SHDC#9! (take two)

[Simon Ford]

Hi,

Apologies for not sorting SHDC#9 out yet. I suddenly found myself very
busy, but that should not be an excuse! Lets try again...

I'm trying a different solution to choose a date this time; to show
your availability, cast your votes at:

http://doodle.ch/f94ucqxqcnnamu4i

Cheers!
Simon

[tom]

Hey Guys,

Have dropped back onto the grid! have been off on a very random
holiday. Am running off to Glasgow "University" to do some "research"
for a few years, so don't think I'll be doing much more SHDC :(

Sorry i didn't get to say bye, will still be around Cambridge a bit,
so will drop by if the dates align! I hope SHDC becomes a success and
a legend :)

Rock on - tom/twak

[Simon Ford]

Ok, looks like the SuperHappyDevClub october dates are best, so i'm
going to go for...

SHDC#9 - Saturday 18th October @ 2pm

I'll run it at my house (for those who don't know the address, just
give me an email)

Now, some rules...

The first rule of SHDC is, its ok to talk about SHDC. So feel free to
invite anyone you know who might be in to this sort of thing. More
people, more ideas, more fun.

The second rule of SHDC is, you should have an idea of what you are
going to try and do *before* you arrive. Even if it then goes out the
window when you start speaking to people and something much cooler
evolves. Helps avoid procrastination; save that for work.

The third rule of SHDC is, we should have to sustenance we need to
make it through to the early hours. So feel free to bring drinks/
snacks/cake along! If people are up for it, perhaps we could pool some
money to cover some takeaways and a beer run? Happy for ideas/
suggestions here.

The forth rule of SHDC is, feel free to bring along any CDs/iPods you
fancy; its always cool to hear new music.

Thats the rules done.

So if you are planning to come along, how about replying to this mail
introducing yourself (especially if you are new!) giving a brief
summary of what project you might be working on, and any ideas/
suggestions about food/drink or anything else :)

See you on the 18th! And pass it on...

Simon

[Jonathan Austin]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 9:02 AM, Simon Ford <simon....@googlemail.com> wrote:

Ok, looks like the SuperHappyDevClub october dates are best, so i'm
going to go for...

SHDC#9 - Saturday 18th October @ 2pm

I'll run it at my house (for those who don't know the address, just
give me an email)

So if you are planning to come along, how about replying to this mail
introducing yourself (especially if you are new!) giving a brief
summary of what project you might be working on, and any ideas/
suggestions about food/drink or anything else :)

Should we do the introduction bit on the wiki? Maybe a 'People' page? I would've done it but it looks like you need to have an account for the wiki...
 

See you on the 18th! And pass it on...

I should be able to make it on the 18th. Looking forward to it.

I'm Jonny Austin. I'm a student doing Engineering (just finished 2nd year - still to do much actually practical!) and I've been a couple of times before. This time I think I will try and work on getting a Psion Series 5 Keyboard to work as a USB keyboard.

It's pretty new territory for me, so if anyone has useful tools or reading material for getting started and pointing me in the right direction, please let me know (/bring them along). If anyone is taking a really keen interest, it has been done before:

http://sgenomics.org/mediawiki/index.php/Psion_Series_5_USB_Keyboard_mod

But I'll be using different tools.

I've also been thinking over some possible designs for a way to make a componentised (perhaps over dbus) parser-thingy to pick up dates, to-do tasks, names of documents on the filesystem, contacts in your address book, etc that appear in text that you're reading/editing... The idea is to make it available to all apps and easy to write 'plugins' for. I'm just at a 'talk it over' stage so if anyone's interested in desktop environment level Linux, or generally software design perhaps we can talk about that.

As for food, I've got a voucher for 50% off at Pizza Hut (delivery) when you spend more than £25, an identical twin of which has worked fine before... so that's an option... I'll bring it along.

See you there, I hope,

Jonny

[Steve McConville]

> So if you are planning to come along, how about replying to this mail
> introducing yourself (especially if you are new!) giving a brief
> summary of what project you might be working on, and any ideas/
> suggestions about food/drink or anything else :)

I'm new here - Hoping to make it. Been living in Cambridge for a year
or so - being an internet/systems guy mostly. I like to make electric
things go beep and blurp and so forth.

I have just this evening received the free datafile sample CD from the
Royal Mail, containing a sample file formatted like their PAF
(postcode address file). You know when you order things from a website
and they ask you for just your postcode & house number? This sits at
the backend. The dataset is not-free (50 quid for a 1 user license,
getting big quickly), but they'll give you set to develop against for
nowt. No postage either, obviously. I'm planning to write a wee parser
that will put this into an RDBMS or at least a B-tree, because it
looks like it's just the raw sequential records dumped off a
mainframe.

