- toronto-lisp - mailman3.common-lisp.net

[toronto-lisp] How was the January Meeting?
by Abram Hindle 11 Jan '09

11 Jan '09

How did the January Meeting go? abram

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[toronto-lisp] Reminder: 6 January 2009 meetup
by Rudolf 05 Jan '09

05 Jan '09

This Tuesday, ~6pm at LinuxCaffe. The ALU wiki is still down :'( -Rudolf O.

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[toronto-lisp] Ray Tracer videos
by Brian Connoy 29 Dec '08

29 Dec '08

For those of you that appreciate an "over the shoulder" view of Common Lisp interaction, here are some cool vids you might not have seen: http://home.in.tum.de/~lehmanna/lisp-tutorial.html There are occasional moments the presenter gets stuck on a bug, but personally I find this enhances the viewing pleasure. Brian C.

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[toronto-lisp] ALU Wiki
by Rudolf 24 Dec '08

24 Dec '08

The ALU wiki has been down for about a week. I have the last version of the Toronto Lisp page from it saved and I'll upload it to my website I guess :-/ -Rudolf O.

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[toronto-lisp] Agrippa by William Gibson + LISP Poetry
by Abram Hindle 14 Dec '08

14 Dec '08

William Gibson wrote some Lisp poetry for his art-book Agrippa: http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/code-scrolling-gibsons-poem-in-agrippa-item… More background: http://www.metafilter.com/77393/The-Agrippa-Files abram

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[toronto-lisp] Article about the meta-circularness of LISP
by Abram Hindle 11 Dec '08

11 Dec '08

http://tuxdeluxe.org/node/153 Talks about the current lisp community. I think it gives too much credit to Lemonodor. abram

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[toronto-lisp] 6 January 2009 Meetup, previous meetups
by Rudolf 10 Dec '08

10 Dec '08

The next meetup will be on 6 January 2009. That's the first Tuesday of the month. I finally got around to updating the wiki with Abram's notes (thanks for those). Added links to them too. Anyone (or two) willing to do a presentation in January? -Rudolf O.

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[toronto-lisp] My notes on the recent meeting
by Abram Hindle 03 Dec '08

03 Dec '08

Here are my toronto lisp users group notes. The topics are expressed in rough order of appearance. Sorry no hyperlinks right now. * LISP Meeting <2008-12-02 Tue> Overall the meeting was about communication, semantics, lexicons and models. Oh with a real lack of syntax (use sexprs) unless we need it. Gary probably led most of the discussion. How does this relate to LISP? Sexprs and expressability. *** Concurrency -> Expressability of Lisp - The language problem - ORC - stratego - programming rewriting - TXL etc - issue of performance - Adoption - low level lisp - sassy - assembler and scheme macros - call out to scheme - siag - scheme in a grid - proto scheme - natural language ??? - legalese - semantics - grammar - lexical - more semantics - more semantics - back to concurrency support - call return - grammar - did I mention semantics *** Convienance - Prolog to lisp and vice versa - erlang - concurrency convienance *** GUIs - Book: Humane interface - jeff raskin - ... missed some *** Visualization -> Diagrams - studies - communication - diagrams have limitations - discussion - making diagrams - executability *** Tree structured program - Book: Design Driven Design - macros are semantics independant - why bother making the syntax - work on semantics - SE & Tree Structure - Tree Specs - Executable specs - formal specs? - formal language for specs? - use sexprs - human translation to - formal?? - paraphrased: - gary says model driven design/arch/spec - fails due to a lack of lisp? - Elegance versus symbolics - nice drawings mean - problem is defined - once you can winnow SE down to diagrams - you're a real engineer - Book: Realistic Compiler Generator from MIT Press. *** Meeting Ended *** people in attendance - abram - brian - paul - justin - james - chris - gary

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[toronto-lisp] Next meetup. Tuesday December 2nd?
by Rudolf 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

That's the first Tuesday of the month and that's what everyone seemed to agree on is a good date, right? I'm going to miss it again because of an exam :'( On the plus side I've been checking out the Processing language because of the course and wrote up an Emacs mode for it. -Rudolf O.

