Sunday, August 19, 2012

Vim Geeks this Wednesday, August 22nd at 6:30pm

WHAT:   St. Louis Vim Geeks
        - Emacs Isn't Evil (Unless You Want It To Be)
        - Getting Way Beyond Started (continued)

WHERE:  CAIT - The Center for the Application of
        Information Technology
        Classroom 24
        5 N. Jackson Ave, St. Louis, Missouri 63105

WHEN:   Wednesday, August 22nd, at 6:30pm

RSVP:   http://www.meetup.com/vimgeeks/

A couple of quick updates:

  • The great folks at Technology Partners have stepped up to sponsor this month's food and drinks. Much appreciated!
  • The Kickstarter "Beautiful Vim Cheat-Sheet" posters finally arrived. If you were one of the people that participated in the project, I'll be bringing them to this Wednesday's meeting. (This might also be a clue to one of the items we'll be giving away.)

We've got two presentations again this month, one that's completely new, and the one we didn't get anywhere close to finishing last time out. Here's the skinny:

Emacs Isn't Evil (Unless You Want It To Be)

You know the old joke that goes "Emacs is a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor"? Well, it seems some people took it to heart and created "Evil" -- an (E)xtensible (vi) (l)ayer on top of Emacs. Aditya Siram (a.k.a. deech) is going to tell us all about it:

Evil is a Vim emulation layer on top of Emacs I've been using almost exclusively for the past year or so. It was built to ease the transition to (read: pitch) Emacs but there will be no evangelism in my presentation. Instead I'll talk about how it has changed my mindset on text editing in Emacs, some of the Vim (Evil) features that I now find indispensable, ones that I could never quite get, where the two editing philosophies work well together and where they clash.

Getting Way Beyond Started (continued)

Time ran short during our last meeting and we had to end the second presentation early, so we're picking it up right where we left off. Here's the description from last month:

Steven Pritchard and I will be sticking a little closer to the essentials, showing how to get Vim installed and configured wherever you may need it, and how to start taking maximum advantage of it as quickly as possible. (Okay, it's really more of an excuse for us to show off a whole bunch of cool stuff you can do to make Vim stand up and dance, all jammed into a single presentation, because we just can't help ourselves.)

We'd just managed to get through the installation and configuration sections, so this month we'll jump straight into the tips and tricks. Bring your questions!

Food and Drink and More Free Stuff

As we did last month, we'll be serving free food and soft drinks, and we'll have a few more prizes to give away. Make sure you RSVP so we know how much food we need!

When and Where

We'll be meeting at 6:30pm this Wednesday, August 22nd, in Classroom 24 at CAIT. Here's the address:

CAIT (The Center for the Application of Information Technology)
Classroom 24
5 N. Jackson Ave
St. Louis, Missouri 63105

CAIT on Google Maps

Forsyth MetroLink Station

CAIT also provides detailed driving directions and parking information . (Don't worry about the parking permit stuff. It doesn't apply to us.)

Make sure you RSVP!

See you there!

Thanks,
Bill