AusHac2010

If you've found this page, you use Haskell, and live in Australia (or at the very least able and willing to travel here), then you're in the right place! We're looking into organising a Haskell Hackathon some time during the middle of 2010, and this where it shall be organised.

If you're interested in coming, please put your name down on the list below, along with your IRC nickname if you're on #haskell, and possibly your email (We'll use this to let you know of any progress we've made, but it's not mandatory). Also, if you've got something to discuss, feel free to add it to the bottom of the page in the Discussion section (just to keep the rest of the page clean and helpful).

What we've got so far

Why

Because we miss out on all the fun they have up north, and we've got something to offer. It's also a great chance to meet all these people you talk to on IRC, or read their blogs, and just have a good time, while getting some (potentially) useful work done!

When

A few dates have been discussed, mainly taking into account when the university holidays are for various universities:

• ANU: 7 June -> 18 July
• UNSW: 29 June -> 18 July

So so far we need a weekend between the 28th of June and the 18th of July.

We're looking at organising it over a weekend, and I (Axman6) would quite like to have it start on a Friday, ending on Sunday. This does not at all mean that those who can’t make the Friday will miss out, the more people we have, the better. But I think that having more time will mean that we can get more done (which is the point right?).

Where

Manuel Chakravarty and Ben Lippmeier have said there should be no problem finding a room at UNSW, with the only possible problem being Internet access for everyone, but hopefully something can be arranged by that time.

Who

If you're interested in coming, please show your interest by adding your details to the list below (if you don't have an account, please email me (Axman6) your details and I'll add you).

Name	IRC Nickname	Email	Availability	Preferred date	Comment
Alex Mason	Axman6	axman6@gmail.com	Probably any weekend during the ANU holidays	-	Organiser
Liam O'Connor-Davis	kamatsu	liamoc@cse.unsw.edu.au	All the UNSW midyear break.	-
Ivan Miljenovic	ivanm	Ivan <dot> Miljenovic <at> gmail <dot> com	*shrug* lazy PhD student, so whenever	<===	Organiser
Tony Morris	dibblego	code@tmorris.net	Nothing specific	-	Tentative, depending on health
Manuel Chakravarty	TacticalGrace	chak@justtesting.org	I'm away 4-11 July; will probably not be able to attend all of it regardless of date	Probably weekend of the 18th July	Will help getting a room at UNSW
Mark Wotton	blackdog	mwotton@gmail.com	flexible, but weekend
David Terei	dterei	dave.terei@gmail.com	I'm away from April - start of August. Probably can't attend given proposed dates	Any weekend after August 19th
Hamish Mackenzie	hamishmack	hamish.k.mackenzie@googlemail.com	Any weekend
Ben Lippmeier	benl23	benl@ouroborus.net	flexible
Stephen Blackheath	blackh	naughty.biscuit.stephen@blacksapphire.com	Any time		Please fix date soon if poss
Erik de Castro Lopo	m3ga	erikd@mega-nerd.com	Weekends
Ben Sinclair	bens	ben.d.sinclair@gmail.com	Any weekend
Michael Mounteney	mounty?		Weekends
Bernie Pope	bjpop	florbitous <at> gmail <dot> com	Weekends
Stephen Gream	Fallen_Demon	poisonthemon@gmail.com	Weekends
JensPetersen	juhp	@haskell.org	Weekends	earlier better

Discussion

Possible Projects

Generic graph class

What: I (Ivan) last year floated the idea of replacing the current default array-based Graph data type with an extensible set of classes with default instances. There's various interest about this around and I've done some work on it, but if there's anyone else coming it'd be better to bounce ideas together about how to define such classes.

Who: Ivan M

Gloss-based plots

What: Either an alternative graphing back end to Criterion that only relies on OpenGL (through the use of Gloss), or a library for plotting. At the moment Gloss looks like it may only be suitable for bar type graphs, but we'll see. (We may look into writing some other library that's better suited than Gloss, as Gloss is aimed at students learning haskell, and wanting to just get something drawn)

Who: Ivan M, Alex M

GHC LLVM backend

What: The recent work dome by David Terei on an LLVM backend for GHC has shown some fantastic results, and getting it to a point where it could become the default GHC backend is something a lot of people would really like to see.

Who: Alex M, Manuel, Erik

Accelerate

What: Accelerate is a Haskell EDSL for regular array computations. The aim is to make it generate so blindingly fast code that the C folks start to cry. An LLVM backend is in very early stages of development and a CUDA GPU backend is good enough to run some first small Accelerate programs.

Who: Manuel, Alex M

Hubris

What: Hubris is a bridge between Ruby and Haskell. There are two main options - working on Hubris itself (adding instances for more data types, making it easier to install, chasing the 64-bit linking bug...) or actually building something cool with it. Open to either. (Oh, one other idea - using Hubris to export QuickCheck to Ruby directly. RushCheck looks a bit moribund these days...)

Who: Mark

Leksah

What: Leksah is a Haskell IDE written in Haskell. Goal for 1.0 is mainly to fix issues in 0.8 rather than add new features, but it would also be nice to make some more progress on replacing GtkSourceView with Yi. Support for running QuickCheck and HUnit may be something we could slip into 1.0.

Who: Hamish

MPI bindings

What: The Message Passing Interface MPI is a popular library/standard used in distributed high performance computing systems . An old Haskell binding exists, but has suffered severe bit rot. It would be nice to get this working again, and then try to build some nicer abstractions on top (such as mapReduce).

Who: Bernie

Dates

If you want to propose a date, add it to the list below.

It has been proposed that we have the date set at the weekend of the 16th-18th of July. (I [Axman6] would prefer it to be a week earlier, because the 19th is the first day of uni at ANU and UNSW).

Date	Who can make it	Who can't	Comments
July 9th-11th	Alex Mason Ivan Miljenovic Liam O'Connor-Davis Mark Wotton	Manuel Chakravarty	-
July 16th-18th	Alex Mason Ivan Miljenovic Liam O'Connor-Davis Mark Wotton	-	This ends the day before ANU and UNSW terms begin

Accommodation

Hostels

If you're looking for somewhere cheap to stay near UNSW then there are a few back-packers in Coogee. It's about a 10 minute bus ride from Coogee Beach to UNSW. Shared rooms are AUD$30 - 40.

For something a bit further out, you could also try one of the Sydney YHA hostels. The Glebe one is walking distance to Darling Harbour, though it takes about 50 min to get to UNSW via light rail then bus. Private rooms with shared facilities are about AUD$80. Shared rooms are AUD$30 - 40.

If you want to say across the road from Central station, and don't mind hanging out with English gap-year kids, then you try WakeUp.

If you like to party then Evas Backpackers is a short stumble home from Kings Cross.

I'd avoid SydneyCentralOnWentworth. It has a pretty website but the rooms are small and dingy (benl23 stayed there in 2009)

Note that hostels tend to be busiest on Friday and Saturday nights, so it's good to book early.

Colleges

For something more up-market you could try one of the UNSW residential Colleges. This site also has more links to hotels and hostels.

Hotels

If you have AUD$120 - 150 per night and aren't organised then LastMinute is a good place to find a hotel. You get the best prices if you book 2-3 days in advance.

Related Links

• OzHaskell