- seattle - mailman3.common-lisp.net

[LispSea] video projector?
by Daniel J Pezely 15 Jun '06

15 Jun '06

Does anyone have a video projector that we may use for the first few meetings? Likewise, does anyone have advice on projectors? Some perform resolution scaling such as squashing large screens down to 1024x786. While that's fine for most people's business slide shows, is this adequate for viewing text such as within Emacs and a web browser? Thanks, -Daniel

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[LispSea] the Gardeners
by Brandon J. Van Every 15 Jun '06

15 Jun '06

yes I'm dragging my feet about getting out the door to Yakima. Tomorrow, I swear. Maybe even early for a change. I've unsubscribed from the Gardeners mailing list. Reasons: - Many of the posts aren't following their charter. A lot of things people propose aren't "weed pulling" or "maintenance" projects. They're heavy duty build-a-lot-of-stuff efforts. At least, this is my perception skimming the proposals floating into my inbox. Too many "from scratch" projects. As a person with plenty of my own projects, who could generate projects for LispSea until the cows come home, it's a turnoff. When people post a lot of "from scratch" projects that they haven't even started yet, I have a hard time taking them seriously. I assume, based on 14 years of internet experience with such things, that they won't get anything done and won't make good work partners. - Other posts are following the charter, i.e. meaningful usability and showcasing improvements to things already extant. But they happen to be projects I'm not interested in. Generally, I am already doing the projects I'm interested in. I may be exceptional in that I've scoured the Earth for projects that meet my own goals and aspirations. Nothing's out there that does what I want, I've bazillion-checked it. So I'm doing the things I want. I'll worry about dragging other people into my projects as they get farther underway. I realize not everyone's in my shoes. People may show up to LispSea with an amiable disposition, have energy to do projects, and happily slot themselves into whatever the Gardeners are up to. But for Windows game development in high level languages, there's nothing out there at all. - The focus is Common Lisp and I'm a Chicken Schemer. I'm happy to work with the CL crowd on open source Windows and OpenGL issues. But it's never going to get the bulk of my attention, not unless there's $$$$$ in it somewhere. I've chosen my toolset and made my sweat investments. I'm determined to make Chicken Scheme the best game development enviornment on any platform. For game developers whose brains work a certain way, of course. - LispSea projects are way more important to me than Gardeners projects. If two birds can be killed with one stone that's great, but I'm far more confident in local partnerships and efforts, should the stars align. "How will it improve the Lisp job market in Seattle?" is the first thing on my mind for any LispSea project. My takeaway is, I believe strongly in people networking their personal interests. I'd like to put tools in front of people, and enact the needed communication rituals, so that it happens. I see that as the LispSea priority, organizing and networking people on the local level. I don't see "doing whatever the Gardeners are doing" as a priority. It's an available venue for partnerships, but partnerships can come from other quarters as well. Mostly, I'd like to see us concentrate on *local* partnerships. Things where face-to-face is a decided value add for getting things done. Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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[LispSea] LispSea logo
by Brandon J. Van Every 15 Jun '06

15 Jun '06

For shits and giggles, how about a LispSea logo? The only reason I mention this, is because I've been through several logo efforts for several languages. All have failed. This is not a priority item for me right now, but I thought I'd mention this if anyone else is into that sort of thing. I suppose there needs to be a website before repositing fancy graphics on it. Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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Re: [LispSea] LispSea logo
by Daniel J Pezely 14 Jun '06

14 Jun '06

Brandon wrote: > Looking at http://www.seattle.gov/ , I propose > some version of the Space Needle as a symbol for Seattle. Be mindful that any representation of the Space Needle would require permission from the Space Needle Corporation. They're rather protective of their registered trademark "image or likeness". Likewise, the Chief Seattle statue in Belltown (I believe) would also require permission of the City. It's not impossible and won't necessarily cost anything. There's just an extra step required. In another message, Brandon also wrote: > I will cough some things out when I get back... Thanks! -Daniel PS - Alternatively, I considered a variation on the http://alu.org planet within parens with a "you are here" marker. I couldn't quite get the right angle of Earth with my cell phone camera, though.

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Re: [LispSea] A 'get things done' app (in Lisp)
by Justin Grant 13 Jun '06

13 Jun '06

Well maybe the suggestion wasn't so good after all. Coding something spontaneously while being subjected to large waves of fun at the same time is something that is quite unacceptable. We can't have people laughing and coding at the same time can we ? Lisp cannot be taken to light-heartedly !!! Seriously now, just how much can a person get done while chuckling at funny looking cars ? So if we leave it a couple days it may become a more serious matter or even better, it may just disappear altogether. After all the very idea had the beginnings of humor and enjoyment ! OR We could lighten up about the whole thing. In the meanwhile I'm sailing off to a tiny island for a few days inhabited by fierce invalids from hot climates who dare not eat chicken. The Laughing Lisper...

