Autumn 2010

December 2nd at 7:00PM in the Ohio Union Senate Chamber Daniel Thau will be giving a presentation on Vim, an extremely powerful text editing program. Vim is known for having a difficult learning curve, but for many of those who do any appreciable amount of work editing text (such as Unix configuration, programming, etc) the benefits can far outweigh the cost.

On Thursday, November 18, at 7:00PM in the Ohio Union Senate Chamber, Matt Meinwald will be presenting on Xen, a popular server virtualization system. He will show what the software has to offer and will demo the installation process on Debian. Depending on time and interest, he may explain how we use it in the Open Source club systems or compare it to other software out there.

This *Friday*, November 12th at 7:00PM in the Ohio Union Senate Chamber Daniel Thau will be giving a presentation on Git, a distributed version control system with a focus on performance and integrity. Despite being known as one of the more difficult VCSs to grasp, git has become quite popular and has a fair number of recognizable F/OSS projects using it, such as the Linux Kernel and X.org.

This Thursday, November 4th at 7PM in the Ohio Union Senate Chamber, Jonathan Tubb will be giving an overview of Model View Controllers. A popular architecture for developing web applications, MVCs have come into their own in the past decade becoming the standard for quick deployment of applications. Information, use cases, and examples of MVCs and web applications will be covered.

Also featuring Tubbs witty remarks and dashing good looks, maybe even pizza.

This Thursday, October 28 at 7PM in the Ohio Union Senate Chamber, Alex Lingo will be presenting an old club favorite known as "This Week in Slashdot". Slashdot (commonly abbreviated as /.) is a website that deals in news for the nerdy, specifically "stuff that matters". Readers submit articles which are then accepted or rejected by editors and published on the site. From there, the readers have huge discussions about every aspect of the article which can be very funny/interesting/insightful/etc and oft prove to be a very good read.

This meeting will focus on several aspects of Python that don't normally come up in normal Python meetings. It will show you how things can be easier and more fun in Python! I will will be covering things from as simply as handling basic data types to more advance things such as making system calls or making the most of the PSL (Python Standard Library).

This meeting will also attempt to cover a small comparison between the larger more known languages: Java and C++, and show how some things can be done easier and quicker than in Java or C++.

This Thursday, at 7 pm in the Ohio Union Senate Chamber, Brian Swaney will be demonstrating use of the GIMP image editor. GIMP is what some might consider an open source alternative to the proprietary $800 Photoshop application, except that many people refuse to consider it on the grounds that it is allegedly inferior, and therefore unusable. While I'm not familiar with Photoshop, I will debunk the myth about GIMP being unusable, and show just how powerful GIMP can be for those who take the time to learn it.

On Thursday, October 7th at 7PM in the Ohio Union Senate Chamber, Alek Rollyson will be explaining what Mutt is, what it does, and why you should care. Per Mutt's mantra, most e-mail clients suck, Mutt just sucks less. Alek will be showcasing Mutt's capabilities via the story of Mua the Mutt and the adventures in which she partakes. Through a storytelling device, he will explain that Mutt is solely a mail user agent and requires other pieces and parts in order to function as a complete email solution.

This Thursday, September 30 from 12-6PM, we are sponsoring a Red Cross blood drive in Dreese Lab. If you would like to schedule a time to donate blood between 12PM and 6PM, you would like to help at the table between 11AM and 7PM, or if you have any questions, please contact Matt Meinwald (meinwald [dot] 1 [at] osu [dot] edu).

Thursday, September 23 is the first meeting of autumn quarter. We will be meeting in the Ohio Union Senate Room (note the change in location from last year) at 7PM. After a short introduction of the club and a brief description of the blood drive we are sponsoring on the 30th, Matt Meinwald will present an overview of Free operating systems, focusing primarily on GNU/Linux distributions.