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Week 5: llamas! (+ TGM planning and NPEMap)
by Will Thompson 05 Nov '06

05 Nov '06

Evening all, I was accosted in a lecture the other day by an angry member demanding to know why my relentless barrage of emails had abruptly ended. I do actually have a good reason: there wasn't anything to say. But this week we're back in action! Mice, llamas and IBM Pervasive Messaging middleware =================================================== Date: Wednesday 8th November Time: 20:00 Place: Denys Wilkinson Building (in the Engineering Area[0]) "What do mice and llamas have to do with IBM Pervasive Messaging middleware?" Dr Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM Master Inventor, will talk about some of the more unusual applications of the Pervasive Messaging software that he and his team are developing at IBM:from monitoring oil pipelines in Alaska, to tracking llamas on the Isle of Wight! I went on about this talk at freshers' fair, and at pretty much any opportunity I've had. Everyone knows that llamas are cool, but rarely do you see them actually involved in technology. I suspect that this will be good fun. [0] http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Engineering_Area Termly General Meeting ====================== We're currently talking about having the General Meeting (which is in Week 7) in a pub before migrating to a foodery. (I believe Michael favours a repeat visit to the Big Bang[1]...) If you're planning to come to the meeting and have a strong preference against the meeting being in a pub or the meal being in the Big Bang, let us know and we'll ignore Michael! [1] http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Big_Bang Help build a free postcode database! ==================================== I thought I should take this opportunity to mention New Popular Edition Maps, which show maps of the UK from the sixties with a slick interface, allowing you to take a look at how your area used to look. While you're doing this, you can add the postcodes of buildings (or places where buildings now are), and help to build a free postcode database. (The Royal Mail's one starts at a few thousand pounds a year.) Wander on over to http://www.npemap.org.uk/, find your house, add its postcode, browse around, find entertaining route plans scribbled in pencil, and so on. It's pretty addictive. Also, ex-Compsoc people are involved, so it must be a good thing. That's enough from me. See you on Wednesday, wjt PS. The underlining of titles looks just great in mutt, but I'm aware that not all of you read emails with a monospaced font. How bad does it look in pointy-clicky mail clients and whatever webmail system people think is cool these days? -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President <http://www.ox.compsoc.net/>

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Week 3: Jon Masters of Red Hat, LinuxWorld Expo (+ EA follow-ups)
by Will Thompson 20 Oct '06

20 Oct '06

Hi all, 0. This week ------------ Great turnout to the EA talk. I hope you all enjoyed it. Phil, Harvey and Ian all asked me to mention that if you have any other questions for them, or happen to be going to the area and want to look around the EA building, you're welcome to get in touch with them. I have their email addresses, so drop me a line if you want them. If enough (but not too many) people are interested, a group of Compsoccers (is that a word?) could all go down at the same time for a tour and to talk to other EA people at some point in the future. Again, throw email at me if you're up for that. On a related note, Tom Holden sent me the following before the talk: I worked for EA for a year (now doing postgrad). If any [Compsoc] members are serious about going into the games industry I'm happy to give them a slightly different perspective to what I'd imagine they'd get at that talk. If you're interested, once again, let me know. He'll send out a mass email when I've gathered addresses. (I meant to mention this before or at the talk, but forgot; sorry Tom!) 1. Next week ------------ On Monday, we have Jon Masters from Red Hat talking about the modular nature of the Linux kernel; in particular, how this helps make porting the kernel to new platforms easy. This should be an accessible talk, despite the subject matter, so don't feel put off if you're unfamiliar with kernel programming and so on. Venue: Comlab, room 051 Date: Monday 23rd October Time: 20.00 http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Computing_Laboratory has some information about Comlab (in case you're not familiar with it). There is a door into the basement to the left of the door into the main reception, which we will be using. Also, some of you might be interested to know that LinuxWorld Expo is in London on Wednesday 25th and Thursday 26th next week. (In fact, this is why Jon is able to speak to us next week despite living in the US!) I know that a few Compsoccers are going along. It's fairly enterprise-focused (although there is an area of non-corporate stands), but should be fun. Entry is _free_ if you register on the Expo website[0] by midnight _today_, so act quickly! You don't have to go to both days, or all of either day. [0] http://www.linuxworldexpo.co.uk/ (Yay, I've just noticed that the Tux Games people will be there.) I should go now. There are old friends and pizza next door! wjt -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President <http://www.ox.compsoc.net/>

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EA talk; new mailing lists; other assorted fun
by Will Thompson 17 Oct '06

