From peter at pchristensen.com  Thu May  1 20:24:37 2008
From: peter at pchristensen.com (Peter Christensen)
Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 15:24:37 -0500
Subject: [chicago-lisp] Recap of 4/18 Chicago Lisp Meeting
Message-ID: <bc7dfb0b0805011324g98a0fd6qaa20645a7d6b7e1@mail.gmail.com>

Recap of 4/18 meeting:
http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/recap-of-4182008-chicago-lisp-meeting/

*ITEMS OF BUSINESS*: **

*Name* - None of the name ideas got much support, so we're sticking with
Chicago Lisp until someone comes up with something awesomer. **

*Project* - No one had any ideas for or time to work on a project as a group
so that's also waiting for an awesomer idea.

*Server* - John and Craig both have servers where they can host things but
not allow remote access to. John has a basic homepage at
http://www.chicaglisp.org and has a mailing
list<http://https//www.chicagolisp.org/lists/listinfo/chicago-lisp-discuss>setup.
There might be a wiki in the future. Meeting announcements and recaps
will continue to be on Peter's Chicago Lisp
page<http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/chicago-lisp>and then cross
posted to the two mailing lists and the
chicagolisp.org site.

*Next Meeting*

*WHEN*: Friday, May 16th at 7pm. **

*WHERE*: TBD (suggest a place <chicago-lisp-discuss at chicagolisp.org>) **

*WHAT*: Lightning talks. The following people have signed up, more
welcome (email
Peter <http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/chicago-lisp> if interested or add a
comment at Coordinatr <http://coordinatr.com/events/home/3bbndi8iji>)

   - Grant Rattke - A simple object system using macros
   - Steve Githens - TBD
   - Dry runs from the people presenting at the Intro to Lisp Workshop

*Intro to Lisp Workshop*: We did some pre-planning and delegation. See details
here<http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/announcing-intro-to-lisp-workshop/>.
**

*Presentation on Combined Object-Lambda Architectures (COLAs)*:

The inagural presentation of our group was about the work done by the
Viewpoints
Research Institure (VPRI) <http://www.vpri.org/>. The most recognizable name
associated with this is Alan Kay, Mr. Invent the Future himself. John
Quigley made an excellent slide
deck<http://www.pchristensen.com/20080418-jquigley-colas.pdf>(pdf)
where he reviewed the paper "Making
COLAs with Pepsi and Coke"
<http://piumarta.com/software/cola/colas-whitepaper.pdf>(pdf) by Ian
Piumarta and put into slightly more comprensible language.

This paper is for the Fundamental New Computer
Technologies<http://www.vpri.org/html/work/ifnct.htm>project at VPRI.
The aim of the project is to create a complete computing
system in 20,000 lines of code. This system would be everything from the
hardware to the UI and include both design and implementation. Having such a
compact system would be a useful exploration and learning tool, so every
part of it can be inspected and manipulated. They're currently 18 months
into a 5 year project but they already have made intriguing progress.

John's presentation was about the architecture of the self bootstrapping
system. I can't claim that I understood it all, or even most of it. I was
able to keep up mostly because I had come across VPRI's work on Jeff Moser's
blog earlier in the week so I was familiar with the overview. What I did
sort of grasp boggled my mind and definintely but VPRI on my technical
radar, if for no other reason than as a technical challenge to aspire to.

If you can understand everything in Piumarta's paper (or even in John's
summary deck), you're a whiz. If not, don't feel bad. I would recommend
reading the NSF proposal
<http://www.vpri.org/pdf/NSF_prop_RN-2006-002.pdf>(pdf) and the first
year progress report <http://www.vpri.org/pdf/steps_TR-2007-008.pdf> (pdf).
They're in more accessible, less technically deep language and they have
pretty pictures.

Thanks John for setting the bar high right out of the gate!



