LUV Main December 2014 Meeting: A vain attempt to rescue Australian democracy with a little JavaScript / holiday gifts Start: Dec 2 2014 19:00 End: Dec 2 2014 21:00 Event Link: http://luv.asn.au/2014/12/02 Location: The Buzzard Lecture Theatre. Evan Burge Building, Trinity College, Melbourne University Main Campus, Parkville. Location Link: http://luv.asn.au/meetings/map Speakers: * Paul Foxworthy: A vain attempt to rescue Australian democracy with a little JavaScript * Andrew Pam: Holiday gift suggestions for Linux lovers Paul Foxworthy: A vain attempt to rescue Australian democracy with a little JavaScript “Graphs are like tiny dollops of science you can hold in your hand” - First Dog on the Moon "Above the line" voting in the Australian Senate and most State upper houses means your favourite political party can choose where preferences will be distributed, and you may not know, or like, their decisions. In 2012, Paul Foxworthy noticed that even the “how to vote” tickets for his local Council election had a long list of single-issue candidates sending second preferences to the “real” candidate. With some analysis, you could detect clusters of candidates that seem to be co-operating. But who has the time and patience? Paul looked for, and eventually found, a way to visualise preference data. auprefs.info is a web site and open source web application to visualise preference distribution in Australian elections. It aims to better inform voters where their vote might go. Knowledge is power - if we can see what our vote is doing, we might be more careful how we exercise it. auprefs.info has the group voting tickets for the upper house in the November 2014 Victorian election, and we will do some analysis of those. Paul will talk about why he did it, and how you can create force-directed graphs and other interactive visualisations using the amazing d3 graphing library. Paul Foxworthy (@ConcreteGannet) is an open source developer and trainer living in Melbourne. He is a director of Coherent Software, a committer to the Apache OFBiz project, and also currently serves as a director of Open Source Industry Australia. Outside work, Paul tries to get away to his bush block in Gippsland, and to teach agile techniques to Ilke the German Shepherd. Andrew Pam: Holiday gift suggestions for Linux lovers This seems like a good time of year to take a look at all the latest cool devices that run Linux. Andrew will also mention some of best games that run on Linux. Andrew first discovered an interest in boolean logic when his mother carried him in her arms at just the right height to reach light switches as they passed through doorways. He was lucky enough to go to a school with an obsolete PDP/8e: switches, lights, core memory, paper tape, punched cards and all. He first started programming on a TRS-80 model 1 level I and the first computer he owned was a Commodore VIC-20. He has run the gaming Miniconference at linux.conf.au in the past and enjoys playing computer games on Linux systems. He is the current president of Linux Users of Victoria. The Buzzard Lecture Theatre, Evan Burge Building, Trinity College Main Campus Parkville Melways Map: 2B C5 Notes: Trinity College's Main Campus is located off Royal Parade. The Evan Burge Building is located near the Tennis Courts. See our Map of Trinity College. Additional maps of Trinity and the surrounding area (including its relation to the city) can be found at http://www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/about/location/map Parking can be found along or near Royal Parade, Grattan Street, Swanston Street and College Crescent. Parking within Trinity College is unfortunately only available to staff. For those coming via Public Transport, the number 19 tram (North Coburg - City) passes by the main entrance of Trinity College (Get off at Morrah St, Stop 12). This tram departs from the Elizabeth Street tram terminus (Flinders Street end) and goes past Melbourne Central Timetables can be found on-line at: http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/route/view/725 Before and/or after each meeting those who are interested are welcome to join other members for dinner. We are open to suggestions for a good place to eat near our venue. Maria's on Peel Street in North Melbourne is currently the most popular place to eat after meetings. LUV would like to acknowledge Red Hat for their help in obtaining the Buzzard Lecture Theatre venue and VPAC for hosting, and BENK Open Systems for their financial support of the Beginners Workshops Linux Users of Victoria Inc., is an incorporated association, registration number A0040056C.