Hello all,
Microsoft will be joining us later this week for a talk on developing
apps for HoloLens, their augmented reality development. I had the
opportunity to try the HoloLens last summer, and I strongly encourage
you to come and have a look! After the talk there will be the
opportunity to chat with the speaker, as well as the usual selection of
food and drinks.
Last Wednesday we hosted our first competitive programming event, and
I'd like to begin by congratulating the winners - you can see their
scores here
<https://www.hackerrank.com/contests/compsoc-ht17/leaderboard>. After
the success of this event we will definitely be running similar events
in the future, so don't worry if you missed this one!
This week's Learn to Code will be the final session of the term. We hope
that those of you that attended enjoyed the experience and that you're
planning to keep up the coding in the future! We would once again like
to thank all of the volunteers that assisted with the sessions. The
materials are available here <https://github.com/oxcompsoc/learntocode>.
On Saturday, for the penultimate Geek Night of the term, we will be
running a LAN Night.
Next Wednesday we'll be holding our Annual General Meeting and electing
a new committee. It is essential that we meet quorum for the election,
so please be sure to either come or vote by proxy. If you are interested
in standing for a committee position then please feel free to email Matt
<mailto:president@ox.compsoc.net>, Chris
<mailto:treasurer@ox.compsoc.net>, or me
<mailto:secretary@ox.compsoc.net> to find out what the roles entail.
Additional roles may be created at the discretion of the new president
and secretary.
Have a great week :)
Thomas and the rest of the committee
Events
Microsoft Tech Talk: The Path to Mixed Reality
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1150829498377582/>
*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 7pm Wednesday (7th
week)*
Microsoft HoloLens is the first fully self-contained holographic
computer running Windows 10. It is completely self-contained-no wires,
phones, or connection to a PC needed. Microsoft HoloLens allows you to
place holograms in your physical environment and provides a new way to
see your world. This session provides a mixed reality primer and an
overview of the available tools & documentation to quick start your
holographic application development.
Pizza and drinks will be served after the event.
Learn to Code <https://www.facebook.com/events/1804363963151491/>
*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 7pm Thursday (7th
week)*
In the sixth and final session of the course we'll be reviewing all of
the content, looking at Python modules and classes in more detail, and
taking a look at other resources you might want to look at for learning
to code. Like the previous sessions, much of the session will require
you to work on a laptop, so we highly recommend taking one.
We do expect demand to be very high for this course, so please try to
arrive before the advertised start time as we need to register everyone
(for fire regulations). You'll need to enter via the back door on Parks
Road; there are CompSoc signs up at the department.
If you're a CS student with a little spare time and enthusiasm, please
consider volunteering by contacting the committee.
Geek Night 7: LAN Night
<https://www.facebook.com/events/377811005939167/>
*Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Saturday (7th week)*
Join us for an evening of video games and pizza!
Annual General Meeting
<https://www.facebook.com/events/739607626208010/>
*Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Wednesday (8th week)*
As well as reports from the existing committee, we'll be electing a new
committee; the president <mailto:president@ox.compsoc.net>, secretary
<mailto:secretary@ox.compsoc.net>, and treasurer
<mailto:treasurer@ox.compsoc.net> roles are all up for election. Feel
free to email any of us if you would like to get an idea what the roles
entail, but here's a rough summary:
* *President*: ultimately in charge, responsible for event
organisation, and relations with sponsors
* *Secretary*: shares many responsibilities with the president, along
with managing social media, and sending these newsletters
* *Treasurer*: keeping track of the accounts, producing termly reports
for the proctors, and ordering pizza
All of the committee are responsible for the smooth running of our
events, and we all took part in the teaching of Learn to Code this year.
Other notices
Facebook London Hackathon <http://www.fb.me/LonHack17>
*Facebook London, 10 Brock Street, NW1 3 London - 11th & 12th March*
Here at Facebook, we believe that every engineer possesses amazing ideas
and creativity. Hackathons are a longstanding tradition at Facebook
where our engineers stay up all night to create a working product or
prototype from scratch. Remember- done is better than perfect.
*Please note - all members of your team must register individually for
the opportunity to attend*
Register here <https://fblonhack17.splashthat.com/>
Join Facebook in London as we stay up all night hacking, learning and
having a some fun! Start brainstorming ideas & forming teams (of up to 4
people). We'll supply the food, fun diversions, prizes, and some expert
guidance in the form of our engineers. We'll also provide reimbursement
for public transportation. You bring your laptop, appetite, skills and
ideas.