On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:09 PM, Peter Christensen <peter at pchristensen.com>
wrote:

> Fine with me too.  I'll have the recaps up this weekend - they're mostly
> written but I was waiting on the date for the workshop before I posted them.
>
> -Peter
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:11 PM, Craig Ludington <cl at craig.upholsters.us>
> wrote:
>
> > John Quigley writes:
> >  > I've tentatively scheduled the first Lisp Workshop for Saturday, May
> > 31, 2008 at 3:00pm at the Institute of Design[1] in downtown Chicago (right
> > by the Clark/Lake El stop).  More details to come, but I want to first
> > confirm that this date works with the various volunteers who will be
> > teaching.
> >
> > That date is fine with me.
> >
> > Craig
> > _______________________________________________
> > chicago-lisp-discuss mailing list
> > chicago-lisp-discuss at chicagolisp.org
> > https://www.chicagolisp.org/lists/listinfo/chicago-lisp-discuss
> >
>
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Peter Christensen
> http://www.pchristensen.com/
> peter at pchristensen.com




-- 
------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christensen
http://www.pchristensen.com/
peter at pchristensen.com
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From peter at pchristensen.com  Thu May  1 20:24:57 2008
From: peter at pchristensen.com (Peter Christensen)
Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 15:24:57 -0500
Subject: [chi-lisp] [chicago-lisp] Lisp Workshop planning
In-Reply-To: <bc7dfb0b0804252009v7782b407tac5c95c1cf142a4b@mail.gmail.com>
References: <4812870F.40107@jquigley.com>
	<18450.36705.493646.682170@whip.bikegeeks.org>
	<bc7dfb0b0804252009v7782b407tac5c95c1cf142a4b@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <bc7dfb0b0805011324v340d75c8p7de8cde4d918912b@mail.gmail.com>

Announcing Workshop:
http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/announcing-intro-to-lisp-workshop/

*INTRO TO LISP WORKSHOP* **

*WHO: *Programmers interested in learning more about Lisp.

*HOW MUCH*: The low, low price of 3ish hours of attention span.

*WHEN*: Saturday, May 31st from 3pm-6pm.

*WHERE*: Institute of Design, 350 N. LaSalle St, 4th floor, Chicago.
Map<http://tinyurl.com/4rbmd3>
.

*WHAT*: A hands-on introduction the the Common Lisp programming language.

*Tentative Schedule *(presentations will be 30-60 min)* *

   - Setting up a Lisp Environment (John Quigley): A hands-on walkthrough
   of how to setup a Lisp environment, Emacs, and SLIME. There will be
   documentation beforehand about steps to take and which packages to get.
   - Lisp Basics and Idioms (Peter Christensen): Lisp syntax, contructs,
   basic code, idioms and practices.
   - Common Lisp condition system (need a volunteer)
   - Macros (Craig Luddington): How Lisp lets you write code that writes
   code that writes code ? and why you'd want to do that.
   - Demos of cool things in Lisp (need volunteers): showing off both
   neat and practical things that Lisp can do.

We're looking for volunteers to do the following:

   - Present on the CL condition system
   - Suggest and present on other aspects of CL not listed here that
   would be suitable for an introductory session
   - Walk around and help troubleshoot during the first session about
   setting up your environment.

If you're interested in attending or helping, please email
me<http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/contact-me>and include "Intro to
Lisp Workshop" at the start of the message.


On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:09 PM, Peter Christensen <peter at pchristensen.com>
wrote:

> Fine with me too.  I'll have the recaps up this weekend - they're mostly
> written but I was waiting on the date for the workshop before I posted them.
>
> -Peter
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:11 PM, Craig Ludington <cl at craig.upholsters.us>
> wrote:
>
> > John Quigley writes:
> >  > I've tentatively scheduled the first Lisp Workshop for Saturday, May
> > 31, 2008 at 3:00pm at the Institute of Design[1] in downtown Chicago (right
> > by the Clark/Lake El stop).  More details to come, but I want to first
> > confirm that this date works with the various volunteers who will be
> > teaching.
> >
> > That date is fine with me.
> >
> > Craig
> > _______________________________________________
> > chicago-lisp-discuss mailing list
> > chicago-lisp-discuss at chicagolisp.org
> > https://www.chicagolisp.org/lists/listinfo/chicago-lisp-discuss
> >
>
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Peter Christensen
> http://www.pchristensen.com/
> peter at pchristensen.com




