Wed. November 12th, 6:53pm at FreeGeek -- 1731 SE 10th Ave.

Speaker: Gabrielle Roth Topic: 600 Simple Strategies for Sanely Summarizing Cisco Syslogs

Syslog is a handy troubleshooting tool, but only if you actually read what's logged. I wrote a Cisco syslog parser & reporter as part of our network fault-management system. We'll go over:

• network management basics
• why we needed this specific tool
• why I created my own tool from scratch (instead of using an off-the-shelf solution)
• how I did it & what the results were, and
• what I'm going to do next.

You don't need to be a Cisco engineer or even know much Perl to get something out of this talk.

As always, the meeting will be followed by social hour at the Lucky Lab.

I started using Perl just over six years ago, when 5.6.2 was already getting old and 5.8.1 was on the way. By the time I put my first module on the CPAN, over half of the current contributors had already shipped.

I have often read the source of a core module and asked "Why?" only to discover some unknown feature or historical accident. The history lesson continues all the way into the roots of Unix in some cases, but also often leaves me thinking "So?". And now I am quickly approaching my 40th CPAN distribution.

In this talk, I will share my own experiences in developing with Perl and explore the idea of the "Modern" or "Enlightened" Perl. Did I miss the heyday of Perl or are we still making that now? How does today's Perl code look different than it did 5 or 10 years ago? Is there a Perl renaissance coming, and what does it have to do with Perl 6? What modules should you be using for new development? Where is my flying car? Why am I still programming in Perl? And why am I programming at all?

I will try to find answers to some of these questions and invite you to bring questions (or answers!) of your own.

As always, the meeting will be followed by social hour at the LuckyLab.

Test::Builder underpins 80% of the tests on CPAN. Its limitations become everyone's limitations. It's done a very good job adapting the last seven years, and testing has become more sophisticated in that time, but age and backwards compatibility holds things back. There are a number of desired features which Test::Builder cannot support, such as end-of-test actions, without radically altering how tests are built.

thus: Test::Builder2.

This will be "something of a talk" followed by some hacking both on Test::Builder2 directly and writing new test modules. It'll give folks an opportunity to work both with Moose (well, Mouse) and git. Pair programming will make life easier, we can pair of experienced folks with inexperienced. Or just huddle together for strength in numbers. I find it easier to pair when each person has their own keyboard, so I'm going to bring along a few spare keyboards and mice. I encourage others to do the same.

This month's WikiWednesday will include the usual wiki-geekery, but will also welcome folks from CHIFOO, after they've finished hearing Ward (Cunningham) speak on Wiki Design Principles.

Our main topic of discussion for the evening is the Oregon Transparency Taskforce, an effort to make Oregon state government more transparent, accessible, and accountable that is coordinated through wiki. (Google Group here: http://groups.google.com/group/oregon-transparency-taskforce/?pli=1)

Moose is a postmodern object system for Perl 5.

Moose's recent rise in popularity has led to a surge of declarative class-building and accessor-generating modules, but the real power of Moose comes from its metaclass fundamentals, not from the syntactic sugar of has(). Using Moose as a foundation makes it easier for your code to grow and scale.

I'll cover some of the concepts in Moose that the MOP (Meta-Object Protocol) makes possible, especially roles and type constraints. If we have time, I'll go through a simple Moose extension, focusing on the mechanisms Moose provides to help your code play nicely with others'.

If the first sentence of this description was news to you, you should at least read the SYNOPSIS of Moose, and if you can get through Moose::Manual and Moose::Manual::Concepts, so much the better. I'll expect a lot of questions, but I hope to move past "what is an object" pretty quickly. By the end of the night I hope you'll have a better understanding of the depth of what Moose provides, and why has() is only the tip of the iceberg. I don't expect that everyone will immediately understand every concept provided – my goal is to impress you so much with Moose's awesomeness that you're willing to follow up later on the documentation pointers that I throw out.

This month's topic: Sexier Software with Flex and Java

Outline: Intro to Rich Internet Applications

RIA as the next generation of Software

Back to the Client-Server Model

Adobe's RIA Software Development Platform

Intro to building software with Flex

What is Flex?

Open Source SDK

ActionScript & MXML Languages

Components

How do you use Flex?