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Re: [toronto-lisp] Next meetup. Tuesday December 2nd?
by gfb＠cs.toronto.edu 02 Dec '08

02 Dec '08

On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 03:15:43PM -0500, Justin Giancola wrote: > I don't know if it would qualify as "specialized Lisp-related > experience" but over the past few months I've spent a disproportionate > amount of my free time reading about and programming in Clojure. That's exactly what I was interested in knowing (in two senses: knowing that someone who knows some Clojure would be there :)#). I might print out (I'm between laptops) http://clojure.org/{concurrent_programming,refs,agents,other_libraries} and bring it to spark some questions for me. I'd also be interested in "getting started" type information that fell through any cracks in the documentation. I'm also interested in it from the perspective of using it for teaching courses that might traditionally use C or other specicalized concurrent, parallel, etc languages. [...]

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[toronto-lisp] Summary of Meeting Nov 4
by Abram Hindle 06 Nov '08

06 Nov '08

Here are my notes, feel free to fill anything in if you attended: 5 people attended. Talked about: * Books ** Let Over Lisp (LOL). A book about Macros and Lisp. *** Author has very strong opinion about hygiene ** Functional Data Structures *** Useful for undo-able operations *** Non-mutable data structures ** On Lisp was mentioned in passing, LOL is supposed to be the follow up. * Emacs ** Like usual emacs came up ** Org-mode *** Useful for "Getting Things Done" (TM) *** Does hierarchical foldable lists with little text GUI widgets ** electric buffers ** navigating buffers ** SLIME + Clojure ** Quack for Scheme * Scheme ** Hygenic macros (RE LOL) ** Chicken Scheme *** Good library support *** Close to UNIX ** PLT Scheme *** immutable cons cells *** Performance improving *** Lots of code *** DrScheme debugger and macro expander *** Use w/ quack w/ Emacs * Clojure ** http://blip.tv/file/1313398/ ** doto macro (doto a (b) (c) (d)) instead of (. a (b)) (. a (c)) ... ** Laziness of sequences ** Is Map lazy? No it just returns a lazy sequence and guarantees no order of application ** arity functions * Vector graphics in CL ** Vecto library for vector graphics *** Very pretty movie charts w/ timeline stuff **** http://www.xach.com/moviecharts/ ** cl-svg - data driven svg bindings *** http://code.google.com/p/cl-svg/wiki/API_Basics ** cl-rsvg - cairo svg bindings - *** http://www.cliki.net/cl-rsvg * OODBMS in CL and Serialization ** DB4O in java and clojure ** Querying in OODBs ** PLOB ** How to mark something "Transient" when serializing? ** Some DBs http://www.cl-user.net/asp/libs/bdb http://www.cl-user.net/asp/libs/bknr http://www.cl-user.net/asp/libs/clouchdb http://www.cl-user.net/asp/libs/elephant http://www.cl-user.net/asp/libs/PLOB http://common-lisp.net/project/clouchdb/ * Blogs ** Stackoverflow, how it is full of funny stuff **** Mosquito Lisp -> Wasp Lisp - tiny embedded buffer overflow lisp *** Joel Spolsky is Joel Lolsky *** Lemonodor lisp/robotics *** Overcoming Bias - not lisp but rationality * Graph Rewriting ** Fluid-let ** Pacman *Lush * Tuesday was ok except there was a DJANGO sig at the same time at Linux Cafe

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[toronto-lisp] meeting dates
by Paul Tarvydas 03 Nov '08

03 Nov '08

Have we decided on 1st Tuesdays? Are we meeting tomorrow (Nov. 4)? pt

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[toronto-lisp] meeting dates
by Paul Tarvydas 03 Nov '08

03 Nov '08

I completely missed the discussion that set the first Thursday of the month to be the Toronto Lisp User Group meeting date, so I don't know if my question is ridiculous (e.g. akin to arguing about editors): Is it possible to consider another day for the regular meetings? I have a conflict with the first Thursday of the month (Royal Astronomical Society meetings on the first Thursday). Other Thursdays are good, and Tuesdays are good for me. If the day can't be changed, then I will simply have to choose to skip some meetings, when I wish to attend the RASC meetings. pt

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[toronto-lisp] I missed the meetup tonight!
by Rudolf 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

Can someone (or two) give a summary of what went on? What was the presentation about, what was it like? Are there slides that can be viewed online? Sorry for missing out, I thought the cold I had would be destroyed by meds by 5pm, but nope :-/ -Rudolf