-- 
------------------------------------------------------
Peter Christensen
http://www.pchristensen.com/
peter at pchristensen.com
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From jquigley at jquigley.com  Tue May  6 02:51:16 2008
From: jquigley at jquigley.com (John Quigley)
Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 21:51:16 -0500
Subject: [chicago-lisp] Re: [chi-lisp] Planning for the Intro to Lisp
	Workshop
In-Reply-To: <bc7dfb0b0805051152u658c351fode8ff841550c37ab@mail.gmail.com>
References: <bc7dfb0b0805051152u658c351fode8ff841550c37ab@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <481FC7A4.8040803@jquigley.com>

Peter Christensen wrote:
> John (or anyone who knows):
> I'm working on the facilities plan for the Intro to Lisp 
> workshop at the end of the month, and there were a few questions I had 
> (some only need answers, some need action):
> 
>    1. At IoD, is it just one big room that everyone will be in or are
>       there different rooms where we can hold separate "tracks"?

Assume that there will be a single large conference room - it's an amazing space.

I will tell you that ID maintains multiple floors within their building.  Some floors have pretty amazing task areas for student groups to brainstorm in.  We might be able to acquire one of these larger areas (assuming there are no weekend groups working, which is rather likely), but let's not count on it for now.  I'll have more information as we get closer.  I also suspect we should keep the flow of this particular meeting simple for our first attempt; having multiple tracks may be overwhelming, from a coordination perspective =)

>    2. What are the comfortable and legal occupancy limits (just in case
>       lots of people decide to come)?

Assume a comfortable limit of 50.  I can inquire after larger areas if this doesn't seem reasonable.  We could potentially setup a small registration, disallowing non-registered people from attending this go-around.  That would very likely be overkill, however.

>    3. I'd like to record the presentations in as many ways as possible.

Entirely agreed.  I'm a media dummy though, so I'll have to let you take the lead on this.  There will be plenty of outlets and other such things for ease of recording.

>    4. Coordination - John, could you set CLiki or some other wiki
>       software on the chicagolisp.org <http://chicagolisp.org> website? 
>       That would probably cut down on a lot of emails.

I'm in the process of bringing the site up to speed.  I'll have a wiki online (it won't be Lisp-based, at least for now, apologies).  Thanks for your patience on this, it's been a hectic few weeks.  See more here:

http://www.chicagolisp.org/

>    5. Setup documentation - someone at the last meeting mentioned having
>       documentation on how to setup a Lisp environment - I'd like to
>       take a look over it and post is along with the announcements so as
>       many people as possible can be ready before coming.  I think
>       that'll speed up the first session and make the most of our
>       limited troubleshooting resources.

That was myself, and I was describing materials from my previous "micro" workshop.  I'll polish those docs up and get them out the door sometime this week.  Stay tuned.

> I'll send out another email this week about the presentation schedule.

I'm double confirming that the space is available and that someone will be available to let us in.  Wait on my final word of confirmation, which should be coming in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Thanks for all of the help, I'm really looking forward to this.

- John Quigley


From jquigley at jquigley.com  Tue May  6 16:15:47 2008
From: jquigley at jquigley.com (John Quigley)
Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 11:15:47 -0500
Subject: [chicago-lisp] Re: [chi-lisp] Planning for the Intro to Lisp
	Workshop
In-Reply-To: <481FC7A4.8040803@jquigley.com>
References: <bc7dfb0b0805051152u658c351fode8ff841550c37ab@mail.gmail.com>
	<481FC7A4.8040803@jquigley.com>
Message-ID: <48208433.3090802@jquigley.com>

John Quigley wrote:
> I'm double confirming that the space is available and that someone will 
> be available to let us in.  Wait on my final word of confirmation, which 
> should be coming in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Confirmed.  Please start making announcements.  We should try to reach out to every Chicago-based programming organization we know of.

Please note the Lisp Workshop wiki page:

http://www.chicagolisp.org/wiki/doku.php?id=lispworkshop

- John Quigley



From jquigley at jquigley.com  Tue May  6 19:28:12 2008
From: jquigley at jquigley.com (John Quigley)
Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 14:28:12 -0500
Subject: [chicago-lisp] Re: [chi-lisp] Planning for the Intro to Lisp
	Workshop
In-Reply-To: <bc7dfb0b0805061009n6bb98bbpd68c6f6e5586a8f0@mail.gmail.com>
References: <bc7dfb0b0805051152u658c351fode8ff841550c37ab@mail.gmail.com>	<481FC7A4.8040803@jquigley.com>
	<48208433.3090802@jquigley.com>
	<bc7dfb0b0805061009n6bb98bbpd68c6f6e5586a8f0@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4820B14C.80104@jquigley.com>

Peter Christensen wrote:
> I pasted the info from my page onto that Wiki.  I'll try to keep my page 
> up to date with what goes on the Wiki.

