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diff --git a/2019/transcripts/06.md b/2019/transcripts/06.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f9977656 --- /dev/null +++ b/2019/transcripts/06.md @@ -0,0 +1,129 @@ +[[!meta title="Org-mode and FoilTeX - an unlikely (but useful) combination for teaching - Tom Faulkenberry"]] + +- Hi my name is Tom Faulkenberry and I am a mathematical psychologist + and professor at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. + My talk is about using something that's kind of old, a lot of people + don't think about it any more, with something new, like Emacs + Org-mode. Particularly I'm going to talk about using FoilTeX in + Emacs Org-mode. So first I want to give you a little bit of + background about what this is and why you would want to do it. As + you can see I have some things available for you on a GitHub repo. + The address you can see up here, is + <https://github.com/tomfaulkenberry/orgFoils> with the F + capitalized. So if you go there you'll see this README and it kind + of tells the story, I've been using Emacs for a long time and even + before that I was using LaTex in my graduate studies in mathematics. + +- Now with the advent of Org-mode many of us know that we are able to + combine the efficiency of using an Emacs workflow, and particularly + the markdown language that's provided by Org-mode, with the + mathematical type setting power of LaTeX, and so there are standard + ways to export Org-mode into LaTeX-type documents. Particularly + this works for presentations, and of course I'm a professor so I + make a lot of presentations, both at conferences as well as for + classes that I teach. Now I found that Org-mode did this very + nicely, as long as you were willing to use the ?Beamer? class, so if + I wanted to make things that were horizontally oriented and use the + standard color schemes in ?Beamer? then Org-mode export works fine + for that. But I have to admit I longed for simplicity of old days + of using LaTeX, where we made slides for - okay I'm going to date + myself here - but we made slides for overhead projectors that were + in a portrait orientation, and they just didn't have a lot of + decoration on them. + +- They kind of got to the point, they showed some mathematics, they + showed some things, and that was about it. + +- Well those were made back in those days using something called the + FoilTeX package, I've provided a link here on this README. You can + see if we go to the package for FoilTeX it hasn't been updated since + 2008, and even before that it went six years between updates. This + is not by any means an active development package. Rather it is + something that is old, it is archival but it is still distributed + with the full installation of LaTeX. So back to the point, why do + we care about this? Well, it's a pretty simple way of making + presentations, but Org-mode won't do it without a little bit of + hacking. So the point of this presentation is to show you that it + can be done, to show you that you can actually make very nice + presentations for both conferences as well as teaching notes, and + teaching slides, with just a little bit of work on your .emacs file. + So before I show you how that works, and it's all documented here on + the GitHub repo, I want to just demonstrate it in action, so I'm + going to flop over to Emacs real quick. Here is a document, there + is a copy of this document in the GitHub repository that I mentioned + about, so as you can see it does seem to follow the structure of a + standard Org-mode document. + +- At the top we have some header matter that I will explain in just a + second, and then we have these lists that begin with asterisks, and + if we tab them you can see that there's text underneath these. + These sections, if you will, will each turn into separate pages on + my lectures notes. So I've got several, this is for about a two + hour long course, so how does it turn into a pretty document that I + can then take to my course with me? + +- Well it works just like any standard Org-mode to LaTeX export. We + type C-c C-e which then provides us with this export menu, and as we + can see here to export to LaTeX and then a resulting PDF file I can + type l and then o and I do that and it will generate my LaTeX file + as well as open it for me and we'll see that pop up. Okay. And let + me go to the very beginning. This is what it looks like. Let me + scroll or zoomout a little bit so you can see the full page. So + these are in portrait orientation, I use my lecture like this + because usually I'm giving a lecture on an, not an overhead, but a + document camera where I'll take the paper with me and I'll have some + things written but I'll also have some space to write additional + things throughout the class. So sort of a hybrid between a chalk + talk if you will and a formal presentation. + +- And so as you can see this is nicely done with some readable fonts, + using LaTeX type type-setting, so it's really good for mathematical + content, and I found it's just a really clean way of doing things. + So that's what it looks like. So the question is how do you do + this, how do you generate this and get your Org-mode and Emacs set + up to work this way. Well I detail this in the GitHub repository. + There are two things you need to do to make this work. First is you + need to edit your .emacs file to include this codeblock. So this + codeblock is, I'll show you on my .emacs file, it doens't really + matter where it goes, I usually put it somewhere in the middle. Let + me open that just real quick for you. + +- My .emacs file's got some stuff in it and if we go down to about + right here you can see that code chunk is right here. So that code + chunk is what it takes to make that exporting that I demonstrated + work. You can see it here it basically does two things. First is + it defines a Foils class, that you can call in the Org document, and + then it maps your section header, that asterisk, to the FoilTeX + command which is Foil head. So if you type all of this in your + .emacs and then reload that you will be able to then turn the + example Org mode document into a nice set of lecture notes. The + other thing that you need to include, is you need to include a + document header. + +- Now this is kind of a barebones header, I will say that strictly + speaking, not everyone of these things is required, for example, you + do not need this `\usepackage{amsmath}`, unless you are using some + fonts or things that are in that package. + +- Another thing is this little bit of LaTeX command, this makes it to + where my paragraphs don't indent, which for presentations and + lecture slides I prefer. There are also some class options, I do + mine portrait, but if I'm giving a presentation at a conference + those are usually done via computer projector, so I would turn that + into landscape. And also this 17-point font you see, that's the + size that works nicely for me, but there are other font sizes + available in FoilTeX that you can use. All of those are detailed in + the FoilTeX manual which I've provided a link to for you here. + +- Finally, in this repository I do give you the Org-mode file itself, + it doesn't render nicely in the browser but you can clone this + repository and pull it up in your Emacs just fine, and then finally + the resulting PDF I showed you is also living in this GitHub repo. + So, it's a little bit slow right now, but it's there. I'm moving it + around too much as you can see. But anyway there is, so if you + think this is interesting and something you might like to do I + certainly welcome you to contact me by or by Twitter, there's my + email address and my Twitter handle. This I think is a really cool + thing and I hope that you do too. If you want old-school type LaTeX + ability with new-school Emacs Org-mode this is the way to do it. So + hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to talking with you further. diff --git a/2019/transcripts/07.md b/2019/transcripts/07.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..ff64e0ce --- /dev/null +++ b/2019/transcripts/07.md @@ -0,0 +1,136 @@ +[[!meta title="A.I. that Helps Play the Game of Your Life - Andrew J. Dougherty"]] + +- What if you collect thousands of A.I. tools and apply them towards + planning your life? That's exactly what FRDCSA has been working on + for the last twenty years. Only soon, you can download a VM + containing the core systems. In today's increasingly complex world, + sometimes we can be blindsided by rules we didn't know existed. If + you're living on the edge, this can be a disaster. What if all the + rules that applied to us, from legal, to financial, to just basic + common sense, were collected into a system that was capable of + reasoning with them and planning with them. You could put your + objectives into the system and it would factor in all these things + and spit out a plan. Well that's just one of the many things that + FRDCSA's Free Life Planner A.I. seeks to do. + +- A.I. is problem-solving, and software that can do this has to grow + larger as problems and their complexity multiply. Over the last 20 + years the FRDCSA project has collected thousands of codebases, and + written hundreds of codebases, gluing everything together and making + it available from within Emacs, Perl and Prolog. The Free Life + Planner, FLP, takes this and applies it directly towards assisting + users in their minute-to-minute, day-to-day, year-to-year lives. + +- Think of a massive collection like V'ger had in Star Trek: The + Motion Picture, of things like strong game-playing systems like + AlphaZero, but tailored to the specific problems people most often + encounter with finances, meal-planning, transportation, health care, + etc. + +- If you're interested in a personal A.I. assistant, stay tuned as we + cover the Free Life Planner. But it is after all only one of over + 600 custom codebases developed for FRDCSA. Soon, Panoply, the + virtual machine distribution of FRDCSA, will be released for you to + explore. So, let's have a look at some of what FRDCSA can do for + you. + +- FRDCSA wants to help you solve as many problems as it can, treating + the world as a game which it tries to win, by proofs that bad things + don't happen. We know that if a set of problems constitutes t bits + of information, and a set of programs contains less than t bits of + information, then it is impossible to solve these problem from these + programs. When it comes to AI, bigger is better. In 2002 this led + me to Emacs, Perl, Debian and Cyc, and a growing list of over + 100,000 external codebases. In fact, FRDCSA excels at finding and + packaging software, and exposing APIs for reuse. + +- Someone once asked me, what does FRDCSA do? I couldn't give them an + answer. I didn't know where to begin. There aren't any silver + bullets to demonstrate. So where does Emacs fit in? It is the + develop console, mission control, where most development and usage + occurs. There are dozens of modes, thousands of key-bound + functions. Let's look at some representative Emacs systems written + because we couldn't find anything with similar capabilities. + +- This is UniLang, a multi-agent system facilitator, and a core FRDCSA + system. UniLang let's all the systems talk to each other. For the + Free Life Planner we want to spider the internet, to find, retrieve + and index rules and software, to apply them towards improving the + way we live on a daily basis. But to intelligently spider you need + to be able to understand the text. Because lots of useful + information on the internet is in text form, FRDCSA is heavily + focused on natural language understanding. + +- This is NLU, it's a system based on semantically annotating text. + +- Okay, so our spider is helping us to locate rules. But what about + software, we still need more software. New software is being + written all the time, how do we gather it? IES is an information + extraction system, it allows you to label text like software + metadata using text properties, and then train a model and use it to + label other text. This way we can extract information about + software systems we want to acquire and package. + +- Okay great, we're getting more software, now what do we do? Let's + go back to rules for a minute. We have a lot of text, but how do we + translate it into a machine-readable format? That's where NLU-MF + comes in. Okay we have rules in a machine readable format, but how + do we know when they're applicable? We have to store the + world-state somehow. Enter FreeKBS2, our free knowledge-based + system, with persistent storage of rules and facts. It is a useful + Emacs front-end for rapidly manipulating symbolic rules and facts + and editing the knowledge-base. + +- So now we have some refined executable rules. How do we reason with + these common sense rules? Enter the Cyc system, undoubtedly the + world's largest, most sophisticated, common sense A.I.. But Cyc is + proprietary. Well, thanks to Douglas Miles, the author of the free + (libre) LogicMOO system, that's not a problem anymore. LogicMOO + aims to be backward compatible with Cyc itself. Let's demonstrate + our cyc-mode-2, which aims to create a deep channel between Emacs + and LogicMOO. + +- Today's software is fantastic, but there's not a lot in the way of + integrated approaches to planning one's life to improve the way we + live on a daily basis. The version of Free Life Planner on the + Panoply VM distribution currently does calendaring, recurrences, + reminders, planning, scheduling and execution. But the good news + is, we can make it a lot better. The potential for a rule-based + crowd-sourced life planner is tremendous. + +- People finally started understanding better what FLP, and to some + extent, FRDCSA, does when I wrote the following use case story. + It's the homeless-story.html, I'll provide the link later. It's the + story of a person facing homelessness who uses FLP to escape + homelessness. I highly suggest you read it to familiarize yourself + with the FLP. Some people think it is science-fiction, but I assure + you this story is doable with the tools we've collected. + +- Okay, where are we? We have a rule-based system, but our software + cannot do everything, no piece of software can. We have lists of + software that the spider and IES got us. Retrieving it is easy, + packaging it is hard. How do we package this software? Why not + record ourselves packaging software to add data to the A.I. so it + can learn how to make packages. + +- So we have lots of data about how to package, but now the system has + to figure out how to make packages on its own. It needs to be able + to think and plan. What's more, once the software is packaged, FLP + has to figure out how to use that software. Enter the software + robot called Prolog-Agent. Prolog-Agent is an intelligent agent + under development that can control Emacs in order to achieve + objectives, and will eventually be able to make use of recorded + traces. + +- So now we have all these rules and software, but wouldn't it be nice + if we could help teach the users some of the rules, and how to use + the software. That's what CLEAR does. CLEAR is a great way to have + books, manuals, websites, etc, read to you, allowing you to pause, + quit, resume and filter out nonsense. + +- If you'd like to get a copy of Panoply when the public alpha is + hopefully released in a few months, please email me. I will add + your name to the mailinglist. But also, please join us at `#frdcsa` + and/or `#freelifeplanner` on freenode. I would like you to try out + the FRDCSA, familiarize yourself with it, and test it. Thank you so + much for listening. Have a great day. |