The winning team will get the chance to compete against teams from other
Hackathons at the Hackathon Finals and be judged by our executives- held
at Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, California in November!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise
meetings and events for our members to use and further their computing
interests. See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc>, Twitter
<https://twitter.com/oxcompsoc>, or visit our website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
--
Thomas Denney
Secretary - Oxford University Computer Society
secretary(a)ox.compsoc.net <mailto:secretary@ox.compsoc.net>
Hello all,
Later this week we'll be hosting our first competitive programming
event, the fifth Learn to Code session, and a chat-bot themed Geek Night.
Our programming competition, on Wednesday night, will have a selection
of a problems from previous competitions of varying difficulties. As
well as earning the pride of winning, we will be awarding winners with
gift cards (there will be separate prizes for those that have and have
not competed in these kind of competitions before).
On Saturday we will be experimenting with building chat bots using
Microsoft's Bot Framework
<https://docs.botframework.com/en-us/downloads/>, which allows you to
build bots for services like Facebook Messenger, Skype, or Slack. The
tools work on any platform and use either C# or NodeJS (we'll focus on
the latter). We will have our usual selection of food and drinks.
Microsoft will be joining us next week for a talk on developed augmented
reality apps for HoloLens.
As I'm sure many of you are aware we've seen really great demand for
Learn to Code, and I would once again like to thank all the volunteers
that have assisted us with running the sessions. The materials from all
the sessions will now be made available via GitHub
<https://github.com/oxcompsoc/learntocode> (hint: if you want to see
where future sessions are going, take a look at the |future| branch).
Have a great week :)
Thomas and the rest of the committee
Events
Competitive Programming
<https://www.facebook.com/events/408464376168242/>
*Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Wednesday (6th week)*
We're going to host a programming competition! We'll have a selection of
ten programming problems to solve with points awarded for correct
solutions submitted in as little time as possible. You can use any
programming language you like, but we recommend C++, Java, or Python.
You can compete individually or in teams of up to three people.
For those of you that have never done competitive programming before, we
recommend taking a look at websites like HackerRank and Kattis for
sample problems. Make sure you drag you friends along too, as teams can
work on more than one problem at once. If you have competed before, the
level of difficulty should be similar to early rounds of ACM-ICPC.
Pizza and drinks will be served after the event.
Learn to Code <https://www.facebook.com/events/396719150705223>
*Lecture Theatre A, Room 051, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Thursday (6th week)*
In the fourth session we'll take a look at basic data structures in
Python like lists and dictionaries, and explore how these data
structures can be used to solve common programming problems. Like the
previous sessions, much of the session will require you to work on a
laptop, so we highly recommend taking one.
We do expect demand to be very high for this course, so please try to
arrive before the advertised start time as we need to register everyone
(for fire regulations). You'll need to enter via the back door on Parks
Road; there are CompSoc signs up at the department.
If you're a CS student with a little spare time and enthusiasm, please
consider volunteering by contacting the committee.
Geek Night 6 <https://www.facebook.com/events/613787808811896/>
*Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Saturday (6th week)*
We're going to be experimenting with the Microsoft Bot Framework SDK to
build smart chat bots. Hopefully by the end of the evening we'll have
the basics of a CompSoc Chat Bot! The usual selection of food and drinks
will be on offer.
Before coming, you may wish to look at some of the sample code and tools
<https://docs.botframework.com/en-us/downloads/>. Please note that all
the tools work on Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Microsoft Tech Talk: The Path to Mixed Reality
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1150829498377582/>
*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 7pm Wednesday (7th
week)*
Microsoft HoloLens is the first fully self-contained holographic
computer running Windows 10. It is completely self-contained-no wires,
phones, or connection to a PC needed. Microsoft HoloLens allows you to
place holograms in your physical environment and provides a new way to
see your world. This session provides a mixed reality primer and an
overview of the available tools & documentation to quick start your
holographic application development.
Pizza and drinks will be served after the event.
Other notices
Facebook London Hackathon <http://www.fb.me/LonHack17>
*Facebook London, 10 Brock Street, NW1 3 London - 11th & 12th March*
Here at Facebook, we believe that every engineer possesses amazing ideas
and creativity. Hackathons are a longstanding tradition at Facebook
where our engineers stay up all night to create a working product or
prototype from scratch. Remember- done is better than perfect.
*Please note - all members of your team must register individually for
the opportunity to attend*
Register here <https://fblonhack17.splashthat.com/>
Join Facebook in London as we stay up all night hacking, learning and
having a some fun! Start brainstorming ideas & forming teams (of up to 4
people). We'll supply the food, fun diversions, prizes, and some expert
guidance in the form of our engineers. We'll also provide reimbursement
for public transportation. You bring your laptop, appetite, skills and
ideas.