Compiler

Debugging

Intro to BlazeDS (Java Integration)

Installing BlazeDS into a Web App (WAR File)

Remoting (RPC style object invocations over HTTP)

Pub/Sub Messaging

Spring Integration

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Speaker: James Ward

James is a Technical Evangelist for Flex at Adobe and Adobe's JCP representative to JSR 286, 299, and 301. Much like his love for climbing mountains he enjoys programming because it provides endless new discoveries, elegant workarounds, summits and valleys. His adventures in climbing have taken him many places. Likewise, technology has brought him many adventures, including: Pascal and Assembly back in the early 90's; Perl, HTML, and JavaScript in the mid 90's; then Java and many of it's frameworks beginning in the late 90's. Today he primarily uses Flex to build beautiful front-ends for Java based back-ends. Prior to Adobe, James built a rich marketing and customer service portal for Pillar Data Systems.

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PJUG meetings start with some time to eat and socialize (pizza and beverages are provided), followed by the featured speaker, then Q&A, discussion, sometimes a drawing to give away swag. :)

Though we like knowing how many people to expect, you don't have to RSVP, on Upcoming or otherwise. Go ahead and just show up!

Many people also go for a drink and further discussion following the meeting, at a location determined ad hoc (more often than not, Jax on 2nd).

http://twitter.com/pjug http://pjug.org/ (join our mailing list, linked from the website!)

This month's topic: The Feel of Scala

Scala is a new language for the Java Platform that blends object-oriented and functional programming concepts. This talk will focus on the design choices of Scala, and what they mean for developer productivity. The talk will highlight what it means to program in a functional style, and show you how Scala facilitates a hybrid of functional and imperative programming styles. The talk will also explore how Scala compares to dynamic languages such as Ruby and Python. And you'll see examples of real, production Scala code that will illustrate what it feels like to program in Scala.

Speaker: Bill Venners

Bill Venners is president of Artima, Inc., publisher of Artima Developer (www.artima.com). He is author of the book, Inside the Java Virtual Machine, a programmer-oriented survey of the Java platform's architecture and internals. His popular columns in JavaWorld magazine covered Java internals, object-oriented design, and Jini. Active in the Jini Community since its inception, Bill led the Jini Community's ServiceUI project, whose ServiceUI API became the de facto standard way to associate user interfaces to Jini services. Bill is also the lead developer and designer of ScalaTest, an open source testing tool for Scala and Java developers, and coauthor with Martin Odersky and Lex Spoon of the book, Programming in Scala.

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PJUG meetings start with some time to eat and socialize (pizza and beverages are provided), followed by the featured speaker, then Q&A, discussion, sometimes a drawing to give away swag. :)

Though we like knowing how many people to expect, you don't have to RSVP, on Upcoming or otherwise. Go ahead and just show up!

Many people also go for a drink and further discussion following the meeting, at a location determined ad hoc (more often than not, Jax on 2nd).

http://twitter.com/pjug http://pjug.org/ (join our mailing list, linked from the website!)

This month's topic: Java Performance Testing with Project Bonneville

Project Bonneville is Chris Cowell-Shah's evenings-and-weekends open source project for measuring the performance of certain core Java SE features. Chris will review the results of these benchmarks with an eye to addressing the following questions:

How does performance vary across JVM vendors?

How does performance vary across JVM versions?

How does performance vary across operating systems?

How does the performance of 1.4 features differ from their 1.5+ replacements?

How true are commonly held assumptions about Java performance?

Can we generate simple rules of thumb for high-performance Java SE programming?

There will also be a short discussion of the tradeoffs between micro- and macro-benchmarks. Because this is a work in progress, comments and observations about Project Bonneville's benchmarking methodology, or suggestions for future benchmarks, are especially welcome.

Chris promises a LOLCAT-free presentation, though there may be a slide or two of his kids.

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Speaker: Chris Cowell-Shah

Chris does quality assurance for Oracle's Java-based Rules engine. He has also worked as an IT consultant for Accenture, and as a researcher for Accenture's Palo Alto research and development lab. He studied computer science and philosophy, and is always on the lookout for points of intersection between the two. http://www.cowell-shah.com/

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PJUG meetings start with some time to eat and socialize (pizza and beverages are provided), followed by the featured speaker, then Q&A, discussion, sometimes a drawing to give away swag. :)

Though we like knowing how many people to expect, you don't have to RSVP, on Upcoming or otherwise. Go ahead and just show up!

