Gather round children, as we tell you a ghoulish story about science, complexity and goblins!

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away across the great ocean, there lived a beautiful and clever princess called Kristin Henry. The land where she lived was vast and bounteous, but it was beset by cruelty and confusion. Dark, twisted forests of information covered the landscape, and were haunted by evil ‘Spam’ goblins. No one dared venture into the spooky woods and maps were unknown.

One day, whilst Kristin was walking in the royal palace, she had an idea. As a child Kristin had been schooled in ‘communicating complex scientific information within intuitive user experiences’ by her kindly father, the King of Hi-Vis. She wondered whether the life cycle of the forest itself could provide the framework for navigation through the tangled undergrowth. She fetched a golden computer from beneath her 20 mattresses and mapped out a visualisation of the life cycle of malaria, and a computational art piece called ‘The Color Of Spam’. All the people rejoiced, for Kristin’s clear and informative visualisations had brought light and understanding to the the dark and twisted forests of information that surrounded them on all sides, and a great banquet was thrown in her honour.

When the feast was over, the court jester Sebastian le Delisle shook his shaky bell-stick thing and said ‘Princess Kristin, wilst thou cometh to the court of FlashBrighton and show the folk there assembled your clear and informative visualisations, yo-ho-tee-hee-ha-ha [cough]?’

The princess was overjoyed and gaily replied ‘Oh jester I shall! On Tuesday the 4th of June, at 7pm, at the Werks in Hove‘.

Genetic Algorithms – or “GA’s” – are a class of algorithms inspired by evolutionary biology.

The session will be led by Plug-in Media‘s Alan Owen. He will introduce you to the concepts such as ‘optimisation algorithms’, ‘particle swarms’, ‘optimisation methodologies’ and ‘neural networks’. Alan has previously studied Biology and Evolutionary & Adaptive Systems, so knows his stuff.

We want this session post itself to evolve in the same way that a GA would, so if you want to know what these things are and what Alan will be telling you about them on the night, use the comments box below to ask questions and Alan himself will respond.

What are you waiting for? Ask Alan a question and we’ll bring you more details as they emerge.

Ruby On Rails is a popular framework for building web applications.

But upon my soul, a knowledge of ‘Ruby on Rails’ – or, by the somewhat more unseemly monicker by which it goes amongst enthusiasts, ‘RoR’ – will undoubtedly make your digital labours considerably less fractious. Indeed, if you will permit me what I feel is a particularly illustrative metaphor, one might say that it could act as the ‘meat’ for your Flash ‘gravy’.

The undertaking to enlighten us on such a commodious topic as ‘RoR’ could only be undertaken by an fellow of great discernment and familiarity with the subject, and we are greatly blessed in that we number amongst our ranks one such individual. We talk, of course, of that upstanding gentleman, unmatched in his field, the captivating and adroit Mr. Jez Nicholson. Mr. Nicholson is a backstage technical expert for society games and maintains a keen amateur interest in cartography.

This empirical session is aimed at novices in the discipline of ‘RoR’, or ‘newbies’, as I believed they are referred to in the fashion of the day. Mr. Nicholson will dutifully instruct you in the rudiments of the language and convey the not inconsiderable pleasure he gains from his daily enterprise therein. Perhaps more fittingly, he also plans to demonstrate how ‘RoR’ can communicate with Flash, forming an auspicious union between these two great technologies.

Our flask is full to the brim, so come sup with Mr. Nicholson at the gentleman’s club, and allow us to add Webapp meat to your Flash gravy.

It won’t be essential to join in, but if you’d like to give it a go then we will be using Rails 2.3.2 with Gem 1.3.1. It doesn’t take long to install, but you should have it up-and-running before the night. A good way to install these on the Mac is by using macports http://macports.org/

There will be no FlashBrighton meeting this week – instead why not come along to £5app’s meeting? Our very own Jamie Matthews will be presenting his app hereit.is along with David Hawes and Allister Furey.

More information on the £5app meetup page.

This Tuesday at cuddly FlashBrighton
Is a free study night to enlighten
Us on whatever we’d like
To play with that night.
someCode + someGeeks = rightOn;*

A limerick, and now the details in rude haiku form:

Tuesday the 7th
Of July at 7pm
At ‘The Werks‘ in Hove

Sign up on Upcoming

* – just to be clear: this Tuesday will be an informal study group with no agenda. Just turn up and start hacking away at whatever you fancy!