The winning team will get the chance to compete against teams from other
Hackathons at the Hackathon Finals and be judged by our executives- held
at Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, California in November!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise
meetings and events for our members to use and further their computing
interests. See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc>, Twitter
<https://twitter.com/oxcompsoc>, or visit our website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
--
Thomas Denney
Secretary - Oxford University Computer Society
secretary(a)ox.compsoc.net <mailto:secretary@ox.compsoc.net>
Hello all,
This week Ensoft will be joining us for a talk on cloud-scale data
centres. Next week, in a CompSoc first*, we'll be hosting a programming
competition. For those of you that have never tried competitive
programming before this will be a great opportunity to brush up your
problem solving skills and see what the competitions are like.
Meanwhile, for those that have competed before (and maybe you're even on
this list <http://stats.ioinformatics.org/results/2016>), we hope that
the problems will be of intermediate difficulty.
As I'm sure many of you are aware we've seen really great demand for
Learn to Code, and I would once again like to thank all the volunteers
that have assisted us with running the sessions. The materials from all
the sessions will now be made available via GitHub
<https://github.com/oxcompsoc/learntocode> (hint: if you want to see
where future sessions are going, take a look at the |future| branch).
Have a great week :)
Thomas and the rest of the committee
* I'm not sure if this is strictly true, but it is certainly the first
time under this committee...
Events
Ensoft Tech Talk: How to build a 300 acre computer
<https://www.facebook.com/events/675360745957957/>
*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 7pm Wednesday (5th
week)*
Cloud-scale data centers are the biggest computing machines ever built,
and warp the very structure of the Internet. This talk gives an
accessible view into these creations, including how networking is
evolving to enable them.
Bio: Simon Chatterjee is Director & CTO of Ensoft, whose experience
includes helping to bring into existence the Guinness Book of Records'
"World's Highest Capacity Internet Router".
Pizza will also be provided.
Learn to Code <https://www.facebook.com/events/1296752107035202/>
*Lecture Theatre A, Room 051, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Thursday (4th week)*
In the fourth session we'll take a look at basic data structures in
Python like lists and dictionaries, and explore how these data
structures can be used to solve common programming problems. Like the
previous sessions, much of the session will require you to work on a
laptop, so we highly recommend taking one.
We do expect demand to be very high for this course, so please try to
arrive before the advertised start time as we need to register everyone
(for fire regulations). You'll need to enter via the back door on Parks
Road; there are CompSoc signs up at the department.
If you're a CS student with a little spare time and enthusiasm, please
consider volunteering by contacting the committee.
Geek Night 5 <https://www.facebook.com/events/1336359586421973/>
*Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Saturday (5th week)*
Join us for an evening of relaxing, chatting, games, coding, and the
usual selection of food and drinks.
We will also have an Adafruit IoT starterkit and a BBC micro:bit if you
are interested in learning some embedded programming.
Competitive Programming
<https://www.facebook.com/events/408464376168242/>
*Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Wednesday (6th week)*
We're going to host a programming competition! We'll have a selection of
ten programming problems to solve with points awarded for correct
solutions submitted in as little time as possible. You can use any
programming language you like, but we recommend C++, Java, or Python.
You can compete individually or in teams of up to three people.
For those of you that have never done competitive programming before, we
recommend taking a look at websites like HackerRank and Kattis for
sample problems. Make sure you drag you friends along too, as teams can
work on more than one problem at once. If you have competed before, the
level of difficulty should be similar to early rounds of ACM-ICPC.
Pizza and drinks will be served after the event.
Other notices
Facebook London Hackathon <http://www.fb.me/LonHack17>
*Facebook London, 10 Brock Street, NW1 3 London - 11th & 12th March*
Here at Facebook, we believe that every engineer possesses amazing ideas
and creativity. Hackathons are a longstanding tradition at Facebook
where our engineers stay up all night to create a working product or
prototype from scratch. Remember- done is better than perfect.
*Please note - all members of your team must register individually for
the opportunity to attend*
Register here <https://fblonhack17.splashthat.com/>
Join Facebook in London as we stay up all night hacking, learning and
having a some fun! Start brainstorming ideas & forming teams (of up to 4
people). We'll supply the food, fun diversions, prizes, and some expert
guidance in the form of our engineers. We'll also provide reimbursement
for public transportation. You bring your laptop, appetite, skills and
ideas.
