Monday 10/22 - Jedi Text-Editing at Vim Geeks!

WHAT:  St. Louis Vim Geeks
       - Crafting Your Vim Lightsaber - Charlie Sanders
       - A Tour of My Vim Environment - Steven Pritchard

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

WHEN:  Monday, October 22nd, at 6:30pm *** Note: Monday Again! ***

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

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Here's what's happening this month:

Crafting Your Vim Lightsaber Using Git and Vundle

A personalized Vim environment, with a big bunch of plugins and a .vimrc customized just-so, can be a blast. Unfortunately, it can also be a big, unmaintainable mess. Charlie Sanders has a better way:

Configuring your editor is like crafting your own lightsaber. Vim is an extremely powerful and flexible tool; as Obi-Wan Kenobi describes it, "it is not as clumsy or random as other text editors. An elegant tool, for a more civilized age.". In this presentation, we will discuss how to use git and vundle to manage vim configuration and plug-ins.

Vim Environment Tour

Most long-time Vim users build up collections of settings, keymaps, plugins, and other tweaks to tailor their Vim environment to their own work and preferences. There's a lot to be learned from seeing how people customize Vim for their particular needs, so we're kicking off a new feature this month: Vim Environment Tours.

Steven Pritchard's going to get us started, taking us through the setup he's been using since his conversion from unapologetic-vi-holdout to unabashed-Vim-enthusiast.

Food, Drink, and Free Stuff

The good folks at O'Reilly have provided books and some other goodies to give away, and we'll also be serving food and drinks. Don't forget to RSVP so everyone has enough to eat!

When and Where

We'll be meeting at 6:30pm this Monday (not Wednesday!), October 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 this Monday!

Thanks,
Bill

UPDATED - NEW PLACE AND TIME - Monday 9/24 - Hang out with Drew Neil of vimcasts.org!

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NOTE: NEW PLACE AND TIME! We're now meeting at 6:30pm at Maggie O'Brien's, literally right next door to the Union Station Marriott.

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Join us this Monday at 6:30pm for dinner, drinks, and socializing with Drew Neil, the creator (and enchanting voice) of Vimcasts!

Drew’s in town to teach his Vim Masterclass at Strange Loop 2012. The class is long-since sold out, but you can still meet Drew (and perhaps osmotically absorb some expert-level Vim wizardry) by coming out to Maggie O'Brien's this Monday.

The details:

WHAT:
Dinner and drinks with Drew Neil of Vimcasts
(brought to you by your friendly neighborhood Vim Geeks)

WHERE:
Maggie O'Brien's *** UPDATED! ***
2000 Market Street
Saint Louis, MO 63103
(314) 421-1388
Map

WHEN:
Monday, September 24th, at 6:30pm *** UPDATED! ***

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

Note: This takes the place of the usual monthly Vim Geeks meeting, so please don’t show up at CAIT this Wednesday night. We won’t be there. :-)

Hope to see you this Monday night!
Bill

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/

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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.)

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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