Note also that the conference room I intend to use, contrary to what the website says, will be on the 2nd floor of ID, not the 4th.  Please update materials, sorry for not clarifying this initially.  ID has at least floors 2 through 6, so we'll have to be careful to not confuse people!

- John Quigley


From jquigley at jquigley.com  Tue May 13 05:55:58 2008
From: jquigley at jquigley.com (John Quigley)
Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 00:55:58 -0500
Subject: [chicago-lisp] Chicago Lisp meeting and workshop
Message-ID: <48292D6E.6040203@jquigley.com>

Hey Folks:

Chicago Lisp is meeting this coming Friday, May 16 at 7:00pm.  We'll be at the CashNetUSA Offices, at 200 W Jackson Blvd, Chicago, IL 60606 [1].  Slated presentations to be:

  - An Object System Using Macros (Grant Rattke)
  - Kawa and Clojure (Steve Githens)

I'd also like to notify you that we'll be hosting a 3- to 4-hour Lisp Workshop for beginners, the purpose of which will be to get you entirely bootstrapped and productive in a Lisp environment by the time you leave.  We'll be hosting this on Saturday, May 31 at 3:00pm at the Institute of Design, at 350 N LaSalle Blvd, 2nd floor, Chicago, IL 60610 [2].  More information about this on our wiki [3].

Please visit us at our new homepage:

http://www.chicagolisp.org/

and consider joining our discussion list for event notifications:

https://www.chicagolisp.org/lists/listinfo/chicago-lisp-discuss

Sorry for this off-topic email to your list, it will be the last.  We're a new group and we're simply trying to get the word out to Chicago developers about our existence.  We're open to absolutely everyone, and we'd love to meet you, so please consider joining us.  Thanks very much, and,

All my best,
John Quigley

[1] CashNetUSA Google Map: http://tinyurl.com/5n9pms
[2] Institute of Design Google Map: http://tinyurl.com/34gkzt
[3] Lisp Workshop info: http://www.chicagolisp.org/wiki/doku.php?id=lispworkshop




From jquigley at jquigley.com  Tue May 27 18:45:53 2008
From: jquigley at jquigley.com (John Quigley)
Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 13:45:53 -0500
Subject: [chicago-lisp] Lisp Workshop 01: coordination/planning
Message-ID: <483C56E1.2060700@jquigley.com>

Let's use this thread to coordinate.  The workshop is of course this coming Saturday, at 3:00pm.  I have an inquiry in with the building manager requesting access to the building at 2:00pm, which will allow us some time to set things up; information on that forthcoming.

=== Presentation Deck and Code Demo ===

I'm working on the 'workshop project,' which is running a bit behind.  I'm on schedule to have it completed for Saturday, though.  My other task is to organize the presentation materials into a Latex deck.  I can't promise I'll have the time to do this, it's a very time-consuming activity, but I'll really try.  If anyone else is familiar with Latex Beamer, you could be of great assistance in helping me with this!

I have materials from Craig, but I need Peter's; please email me.  Craigs materials are here:

* http://rimpoche.chi.il.us/macros/macros.html
* http://rimpoche.chi.il.us/macros/debugging-log.lisp
* http://rimpoche.chi.il.us/macros/form-bind.lisp

=== Workshop DVD ===

Grant is taking charge of the workshop DVD, it sounds as if everything is moving smoothly on that front.  Thanks very much for the updates and excellent wiki page detailing this effort, Grant.  The wiki page:

* http://www.chicagolisp.org/wiki/doku.php?id=giftbag

=== A/V Facilities ===

We need lots of help here.  The Institute of Design has lots of A/V equipment.  I have an initial inquiry out with the building manager, but I need someone to pickup the slack here to figure out what is needed.  I'm an A/V dummy and have too much on my plate as it is.

