Hello, CompSoc minions. Week 5 has appeared, and with it comes our last
talk of the term.
Being Google: Building your own search engine from scratch
==========================================================
Tuesday 22nd May, 20:30
Keble College, Pusey Room (off Pusey Quad; map of Keble [0])
Tom Dyson, of Torchbox [1], will talk about the challenges involved with
parsing
and indexing text, along with code examples and details of real world
implementations.
It should be a good talk; Tom has several examples of his own, as well
as showing
us things drawn from the big giants of the searching and indexing industry.
If you have no idea where the Pusey Room is, don't fear; there will be
someone hanging around Keble's porters' lodge.
[0]: http://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/about/tour
[1]: http://www.torchbox.com/
While that may be all the talks for the rest of the term, there's no
need to worry! There's still the TGM to come in week 7, and we'll have
a fully-packed term in Michaelmas.
As a final note, it is required that you now go and read
http://xkcd.com/c262.html. That is all.
Andrew
--
Andrew Godwin, President, Oxford Computer Society
Jabber/GTalk: andrewgodwin(a)gmail.com
MSN: andrew_godwin(a)hotmail.com
Mobile: 0789 0725 396
Web: http://www.ox.compsoc.net
It's another week and so it must be time for more events. This week, we
have a talk by Matt Trout, and the Geek Quiz, which we admit to not
organising but which we encourage you to attend anyway.
DBIx::Class and Catalyst
========================
Wednesday, 16th May
20:30
Denis Sciama Lecture Theatre,
Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Rd. [0]
Matt Trout will come and give us a run-down of tips, tricks and
available modules that serve to make Catalyst [1] internationalisable,
localisable, capable of dealing with a wide variety of domain models and
templating systems.
Topics covered include:
- URI mapping flexibility
- Supported environments
- Models
- Views
- Authentication stores
- UTF8 and internationalisation
- Javascript
- Mad plugin foo (laundry list)
There will be someone outside the DWB to let you into the talk; if you
have never been before, it's up the large concrete steps at the end of
Keble Road, and round the corner.
For those who can't be bothered to type links into browsers, Catalyst is
a web development framework, implementing such acronyms as MVC and ORM,
and is written in Perl. Come along to see shiny examples demonstrating
just how nice web application development has become.
[0]: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=OX13RH
[1]: http://www.catalystframework.org
Geek Quiz
=========
Thursday, 17th May
Doors open roughly 7.30pm
North Lecture Room, St John's College [2]
(Staircase 4 of the Quad to the left of the Porter's Lodge)
This sounds like an interesting prospect - a pub quiz, with a geeky slant. While we haven't organised it, after being informed of its existence last week several CompSoc members are planning on going, and so we encourage you to turn up, and we can form a team (or two, if things go well).
The format is bring-your-own-round, with about ten questions a round, so spend some time beforehand and arrive with a few good questions (and answers). The event starts "as soon as people arrive", so I suggest getting there on time, and, says the organizer, "Food and drink are not allowed in the room, so if you are going to bring any clean up after yourselves and don't tell me about it."
If you have any questions, you can email the organizer (Adam) at adam.povey(a)sjc.ox.ac.uk; if you're going to come, we'd appreciate you replying to this message (or just send a normal email to president@) to give us (and him) some idea of numbers.
[2]: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=OX13JP
That's your lot for this week! As a final note, we're planning on possibly having a CompSoc punting outing sometime this term; if you're interested, and would be likely to come along, reply and say when you're able to make it, so we can arrange things accordingly.
Andrew
[pi]: http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/32983/1178978535/catsink.jpg
--
Andrew Godwin, President, Oxford Computer Society
Jabber/GTalk: andrewgodwin(a)gmail.com
MSN: andrew_godwin(a)hotmail.com
Web: http://www.ox.compsoc.net
Hello once again, CompSoc members; it's week three, and time for another
talk!
How To Make An Indie PC Game
============================
Wednesday 9th May, 20:30
Roy Griffiths Room, Keble College (in the ARCO Building)
In 2003 Ian Hardingham graduated in computer science from Oriel.
He immediately set up his game development company, Mode 7 Games. With no
investment and very little experience, he and a team of five students set
to work on a stupidly ambitious title - Determinance: a freeform flying
sword-fighting game. Nearly four years later, Determinance is a success,
Mode 7 have a publisher, and they are diversifying into Nintendo DS and
Wii games.
This Wednesday Ian will come to tell us:
- The best ways to get started in the indie industry.
- The technology and communities worth getting involved with.
- How to deal with your artists quitting to become carpenters.
- The truth about how much money you can make selling games online.
- How important Mac and Linux actually are to indies.
- What to do when EA give you an audience - but they think you're crazy.
- What not to name your games. (Don't call them anything as stupid as
Determinance.)
This is looking to be a great talk; Ian certainly has many good stories
to tell,
as you can see. Don't worry about stumbling around Keble trying to find the
room; there will be someone at the Keble Porters' Lodge to guide you to
the talk.
See you there!
Andrew
--
Andrew Godwin, President, Oxford University Computer Society
Jabber/GTalk: andrewgodwin(a)gmail.com
MSN: andrew_godwin(a)hotmail.com
Web: http://www.ox.compsoc.net
Just a reminder that the Second Life talk is today, at 8:30.
We've had a room change, to the Morley Fletcher Room in Worcester
College, but we will still be meeting at the Porter's Lodge, where there
will be someone to take you there.
Andrew
Hello, people of CompSoc.
It's Week 2, and we have our first talk of the term on Wednesday, at 8:30:
Second Life and IBM
===================
Speaker: Ian Hughes
Wednesday 2nd May, 20:30
Sainsbury Common Room, Worcester College
Ian Hughes talks on Second Life and IBM, and how virtual worlds are
impacting
the company and others:
Ian Hughes, a.k.a. 'epredator potato' in Second Life, is an IBM
Consulting
IT Specialist who has worked on leading edge emerging technologies for
the
past 17 years, a programmer since he was 14. He is now officially an IBM
Metaverse Evangelist having led in bands of colleagues into Second
Life for
the past year with a view to understanding what the social, business and
technical implications are of virtual world technology used with a web
2.0
mentality and user generated content. What makes this work now? What has
caused the massive increase in usage from 70,000 to 4.2 million
registrations
in less than a year? How can business become involved without killing the
spirit? Who are we online?
Head for the Porter's Lodge at Worcester; there will be someone there to
guide
you to the Sainsbury Common Room.
Second Life is a great subject for a talk, and now the university has
bought an
island[0] it's even more relevant, so come and listen!
[0]: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/secondlife/
Next week, we'll have Ian Hardingham talking about game development; if you
want more information the full termcard is now up on the website, for your
planning pleasure.
See you at the talk.
Andrew
--
Andrew Godwin, President, Oxford University Computer Society
Jabber/GTalk: andrewgodwin(a)gmail.com
MSN: andrew_godwin(a)hotmail.com
Web: http://www.ox.compsoc.net
