mencoder -ss 111 -vf crop=275:300 mov07578.mpg \
         -of mpeg -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -o emacs.mpg

I might need to tweak it a bit more. Still, mencoder is fun!

On Technorati: democamp, democamptoronto, mencoder

Random Emacs symbol: w3m-w3m-retrieve - Function: Retrieve web contents pointed to by URL using the external w3m command.

It helped that there was a low table that I could put my computer on so that I could do my demo without hiding behind the podium. (I hate podiums and other things that stand between me and the rest of the people!) The microphones were good, too. I left the podium microphones in place, and my natural presenting voice was strong enough to get picked up without effort. And of course, a warmed-up sympathetic crowd was just *wonderful* to work with... =)

I can't wait to work on a few more things. A lower voice might be easier to listen to, as long as I can still keep my warmth and humour. A slightly higher table would've been nice. More structure for the hacks, maybe a clearer message? But it was a fun presentation, and I'm glad I got the chance to show people something crazy and fun.

I'd like to refine this presentation even further. I have an important message I want to share with as many geeks as possible. I want people to push the boundaries, to imagine what's possible when software can be customized to that extent. Maybe the benefits will trickle down to everyone else, the way wild ideas in research prototypes can be taken into the mainstream...

On Technorati: democamp, democamptoronto, torcamp

Random Emacs symbol: emerge-revisions-with-ancestor - Command: Emerge two RCS revisions of a file, with another revision as ancestor.

Anyway. That was FUN. And it was relatively easy to get through, especially with the cue system I made (Emacspeak rocks!). I'll talk about that some other time. It's a really cool hack and well worth exploring.

SO. The democamp.ca folks will eventually get around to posting a vidcast. In the meantime, I have a 431MB MPEG movie that I need to either downsample or cut up in order to put online, maybe on YouTube. I don't have enough memory or hard disk space to play around with this (have you seen my computer?!), but I'll happily put the video up if we can figure out how to go about doing that.

If you enjoyed the talk, missed it, or just want to hear/see me bounce up and down about Emacs some more, come to the Linux Caffe on Saturday (Oct 28, 2006) from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM. I'll be there, and we might even see about having some kind of mini-show / vidcast. I wonder if David has a projector. =)

That was fun! Can't wait to do it again!

On Technorati: democamp, democamptoronto, democamptoronto10, emacs, linuxcaffe

Random Emacs symbol: comint-input-sender-no-newline - Variable: Non-nil directs the `comint-input-sender' function not to send a newline.

On Technorati: democamp

On Technorati: democamp

Random Emacs symbol: eshell-script-load-hook - Variable: *A list of functions to call when loading `eshell-script'.

Look at that, programming with maybe a hundred people in the audience catching missing parens and stuff like that. =)

On Technorati: democamp

Random Emacs symbol: gnus-article-washing - Group: Special commands on articles.

Smalltalk is a fun language. I ran into it when a friend told me about Squeak, which is this *totally* awesome little 3D Smalltalk environment which you should try if only so that it can warp your brain.

I would do more Smalltalk, but Squeak is not fun to use when you don't really have a mouse. =) Maybe when I get a proper computer.

But really, it's adorable!

Okay, the demo is back on track. Okay... AJAX for Smalltalk... <laugh>

Murphy's Law unfortunately strikes again. I'll check this out later.

www.brokentomb.com

Random Emacs symbol: nnmail-purge-split-history - Function: Remove all instances of GROUP from `nnmail-split-history'.

On Technorati: democamp

Hmm. They've got some kind of hyperlinking going on when you hover over the quote, which may make it difficult to copy the text.

A podcast of quotes, too. Hmm. It's nice to go into the history of these quotes. =)

Hmm, interesting. Stumbledupon gave them lots of traffic.

Suggestions:

• Digg-style: Add some information to the large graphic elements at the left of each quote.
• Blog widgets! Lots of blog widgets! QOTD, random quote, stuff for the sidebar...

On Technorati: democamp

Random Emacs symbol: muse-replace-regexp-in-string - Function: Replace REGEXP with REPLACEMENT in TEXT.

Things I particularly like about it:

• You can highlight a region and attach either a predefined comment or a new comment.
• The support for rubrics makes grading much easier and more consistent.

Hmm, maybe the student view can be improved by making it easier for students to see all their projects.

Suggestions:

• Per project views, etc.
• Accessibility guidelines
• Downloadable spreadsheets
• Usable for code reviews for open source projects? Won't be grading, of course, but interesting for annotation...

The developers said that Turbogears made development much easier. One of the biggest challenges that faced them was cross-browser Javascript. Another is that the school uses a different authentication system (Kerberos) than the one used by Turbogears.

On Technorati: democamp

Random Emacs symbol: nnvirtual-find-group-art - Function: Return the real group and article for virtual GROUP and ARTICLE.

(progn ;; Setup
  (defvar democamp/presentation-file "~/democamp.el")
  (defvar democamp/cue-buffer "*DemoCamp*")
  (defun democamp/next ()
    (interactive)
    (let (start sexp)
      (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect democamp/presentation-file)
        (setq start (point))
        (forward-sexp)
        (setq sexp (buffer-substring-no-properties start (point))))
      (eval (read sexp))))

  (defun democamp/previous ()
    (interactive)
    (let (start sexp)
      (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect democamp/presentation-file)
        (setq start (point))
        (backward-sexp)
        (setq sexp (buffer-substring-no-properties (point) start)))
      (eval (read sexp))))

  (defun democamp/repeat ()
    (interactive)
    (let (start sexp)
      (with-current-buffer (find-file-noselect democamp/presentation-file)
        (setq start (point))
        (backward-sexp)
        (setq sexp (buffer-substring (point) start))
        (forward-sexp))
      (eval (read sexp))))

  (defun democamp/say (text)
    (with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create democamp/cue-buffer)
      (erase-buffer)
      (insert text)
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (call-interactively 'emacspeak-speak-buffer)))
  (global-set-key (kbd "") 'democamp/next)
  (global-set-key (kbd "S-") 'democamp/previous)
  (global-set-key (kbd "C-") 'democamp/repeat)
)

On Technorati: emacs, pimpmyemacs, democamp

Random Emacs symbol: gnus-multiple-choice - Function: Ask user a multiple choice question.

(progn
  (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height 700)
  (delete-other-windows)
  (sit-for 1)
  (animate-sequence (list "Livin' la Vida Emacs" "DemoCamp10" "Sacha Chua") 1))

I may end up writing a presentation mode if there isn't one yet. I've seen one before, but I don't know if it accepts arbitrary Lisp expressions. Maybe I can mess around with eev, too..

Comment from pll:

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's just SOOOOOO cool, and hysterical. I've got to steal^H^H^H^H^Hborrow this hack. I've been toying with the idea for a while of doing a "Life with Emacs" talk for my LUG. What a perfect opening :)

On Technorati: emacs, democamp

Here's an incomplete list of highlights from DemoCamp:

• Ari Caylakyan came along from Toast I.T. Toastmasters in order to see the geek events I go to.
• Chatted with Olivier Yip Tong on the way in.
• Carsten Knoch gave me the July 1 issue of the Guardian UK that I'd blogged about. A journalist interviewed a bunch of UK-based IBM bloggers and the IBMers mentioned me as an example of a blogging student, and the article came out online on July 1. I met Carsten at Enterprise 2.0 Camp on 2006.07.20, and he went back and read my blog. (Awwwwww!) When he read my entry about the Guardian, he realized that he had that issue and that it was sitting in his recycling bin. What an amazing coincidence! I'll read through the entire thing later to see if I made it into print. If so, them my mom will be ridiculously happy to receive a paper copy of it for her scrapbook. =) Even if the article isn't there - isn't that just a nifty thing?
• Jane Zhang made me promise to blog the Social Tech Brewing event this August. The event's about women in technology, and it looks like it will be a very interesting discussion.
• I apologized profusely to Greg Wilson for not following up on the introduction to Steve Easterbrook, who teaches a course that I absolutely must take next semester and who is interested in the social side of software engineering. Greg invited me to another meeting at 9:45 AM at the Starbucks at College and St. George. (Update: I was unavoidably late and ended up at the Starbucks at 10:00 instead of 9:45. Didn't meet them. Argh! Now I look terrible. I hate being late!)
• Hypothesis: Following Greg Wilson around leads to conversations with interesting people. Data point: Hugh Ranalli. I overheard Hugh talking to Greg about computer training in developing countries, so naturally I stepped right into the conversation. (Greg told me to be nice and share! ;) ) Hugh's working with Digital Opportunity Trust on skill-oriented training (as opposed to tech-oriented; teaching presentation skills instead of Microsoft Powerpoint), and I think that's just what is needed. I'm curious about the Teach Up, Skill Up, and Scale Up programs he described for teachers, at-risk youth, and entrepreneurs.
• James Woods had a haircut, which is probably one of the reasons why I didn't remember his name, but still... He remembered mine and he makes an effort to be good with names, but was good-natured enough to forgive my lapse. =) He told me how he scheduled himself onto a yet-unplanned DemoCamp just to make sure he'd get a slot, and of David Crow's funny reaction to that.
• James Woods introduced me to Vlad Jebelev, who used to be a Toastmaster when he lived in Missassauga. His wife was one of the club founders for a bank-based club.
• Jeremy talked to me about his work in scientific visualizations - mainly physics and chemistry. His wife's doing her PhD in biotechnology, so he's getting interested in that as well.
• With a little more time this DemoCamp, I got to know Ian Irving through more than just his blog title. "Hi, I'm Ian Irving of falsepositives" wasn't much to go on last time, especially as I didn't feel like opening my computer then and there! ;) I noticed the Lotus Notes thing on his business card and we talked a bit about that. Then we ended up in a longer conversation about how to keep track of lots of blogs and the strategies we use, like following influencers, analyzing OPML... Ian has some pretty interesting OPML analysis tools that he should share. =) It would be good to see the intersection of blog subscriptions between your friends, for example... He's thought a lot about this attention economy, and has come up with a few things to make it personally better.
• Finally got to connect with Rick Mason. He had stumbled across my entry on networking with Moleskine notebooks. We nearly met at the Flash event on 2006.06.29, but for some reason or another he didn't make it to that one. We were supposed to meet last week for coffee, but our schedules got full. DemoCamp did the trick!
• It was good to see Rock Jethwa at DemoCamp. I met him at the TorCHI social the night before and thought he might enjoy the DemoCamp scene. He probably heard about it from other people, too. =)
• Rock Jethwa introduced me to Goran Matic, who's also really enthusiastic about storytelling and social computing. Awesome!
• Simon Rowland actually managed to make it out to one of the DemoCamp parties! =)
• Andrew Burke joked about his resemblance to Simon Rowland. I laughed and said I'd probably be able to tell them apart by now, all things considered. Andrew and I chatted about Emacs. He said that geek get-togethers in California tend to be Emacs-dominated, while Toronto's more of a vi city than anything else. I really should have a dinner party just for Emacs geeks.
• Joey de Villa talked about his recent experiences with AdSense and how Randy of KBCafe is making quite a living off targeted blogs.
• Brent Ashley collected his requisite two hugs: one coming in, one going. <laugh>
• Gabriel Mansour and Simon Rowland started talking about Asterisk. Gabriel mentioned the Asterisk + Drupal module. Simon laughed and told him the history of that particular piece - his company developed it. <grin> That was cute!
• Jedediah Smith suggested that I introduce him as a former mustard factory safety inspector if Web advertising is considered evil.
• Alan Hietala promised to check out Toastmasters. He'll be graduating within a few weeks and is looking for a programming/software development job that can take advantage of his interests in visualization and other deep hacking stuff. He's interested in doing software architecture eventually.
• Apricots and a kooshy ball!

A very good evening indeed.

On Technorati: democamp, torcamp, democamptoronto8, barcamp, toronto

Lots of interesting conversations, though, and lots of role models. I'll try to follow up with them over the next few days. I brought my little black book, of course, and it was fun seeing everyone else with Moleskines. (They're like Macs among the geek crowd, only more portable. ;) )

Note to self: either learn shorthand or learn how to write more neatly.

On Technorati: democamp, networking

Random Japanese sentence: 彼女は猫を脅かして追い払った。 She scared the cat away.