17 Oct '06

Greetings, people of Compsoc! Firstly, good to see a bunch of you at the OUCS tour today. Michael took a few photos --- they'll be on the net soon. Okay, this is going to be a long enough email to warrant a table of contents. I apologise in advance. You're allowed to skim-read it. :-) 0. Electronic Arts talk on Thursday 1. Mailing lists: compsoc-jobs and compsoc-discuss 2. Scientific Society: Computer Vision and the Geometry of Nature 3. An aside about spam 4. Oxford Student Publications seeking technical staff 5. IBM Student Mainframe Contest 6. Outro 0. Electronic Arts talk on Thursday ----------------------------------- Computer Games Development Date: Thursday 19th October Time: 20:00 Location: Keble College, Pusey Room (off Pusey Quad) A senior engineer from Electronic Arts will present on what he does on a day to day basis as far as developing on next gen consoles (i.e. Nintendo Wii etc.) and also gaming career opportunities for CS grads. In addition, Harvey Wheaton (Senior Development Director) will show some of what EA are doing with the Harry Potter franchise and give some insight as to what a development director does. Want a handy map of Keble? http://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/tour/index.php Apparently, http://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/support/getimage.php?id=49 was taken from the lodge, and the Pusey Room is up the staircase a third of the way from the left edge of the photo. There'll be someone at the lodge to meet people just before 20.00. 1. Mailing lists: compsoc-jobs and compsoc-discuss -------------------------------------------------- Later this week, we're going to be (re)creating two mailing lists: compsoc-jobs and compsoc-discuss. We receive a lot of emails from companies asking us to advertise vacancies, graduate career events and so on. A separate mailing list, compsoc-jobs, will allow us to send them on to those of you who want them, while not irritating those who don't. Only the committee will be able to post to it: companies/advertisers will go through us. There are a couple of items towards the end of this mailing list that really belong on that list, but I'm including them here to clear the backlog. compsoc-discuss will just be for general discussion among compsoc members and followers, so will be open to unmoderated posts by anyone subscribed to the list (which we'll ensure is (mostly) a subset of Compsoc members and those subscribed to compsoc-announce). Again, it'll be opt-in so that those of you who don't want to get that discussion, uh, won't. We'll mass-invite everyone who is on compsoc-members or compsoc-announce to both when we create them. If you don't want to be on one or both lists, you can just ignore the relevant invitation and nothing more will appear in your inbox. We're not sure how much use -discuss will see. That's up to you. Time will tell. :-) 2. Scientific Society: Computer Vision and the Geometry of Nature ----------------------------------------------------------------- I was asked by the Scientific Society to pass this on. It looks like it might interest some of you. I attended a lecture on something similar last year, and it was awesome. Computer Vision and the Geometry of Nature Dr. Andrew Fitzgibbon Date: Wednesday 18th October 2006 Time: 8:15pm Location: Inorganic Chemistry Lecture theatre on South Parks Road Map: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~science/sci_map.gif Free to Scientific Society members; £2 for anyone else. Computer vision is the search for mathematical models and algorithms which can explain and emulate the tremendous visual abilities that most of us rarely notice we possess: we can easily recognize thousands of objects, follow complicated movements, and almost subconsciously build a three dimensional view of the world through stereo vision. When a camera captures a movie of some scene in the world, the rich visual complexity of the scene is not lost - we can still enjoy the images and recognize the film's contents - but the visual patterns are translated to complex numerical arrangements which current mathematics and statistics strives to represent and understand. Although science is far from having a complete understanding of the processes of vision, the last decade has seen applications of artificial vision move out of the lab into the real world. The talk will talk mainly be about the use of computer vision in obtaining a 3D representation of the world, and the application of these techniques to cinematic special effects in movies such as the "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" series. The lecture will begin by looking at some aspects of the human visual system, trying to answer the question of whether it is even reasonable to expect to emulate human vision without first building an artificial intelligence: "Is vision AI-hard?". Several classic experiments which suggest that not all tasks require AI. Applications where these tasks arise will be considered, for example robot navigation and special effects and show how a combination of engineering and geometry gives us reliable solutions in real scenes. After looking at how a man- made world simplifies the solutions to these problems. Dr. Andrew Fitzgibbon has twice received the IEEE's Marr Prize, the highest in computer vision; and software based on his work won an Engineering Emmy Award in 2002 for significant contributions to the creation of complex visual effects. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at University College Cork and at Heriot-Watt University, and received his PhD from Edinburgh University in 1997. Until June 2005 he held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science, and at New College, Oxford and presently is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge. 3. An aside about spam ---------------------- A few people mentioned that a spam titled "chuffautocratbluish" reached compsoc-members on Sunday. That's entirely my fault: sorry. I ticked the wrong box when confirming that my own mail to the list _wasn't_ spam. 4. Oxford Student Publications seeking technical staff ------------------------------------------------------ Oxford Student Publications Limited (OSPL), publishers of Cherwell and ISIS, are looking for new technical staff. With an annual turnover of nearly £90,000 OSPL is one of the most exciting student companies in Oxford. New staff can expect to gain invaluable communication and organisational skills and we welcome applications from students of all levels of technical expertise. Most new staff will be set a short-term 'project', whereby OSPL will present you with one of its ongoing problems, which we will give you responsibility to complete according to how you see fit. Previous technical staff have gone on to become Editors of both Cherwell, Cherwell24, Mays Anthologies, and being a member of the Board of Directors. Please contact Josh Sasto on chairman(a)ospl.org for more details. 5. IBM Student Mainframe Contest -------------------------------- IBM UK are running a competition involving students working with mainframes (which is cunningly called the UK Student Mainframe Contest) this autumn: The main idea of the contest is to try and give current students, with no mainframe experience, some appreciation of the platform through a series of "hands-on" exercises. If the lure of using the technology with a chance to enhance your CV isn't a big enough incentive to take part, then there are also a series of prizes that you can win along the way: Part 1 - a few hundred IBM Mainframe t-shirts Part 2 - 25 Sony PSPs Part 3 - 3 Lenovo Thinkpads and a trip to Hursley It looks like it might be good fun. I spoke to some students who worked with System Z over the summer, and they said that they had completely different challenges and experiences to what they would gain by writing C++ to be run on x86 machines, or similar. There's some more information on the contest wobsite[1]. It's already started, but entry has not closed. IBM also provided a presentation[1] and a poster[2]. (I had some problems viewing the poster. If you're a Linux user, try xpdf or gpdf rather than evince, which displays a blank page. On other platforms, you're on your own!) [0] http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/uk/z/mainframecontest/ [1] http://www.ox.compsoc.net/ibm_mainframe/presentation.pdf [2] http://www.ox.compsoc.net/ibm_mainframe/poster.pdf 6. Outro -------- Okay, this was even longer than I anticipated. Sorry about that. Enough! Time to leave the house! See you on Thursday, wjt -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President <http://www.ox.compsoc.net/>

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Week 2: OUCS tour and Electronic Arts
by Will Thompson 15 Oct '06

15 Oct '06

Hi all, Thanks to everyone who gave up a night of the ever-busy first week of term to come to the pub with Compsoc --- the turnout was great, and fun was had. (I hope!) Right, onwards to second week. There are two events for your attending pleasure this week! The first was not on your termcards, but it's on the wobsite: Tour of OUCS ============ When? Tuesday 17th October, 18.00. Where? OUCS, Banbury Road. A tour of the University Computing services, with a chance to see the computers that run the network, some shiny bits of networking kit, and meet the people who keep it all running smoothly. I particularly like the existence of a machine named "poke-it-with-a-stick". (I hope they haven't got rid of it since last year. That would disappoint me.) It's surprisingly good fun to see what exactly powers Herald and kin. You should come along. We're meeting at the reception of OUCS for 18.00. If you need directions, http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/about/travel.xml should help. Computer Games Development ========================== When? Thursday 19th October, 20:00. Where? Keble College (to be confirmed). A senior engineer from Electronic Arts will present on what he does on a day to day basis as far as developing on next gen consoles (i.e. Nintendo Wii etc.) and also gaming career opportunities for CS grads. In addition, Harvey Wheaton (Senior Development Director) will show some of what EA are doing with the Harry Potter franchise and give some insight as to what a development director does. I'm told that they might bring some free stuff to give away. I like free stuff. I'll let you know the venue for certain soon! The observant among you may have noticed another extra talk on http://www.ox.compsoc.net/events/termcards/current/ compared to the draft termcards we gave out at the fair. For those of you who didn't, Murray Stokely of Google is coming to speak in week seven. Add it to your diary with the rest of the events! Right, that's enough from me. I think I'll slide back into the ethereal shadows of the Internet... wjt -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President <http://www.ox.compsoc.net/>

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Week 1: Freshers' drinks at the Lamb and Flag
by Will Thompson 10 Oct '06

10 Oct '06

Hi, Firstly, to all those who joined the mailing list at Freshers' Fair, welcome! I hope that we've arranged events that interest you. (If not, let us know what you'd like to see instead.) This Thursday, we're meeting at the Lamb and Flag (a pub on St Giles') at 20.00. This is a chance for freshers (and others new to Compsoc) to meet existing members and find out about the society. We'll be there all evening, so drop by whenever you're free. We shouldn't be too hard to find. :-) Google map for the Lamb and Flag: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=OX1+3JS&spn=0.005,0.02&hl=en Oxford Guide page on the Lamb and Flag: http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Lamb_And_Flag See you there! Also, if you didn't get a draft termcard at the fair, you can check out http://www.ox.compsoc.net/events/termcards/current/ for the most up-to-date list of events. I should probably take this opportunity to mention an error on the draft: Thursday 8th November doesn't actually exist, and in fact Andy Stanford-Clark's talk in fifth week is on Wednesday 8th. (Thanks to the several people who pointed this out. The worst thing is that I originally tried to arrange the talk for Wednesday 7th.) I'm off to drink honey and lemon tea. I appear to have freshers' flu despite not being a fresher. It's a cruel world... wjt -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President <http://www.ox.compsoc.net/>

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Week 6
by Will Thompson 28 May '06

28 May '06

Hi, So this week we have a talk and the TGM. Further down your screen you can read about a summer programming contest and an internship/job advertisement. Get that mouse wheel spinning! Windows Vista ============= Dennis Sciama Lecture Theatre, Denys Wilkinson Building Wednesday 31st May 20:15 Steven Audis from Microsoft UK will speak about Windows Vista, the highly successful XP's successor. He will give a demonstration of some of the most exciting technology (such as Avalon, WinFX and the new security features). If you're a Windows fan who wants to know what's in store, a Windows sufferer looking for things to get better, or a Windows evader wondering what you're missing, come along and find out what Vista will be capable of. Termly General Meeting ====================== Denys Wilkinson Building Friday 2nd June 20:15 Come along and tell the committee what you thought of this term, what events you'd like next term, and other general business about the running of Compsoc. Afterwards, we're breaking with the curry tradition and seeking SOSSIDGES at The Big Bang[0] on Walton Street. [0] http://thebigbangoxford.co.uk/ In both cases, it'd be great if you could aim to arrive between 8.00 and 8.10, because someone has to be there to let you in. If you think you might be late, drop me an email to get my mobile number, because if you get there after quarter past and can't phone me no-one will be at the door and you _won't_ _get_ _in_! :-) In other news, the inimitable Graham Lee mentioned the Solaris 10 University Challenge Contest[1], run by Sun Microsystems. Basically, you build something awesome on top of Solaris 10 (or indeed _into_ Solaris 10) and get a chance to win a ridiculous sum of money for yourself and for the university. They have a handy list of project ideas[2] to give you an idea of what they have in mind. It looks like it'd be fun, even if you have no previous experience with Solaris, and would definitely be a learning experience. Go for it! [1] http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/contest/univ_challenge.jsp [2] http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/contest/univ_challenge_proj_idea.jsp?=1 Finally, Stephen White, ex-Compsoc SAC, sent us the following job advertisement for DecisionSoft[3], who have a long connection with Compsoc. If you're a Java programmer looking either for a summer internship or full-time employment in Oxford, have a read and send your CV to them. We are a small software company based in central Oxford, developing cutting-edge XML systems in a young, relaxed environment. We're looking for quick learners with good communication skills and experience with one or more of the following technologies: * J2EE/Spring/Hibernate * J2SE/Swing * Eclipse/SWT * Ant/Maven/Cruise Control/Python * XML/XSLT/CSS/General web-dev experience is a bonus. Successful candidates will have a passion for all things technology-related and will have pursued their interest in programming significantly beyond the requirements of their degree; in particular, they will have a good grasp of practical OO techniques (preferably in Java). Elite table football skills optional. Potential candidates should send a brief CV and the date when they expect to be available to cv(a)decisionsoft.com. DecisionSoft is full of great people, so fire off your CV! [3] http://www.decisionsoft.com/ Right, that's it for now. Hope those of you who do that strange thing where you sit in boxes floating in wet stuff were triumphant, and got less wet than the treasurer (whose crew decided he needed to be thrown in), wjt

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Week 5
by Will Thompson 25 May '06

