Unix

Back on the 11th, I announced that we'd be hosting a party to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Unix

I'm happy to say that this party will be co-hosted by the following local Unix/Linux groups:

Capital Area Central Texas Unix Society (CACTUS)
These guys are the oldest *nix group in town. Back in the early 90s, I used to give them a discount on O'Reilly books at Europa. These guys were the who's who of Austin's first generation of sys and network admins. I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

Austin Linux Enthusiasts
This group started out as the Goodwill Linux User Group. After losing the meeting space at the old Goodwill Computer store, they changed the name. When I started buying servers to build my home lab, Les Nemeth and the ALE guys were a tremendous help teaching me about system and configuration. If you need help, this is a tremendously friendly group.

League of Professional System Adminstrators -- Austin Chapter.
If you want to learn about standards and best practices for system and network administration, LOPSA is a good place to start. A real sharp helpful bunch of guys this is. They have the jobs you want. Meet the group and find out how they got them.

It looks like we may have rain tomorrow, but there is plenty of parking at the Dog and Duck. Plenty of space inside, the patio is covered, and they have a great selection of beer.

Hope you can make it!

Details:
Unix 40th Birthday Bash
Thursday, January 28th
6:30PM-8:30PM
Location: Dog and Duck Pub
Facebook Event Page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=229286022733

I've always considered midnight, January 1, 1970 as the birthday of Unix.

January 1, 1970 is the moment Unix computers recognize as 00:00:00. That is the moment at which the Unix Epoch begins.

Although I had played around with Fortran on an IBM S370, it wasn't until I got a shell on a Unix SVR4 system that things started to make sense. Learning the shell, then grep, sed, awk, and perl felt like such a natural progression. Moving on to C gave me the opportunity to dive below the command line to learn about system calls and the kernel. I don't consider myself a programmer, but I've had a tremendous amount of fun.

I've celebrated the birth of Unix before. Back in 2001, Orion and I hosted the GeekAustin Billion Seconds of Unix Party. I'm not going to let this birthday pass without a celebration either. A few rounds of beer are in order.

As many times as you hear Unix, free, and beer in the same sentence, I decided that this party should be someplace with a large selection of beers and ample free parking.

The event was originally scheduled for the 14th, but because of the 70% chance of rain, we are moving the event to the Thursday the 21st.
I'll be announcing the location shortly.

This event is co-hosted by the Austin Chapter of the League of Professional System Administrators (http://www.lopsa-austin.org/)

Come join us!

Details:
Unix 40th Birthday Bash
Thursday, January 21th
6:00PM-8:30PM
Location: TBD
Facebook Event Page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=229286022733

RGM Advisors, LLC is looking for a Quantitative Research Developer with the following qualifications:

* Exceptional development and problem solving skills that include C++ in a Unix environment
* Ability to rapidly develop solutions to complex problems involving both elegant software design and deep analytical thinking
* Experience with quantitative research, market microstructure, trading systems and machine learning techniques are highly desired

I really love C -- largely because I learned it at the same time I learned Unix, but my knowledge of C is largely limited to the chunks of Unix source code with which I am familiar. I'd love to learn C++ but I doubt that that will ever happen. Tonight I caught up with Matt Weigel,an old friend who just happens to be the organizer of the Austin C/C++ meetup. I took the opportunity to ask Matt about the Austin C/C++ meetup.

(10:12:16 PM) Linear: C or C++: Is there more emphasis on one or the other?

(10:13:16 PM) Matthew Weigel: It's a mix. We have a few Linux kernel developers who come, and a few old-school Unix developers of other stripes who stick to C.

(10:13:18 PM) linearb: Do you have presentations? or are these just meet and greets.

(10:13:24 PM) Matthew Weigel: no presentations as of yet.willing to host one, but so far no one has been chomping at the bit to give one.

(10:14:25 PM) linearb: Do you think that is because of the suitability of the venues, or do you think that the guys are just looking for an opportunity to get together?

(10:14:46 PM) Matthew Weigel: a bit of both? I mean, some people come strictly for the socialization. Any kind of presentation, I'd want to precede it or follow it with meet'n'greet. With B.B. Rovers we have the back room available, which is sufficiently separate and quiet that presentations are a possibility. The capacity is around 30? we usually have about 10-15 people show up. So, we have room to grow.

(10:18:36 PM) linearb: BB's seems to be rife with geeks.

(10:18:53 PM) Matthew Weigel: indeed. wireless+beer.

(10:20:55 PM) linearb: How many of BB's beers have you sampled? Any beer reccommendations ?

(10:21:05 PM) Matthew Weigel: 80+%, but not all of them there. Recommendations: Full Sail Session Lager, Fuller's ESB, Great Divide Titan IPA

(10:23:40 PM) linearb: so, are you more of a C or C++ guy?

(10:23:50 PM) Matthew Weigel: "meh" :-). at this point I've probably actually spent more time working in C, but the current job is C++, so that will change before too long. I'm probably more of a C++ guy, but I also miss C's simplicity

(10:25:11 PM) linearb: There is a real poetry about it. What are your favorite C/C++ books?

(10:26:43 PM) Matthew Weigel: for C, The C Programming Language, and The Practice of Programming, and for C++, Effective C++. The Practice of Programming isn't really about C, it just uses C to illustrate a lot of points (along with awk, Perl, and Java)... but the C is the best.

(10:28:20 PM) linearb: Effective C++ seemed to spawn a bunch of similar books for other languages.

(10:29:24 PM) Matthew Weigel: the important part about the Effective C++ books (there are at least 3, but I've only read one) is that they're written by Scott Meyers

(10:31:15 PM) linearb: I was thinking about Effective Perl Programming, Effective Java

(10:32:01 PM) Matthew Weigel: hehe, wow

(10:32:16 PM) linearb: and all the other books influenced by Meyer's books

(10:32:53 PM) linearb: Although I don't expect to see Effective Haskell anytime soon.

(10:33:06 PM) Matthew Weigel: parse error

(10:34:26 PM) linearb: So back to the meeting, do you find that meetup works for helping coordinate the meetings? Can you get contact info for the members? or does all communication have to be mediated through meetup?

(10:34:39 PM) Matthew Weigel: it works pretty well.Enough people use meetup that there's a stream of newcomers, and meetup.com provides a mailing list, tools to track who has RSVP'ed and who's active/inactive

(10:34:40 PM) linearb: So when is the next meeting and what is the linkedin page?

(10:34:54 PM) Matthew Weigel: 3/18 the URL is http://c.meetup.com/48/

(10:35:15 PM) linearb: Hey, thanks for the info.

(11:36:12 PM) linearb: hey, so do you know that joke? : "Two C strings walk into a bar....

(11:03:53 PM) Matthew Weigel: the first one says "I'd like a beer, please098u807g23pdhoenueuth,,.' and the second one says "you'll have to excuse my friend, he's not NULL-terminated"

(11:04:20 PM) linearb: hehe, that's the one