=== Workshop Floats ===

We need more floaters, folks who are competent with certain aspects that we'll be covering, who can go around the room and assist people.  Please sign up at page bottom:

* http://www.chicagolisp.org/wiki/doku.php?id=lispworkshop#coordination

=== Workshop Format ===

We need someone to finalize on the format.  My basic thoughts:

1) Setting up a Lips environment
I'll have some basic materials on-line by Thursday that describe the procedure.  I'll advertise this, and hopefully people will come prepared.  There will be stragglers.  During the workshop, I'll start off with a basic introduction of our group, members and how to operate in Lisp.  This will be mostly free-form, I don't believe I'll have time to put together formal slides for this part.  I don't think slides are appropriate anyways, I suspect we should just thread our floaters and presenters through the room, to answer questions and assist in a hands-on way.  This ad-hoc approach seems good to me; it will loosen people up and probably provide for the most efficient means to get everyone operational.  This could take anywhere from between 45 to 75 minutes, with questions and hands-on help.

2) Lisp Basic Idions
Peter has this covered, I'll let him fill us in with any thoughts.  This will probably run approximately 60 minutes, with questions and hands-on help, I would imagine?

3) Macros
Craig and Eli will be covering this.  They're pretty organized in that they have all material together already, thanks guys.  They'll be doing code demos among other things, so this could take anywhere between 45 and 75 minutes, with questions and hands-on help.

4) Code Demo
I've got this one covered.  It's going to be a fairly simple chat server that people can use a basic telnet client to connect with.  This will be a partial code-review, demonstration of some neat aspects (lots of focus on runtime patching, for instance), and iterative design.  This will probably run 60 minutes, with questions and hands-on help.

Total running time appears to be approximately 4 hours of raw presentation, not including break time.  We should probably have a good-sized break between (3) and (4), to liven people up.

=== Beverages and Food ===

We had an offer for sponsorship from Obtiva, can someone follow-up on this?  Food and drink are allowed at the Institute of Design, including beer.  I'll probably be bringing some microbrews, if others could do that same, that would be great.

There's also the question of whether we should go out to dinner afterwards?  We'll have a lot of new people, both from Chicago and from (way?) out of town, so this might be nice to do.  Thoughts?  We'd want an organizer for this as well.

=== Conclusion ===

What more can I say, there's lots left to do, so please give us a hand.

Thanks very much, hope everyone is well.

- John Quigley


From jquigley at jquigley.com  Thu May 29 05:15:24 2008
From: jquigley at jquigley.com (John Quigley)
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 00:15:24 -0500
Subject: [chicago-lisp] Lisp Workshop 01: coordination/planning
In-Reply-To: <483C56E1.2060700@jquigley.com>
References: <483C56E1.2060700@jquigley.com>
Message-ID: <483E3BEC.4000206@jquigley.com>

I've created a "Materials" subsection on the Lisp Workshop informational page:

http://www.chicagolisp.org/wiki/doku.php?id=lispworkshop#materials

Please link in any other relevant things.  Craig, I've taken the liberty of zipping up your HTML-based presentation and the two Lisp source files into a lisp-macros.zip bundle, and made reference to it within this section.

Also notice that I've put an alert on our homepage, notifying people of the 'bootstrap' material's existence:

http://www.chicagolisp.org/

We don't have an efficient way of broadcasting this information directly to attendees, so I'm hoping that a sufficient number of people will reference our homepage before the big day and take note of these things.

- John Quigley



From ssrat at mailbag.com  Thu May 29 22:37:07 2008
From: ssrat at mailbag.com (David Douthitt)
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 17:37:07 -0500
Subject: [chicago-lisp] Lisp Workshop 01: coordination/planning
In-Reply-To: <483E3BEC.4000206@jquigley.com>
References: <483C56E1.2060700@jquigley.com> <483E3BEC.4000206@jquigley.com>
Message-ID: <483F3013.1010807@mailbag.com>

John Quigley wrote:
> I've created a "Materials" subsection on the Lisp Workshop 
> informational page:
>
> http://www.chicagolisp.org/wiki/doku.php?id=lispworkshop#materials
>
> Please link in any other relevant things.
What about Lisp-in-a-Box ( http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/ ) or 
the related project LispBox ( http://gigamonkeys.com/lispbox/ )

I was sure there was a live bootable Linux CDROM for a Lisp introduction 
and learning, but I can't find it now (I thought it was from the NYC 
Lisp Users Group...)