[svfig-announce] Meeting September 25, 2010 -- off-site in AM

[Kevin Appert]

--- SVFIG Meeting, Fourth Saturday, September 25 2010 ---
_______________________________________________

*** BLDG. 550 WILL NOT BE ACCESSIBLE ***
   ***TO SVFIG UNTIL AFTER LUNCH!***
MEET US AT THE ELECTRIC CAR RALLY
http://www.eaasv.org/rally.html
(More below)
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*** AFTER LUNCH, THE MEETING PLACE IS SAME AS LAST MONTH ***
The meeting will be held on the FIRST OR second floor of Building 550
(aka Peterson Building. Directions and map links are below.

*** DO NOT ASK STANFORD STUDENTS TO LET YOU IN
AND DO NOT ENTER THE BUILDING BEHIND STUDENTS ***

Enter the building from the Panama Mall side.   The door is labeled
"Building 550 - Mechanical Engineering Design Group".
If there isn't someone from SVFIG at the door to let you in, call the
cell phone number on the sign.

The Official SVFIG Announcement Editor's Parking Lot Recommendation is
the lot near the intersection of Teresa St and Lomita Dr.

***WIFI AVAILABLE***
To use Wifi, you will need a guest account.   If you didn't have a guest 
account last month and you want to use Wifi, then email Dave Jaffe at: 
<dljaffe at stanford.edu>
_______________________________________________

AGENDA
For late-breaking updates, check the web site:
<<<http://www.forth.org/svfig/next.html>>>

At each lull in the action, between talks or before breaks we will be
inviting folks to give short 5-10 minute 'quickies'.  If you'd like to
tell us about something, let Kevin know at the meeting and we'll reserve
the time for you or take your chances that nobody else will grab the slot.

09:50 --- RENDEZVOUS AT STARBUCKS
Kevin Appert will be at Starbucks for a few minutes at the corner of El 
Camino Real and Stanford Ave. in Palo Alto.  The address is 2000 El 
Camino Real.  Kevin's cell phone is 650.678.0532
It's far enough away so that it won't be affected by the Rally crowd.

10:00 --- Electric Car Rally and Show at Palo Alto High School
The 38th Annual EV Rally will have production and converted electric 
vehicles on display (some available for test rides or ride-alongs). 
They'll also have EV component suppliers, solar panel vendors, local 
clean air organizations, and a solar oven display.
<<<http://www.eaasv.org/rally.html>>>
<<<http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/3085854/CA/Palo-Alto-CA/Electric-Car-Rally-amp-Show/Palo-Alto-High-School/>>>
Be aware of Rule 6: All two-wheel EV riders must wear helmets (we 
recommend you bring your own helmet if you think you'll be trying out 
two-wheel EVs, though vendors will have a few helmets available).
And Rule 7: No poofters.

11:45 --- LUNCH
      We will rendezvous at The Village Cheese House across the street 
in the Town and Country shopping plaza.  It will probably be crowded by 
noon!  http://www.yelp.com/biz/village-cheese-house-palo-alto
      There are maps around the shopping center.  The Cheese House is at 
the far corner of the property, farthest from the two major cross 
streets.  Call Kevin at 650.678.0532 if you can't find it.
      Some may choose alternative venues (Hobee's, Kirk's Steakburgers).

13:00 --- INTRODUCTIONS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, DISCUSSION --- All Assembled
This month we'll go around the room and each introduce ourselves.  If 
you've read something interesting, tell us about it!

13:30 --- PREVIEW: FORTH MEETS SMALLTALK --- Doug Hoffman
Doug will try out the Skype link and give us a quick look at an ANS 
Forth object extension which he'll describe at the October meeting.
See Doug's bio here: http://www.forth.org/whoswho.html#doughoffman

14:00 --- Interesting Items - Volume 15 --- Dave Jaffe
Dave will continue his survey of interesting newly-introduced 
microcontrollers, I/O peripherals, sensors, products, and gadgets that 
can provide useful and unique capabilities to Forth embedded systems. If 
anyone has come across anything that fits this category, pass it/them 
along to him for inclusion in his presentation.

