[Glastonbury] Tonight's meeting

[Ian Dickinson]

Martin <mwheeler at startext.co.uk> wrote:
> However, we do have to do something about sorting out a programme for  the
> rest of this year.
> 
> Ian - you said something about neural nets?  That's a subject I'd like to
> know more about -- how about others?
I do have a background in AI, but more on the symbolic reasoning/logic
side of the house. I have looked in the past at neural nets, GA's and
other sub-symbolic approaches, but it's not really an area of
expertise. One of my colleagues is very well respected in that field,
and we regularly rehash the connectionist vs. symbolic reasoning
debate. But there's no doubt in my mind that that topic is *way* too
esoteric for the general membership of this group!

So, to try to be a little more positive, things I *could* talk on that
might be of more general interest:

* using Eclipse as a Java programming environment
* unit testing Java code with JUnit, test-driven development, other
agile methods
* source-code control and document revision using CVS
* using Ant for Java project build control
* web services (SOAP, WSDL, etc) and Apache Axis
* introduction to using stylesheets in web design (I say introduction
because I'm a software developer not a "designer" (I don't have the
beard for it :-), but I do use CSS on all my web sites so I can cover
the basic principles)

By the summer, I'll be able to give a first-hand beginner's experience
with using DocBook, taking Martin's excellent guide as a starting
point! I also plan to teach myself Ruby or Python later in the year,
so scripting languages could be a topic for sometime in the autumn.

The AI stuff I could talk about includes:
* the semantic web
* the belief-desire-intention architecuture for software agents
* description logics
* ontologies

but I have reservations about these because (a) they're not really
Linux specific, and (b) while I obviously would try to make any
presented material as accessible as possible, they do assume a modicum
of "computer-science" background that may make them less relevant or
interesting to the general readership of this list.

Bottom line - I'm happy to yak on about pretty much anything. I guess
we need to arrive at a consensus about what we want from group
overall, recognising that its foundation is as a Linux interest group.

Regards,
Ian