Many people also go for a drink and further discussion following the meeting, at a location determined ad hoc (lately, the Market Street Pub at 10th and Market: http://mcmenamins.com/index.php?loc=24 ).

http://twitter.com/pjug http://pjug.org/ (join our mailing list, linked from the website!)

The next meeting of the OpenSpatialPDX will be happening June 24 at OpenSourcery!

The agenda:

• Desktop GIS Smackdown (uDig versus Quantum versus GRASS etc)

• Open Source Bridge report

• Update on state initiative put forward by Dean Anderson from Polk County to replace various desktop and web-based tools with OS solution.

Hope to see you all there.

Silverlight Conversation and QA with Shawn Wildermuth Feb 19th at Webtrends 6pm This is a Friday (not our usual day)

Do you have questions about Silverlight? Shawn's the person to ask. He's full of Silverlight knowledge, and he's coming to Portland to have a conversation with us. Shawn is extremely well known and respected in the Silverlight community, and it's going to be a real treat to have him. If you want to have a complex and nuanced discussion about Silverlight, join us for this meeting.

Shawn Wildermuth Shawn Wildermuth is a Microsoft MVP (C#), member of the INETA Speaker's Bureau and an author of six books on .NET. Shawn is involved with Microsoft as a Silverlight Insider, Data Insider and Connected Technology Advisors (WCF/Oslo/WF). He has been seen speaking at a variety of international conferences including SDC Netherlands, VSLive, WinDev and DevReach. Shawn has written dozens of articles for a variety of magazines and websites including MSDN, DevSource, InformIT, CoDe Magazine, ServerSide.NET and MSDN Online. He has over twenty years in software development regularly blogs about a range of topics including Silverlight, Oslo, Databases, XML and web services on his blog (http://wildermuth.com).

Warmup: Operating System in Your Browser Window At the beginning of the meeting (6pm), Marc Schulper will show us how to write Silverlight applications for a web based operating system.

WHEN: Friday 02/19/2010 This is a Friday (not our usual day)

6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo) 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at TBD

WHERE: Webtrends (map: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=webtrends+in+portland&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=52.77044,117.949219&ie=UTF8&hq=webtrends&hnear=Portland,+OR&z=15&iwloc=A ) 851 SW 6th Ave. Portland, OR 97204-1337

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible: * Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com * Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com

Getting There: Trimet. I recommend taking Trimet to this event. Check out the map to see the tons of Max/etc. stops nearby. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=webtrends+in+portland&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=52.77044,117.949219&ie=UTF8&hq=webtrends&hnear=Portland,+OR&ll=45.518113,-122.678565&spn=0.00557,0.014398&z=17&iwloc=A Parking. I recommend Smart Parks: http://maps.google.com/maps?near=851+Southwest+6th+Avenue,+Portland,+OR+97204-1307+(Webtrends+Inc)&geocode=CZtaax3F1n_AFfqMtgIdhxCw-CFZtU_2hrTHig&q=%22Smart+Park%22&f=l&dq=webtrends+loc:+portland&sll=45.518074,-122.679161&sspn=0.011831,0.006499&ie=UTF8&ll=45.519218,-122.67643&spn=0.022281,0.057592&z=15

We will be having three lightning-ish talks at PDX.pm this month.

Perl and Parrot in Google Code-In : Highlights and How To Get Involved

-- Jonathan "Duke" Leto

Tool::Bench : A Generalized Benchmarking Framework for Just About Anything

-- Ben Hengst

Graphics in Software Documentation : Why The Void?

-- Otto Hirr

Please come by and be sure to come hang out afterwards at the Lucky Lab social hour, just a few blocks away.

On Tuesday, January 14, Smarsh will host the Salesforce DUG Portland Meetup group for a demo session showcasing how local companies extend their use of the force.com platform to build and deploy social and mobile employee apps in record time—and connect with customers, partners and employees in the cloud.