Add Guelph trip and Jim Elliott's talk.

events.xml

@@ -2,6 +2,76 @@
 
 <!-- Spring 2003 -->
 
+  <eventitem date="2003-07-08" time="4:00 PM" room="TBA"
+   title="Mainframes and Linux">
+  <short>A talk by Jim Elliott. Jim is responsible for IBM's in Open Source
+  activities and IBM's mainframe operating systems for Canada and the 
+  Carribbean.</short>
+  <abstract>
+  <p>
+  Linux and Open Source have become a significant reality in the
+  working world of Information Technology. An indirect result has been a
+  "rebirth" of the mainframe as a strategic platform for enterprise
+  computing. In this session Jim Elliott, IBM's Linux Advocate, will provide
+  an overview of these technologies and an inside look at IBM's participation
+  in the community. Jim will examine Linux usage on the desktop, embedded
+  systems and servers, a reality check on the common misconceptions that
+  surround Linux and Open Source, and an overview of the history and current
+  design of IBM's mainframe servers.</p>
+  <p>
+  Jim Elliott is the Linux Advocate for IBM Canada. He is responsible
+  for IBM's participation in Linux and Open Source activities and IBM's
+  mainframe operating systems in Canada and the Caribbean. Jim is a popular
+  speaker on Linux and Open Source at conferences and user groups across the
+  Americas and Europe and has spoken to over 300 organizations over the past
+  three years. Over his 30 years with IBM he has been the co-author of over
+  15 IBM publications and he also coordinated the launch of Linux on IBM
+  mainframes in the Americas. In his spare time, Jim is addicted to reading
+  historical mystery novels and travel to their locales.
+  </p>
+  </abstract>
+  </eventitem>
+  <eventitem date="2003-07-04" time="3:30 PM" room="University of Guelph"
+   title="Guelph Trip">
+  <short>Come Visit the University of Guelph's Computer Science Club</short>
+  <abstract>
+   The University of Waterloo Computer Science Club is going to visit the
+   University of Guelph Computer Science Club.  There will be a talk given
+   as well as dinner with a fun social atmosphere.
+  </abstract>
+  </eventitem>
+  <eventitem date="2003-07-04" time="4:00 PM" room="University of Guelph"
+   title="Sh: Metaprogramming your way to stunning effects.">
+  <abstract>
+  <p>
+  Modern graphics processors allow developers to upload small "shader
+  programs" to the GPU, which can be executed per-vertex or even
+  per-pixel during the rendering. Such shaders allow stunning effects to
+  be performed in real-time, but unfortunately aren't very easy to
+  program since one generally has to write them at the assembly level.
+  </p><p>
+  Recently a few high-level languages for shader programming have become
+  available. Sh, a result of research at UW, is one such language. It
+  allows programming powerful shaders in simple and intuitive ways. Sh
+  is particularily interesting because of the way it is
+  implemented. Instead of coming up with a language grammar and writing
+  a full-fledged compiler, Sh is implemented as a C++ library, and
+  shader programs are effectively written in C++. The actual compilation
+  then takes place in a manner similar to JIT (Just-in-time)
+  compilers. This has many advantages over the traditional approach,
+  including C++'s familiar syntax for users, and much less work for the
+  Sh implementers.
+  </p><p>
+  In this talk I will give an overview of GPUs and the Sh language as
+  well as some interesting details on how Sh was implemented.
+  </p><p> <!-- Is there a bio tag -->
+  Stefanus Du Toit is a research assistant at the University of
+  Waterloo. He has implemented the current version of Sh from scratch
+  and is actively developing it under supervision of Michael McCool, the
+  original designer of the language.
+  </p>
+  </abstract>
+  </eventitem>
   <eventitem date="2003-06-19" time="4:30 PM" room="MC2037"
    title="vi: the visual editor">
   <short>It's not 6.</short>