Hall — The ZFS File System

Date:

  • Monday, 11 June 2007

Times:

  • 6:30 p.m. Tea and coffee and chat.
  • 7:00 p.m. First talk or presentation.
  • 8:30 p.m. (ish) Pub and more chat.

Location:

Active Learning Lab., (Level 9, near staircase 2)
E.C. Stoner Building (aka Physics/Admin)
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds UK

Directions:

WYLUG Meetings Summer-Autumn 2007

May 29th, 2007

Some advanced notice of forthcoming meeting dates.

Dates:

  • Monday, 11 Jun 2007 — Speakers
  • Monday, 09 Jul 2007 — Speakers
  • Monday, 13 Aug 2007 — Social
  • Monday, 10 Sep 2007 — Speakers
  • Monday, 08 Oct 2007 — Speakers

Times:

  • 6:30 p.m. Tea and coffee and chat.
  • 7:00 p.m. First talk or presentation.
  • 8:30 p.m. (ish) Pub and more chat.

Location:

Active Learning Lab., (Level 9, near staircase 2)
E.C. Stoner Building (aka Physics/Admin)
University of Leeds
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds UK

Directions: