Archives of Previous LispDen Meetings
The first Denver Area Lisp Users Group Meeting is on Friday March 14th, at 7pm, at Pints Pub (221 W 13th Ave, Denver, 303-534-7543).
Feel free to contact me for more info.
Meeting summary:
General discussions on lisp with food and beer consumption.
Our second meeting is on Monday, April 28th at about 7pm in Boulder at:
Mountain Sun Pub and Brewery
1535 Pearl Street
Boulder, CO 80302
It is located near the Army Navy Store just East of Pearl Street Mall. Here's a
link to a map:
http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?Pyt=Tmap&ed=kSXxpep_0TrlfrSb4U2bmBp16r5zC94e_TAFqEeiiwBZvH8kKGVdaCvukMq8IA--&csz=Boulder,+CO+80302&country=us
Larry Hunter will be presenting an overview of the Bioinformatics work that his group does. In addition, he will tell us a bit about his computational facility (which he believes to be the biggest, fastest lisp machine ever built). It's an IBM p690 (their current fastest machine) with 16 processors, 100GB of RAM (yes, that's right, GB), and a 64 bit Franz Allegro CL.
Meeting summary:
Last Monday (Apr 28), we got together for our second meeting. Larry Hunter
presented an overview of the Bioinformatics work that his group does. It was a
really interesting talk (how would you like to have an IBM p690 with 16
processors and 100GB of RAM as your personal workstation :-) ) and plenty of
beer was consumed. Larry also showed us a presentation that he gives called "Why
Lisp?". He gave me permission to make it generally available, so I'm posting a
link to it here and on the ALU web site:
http://home.attbi.com/~bc19191/why-lisp.ppt
There were 7 attendees at the meeting, 4 who use lisp to some extent in their
day jobs and 3 who are interested in lisp but don't use it at work yet.
The third meeting of the Denver Area Lisp Users Group will be on Monday, June 2nd.
Alex Repenning and Andri Ioannidou have volunteered to give a presentation on AgentSheets - an agent-authoring tool written in Lisp. They have a web site with information on the product at: http://agentsheets.com/
We will be meeting at 6pm in their company's office in the Gunbarrell area (northeast of Boulder). The address is:
6560 Gunpark Dr.
Suite D
Boulder, CO 80301
phone: (303) 530-1773
Meeting summary:
On Monday, June 2nd we had our third Denver Area Lisp Users Group meeting. Alex Repenning and Andri Ioannidou gave a really interesting presentation on AgentSheets - an agent-authoring & simulation-creation tool written in Common Lisp (MCL). The intial development of the product was done with MCL - they sell a Mac version based on MCL and have an upcoming OSX version using the (newly released) version of MCL. For their first Windows product, they converted the MCL product to Java. Interestingly, they may release future Windows versions in Lisp.
We saw demos of a number of different simulations that they had created with the tool including a mud-slide simulation, a soccer simulation (potential RoboCup entry??), a bridge stress test simulation, a game of life simulation, a pac man simulation and a virus simulation. In addition, they gave us an early peek at an upcoming 3d OpenGL version of the product (written using the latest version of MCL for OSX). The 3d simulations included a bus tracking application that is being done for Boulder's RTD service (with PDA's providing information on bus locations to commuters and the server display overlaying 3d buses on a map of Boulder) and a distributed human being simulation (with PDA's controlling different characteristics of a human's anatomy) - this one was a lot of fun!
They have a web site with information on the product and links to info on a lot of the existing simulations at: http://agentsheets.com/
Info on Mr. Vetro, the human being simulation can be found at http://www.agentsheets.com/about_us/documents/C5%20Flier.pdf
Info on the bus tracking application can be found at http://www.agentsheets.com/about_us/documents/Mobility%20Agents%20Flier.pdf
In addition to enjoying the AgentSheets presentation (and in keeping with lisp user group tradition), the group consumed Mexican food and alcoholic beverages and had some interesting conversations on XML parsers for lisp and the upcoming ILC-2003 conference.
Topic: Test-driven development in Lisp, LispWorks 4.3 for the Mac & other
topics
Presenter: Eric Blood
Meeting Location: Longmont Public Library, 409 4th Avenue, Longmont Colorado
(Map)
Date: Monday, September 15, 2003
Time: 7pm - 8pm (meeting at library), 8pm - ?? (drinks at The Lefthand Taphouse
or another brewery across the street.)
Summary of the meeting: Eric walked us through a lisp project that he has been
working on using the development approach outlined in Kent Beck's book
Test-Driven
Development. There was a bit of discussion about the pros/cons of the
approach and the scenarios where it would be most appropriate to use it. After
about an hour, we walked over to the local pub to carry on our discussions.
Topic: Using Emacs as a Lisp IDE
Presenter: Bill Clementson
Meeting Location: Conor
O'Neil's Irish Pub, 1922 13th Street - Boulder, Colorado.
(Map)
Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2003
Time: 7pm - ??
Summary of the meeting: Bill Clementson gave a dry run of his ILC2003
presentation.
Topic: Developing a weblog using PLT Scheme, SSAX, and the SXML tools
Presenter: Gordon Weakliem
Date: Monday, November 17, 2003
Time: 7pm - ??
Venue: Pints Pub (221 W. 13th Avenue, Denver, ph: 303-534-7543) - probably one
of the upstairs tables. (Map)
Description: Gordon has been working towards developing a weblog using PLT
Scheme, SSAX, and the SXML tools. He's getting close to having the rendering
side ready, and hopes to at least be able to support either the Atom posting API
or the WFW comment API as well.
There is a "double banger" meeting in February - A meeting on Feb 7 and a workshop on Feb 9:
Topic: Cells/Cello Overview
Presenter: Kenny Tilton
Meeting Location: Hotel
Boulderado Corner Bar (SE corner of the hotel - enter at ground level but we
will be at one of the upstairs tables in the bar), 2115 13th Street, Boulder (
Map)
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2004
Time: 6:30pm - 11pm
Description: Kenny will provide an overview of Cells and Cello. If you
know nothing about Cells and Cello, this will be a good chance to get a quick
intro (from the horse's mouth!). Kenny also runs his own Lisp-based business, so
it will be a good chance to hear some of his "war stories" after we've consumed
a few beers.
Topic: Cells/Cello Workshop
Presenter: Kenny Tilton
Meeting Location:
Meadows Branch of the
Boulder Public Library, 4800 Baseline Rd, Boulder (Map)
Library Phone: 303-441-4390
Date: Monday, February 9, 2004
Time: 6:30pm - 8:30pm (library closes at 9pm)
Description: This will be a "hands on" session. Download
Cells from the
Cells ftp area and bring
it with you on a laptop to the session. (If you don't have a laptop, don't worry
- we'll have a few there and people can share.) Kenny will take us through a few
examples of Cells/Cello usage and help people create a few example apps. Should be fun!
If you plan to come, please send me an email as I'd like a rough idea of numbers in order to make sure we have sufficient space for everyone. Mark your calendars - see you there!
Topic: Q&A Session with Franz
Presenters: Jans Aasman and Jeff Kielty from Franz
Date: March 15, 2004
Time: 7pm-10pm
Venue: Pints Pub (221 W. 13th Avenue, Denver, ph: 303-534-7543) - one of the upstairs tables (Map)
Description: Jans Aasman is the new head of engineering for Franz, the largest commercial CL vendor. He and Jeff Kielty will meet with us for a presentation and Q&A session on a number of different topics. Topics will include (but bring your own burning questions too!): Franz's plans for the future, better database connections, XML and Webservices, GUI developments for Linux, .Net, true CLOS object persistence, 64 bit versions, Multiprocessing, Regular expressions, the need for a Prolog or Expert system on top of CLOS, new features in 7.0.
Topic: Using the Franz ACL SOAP API
Presenter: Andrew Dolbey ( UCHSC)
Date: Monday, May 24, 2004
Time: 7pm-10pm
Venue: We will meet for drinks/food initially at the "Recovery Room Restaurant and Bar", 819 Colorado Blvd. (on the NW side of the intersection of 8th and Colorado), Denver, at 7pm. At 8pm the group will move to the UCHSC offices for the actual presentation. Anyone arriving after 8pm will not be able to attend the presentation as the building has controlled access.
Description: SOAP is one of the core standards for XML-based web services and Franz is the first CL vendor to release a SOAP implementation for Common Lisp. Andrew Dolbey will give an overview of his experiences using Franz's ACL SOAP API.
Topic: Knowledge-based Simulation Environment
Presenter: Doug Williams
Date: Monday, September 27th
Time: 7pm - 8:45pm
Venue: Boulder Public Library - George Reynolds Branch (Note: this is a different Boulder Public Library location from the one where we had the Kenny Tilton meeting). 3595 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder (information and map at: http://www.boulder.lib.co.us/branch/grb.html)
Summary: (Doug's summary)
I am attempting to recreate - and extend - in PLT Scheme the knowledge-based simulation environment I used to have in Symbolics Common Lisp. It will consist of three PLT Scheme collections: Science Collection, Simulation Collection, and Inferencing Collection. The PLT Scheme Science Collection is a port of portions of the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) that provides a foundation for inplementing the other collections as well as providing data analysis functions. The PLT Scheme Science Collection is largely implemented. The PLT Scheme Simulation Collection provides a discrete-event simulation engine based on a process interaction model. The PLT Scheme Simulation Collection has been prototyped. The PLT Scheme Inferencing Collection provides a rule-based inferencing engine.
In this talk, I will present the PLT Scheme Science Collection as well as discussion how to use - and extend - PLoT Scheme for data analysis.
- PLT Scheme Science Collection
- Mathematical Functions
- Special Functions
- Random Number Generation
- Random Distributions
- Statistics
- Histograms
- Chebyshev Approximations
- Using PLoT Scheme
- PLoT Scheme Overvire
- Extending PLoT Scheme
- Histogram Plot
- Step Plot
- Future Plans
- PLT Scheme Simulation Collection
- PLT Scheme Inferencing Collection
- Demo and Q&A
Topic: Meet Mikel Evins
Presenter: Mikel Evins
Date: Sunday, November 28th
Time: 4pm - 6pm
Venue: Oskar Blues Grill & Brew in Lyons (see address/map at http://www.oskarblues.com/contact.htm)
Summary: Mikel Evins is in town! Long time Macintosh Common Lisp hacker and former Apple employee, Mikel has a wealth of experience programming in CL. His RtL is on the ALU Wiki. Mikel has recently been organizing the "revival" of SK8, a multimedia rapid development GUI builder in CL, originally developed for Apple but being ported to multiple platforms. He also writes a (mostly MCL) Lisp weblog at http://evins.net/weblog.
Topic: Lambda, the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name?
Presenter: Kenny Tilton
Date: Friday, February 11th
Time: 6:30pm - 10:00pm
Venue: RedFish Brew House, 2027 13th Street, Boulder
Summary: Kenny Tilton on how Paul Graham went wrong by hiding the fact that he wrote Viaweb alone, and in general how to spin using Lisp for the benefit of people who Work In Tall Buildings (which must remain anonymous, but only the names will be changed). Lisp: say it loud, say it proud. You might be surprised who is listening.
Topic: XMLisp - XML Processing using CLOS
Presenter: Alex Repenning
Date: Friday, April 8, 2005
Time: 6:30pm - 10:00pm (meeting followed by food/drinks at nearby restaurant)
Venue: We will be meeting at the AgentSheets company office in the Gunbarrell area (northeast of Boulder). The address is:
6560 Gunpark Dr.Description: XMLisp is the integration of Lisp with XML. The Lisp Meta Object Protocol is used to establish a simple and highly efficient mapping between CLOS objects and the XML extensible markup language. It is not just an API to read XML files and turn them into some Lisp flavored representation. Instead, it integrates Lisp and XML into one environment at two levels:
Suite D
Boulder, CO 80301
(Mapquest map)
Phone: (303) 530-1773
- At a language level it allows the arbitrary combination of Lisp expressions and XML elements. CLOS objects can be printed as XML elements. XML elements evaluate into CLOS objects.
- At a tool level XMLisp allows users to fluidly experiment with XML. Type XML elements into the lisp listener. Evaluate complete or parts of hierarchical XML elements. Inspect complex XML elements using the inspector. Get support from symbol completion when editing XML.
Topic: Knowledge Based Simulation System
Presenter: Doug Williams
Date: Sunday, 31 July 2005
Time: Noon - 3:00 PM
Venue: Gordon Biersch Restaurant and Brew Pub at Flatirons Mall in Broomfield, CO. Here's a map.
Summary: (Doug's synopsis)
I am attempting to recreate - and extend - in PLT Scheme the knowledge-based simulation environment I used to have in Symbolics Common Lisp. It consists of three PLT Scheme collections: Science Collection, Simulation Collection, and Inferencing Collection. The PLT Scheme Science Collection is a port of portions of the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) that provides a foundation for implementing the other collections, as well as providing data analysis functions. The PLT Scheme Science Collection has been released via PLaneT. Version 1.2, which includes ordinary differential equations, will soon be released. The PLT Scheme Simulation Collection provides a simulation engine for combined discrete-event (based on a process interaction model) and continuous simulation models. The PLT Scheme Simulation Collection will soon be released to PLaneT. The PLT Scheme Inferencing Collection provides a rule-based inference engine.
In this talk, I will present the PLT Scheme Simulation Collection. I will start with a simplified discrete-event simulation engine (less than three pages of documented Scheme code) to show how to build a continuation-based simulation engine. Examples and demonstrations will be used throughout the presentation.
- Introduction
- Simplified Simulation System
- Continuations in Scheme
- Event Definition and Event Lists
- Simulation Control
- Random Distributions (to remove external dependencies)
- Example Simulation Model
- PLT Scheme Simulation Collection
- Simulation Environments (Basic)
- Simulation Control (Basic)
- Events
- Processes
- Resources
- Data Collection
- Sets
- Continuous Simulation Models
- Advanced Simulation Control
- Hierarchical Simulation Environments
- Components
- Future Plans
- Q&A
Topic: Knowledge Based Simulation System
Presenter: Doug Williams
Date: Wednesday, 16 November 2005
Time: 6:00 - 9:00 PM
Venue: Gordon Biersch Restaurant and Brew Pub at Flatirons Mall in Broomfield, CO. Here's a map.
Summary: Rescheduled from July.
(Doug's synopsis)
I am attempting to recreate - and extend - in PLT Scheme the knowledge-based simulation environment I used to have in Symbolics Common Lisp. It consists of three PLT Scheme collections: Science Collection, Simulation Collection, and Inferencing Collection. The PLT Scheme Science Collection is a port of portions of the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) that provides a foundation for implementing the other collections, as well as providing data analysis functions. The PLT Scheme Science Collection has been released via PLaneT. Version 2, which includes ordinary differential equations, will soon be released via Schematics. The PLT Scheme Simulation Collection provides a simulation engine for combined discrete-event (based on a process interaction model) and continuous simulation models. The PLT Scheme Simulation Collection will soon be released via Schematics. The PLT Scheme Inferencing Collection provides a rule-based inference engine.
In this talk, I will present the PLT Scheme Simulation Collection. I will start with a simplified discrete-event simulation engine (less than three pages of documented Scheme code) to show how to build a continuation-based simulation engine. Examples and demonstrations will be used throughout the presentation.
- Introduction
- Simplified Simulation System
- Continuations in Scheme
- Event Definition and Event Lists
- Simulation Control
- Random Distributions (to remove external dependencies)
- Example Simulation Model
- PLT Scheme Simulation Collection
- Simulation Environments (Basic)
- Simulation Control (Basic)
- Events
- Processes
- Resources
- Data Collection
- Sets
- Continuous Simulation Models
- Advanced Simulation Control
- Hierarchical Simulation Environments
- Components
- Future Plans
- Q&A
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