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[LispSea] A 'get things done' app (in Lisp)
by Justin Grant 13 Jun '06

13 Jun '06

As mentioned in an earlier post today. I would like to avoid duplication and hear ideas. I realize we already have the wiki and site but the group would pack more punch if we could tell those that our own site is implemented in Lisp. Dis/agree ?

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[LispSea] database of personal interests
by Brandon J. Van Every 13 Jun '06

13 Jun '06

As I've talked, I've realized I have 10..15 different personal interests of relevance to LispSea. And that's not even counting all the ones of a purely social value, such as sociocultural anthropology, world history, martial arts, film, etc. A group such as LispSea is not just a technical organization, it is also a social one, so I don't see the listing of such interests as out of bounds. SeaFunc meets over beer for a reason, after all. It occurs to me, however, that my list of interests gets complicated. Let's say all the other active LispSea participants are equally complicated. How can all these interests be made accessible? One way is socialization. People blab at each other, people find out about their common interests. That's largely the format that SeaFunc has followed. Although I would note, significantly, that I have not personally engaged in any social activities with anyone from SeaFunc, outside of SeaFunc. Or MLSIG-Seattle before that. The accident of personal chemistry? Or geography? Or available time? Anyways, it says to me that the meme of socialization is not fully utilized. On the other hand, I have a pretty good mental inventory of most of the regulars' technical interests. So it's not under-utilized either. I couldn't tell you much about people who just showed up a few times though. So, socialization is not entirely sticky. It requires the ongoing ritual of showing up to a meeting, and furthermore actively talking to people. Not difficult at SeaFunc since that's all we do, but it will be more of a challenge for LispSea, since we're aiming at more lecture formats. A bio page is the quick way to get information about 1 person. It's not, however, the quick way to get information about 300 people. My main objection to looking at the Lisp Questionnaire is, "You expect me to look manually through 230 people in hopes I find something?" No way, man. How do I search other people's interests, in a painless way? Tooltips spring to mind. I crank up the website, there's a randomly featured member in a sidebar. A few of his major interests are given. I suppose the definition of interests is the whim of the database designer, so that people can have checkboxes to click on, and they aren't required to play "guess the term." I suppose we'd need ongoing maintenance by humans, designing new and useful categories according to user feedback. But I also wonder if Lisp can be used to construct some categories out of thin air. That would be damn useful, because the data could potentially be extracted from any old crapola a Lisper was willing to write, and database designers might need to invent less and do less maintenance. Emphasis on "might." I'd happily start with augmented manual labor rather than AI or heavy duty text swizzling. How do you even get a Lisper to write some sample crapola, so that there's even something to sample? No participation, no data! Eliza springs to mind. If the extraction of user data is implemented as a silly game, perhaps users would bite the lure. So now that I've laid out 1 year of R&D for someone, and the basis for an internet startup ala Meetup.com... anyone see the quick and dirty version of any of this? Cheers, Brandon Van Every

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Re: [LispSea] charter
by Daniel J Pezely 13 Jun '06

13 Jun '06

Dennis wrote: > I do find that I am turned off completely by the definition of "promotion." > I am not interested in "selling" anything to anybody, especially businesses, > who have enough trouble with everybody trying to sell them something. I > think of promotion in the sense it is used in the charter of non-profit > organizations that promote science and education in some discipline. I'm glad someone brought this up! I actually lifted the use of "selling" from another Lisp site (probably cliki.net or alu.org) The main thing I want to get away from is the /whining/ often associated with advocacy or evangelism... Part of selecting an alternate word was to put it into a business context: A company is only really interested in things that help them make more money, so this idea becomes the following. Help businesses put Lisp into practice for the sake of working more efficiently and effectively. So then, should we simply use the preceding sentence instead of the existing words? This also means that the group helps individuals raise their level of comfort with the tools and indirectly increase the pool of potential employees. (Should we just add that to the charter too?) Thanks, -Daniel

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[LispSea] charter
by Daniel J Pezely 13 Jun '06

13 Jun '06

Perhaps we should add to the charter, "Contribute to benefit the Lisp community at large," as a secondary mission. Would those of you on this list who have been quiet mind to comment? Do you agree with the proposed minimal charter? (i.e., is the above additional clause redundant due to it being implied by the very existence of this a group?) What are your expectations and desires for a group? Thanks, -Daniel

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[LispSea] meeting: call for presenters
by Daniel J Pezely 13 Jun '06

13 Jun '06

For our first meeting, is anyone itching to show off what they've done with Lisp? We only need 20-60 minutes. For this first time, the shorter, the better so we have more time to become acquainted before and after the presentation. As I mentioned at the SeaFunc gathering last week and in an earlier post to this list, I'm willing to stand in and show someone else's material if shyness is a factor. You'd just have to show/teach me whatever it is, of course. And supply a small stack of business cards so everyone knows who to credit! Otherwise, I have a presentation but want to open the door first. -Daniel PS - The mailing list is 1 week old and has over 20 subscribers.

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