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[toronto-lisp] meeting tonight?
by Paul Tarvydas 02 Oct '08

02 Oct '08

Is the next TLUG meeting tonight (Oct. 2)? LinuxCafe? pt

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[toronto-lisp] Horse play
by Brian Connoy 19 Sep '08

19 Sep '08

Hi all, I have reason to believe one of the VB/C# pilots here at work, is going to jump ship. As well, a supporting contractor is on his final day today. In short, they are likely to be in a pinch soon with their in-house VB/C# development efforts. So why am I mentioning this here?!? My aim (as mentioned at a couple of the meets) is to lay the ground-work of a "Lisp shop". They don't know it yet, but Common Lisp is going to be their secret weapon. Although I don't play a role in the developments mentioned, one way to broaden the Lisp base is the 'ole Trojan Horse ploy ... a Common Lisp programmer smuggled inside a .NET horse! Interested equestrians are welcome to contact me for more details. BC

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[toronto-lisp] Next meetup dates: September 18th, October 2nd
by Rudolf 14 Sep '08

14 Sep '08

Just a heads up. Next September meet up is the 18th. October meetup is just two weeks after because we have to shift back into 1st Thursday of the month mode. If you want to present in October, now's the time to say something. Paul T. if you're available for an October presentation on VF/event-driven programming that would be excellent. Or the other two topics that you mentioned here: http://common-lisp.net/pipermail/toronto-lisp/2008-August/000044.html Flip a coin or grab a 3-sided die (is that even possible?) to decide. You said some preparation time was necessary and hopefully this is enough. -Rudolf

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[toronto-lisp] Effecient I/O in SBCL
by Abram Hindle 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

I was running into problems with performance with SBCL. I want to read huge CSV files and convert ASCII representations of floats to floats. A. what's an effecient way to convert a string to a float B. what's an effecient way to read lines from a file C. what's an effecient way to split substrings from a string (I don't need to keep them around after I throw away the line) abram

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[toronto-lisp] September meetup and interesting projects
by Rudolf 03 Sep '08

03 Sep '08

== INTERESTING PROJECTS == Name some interesting projects you're working on! Zed Shaw posted a slightly interesting article about user groups, meetups, hackerspaces, social clubs, etc: http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/the_freehackers_union.html He says, I tried a few user groups, but there's barely anyone doing anything truly interesting. I really do enjoy the people who take the time to go to a user group for their favorite tech, but at the same time I feel like they're just there to escape their jobs. That's sad because I run into people who say, "(sigh) I have to do Rails", even at the Python groups. The Python group has had two months of meetings about fucking performance tuning. I love those guys, but holy baby jesus can we just move off of cython already? I hear reports that even the iPhone and Cocoa user group is lame. I mean, that group should be going ape shit right now. Projects...someone must be doing something interesting! Phd work, grad work, web work, desktop work, work work? Tell us more, maybe even present something :D Has anyone worked with Smalltalk or C#? What are they like compared to Common Lisp and Scheme? == NEXT MEETUP == Also, we need to decide the next meetup date. I'm thinking September 11th or 18th. They're all Thursdays of course, starting at 6pm, 99% chance of being at the LinuxCaffe. There's a fine Lisp meetup calendar here (in case you're in another city?): http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=pm55j8kg30dnm54ib2if9fuocc%40group… If Brian C. is still up for it, he could present at the next meetup, depending on if he's available for either of the days? -Rudolf

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[toronto-lisp] Next meetup :o August 7th?
by Rudolf 11 Aug '08

11 Aug '08

Hey, I've been neglecting my responsibilities as a Lisper and looking at JavaScript, a wee bit of Java and now Smalltalk. So the next meetup will be August 7th, which is a Thursday. After 6pm of course and I'm thinking LinuxCaffe may be fine. They don't seem to have anything planned for 7 August. Other suggestions for a location are, of course, welcome. Also, ideas for presentations are friggin' badly needed. If you named your dog Lisp, or you have a tattoo of a lambda on your arm, give a small 10min talk about it! :-D Get a presentation idea together or you'll hear some preaching on the Virtues of Emacs from me (old college presentation I did, it ended with "you're a loser if you don't use Emacs!" so uh, I don't want a repeat of that ;-) ) -Rudolf

