In the spirit of open sourcing stuff, I'm jotting some last minute <br>thoughts for my talk, which I'll print out and have with me at<br>the podium, probably with annotations, other markup.<br><br>I'm recalling Novell's Miguel (de Icaza) showing off the rotating
<br>cube of desktop motifs in earlier OSCONs, the applause. But <br>now that it's a reality on my Ubuntu Dell, geeks seem hesitant <br>to revel in eye candy (I've seen no rotating cube in any <br>presentation so far -- were they big last year?). Either it's ho
<br>hum or let's leave it to OS X to pioneer "trendy" (as in iPhone <br>or whatever). Not sure what it is.<br><br>Anyway, I don't take that slant.<br><br>I'm planning to be Bold with Beryl (r.c. 0.4.2
or something).<br><br>In the context of this morning's keynotes, my presentation is <br>somewhat about branding, less so about Python (kwel logo)<br>and more so about me and my 4D meme, which I've used <br>as a prefix for the two subsidiaries: Solutions and Studios.
<br><br>My logo appears on the top and bottom facets of the Beryl <br>cube, as well as @ <a href="http://myspace.com/4dstudios">myspace.com/4dstudios</a>.<br><br>So on each facet (4 of them, top and bottom not counted), <br>
I'll have a different show and tell item. Screen 0 = slides, <br>which anchor my narrative. Screen 1 = IDLE, from whence<br>I might sneak a peek at the source and/or run some short<br>demos. Screen 2 = VLC paused in Code Guardian, to help
<br>with my slides about Real Time versus Render Time output.<br>Screen 3 (last but not least): Firefox, with a bunch of pages<br>preopened in tabs.<br><br>The context: we're already over the hump with the open source
<br>languages, even some some closed ones, regarding their <br>relevance to "cave painting" in an educational context. <br>I explain what that means using several illustrative slides.<br><br>The Python stuff that I pander has everything to do with my
<br>vision for the local economy. We're a ToonTown in the making,<br>since long before I got here, and BioTech is another big win,<br>along the existing chip fabs, OSDL, other big players. <br><br>Clients for "toons" include these technology companies, NGOs,
<br>other institutions and think tanks (e.g. <a href="http://wwwanderers.org">wwwanderers.org</a>).<br><br>I'm not just talking about Roger Rabbit here. I'm talking about <br>hemoglobin, geospatial simulations, all the "professional adult
<br>cartoons" we call "visualizations" and read Tufte regarding.<br><br>So that explains also my very biological approach, of proteins, <br>biota, animals (or other similar scale) for expressions, functions,
<br>class types. Modules = Ecosystems. Snakes have __ribs__.<br><br>We're big on biology (OHSU etc.).<br><br>Then comes the long digression into string.Template, which<br>has to do with Office Automation. The initial big application of
<br>PCs was word processing (their first "killer" role -- witness death <br>of the typewriter, probably calculators next). And the big <br>application of word processing, abetted by spreadsheet and <br>database, was the "mail merge."
<br><br>When it comes to kids, they like Mad Libs. Let's start there<br>and roll forward through a some examples of boilerplate <br>"view languages": POV-Ray's SDL, Vpython's API, and X3D.<br>Tie in the "mail merge" idea and use that to motivate a
<br>discussion of back end databases, with Venn Diagrams <br>tying to MySQL.<br><br>In sum: "template" remains an important abstraction, is the <br>same "boilerplate" that used to come from lawyers more than
<br>from today's coders. Boilerplate shapes the View while the <br>database (Model) keeps the raw vital records. Thirdly, some <br>Controller (WordPerfect?) mediates between them, giving us <br>form letters, address labels, or GUI views on a screen
<br>(perhaps with write access back to the Model).<br><br>Smattered in between: more bio about me, cuz it's my company <br>that I'm branding. <br><br>The success of IDLE in spreading Python to a vast base of <br>
Windows users was a shot heard 'round the world, still with<br>echoing repercussions (mostly good ones).<br><br>That's about it. the Saturday Academy brand (going on 24 <br>years) gets some air time, my HP4E and the whole business
<br>about Geography (my segue to/from Polyhedra, as "Platonic <br>planets") now much amplified as a result of this convention <br>(glad to see my intuitions were on target).<br><br>We'll just fade out at the philosophy part, as that's where
<br>my "keep Portland weird" background paper picks up (the one<br>I wrote for the Lithuania presentation), and which is more of <br>a formal paper (with endnotes and everything), less a slide <br>show, much less a "switching desktops" screencast.
<br><br>I'll post more about how it all went later sometime. Or watch<br>my blogs (RSS feeds available).<br><br>Kirby<br><br>PS: I do confess to collecting "positive collateral" regarding<br>snake iconography. An obvious example: the caduceus,
<br>used as a trademark by Physicians and others of the medical <br>persuasion. We think of them as healers. <br><br>Also: positive links to Dragonology, but more about that in <br>some other venue. We don't want edu-sig to get sucked into
<br>my HP4E too deeply ("HP wuh? Harry Potter for everyone?")<br><br>