14:20 --- Break

14:30 ---  Gforth on eCos --- John Harbold
John will give a give an update on his porting effort of Gforth to eCos. 
  eCos is the embedded configurable operating system.  It is open 
source, POSIX-compliant, real-time, multi-threaded with your choice of 
scheduler.  http://ecos.sourceware.org/about.html

15:00 --- MPB: A MICROCONTROLLER PERIPHERAL BUS ---   Samuel A. Falvo
Sam will describe a set of challenges involved in having a mix of slow 
and fast devices on a bus.  The solution he's investigating will support 
easy and cheap development of peripherals by hobbyists.  It turns out, 
quite by accident, the structure of MPB resembles NuBus, and is 
similarly CPU-independent, so it has the side-effect of enabling 
professionals to make high-bandwidth peripherals too.


15:30 --- UNSUITABLE FOR CIVILIANS --- Samuel A. Falvo
(If time allows)
An orbital overview of Unsuitable presented as a tech-talk at the
Ning, Inc. headquarters in Palo Alto.  I also cover the rudiments of
Forth for the benefit of those only familiar with contemporary
languages.  Some performance metrics are discussed as well.
This talk will be available for download from the SVFIG website so if we 
don't get to it, you can watch it on your own.

15:55 --- Clean up before you go!

16:00 --- Ok, now you can go.

_______________________________________________
Please note that the times listed above are precise but not necessarily 
accurate.  We might go a little long or short on any agenda item or 
shuffle things on the fly with abandon.  If you're desperate to see 
something at a particular time, please let us know!  Remember that there 
are bugs in any non-trivial SVFIG meeting announcement.
_______________________________________________

The schedule above may be reformatted or line-justified but
please transmit verbatim or not at all.   Any font you like is
fine with me.

No Newsgroup posts or other media distribution this month please!
_______________________________________________

There is NO Public Wireless Internet access at Stanford.
Email Dave Jaffe <dljaffe at stanford.edu> to request a one day
guest account if you didn't have one last month.
_______________________________________________

Coming to SVFIG:
* FORTH DAY in November 2010!

* Bring speaker suggestions TO EVERY MEETING!

* Mitch Bradley's Forth in C (somebody needs to volunteer)

* Blast from the past - a discussion of John James' CRC from his Xmodem
implementation as enunciated in "Forth Dimensions".

* Furthering the Cause of Forth - John Rible
IntellaSys has imploded, or something.  We'd be pleased to hear about
John's new outreach project when formulated.

* Engineering TV
http://engineeringtv.com/
Fifty engineering topic channels. Four new episodes per week.
_______________________________________________

Check the SVFIG web site at http://www.forth.org/svfig/
for last minute changes to this schedule.
The most up-to-date meeting information is at
http://www.forth.org/svfig/next.html

Many thanks to our wonderful Webmaster, Dave Jaffe.

Preliminary agenda along with schedule updates and
discussion may frequently be found on the SVFIG email list.
To subscribe send email to geoperry_at_gmail.com

Please let us know if this isn't your preferred email address for the
SVFIG-Announce mailing list.  Thanks for your patience.

Please suggest a speaker or present at a SVFIG meeting.

Please do not attempt to reply to svfig-announce at ...
send instead to forther_at_comcast.net
_______________________________________________

NAVIGATIONAL ADVICE

Enter the building from the Panama Mall side. (In the event that the 
building door is locked, there will either be someone on duty to let you 
in or a cellphone number to call.)
-
***DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TRY TO PIGGYBACK IN THE DOOR BEHIND
STUDENTS OR ASK STUDENTS TO LET YOU IN***
-
Google Maps does NOT work very well on the Stanford campus, use this
map:  http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/map/
-
Or the Searchable Stanford Campus Map:
http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/map/
-
There is open parking on weekends. Park in any A or C or metered space,
no coins needed even if there's a meter there.  The Official SVFIG
Announcement Editor's Parking Lot recommendation is the lot near the
intersection of Teresa St and Lomita Dr