25 May '06

Greetings, No CompSoc events this week; there is, however, a BCS event tonight: AGM followed by "The Semantic Web: too smart for its own good?" Date: Thursday 25 May 2006 Time: 19:30 (Cheese and Wine buffet from 19:00) Location: ComLab After the business of the Annual General Meeting, preceded as usual by a light cheese and wine buffet, Dan Zambonini will talk about the Semantic web. The Semantic Web is the natural next evolutionary step of the Web. By adding computer digestible semantics and logic to the currently available information, we can create software that helps us work more efficiently and discover new patterns and relationships. The enabling technologies have been around for some time - XML, RDF and OWL - together with the software to process and analyse this exciting new information. So why isn't the Semantic Web a reality today? Will we see the Semantic Web in our lifetimes? And, most importantly, what are the technical and non-technical issues holding it back? This talk will attempt to answer these questions, to discover if the Semantic Web will be relegated to the Betamax and MiniDisc of history - great technologies with little impact. I shamelessly lifted all of that from the BCS web site[0], which has more information should you want more information. [0] http://www.oxon.bcs.org/program2005-6.htm#May Also, I have a job advert from Jacari, a student-run charity providing volunteer home teachers for children who do not speak English as a first language and are therefore disadvantaged at school. JOB DESCRIPTION: COMPUTING OFFICER As the Jacari Computing Officer, you will have a wide variety of different responsibilities. On the IT side of things, you will need to manage the database, back-up Jacari's data on a weekly basis, manage the mailing lists, and update the website. The website is an exciting project to undertake, which allows you a large degree of artistic freedom and innovation, and has great scope for improvement. As well as these tasks, you will be required to liaise with outside organisations such as OUCS and 1&1.co.uk, who together host our website. Your other responsibilities are less related to computing: manning the office for one hour a week, attending committee meetings, and helping out at socials. This is a fun and important role on the committee, with plenty of opportunities to get involved in many different aspects of Jacari. The computer officer is essential to the success of Jacari and we are currently looking for someone to fill this role in the committee of 2006/2007. If you are interested in applying, please email Jacari[1]. For more information about Jacari, please visit our website[2] or email our current computing officer Katie Oliver[3]. [1] jacari(a)herald.ox.ac.uk [2] http://www.jacari.org/ [3] computing(a)jacari.org.uk Also, someone fixed the leaks in the clouds! wjt

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Week 4
by Will Thompson 17 May '06

17 May '06

'lo, This week's talk concerns the horrible plague that scars our minds and unbalances children around the world on a daily basis, and should be banned at once: video games! The video games industry: design, development, future ===================================================== Date: Thursday 18th May, 20.30 Venue: TBA Speaker: Patrick O'Luanaigh Author of Game Design Complete and former head of external development at Codemasters, Patrick O'Luanaigh is now Design Director at SCi/Eidos. He'll be speaking to us about the video games industry; in particular, game design, how new games are created (such as the latest Tomb Raider installment) and some possible future trends in the industry. He'll also touch upon the best ways to get into the industry as a graduate. I'll let you know tomorrow at the latest where the talk will be. Also, if we're really lucky Patrick might be able to show us footage from games still in development. \o/ wjt

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CompSoc: Week 3
by Michael Howe 09 May '06

09 May '06

Hi all, This week, we have Stuart Langridge coming to talk to us about aspects of "Web 2.0". It should be of interest to anyone who's interested in the web and what can be done with it. Stuart, web developer, LugRadio presenter and author of DHTML Utopia, will discuss the resurgence of JavaScript and how AJAX is allowing developers to create a new breed of cross-platform, rich Internet applications. The talk will be this (3rd Week) Thursday at 8.30pm in the Dennis Sciama Lecture Theatre, in Physics' Denys Wilkinson Building. The committee will be eating with Stuart before his talk, and we'd like to invite you to come along. If you're interested, please email committee(a)ox.compsoc.net, and we'll tell you the vital details you'll need to track us down (don't worry, we're a friendly bunch). Enjoy 3rd week, Michael -- Simon: Great. Another exciting adventure in sitting.

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Week 2: tonight's talk's venue
by Will Thompson 04 May '06

04 May '06

Hi, The venue for tonight's talk will be Worcester College, Seminar Room A. When you get to Worcester, walk through the lodge, then along the right-hand side of the quad to staircase 5, which is the penultimate staircase. Turn into the staircase and immediately right again, and Seminar Room A is directly ahead of you. If you have trouble finding it, just ask in the lodge. Also, I'll be loitering in the lodge before the talk begins. A reminder of the talk itself: The briefest of introductions to Active Directory and Group Policy Objects ========================================================================== James Holwell (Exeter) Thursday 4th May, 20.00 Worcester College, Seminar Room A Active Directory is often given as an example of a Windows tool effectively unmatched in the Unix world in terms of comprehensiveness and ease of use. James, a maths undergrad who moonlights as a part-time sysadmin for a small business, will give us a swift tour of what it's capable of. May the fourth be with you, and so on. Don't forget to vote, wjt

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