The winning team will get the chance to compete against teams from other
Hackathons at the Hackathon Finals and be judged by our executives- held
at Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, California in November!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise
meetings and events for our members to use and further their computing
interests. See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc>, Twitter
<https://twitter.com/oxcompsoc>, or visit our website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
--
Thomas Denney
Secretary - Oxford University Computer Society
secretary(a)ox.compsoc.net <mailto:secretary@ox.compsoc.net>
Hello all,
This week we have a talk from Bloomberg about how to efficiently
implement quick sort in industry, the third Learn to Code session, and a
Geek Night. In fifth week Ensoft will be joining us for a talk on
cloud-scale data centres. As I'm sure many of you are aware we've seen
really great demand for Learn to Code, and I would once again like to
thank all the volunteers that have assisted us with running the
sessions. The materials from all the sessions will now be made available
via GitHub <https://github.com/oxcompsoc/learntocode> (hint: if you want
to see where future sessions are going, take a look at the |future| branch).
At last week's Geek Night we had a go at writing OpenGL shaders to
generate an animated version of the CompSoc logo. You can take a look at
some of the code here <https://github.com/oxcompsoc/shaders>. This one
<https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ltKSW3> is my favourite, as it takes
advantage of the text hidden in the logo! If you're interested at
practising your programming skills or just learning something new, we
often theme Geek Nights like this.
Have a great week :)
Thomas and the rest of the committee
Events
Bloomberg: Quicker Sorting
<https://www.facebook.com/events/707824112729406/>
*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 7pm Wednesday (4th
week)*
Quicksort is a well-known sorting algorithm used to implement sort
functionality in many libraries. The presentation isn't really about the
algorithm itself but rather about how to actually create an efficient
implementation of the algorithm: a text-book implementation of the
algorithm actually is not that quick (even if the pivot is chosen
cleverly). It takes paying some attention to detail to improve the
implementation significantly. This presentation starts with a simple
implementation and makes incremental improvements to eventually yield a
proper generic and fast sorting function. All code will be in C++ but it
should be possible to follow the majority of the reasoning with
knowledge of another programming language.
After the talk we will have pizza and the opportunity to speak to the
speaker.
Learn to Code <https://www.facebook.com/events/1680272885603248/>
*Lecture Theatre A, Room 051, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Thursday (3rd week)*
In the third session we're going to continue looking at |while| loops by
building a number guessing game before learning how to write your own
functions. Like this second session, much of the session will require
you to work on a laptop, so we highly recommend taking one.
We do expect demand to be very high for this course, so please try to
arrive before the advertised start time as we need to register everyone
(for fire regulations). You'll need to enter via the back door on Parks
Road; there are CompSoc signs up at the department.
If you're a CS student with a little spare time and enthusiasm, please
consider volunteering by contacting the committee.
Geek Night 4 <https://www.facebook.com/events/1656689631300367/>
*Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science - 7pm
Saturday (4th week)*
Join us for an evening of relaxing, chatting, games, coding, and the
usual selection of food and drinks.
We will also have an Adafruit IoT starterkit and a BBC micro:bit if you
are interested in learning some embedded programming.
Ensoft Tech Talk: How to build a 300 acre computer
<https://www.facebook.com/events/675360745957957/>
*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 7pm Wednesday (5th
week)*
Cloud-scale data centers are the biggest computing machines ever built,
and warp the very structure of the Internet. This talk gives an
accessible view into these creations, including how networking is
evolving to enable them.
Bio: Simon Chatterjee is Director & CTO of Ensoft, whose experience
includes helping to bring into existence the Guinness Book of Records'
"World's Highest Capacity Internet Router".
Pizza will also be provided.
Other notices
Facebook London Hackathon <http://www.fb.me/LonHack17>
*Facebook London, 10 Brock Street, NW1 3 London - 11th & 12th March*
Here at Facebook, we believe that every engineer possesses amazing ideas
and creativity. Hackathons are a longstanding tradition at Facebook
where our engineers stay up all night to create a working product or
prototype from scratch. Remember- done is better than perfect.
*Please note - all members of your team must register individually for
the opportunity to attend*
Register here <https://fblonhack17.splashthat.com/>
Join Facebook in London as we stay up all night hacking, learning and
having a some fun! Start brainstorming ideas & forming teams (of up to 4
people). We'll supply the food, fun diversions, prizes, and some expert
guidance in the form of our engineers. We'll also provide reimbursement
for public transportation. You bring your laptop, appetite, skills and
ideas.
The winning team will get the chance to compete against teams from other
Hackathons at the Hackathon Finals and be judged by our executives- held
at Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, California in November!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise
meetings and events for our members to use and further their computing
interests. See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc>, Twitter
<https://twitter.com/oxcompsoc>, or visit our website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
--
Thomas Denney
Secretary - Oxford University Computer Society
secretary(a)ox.compsoc.net <mailto:secretary@ox.compsoc.net>
