Monday 22 December 2008

About polynomials

Just posted at Vector

About polynomials Part 2 of Gianluigi Quario's article on the representation and evaluation of polynomials.

Friday 19 December 2008

Inquisitive computing

Keith Smillie recommends article "Calculemus!" in American Scientist, which develops the concept of "inquisitive computing" and describes what a good language for it would look like.

Guess what…?

Thursday 18 December 2008

Quickly correlating Kendall

Just posted at Vector:

Quick Calculation of Kendall’s Rank Correlation Distribution Phew! Gordon Sutcliffe shares a fast way to calculate Kendall’s rank correlation frequency distribution.

Saturday 13 December 2008

Curve it like Cauchy

Just posted at Vector:

Curve it like Cauchy Bill Jones & Cliff Reiter use some simple J expressions to draw out the implications of Cauchy’s Integral Theorem – and discover startling and lovely shapes.

And a correction: the recent APL2000 conference was in Bethesda, MD, not Baltimore.

Friday 12 December 2008

Just posted at Vector

Posted today:

Washington round-up APL2000 reports on its recent conference

Structured Storage and Monitor Expressions David Liebtag with news of APL2 Service Level 13

YouTube: Morten Kromberg's Unicode chessboard demonstration.

YouTube: John Schole's plea for simple tools

Thursday 11 December 2008

Unicode Support in APL

The end game for character-mapping conflicts? In a new article, Morten Kromberg explains how and why Dyalog embraced Unicode and meets some strange characters on the Basic Multilingual Plane.

Stephen

Monday 8 December 2008

Spice for Beginners

Dan Baronet’s article on the new programmable command line in the Dyalog IDE is online now at http://www.vector.org.uk/?vol=24&no=1&art=baronet

Two events in London: correction

Correction: the IPSA Christmas party will start at 5.30pm not 7pm as first posted.

Thursday 4 December 2008

Editing the APL Wiki

Kai Jaeger has revised his article on editing the APL Wiki in Vector 23:1&2:

Two events in London

Two informal events at the Plumbers Arms in London on Wed 17 Dec:

4pm BAA Humbug

Meeting of the British APL Association London chapter

7pm I.P. Sharp Associates Christmas Party

The Christmas party that will not die, even though the company was sold off over twenty years ago. If you never had the privilege of working for IPSA, you can still touch someone who did. Better yet, buy them a drink.

Plumbers Arms
14 Lower Belgrave Street
London, SW1W 0LN

Tuesday 2 December 2008

GSE and APL-Germany Fall Meeting, Augsburg

Adrian Smith's report from the GSE and APL-Germany Fall Meeting in
Augsburg is online now.

Award for APL system

Ziggi Paul’s APL system for The Childcare Company has won the Supplier Innovator of the Year award from Nursery Management Today

Tuesday 25 November 2008

11/30 Party

IBM1130.org has announced this year's "11/30 Party":

http://ibm1130.org/party

Monday 10 November 2008

Unplugged: BAA London Chapter meeting 21 Nov

2-5pm upstairs at the Edgar Wallace public house, 40 Essex St, London WC2R 3JE. (Free wifi.) RSVP Chris Hogan.

Original invitation follows:

Before its disaffiliation earlier this year the British APL Association (BAPLA) held several "Wiki Working Party" meetings at the British Computer Society. They proved useful not only in adding content to the APL Wiki, but in reviving the spirit of the old British APL User Group (APLUG) workshops. They also brought Ray Cannon's Moots to mind. Amazing how much you can learn when working together.

We've found a possible new venue and in the prototyping style of APL we'd like to give it a try. The Edgar Wallace public house (Google "40 Essex Street, London, WC2R 3JE") has an upstairs room and free Wi-Fi. The room has public access but the landlord will reserve us enough space for however many we say are coming. We'll provide coffee & sandwiches and the landlord will be pleased to supply other refreshments. This might not be a permanent home for such gatherings, but it's a good place to start.

This is not an official move by BAPLA, but perhaps it could be seen as an unofficial London Chapter of BAPLA, unPLUGged?, and if successful might inspire similar meetings at other locations.

We'll be there on 21 November 2008 at about 2.00 pm and we'd like to see lots of you there as well. Bring your laptop, or a USB drive, or just the knowledge in your head.

Please let Chris, Jake or Phil know if you're coming.
Chris Hogan, John Jacob & Phil Last

Sunday 2 November 2008

Books page

A Practical Introduction to APL 1 & 2 A Practical Introduction to APL 3 & 4


Graeme Robertson's recently-published textbooks for Dyalog are listed on the new books page at vector.org.uk.

Vector 23:4 in the post

Vector 23:4 Dyalog@25

Vector 23:4 is now in the post to subscribers, along with a separately-bound supplement celebrating Dyalog's 25th year.

Thursday 30 October 2008

APL Germany Fall Meeting

APL Germany has announced its Fall Meeting in Augsburg, Germany on 24-25 November.

Invitation at www.vector.org.uk/content/augsburg.pdf

Report on Dyalog 2008 user meeting

On target

Adrian Smith’s report of the Dyalog 2008 user meeting in Elsinore the week before last will appear at the end of the year in Vector 24:1. It is online now at

www.vector.org.uk/archive/v241/conf.htm

Despite the turmoil in financial services, where so many of our applications run, the meeting saw record numbers of delegates.

Overheard at the meeting:
This is the first conference where I raised the average age instead of lowering it.
Not just the age distribution got flattened. There was a more even balance between the sexes than I have ever seen at an APL conference, as Adrian took care to show in his pictures.

To follow soon: reports from the APL2000 conference in Baltimore and (I hope) the APL Germany meeting in Augsburg, both next month.