--
steev
http://www.daikaiju.org.uk/~steve/

[Simon Ford]

I think my plan is to have a go at learning some of these javascript
packages (prototype, scriptaculous, jquery) to see what they are
capable of, and hopefully then use them as a way to quickly prototype
some interface experiments.

The main use is for an idea i'm hoping to try an kick-start soon; a
form of schema-less database for embedded devices to push data to,
with a way to query and aggregate information from it (probably
doesn't sound very exciting like that, but i think the idea could be
really powerful if i get it right). Whilst most of it is mapped out, I
haven't quite got the approach to query part straight in my head yet,
so i'm hoping coming from the angle of trying to build an interface to
create queries might help identify a few key principles.

I'll also have various tools/soldering iron/hardware knocking about,
and might bring some robot bits (perhaps my broken big trak?!) for
when the need to fiddle with real things kicks in. Please bring
whatever toys/things/etc you have to show/share :) And if that isn't
enough, maybe i'll try and design something 3D for that online place
henry mentioned to make :)

[Tim Thornton]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 10:11 PM, Simon Ford
<simon....@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> The main use is for an idea i'm hoping to try an kick-start soon; a
> form of schema-less database for embedded devices to push data to,
> with a way to query and aggregate information from it (probably
> doesn't sound very exciting like that, but i think the idea could be
> really powerful if i get it right). Whilst most of it is mapped out, I
> haven't quite got the approach to query part straight in my head yet,
> so i'm hoping coming from the angle of trying to build an interface to
> create queries might help identify a few key principles.

Sounds like the old soup concept from the Apple Newton. Might be
interesting to dig out some of the old NewtonScript documentation?

Tim

[Henry Gomersall]

On Sat, 2008-10-04 at 01:02 -0700, Simon Ford wrote:
> The second rule of SHDC is, you should have an idea of what you are
> going to try and do *before* you arrive. Even if it then goes out the
> window when you start speaking to people and something much cooler
> evolves. Helps avoid procrastination; save that for work.
>

I've ordered 3 bluetooth modules (the NC4 at
http://www.roundsolutions.com/bluetooth/bluetooth-module.htm ). UPS say
it will arrive tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have them by the weekend.

Its based on the LMX9830:
http://www.national.com/pf/LM/LMX9830.html with the relevant support
hardware.

My plan is to produce a breakout board, and hook it up to the mbed
widget which is going to be the controller, then get a couple of them
talking to each other. If I can, try to get an audio profile working.

Might need a couple of trips to Maplin.

I'd love some assistance on this!

cheers,

hen

[Jonathan Austin]

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 7:39 PM, Jonathan Austin <j.m.a...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 9:02 AM, Simon Ford <simon....@googlemail.com> wrote:

Ok, looks like the SuperHappyDevClub october dates are best, so i'm
going to go for...

SHDC#9 - Saturday 18th October @ 2pm

It's pretty new territory for me, so if anyone has useful tools or reading material for getting started and pointing me in the right direction, please let me know (/bring them along). If anyone is taking a really keen interest, it has been done before:

http://sgenomics.org/mediawiki/index.php/Psion_Series_5_USB_Keyboard_mod

I'm trying to track down an oscilloscope so I can do some probing on a working Psion to get an idea of what the keyboard is actually doing. Does anyone who was planning on driving have one they feel like sharing for an afternoon?

Jonny

[Simon Ford]

see you all tomorrow! if anyone needs to know my address, give me an
email.

On 16 Oct, 22:04, "Jonathan Austin" <j.m.aus...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 7:39 PM, Jonathan Austin <j.m.aus...@gmail.com>wrote:

[Henry Gomersall]

On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 12:20 -0700, Simon Ford wrote:
> see you all tomorrow! if anyone needs to know my address, give me an
> email.

It may not be there til about 4. But I am coming (assuming I survive
mountain biking this morning!).

cool,

hen

[emilmont]

This afternoon I took a further look at Enso.

I was really looking for a tool like this, thanks for the suggestion
Jonny.

I have written a small wrapper of the RPC-XML server to make it even
more easy to add new commands:
http://code.google.com/p/py-enso-extension/

See you at the next SHDC,
Emilio


On Oct 4, 7:39 pm, "Jonathan Austin" <j.m.aus...@gmail.com> wrote: