[GLLUG] Meeting Minutes, December 9, 2004

[Charles Ulrich]

Greetings fellow LUG members. If you didn't attend the meeting, here's
all the really keen stuff that you missed.

It was pointed out that I had the 8th specified in the meeting 
annoucement rather than the 9th. I hope this didn't cause any 
confusion.

Vital Statistics
----------------
Approximately 8 people attended the meeting which started at 6:00PM and 
ended at about 8:15PM.

Presentation
------------
CGI Programming in C by Clay Dowling

Clay managed to successfully unhinge popular suspicion that he had gone 
completely mad by illustrating to the group that writing CGI programs 
in C was both very doable and not just an entertaining masochistic 
exercise. By carefully modularizing your code (as you should do in 
*all* C programming), you will rarely, if ever, have to do any of the 
nasty things that many programmers abhor, such as manual string 
processing. You also gain a number of benefits over interpreted and 
byte-compiled languages such as portability, flexibility, and of course 
speed.

A complete copy of the presentation slides, libraries, and source code 
examples can be downloaded from the web at:

http://www.lazarusid.com/~clay/floppy.tgz

General Banter
--------------
How does one begin learning C? The definitive and most-often recommended 
reference is The C Programming Lanuage, by K&R:

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cbook/

Also mentioned was "The C++ Programming Language" by Bjarne Stroustrup:

http://www.research.att.com/~bs/C++.html

A few talked at length about various spam and spyware preventive 
measures.

One fellow had a valid need to sniff packets at a router and most of the 
group pointed him to Ethereal (ee-THEER-ee-ul):

http://www.ethereal.com/

There was also a highly intellectual, enlightening, and philosophical 
discussion on the concept of manure as an automobile fuel.

There was pizza pizza.

Next Week's Meeting
-------------------
December 16, 2004, 6:00PM @ Atmosphere Annealing, Inc.

LPI Certification Training

Want to learn about Linux but aren't sure where to start? Or would you 
like to bone up on your Linux mastery so you can ace the Linux 
Professional Institute certification exam? The GLLUG LPI certification 
training sessions may be the answer. While we don't provide the exam 
itself, we do present material straight out of IBM's DeveloperWorks? 
LPI study guides so you will have all of the knowledge you'll need to 
run your own Linux machines in confidence and maybe even pass the LPI 
exam if you choose to take it. We'll have experienced LUG members there 
to teach the material and answer your questions in way too much detail 
and to top it off, these sessions are FREE.

Upcoming Events
---------------
- 16 Dec LPI Certification Training
-- 
http://bityard.net