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[toronto-lisp] Re: Sushi date
by Ian Buckley 24 Jul '08

24 Jul '08

Do we have a sushi date tonight? Also, shall we try to get S&D or S&M to babysit for us during August and see a film / play or have dinner, while we still can? ILY Ian XXX

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[toronto-lisp] Lisp meetup today, 6pm, LinuxCaffe, 326 Harbord Street
by Rudolf 03 Jul '08

03 Jul '08

Just a reminder! Today's the meetup, 6pm. LinuxCaffe is about a block south of Christie subway station. Check the map at http://wiki.alu.org/toronto -Rudolf

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[toronto-lisp] power outlet
by Paul Tarvydas 03 Jul '08

03 Jul '08

Whoever gets there first tonight, please get a table near a power outlet - my laptop battery is old and doesn't hold a charge long enough to survive a boot-up :-). pt

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[toronto-lisp] Call for presentations for next meetup: 5 June 2008, 6pm onwards
by Rudolf 12 May '08

12 May '08

I've emailed the Linuxcaffe owner dude and asked if we can have a meetup there. I've always asked if there's a projector. In any case, the people demand presentations! The presentations should be Lisp-related though functional programming stuff is welcome too (Haskell, OCaml, whatever). Maximum length of the presentations should be around 10 minutes. There will be 2 presentations per meetup, maybe 3. I think that's a solid amount. Some ideas for topics: the internals of Clojure, the advantages of CLOS, Scheme Shell's awesomeness in comparison to Python/Perl/Ruby, tiny Lisp interpreters, etc. Just email the list with your presentation ideas or edit the Wiki at http://wiki.alu.org/Toronto . I'm open to suggestions. - Rudolf Olah

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[toronto-lisp] 1 May Meetup Aftermath
by Rudolf 04 May '08

04 May '08

Hey, thanks for showing up to the May meetup (if you did show up that is). The next official meetup is in June. It looks like we'll switch to a monthly meetup schedule. Who showed up: Justin, Brain C, Ian B, Rudolf, Ben, and two other people whose names I forgot to take down heh. Anyway, here are links to various items discussed: - Notation as a Tool of Thought http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358899 - Mosquito Lisp Bill Clementson discussed it -> http://bc.tech.coop/blog/061119.html - Hedgehog Lisp Main website -> http://hedgehog.oliotalo.fi/ Lemonodor discussed it -> http://lemonodor.com/archives/001086.html - Smalltalk books Blue book (Language Implementation/Specification) -> http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BlueBook/Bluebook.pdf Red book (Interactive Programming Environment) -> http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/TheInteractiveProgrammingEnv/TheI… Green book (Bits of History, Words of Advice) -> http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks/BitsOfHistory/BitsOfHistory.pdf - Gauche Scheme http://practical-scheme.net/gauche/ - Practical Scheme: Asset-tracking for the production of the Final Fantasy movie http://www.lava.net/~shiro/Private/essay/gdc2002.html - Jones Forth http://www.annexia.org/forth - SRE design by Olin Shivers (S-expression-based notation for regular expressions) http://www.scsh.net/docu/post/sre.html - foof's IrRegex (66k of regular expression code) http://synthcode.com/scheme/irregex/ - APL - A Glimpse of Heaven http://www.vector.org.uk/archive/v231/legrand.htm - LUSH, a C/Lisp hybrid (allows embedded C code) Main website -> http://lush.sourceforge.net/ Mixing C and Lisp code inline -> http://lush.sourceforge.net/lush-manual/30381be4.html#1.14 - APROL, a J and Scheme hybrid Click through to get the PDF -> http://reddit.com/info/6d16m/comments - Meta Math! by Gregory Chaitin http://www.amazon.com/Meta-Math-Quest-Gregory-Chaitin/dp/1400077974 - Lockhart's Lament, criticises the current method of teaching math http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html - ParEdit.el: structured editing of S-expressions http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/ParEdit - NoSQL, the UNIX shell as a 4GL http://www.strozzi.it/cgi-bin/CSA/tw7/I/en_US/NoSQL/Home%20Page - Representative syntax, ficl parse steps http://ficl.sourceforge.net/parsesteps.html Some of these are only remotely Lisp-related. Am I missing anything? Rudolf

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