Factor Talk at the Lambda Lounge

Last night (April 2, 2009) at the St. Louis Lambda Lounge I gave a 45-minute talk on the Factor programming language. I’ve uploaded the handout and example code here. I apologize in advance to anyone in the Factor community who reads it and laughs at my “newbie” mistakes and misstatements. Continue reading “Factor Talk at the Lambda Lounge”

Git Talk at the STL JUG

Yesterday (Oct. 9, 2008), I gave a talk on Git at the St. Louis Java User Group. Rather than a typical “intro” talk, instead I showed a dozen or so common usage scenarios, then answered questions with additional ad-hoc demos. As with some other recent talks, I eschewed PowerPoint in favor of a printed handout. The text of the handout follows below, or you can download the PDF. I also recorded the audio of the talk, but without video, so the general discussion portions are worthwhile but the demo portions are not.
Continue reading “Git Talk at the STL JUG”

A Brief Introduction to Distributed Version Control

Last night at SLUUG, I have a talk on distributed source control tools. It was quite introductory, but the notes (below) may still be helpful. These notes were on a handout at the talk, as usual I didn’t use slides.

Unfortunately I didn’t get an audio recording of this talk, so no transcript either.

About 30 people were in attendance. Nearly 100% were familiar with CVS and SVN, and perhaps 20% with other tools (ClearCase, SourceSafe, and others). Only 4 had ever used branch/merge in any project or tool! Continue reading “A Brief Introduction to Distributed Version Control”

Selling your Software as a Service: Notes and Audio

At the St. Louis Code Camp on May 5, 2007, I gave a talk on Selling Your Software as a Service, in which I discussed our experiences selling a complex (Java) “enterprise” application in that manner. The room was much more crowded than I expected, it was exciting to have an eager group. As with all my recent talks, I used a handout instead of slides. You can download a PDF of the handout (one page, one side), or read the contents below.

The 1 hour audio recording (Olympus WS-100 digital voice recorder, Audacity cleanup) is available here: SAASTalk.mp3

A transcript of the talk is available. In the talk I mentioned Paul Graham’s The Other Road Ahead, which is shorter and easier to read the my talk transcript.

A couple of people at Code Camp asked if I could come give a similar talk in-house at their firms. Yes – please contact me with the contact form to arrange a date.

The handout contents follow.

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St. Louis Code Camp, May 5 2007

It’s time for the second (annual) St. Lous Code Camp on May 5, 2007. There’s no actual camping (unlike some other ___ camps out there), just one day of sessions. Think of it as a mini-conference. See Brian’s announcement for more details. If you’ve been thinking of giving user group talks and never gotten around to it, Code Camp is a great place to start.

I’m in for two sessions this year, assuming enough slots are available for both: Continue reading “St. Louis Code Camp, May 5 2007”

Ruby GUI Toolkit Talk: Notes and Audio

On March 27th I gave a talk at the St. Louis Ruby User Group about Ruby GUI Toolkits. As with my last few talks, there were no slides, but rather a handout. The original handout fit tightly on a single, two-sided printed page; I’ve expanded the materials slightly and pasted them here.

I also recorded audio of the talk with my Olympus WS-100 digital voice recorder, then used Audacity to clean it up; Audacity’s “Remove Noise” feature worked surprisingly well. The recording lasts 1 hour 23 minutes, is 49 MB in size: RubyGUIToolkitTalk.mp3

A transcript of the talk is also available.

In the audio I mention screen shots and demos; you can find those at the respective toolkits’ web sites (linked below). I also briefly discuss and demo some code from a 2005 talk about Swing.

The handout contents follow below.

Continue reading “Ruby GUI Toolkit Talk: Notes and Audio”