Evening,

Game On on Saturday -------------------

Saturday is approaching rapidly! We've not heard from many of you wanting to come along, but I'm hoping you'll crawl out of the woodwork when you get more details. (Also, I'm assured that Durham's Compsoc "are not that scary, honest!", in case fear of the unknown is holding you back.) The plan is to get to the Science Museum by noon to meet the Durham people; if we catch the 10:05 train from Oxford Station, we'll reach Paddington at 11:06, and have some spare time. Sound good? (I believe that, with a Young Person's Railcard, a return on the train costs around £11, which is the same as the cost of taking a bus, and the train's quicker. If people want to take the bus instead, we can do that and leave a bit earlier. Let me know if so.)

Oxford Algorithm Programming Training Website ---------------------------------------------

Jakub Zavodny, a second-year maths and computer scientist, says:

If you are interested in programming, algorithmics or just a small contest against other Oxford (&Cambridge:) programmers every now and then, this website is just for you:

http://people.ksp.sk/~dano

After registering a username, you get access to a bunch of nice and interesting problems in the archive (ranging from trivial to pretty difficult), you can code up a solution in your favourite language (C,C++,Pascal,Java,C# supported so far - sorry, no Haskell:) and get it tested automatically & instantly.

Each week or two (or according to popularity), we will be holding a short contest (1.5 hours) for you to match your skills in real-time under time pressure. If they are popular enough, we may put in some prizes as well!

This all is free, non-binding, hopefully fun and also useful, so don't hesitate to try it out! The first contest is scheduled on Monday 5th Feb, so get ready by then:)

Any questions, write me (jakub.zavodny at seh.ox.ac.uk) or (dano at ksp.sk).

Oxford Geek Nights - February 7th ---------------------------------

Matthew Westcott of Torchbox wrote to us thusly:

Just wanted to pass on news of an event that Compsoc members may be interested in - an evening of talks and socialising with a primarily web-development focus, upstairs at the Jericho Tavern from 8pm on Wednesday 7th February. All are welcome: http://oxford.geeknights.net/2007/february-7th/

Sounds like fun to me. We put this on the termcard, but I said I'd let you all know about it and then totally failed to do so in my last email. Sorry about that.

asp.net programmer needed! www.odauk.org ----------------------------------------

ODA is a student-run charity that sends volunteers on small-scale development projects, and we're looking for a budding web designer to help write a new website. You'll be interested in charity work, and have a solid knowledge of web design. Our current site is asp-based, (see link above) but the already-constructed barebones of our new one are in asp.net, so knowledge of this would be preferable. Please contact ian.ross@bnc.ox.ac.uk if you're interested.

I'll leave you with news that the BBC Trust have a public consultation on the BBC's proposed on-demand access to TV shows over the interblag. The current idea is to only support Windows Media Player 10, so people who like to use other platforms might want to pay attention to question 5. In any case, head over to http://tinyurl.com/ypdmd6 and let them know your opinions. It's a pretty interesting proposal.

Will -- Will Thompson, Oxford University Computer Society President http://www.ox.compsoc.net/