All posts by davef

OpenStreetMap Pub Crawl — 27 Feb 2008

Announcements

Join us for beer and mapping in central Bradford (27 Feb 2008).

We will rendevous at the following locations and times:

  • 6.00 p.m. ‘The Cock and Bottle’, BD3 9AA
  • 7.00 p.m. ‘The Beehive’, BD1 3AA
  • 8.00 p.m. ‘The Fighting Cock’, BD7 1JE

The idea is to plug a hole in the map, and get fairly inebriated at the same time.

It’s entirely informal, with no planning and no expectations.

Next Meeting: Open Street Map, Monday 11 Feb 2008

Announcements, Previous talks

Our next meeting will be on Monday 11 Feb 2008 in Leeds University’s Stoner Building.

The meeting room is sign-posted from the main Stoner Building entrance.

The meeting officially starts at 7.00 pm, but the room will be open for coffee, tea, biscuits and chat from 6.30 pm.

Dave Fisher and Geoff Richards will be delivering the following talk:

OpenStreetMap (OSM)

Geoff and I will be trying to explain (with demos):

  • What the OpenStreetMap project is trying accomplish
  • How to survey an area
  • How to add details to a map
  • How to edit details on the map, using JOSM and Potlatch
  • How to label map features
  • How you can help to map West Yorkshire
  • Why you should bother

If you would like to do some ‘homework’ preparation, see:

Meeting Definitely On (Monday, 14 Jan 2008)

Announcements

I’ve just had confirmation that Jim Jackson can definitely open up the room for us (thanks, Jim).

The meeting will, therefore, definitely go ahead at the usual time and place (see details in the original announcement below).

It may be a brief affair, if no-one has much to say, with a swift departure to the pub.

WYLUG Monthly Meeting: Monday 14 Jan 2008

Announcements

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 12 Nov 2007

Announcements

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 Monthly Meeting: Monday 08 Oct 2007

Announcements

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

Announcements

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: