The next Vim Geeks meeting is 6:30pm tonight!

Due to the impending holiday, we're having this month's Vim Geeks meeting tonight, Monday, November 22, at 6:30PM at the Computer Room.

At last check, our volunteers for tonight's festivities include:

• Bill Odom will give a short intro/refresher on text objects
• Nathan Neff will show off Vimperator (or maybe Pentadactyl), a Firefox plugin that gives it Vim-like functionality

(Pardon me for copying & pasting from Bill's last meeting announcement at this point...)

Of course, anyone else that has something they want to discuss, demo, or just ask questions about is welcome to join in the fun. Given how these things normally go, we'll also discuss a couple dozen other topics, some of which might even be related to Vim. It's sure to be a good time, in any case.

Here's where you want to be:

  Computer Room
  3720 Green Mount Crossing Drive
  Shiloh, IL 62269
  http://www.computerroom.us/

  http://goo.gl/maps/W5LA

See you there at 6:30pm!

We're having November's meeting early.

After some discussion on the mailing list, we decided that our regularly-scheduled meeting (which happens to fall on the day before Thanksgiving this month) should be moved up to Monday, November 22.  Please mark your calendars accordingly.

Last week's Regular Expressions talk

Here are slides from my talk at last week's St. Louis Perl Mongers meeting:

I'll post video when it is available.

The next Vim Geeks meeting is 6:30pm on Wednesday, October 27th!

Come to the Computer Room at 6:30pm Wednesday night for another exciting round of text-editor-super-nerdery. So far the agenda (and I use the term loosely) looks like this:

• Steve Pritchard on The Awesomeness of Macros (alternate title: "Why Steve Owes Bill a Beer")
• Nathan Neff on Emacs Org-mode, and why it hasn't been ported to Vim (yet)

Steve's also offered to give his impressions of VimOutliner, and if anyone's interested, I'll review the Vim plugin I just built for the nifty Accentuate.us web service.

Of course, anyone else that has something they want to discuss, demo, or just ask questions about is welcome to join in the fun. Given how these things
normally go, we'll also discuss a couple dozen other topics, some of which might even be related to Vim. It's sure to be a good time, in any case.

Here's where you want to be:

Computer Room
3720 Green Mount Crossing Drive
Shiloh, IL 62269
http://www.computerroom.us/

http://goo.gl/maps/W5LA

See you there at 6:30pm!

Vim Key Mapping slides

I gave a short presentation on Vim key mapping at the October 13th SLUUG meeting. Here's where you can find the slides:

http://billodom.com/talks/vim-key-mapping.pdf

They include several example maps that I find particularly useful (or at least interesting).

Thanks again to everyone that attended the talk!

Regularly scheduled meetings

The consensus on the mailing list appears to be that the fourth Wednesday of each month works fine for a regularly scheduled meeting, so that's what we're going to stick with for now.  That would make our next meeting Wednesday, October 27 at 6:30PM at the Computer Room.

Vim macros and Emacs Org-Mode vs. VimOutliner have come up on the mailing list as discussion topics for this month's meeting.

The first Vim Geeks meeting is at 6:30pm tonight!

Along with discussing how to use and abuse Vim, and how to do so more effectively, we'll also do some planning for the group itself. For example, we'll talk about...

• What topics we should cover
• Where to hold future meetings
• The general experience level of the members
• Whether we should all just switch to Emacs

...and anything else of interest to the group. (I'm a big fan of "How the heck do I do ___ with Vim?" questions, so feel free to come with those in mind.)

Steven Pritchard has graciously offered to host this first meeting at the Computer Room, his very geek-friendly store and training facility in Shiloh, Illinois:

Computer Room
3720 Green Mount Crossing Drive
Shiloh, IL 62269
http://www.computerroom.us/

http://goo.gl/maps/W5LA

(I know, I know -- to the Missouri folks, Shiloh sounds like it's halfway between St. Louis and the moon, but I promise it's not that bad. Just head east on I-64, hop off the Shiloh exit, and *poof* you're there.)

See you at 6:30!

First meeting: Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Let's geek out on some Vim on Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 6:30PM at the Computer Room.

Since this is our inaugural meeting, we'll try to figure out where everybody's experience level is, how often we should have meetings, etc.

Discussion group

Subscribe at http://groups.google.com/group/vim-geeks.

Vim Geeks Meeting?

You might be wondering what's up with this site?  The idea came from the St. Louis Perl Mongers mailing list, specifically the reaction to Bill's Vim presentation last month.  I loved the idea of having a Vim geek-out, and I'd like to see it become a regular event.

I've already volunteered the Computer Room's training room.  How does that sound?  Suggestions for dates and/or times?  Should this be a monthly recurring thing?

Using Spell Checking in Vim

Zonker posted an article called Using Spell Checking in Vim on linux.com yesterday.  Check it out.

Vim and vi classes at the Computer Room

On October 4, Bill will be teaching a Vim class based on his recent St. Louis Perl Mongers talk.  (I guess that makes this the Ultimate Edition with Extra Flair or something.)  If you want to know more about the super-cool stuff you can do in Vim, you should take this class.

On September 27, I'll be teaching a class on vi basics.  If you are still one of those people wondering why any of us would actually like using vi of any sort, this class is for you.

More information can be found over at the Computer Room.

Sorry for the shameless plug!  (Although if I apologize, does that make it a "shameful plug"?  That has always confused me.  :-)

Vim Fandango online

Video of Bill's recent talk at the St. Louis Perl Mongers is online.  Everyone should watch it.  It's good stuff.