In an email conversation a co-op member said:

It was lots of fun. We had a very interesting visitor from Berkley.

FYI all – we were talking about “big data” a bit informally (and money/economics) so I hope you all saw this: http://xkcd.com/980. Good data visualization is a wonderful thing. :)

Yes, we’ve been meeting monthly! But we haven’t been posting frequent updates on the website.

At our October 2011 meeting, we talked about several things, such as development practices at Apple and a forthcoming ARM-based single-board Linux computer available for $25-$35.

Liz and Francis took much better notes which are posted at the TCS website:
http://aztcs.org/meeting_notes/2010-10-26/2010-10-26.htm She has screenshots!

Here’s my quick scratches:

Chris wrote SawSearch which is a proxy that keeps an index of all the pages you’ve browsed to and lets you search them locally on your computer by keyword, when you saw the page, filter by domain & date range.

Brendan demo’d http://Spoon.net lets you run any exe on Windows thru the plugin. So you can run any browser without installing it, productivity app, CAD. We determined that its a running as a normal executable, able to access files on your system. But, it is not using the system libs, the exes must be packaged w/own system libs.

Francis shared his experience teaching senior citizens and newbie users and the need for manuals with clear screen shots. Francis has several manuals posted at http://aztcs.org/meeting_notes/meeting_notes.shtml , for example

http://aztcs.org/meeting_notes/winhardsig/GIMP/edit_object.htm

The page has step by step notes on how to modify photos, no tech lingo, just has screenshots and which button to press. This is very helpful to older folks who want to get something done. Essentially this is the equivalent of Francis’ reading several books on Gimp, minus the lingo and concepts, boiled down to concrete instructions.

Another one tells how to build a free motion detector for your house using a webcam and free mashup services.

Golda made a quick stop at http://factual.com and http://evri.com about mashups

Check out Liz’ excellent and detailed Meeting Notes from 2010-09-28 here!

Hey all – here’s our google group we can use to chat between meetings

http://groups.google.com/group/devcoop

The thing about using a google group instead of a regular email list, is that members can adjust the frequency of messages they see, so you can post freely without worrying about bugging anyone.

Notes from the June meeting, a bit late:

– we had what was certainly the most entertaining ‘Hello, World’ program I have ever seen, in a python obfuscation demonstration

- an interesting discussion of handling noise in rapid, large scale data collection

- test system coverage with pros and cons of different .NET integrations (using a built-in form generator vs going a more straight coding route; as you might expect the latter is harder for beginners, but more flexible and scalable in the long run).

I neglected to take real-time notes and am writing this a few weeks later, so please feel free to edit the above! See you all soon

–Golda

I was thinking everyone should write a short intro blurb here explaining who they are – like just an informal introduction to the group.  Then new members can read and get to know everyone more quickly.  To kick that off, here’s my intro:

I am Dave Parizek.  I helped found the co-op, although it was mostly Golda’s idea and she has been the driving force behind getting it going.  I have a BS in Wildlife and Fisheries Science, an almost Master’s in the same.  I have not really worked in wildlife management though.  Instead, since college I have worked at running various small business endeavors.  For the last 8 years, I have mostly been a stay home Dad.  I am happily married to Julie and have two sons, Cooper and Nate. I am a self-taught, part-time programmer.

I love Macs, and love programming in Objective-C with the Cocoa frameworks.  I am also into Drupal website development.

For the most part, I want to just raise my kids, explore cool computer topics, and build up my Land Rover enthusiast website.

You can learn more about me on my personal website, parizek.com.

Ok, folks, get with Golda for access to the site, or email me your intro and I’ll post it.

We have the Santa Rita meeting room at the Main Library next Wed Apr 28th 2010, from 6PM – 7:45PM.

Our next meetings are scheduled for

  • Thurs Feb 25 6PM-7:45PM at the Martha Cooper library on Catalina
  • and

  • Wed Mar 31 6PM-7:45PM at Himmel library

We’ll have short presentations on using Mashup APIs and/or Google code toolkit, then take turns with the mike to show our stuff to each other.

All are welcome, there is no charge to attend. Many of our members also belong to the Tucson Computer Society and Francis usually posts information about them to the TCS website, but you don’t have to be a member of anything to come.

(Prefer assembling components to inheritance when possible – a good design patterns rule)

Kick-off Unmeeting : Wed. Jan 27 6:30-8 PM
@ Himmel Library Meeting Room

See printable flyer

Bring your ideas and projects in progress!

Agenda:

– Brief introductions and some info on collaboration tools

– Working time while we help each other with ideas and projects. Jumpstart, brainstorm, troubleshoot, check out and give feedback.

The Co-op is non-denominational: Perl, Java, PHP, Javascript, CSS/HTML, tool users and others all welcome.
For more information see http://tucson.devcoop.org or contact Golda at gvelez17@gmail.com * 440-1420. Affiliated with the Tucson Computer Society Developers’ SIG : http://aztcs.org/sigs/.