CAPTAIN’S LOG, NOVEMBER 10th, 2018
Many days have passed. I don't know when the last time I saw daylight was, but all I am certain of is that it is far too late to turn back. There is no leaving this place.
I hear the corpses of RedCode warriors hurtling through space and I pray that the Dread King of pMARS doesn't launch one of those foul, impish crafts in my direction. I see them. They are wretched scum that will speed by at full pelt, turning everything it meets into a copy of itself. I pray that Dread King does not find me. Even if he doesn't... the imps will. My DWARF unit covering my back can only hold up for so long.
Wait. Here it comes. BRACE FOR IMPACT-
MOV 0 1
MOV 0 1
MOV 0 1
...END LOG.
Today sees the return of Core Wars. Please familiarise yourself with the basics of RedCode - you’ll need them! In the coming week, we’ve got a grand old Tech Talk in the Maths Institute (L2) with the almighty Silver sponsor, Google! Please RSVP via their form. The talk now has a title and abstract! We also have the penultimate session of CS Essentials coming up, ending on a two-part series on LaTeX, LAN Night on Friday, followed by Film Night on Saturday! Make sure you get enough sleep early enough in the week ;) If you scroll down a little, perhaps you’ll find a poll for which films people want to see?
Silver sponsor Ensoft has a lecture coming up on Tuesday and a micro-internship scheme you may be interested in. Check them out!
The Bletchley trip sign-ups are all full and finalised now. Thanks for signing up, hope people are looking forwards to a nice long trip in a couple of weeks! Silver sponsor Ensoft has long been a supporter of the National Museum of Computing and its educational goals, which you can learn about here.
Here’s the link to our Discord, because you’re worth it. Give me your full name when you’re in. Members get full member access.
DEPLOYING FIGHTERS…
The CompSoc Committee - Joe G, Edward H, Ben S
Geek Night 5: Core War - 7:00 pm 10th November, Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science
This is the best thing ever. No really, it is.
Core War is a game played between two or more programs written in Redcode, a low-level language similar to assembly. Players write a program to eliminate all opponents in the memory of the MARS virtual computer. Core War can also be used as a platform to experiment with genetic programming. I highly recommend checking the link as it contains a guide to the instruction set. Here’s another link to an information homepage.
The MARS (Memory Array Redcode Simulator) executes one instruction at a time, proceeding to the next unless a JMP specified where to jump to. Addresses are all relative, so an OpCode may not know where specifically it is in memory, though it may affect, say, the Kth cell in front or behind it.
There are nineteen operations used in Redcode: DAT, MOV, ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV, MOD, JMP, JMZ, JMN, DJN, SPL, CMP, SEQ, SNE, SLT, LDP, STP and NOP. An instruction (OpCode) will be of the form OP A B, with A being the source address and B being the target address.
To get the ball rolling, let’s take a look at the “Hello, world!” of this thing, the imp:
MOV 0 1This pesky little warrior will simply roll along the memory, overwriting everything in its path with its own OpCode. MOV A B simply moves instruction A to B. Since addressing is relative, it moves current instruction to the next cell in memory, then the warrior’s instruction pointer moves to that new instruction and repeats. It alone cannot kill another warrior, however. If an imp catches up to and overwrites the next instruction another warrior was going to execute, then that will become an imp, the whole memory will fill with MOV 0 1 and they’ll all continue to run around the memory ad infinitum.
Boring right? Don’t you want to make a warrior who will win? Let’s take a quick look at a simple warrior who can fight somewhat, the dwarf.
ADD #4, 3 ; execution begins here
MOV 2, @2
JMP -2
DAT #0, #0If you think hard about what this is doing, you can see that it’s essentially throwing a “DAT bomb” in increments of 4 in front of itself. The idea is that if you can overwrite a part of someone’s warrior with a DAT instruction, they’ll try to read it and terminate. The # symbol is used for immediate addressing, and @ for indirect addressing. In fact, there are eight such addressing modes.
Please read this - it’s vital to understanding this game!
Bring your laptops, get coding these brave warriors, and we’ll provide the pizza!
Tech talk with Google: Clean Coding at Google - 7:00 pm 14th November, L2 Andrew Wiles Building
Why does “clean code” matter? Join us for this interactive workshop with Peter, a software engineer at Google London, to learn about Google’s approach to coding. We will explain what coding at Google is like, and share best practices for coding to help you with your projects and coursework, as well as with your internship and full-time engineering futures.
Please RSVP here! https://goo.gl/MjUnMB
CS Essentials: Session 5 - 7:00 pm 15th November, LTA
This week’s session is the first of a two-part series on LaTeX!
CS Essentials is a brand new course that CompSoc organises for beginners. If you are into either exploring the Linux command line or learning how to create a beautiful document using LaTeX, this is just the course for you!
You do not need any prior experience, just come along and have some fun! All you need is a laptop to get through the exercises. What we will be teaching is:
If you need directions to the department, send us a message and we’ll be more than happy to help!
The course is open to all members of the University of Oxford.
P.S. If you have any experience in any of the topics and a little spare time, you can volunteer to help during the events.
LAN Night - 7:00 pm 16th November, UGSA (expect to stay very, very late!)
LAN Night returns to Fridays! (At least for this term.) We’re going to perform our termly ritual of staying up all night and playing any sorts of games of your choosing!
Bring your laptop; any game controllers and/or consoles, and we’ll provide the nosh.
The Geek Night directly after this is a film night, to wash away the fatigue of staying up all night playing LAN games.
Geek Night 6: Film Night - 7:00 pm 17th November, LTA
Here’s a poll for what films we’re going to be watching.
A list of things on the poll:
We aim to wash away the fatigue of a long, long, long, long LAN night from the night before. Come, and watch a film in our very own beloved Lecture Theatre A. We’ll provide the pizza, which may be consumed within the undergraduate social area (eating pizza in a lecture theatre is not permitted).
We may watch some 1950s-60s films about computers, which could be interesting too.
Coding Pub Quiz with TPP - 7:00 pm 21st November, The Mitre pub
TPP is excited to announce a Coding Challenge on Wednesday 21st November, in collaboration with CompSoc!
Unlike a typical pub quiz, you’ll need to exercise your problem solving skills to tackle the range of challenges set instead of applying your general knowledge.
There will be free food and drinks, both soft and alcoholic, available for attendees throughout the whole event. There will also be great prizes on offer for the winning teams (Such as Raspberry Pi Computers and a Hotel Chocolat hamper).
We recommend teams of about 5-6 people, but smaller groups are welcome too, and if you’re unsure who to come with then we’ll be happy to match you up with other keen problem solvers on the day. Some questions require specific knowledge so you will want a programmer on your team!
Entry is free of charge and doesn’t require a ticket, so feel free to just show up on the day!
The following notice is from JP Morgan.
Hello,
If you want to be a leader in this industry, who better to learn from than the women who are already driving our business forward?
Meet with some of our most influential and inspirational leaders at our Winning Women Front office Insight Day in London. Listen to their stories and get their advice – after all, they were once in your shoes. Be part of it.
You’ll participate in panel discussions, hear from our senior female leaders, learn about personal branding and interview skills and develop an interactive insight into our front office lines of business:
Winning Women is being hosted at our London offices. Come see for yourself how we build diverse and inclusive teams that will make you feel valued and motivated. Places are limited. Apply by 12th November – all majors welcome!
This event is open to female students graduating in 2020 with an interest in applying to our 2019 summer internship programmes.
Successful applicants will be notified of full details in advance of the event.
We look forward to hearing from you.
The J.P. Morgan Campus Recruitment Team
The following notices are from Ensoft.
Placement date: w/c Mon 3rd Dec 2018
Pay: £100/day
Summary: Through this micro-internship you will integrate Ensoft’s VoIP phone system with an internal web application, allowing the phone system to be automatically updated simply by using the app.
Applicant profile: Familiarity with Python programming and administering Linux systems is highly desirable.
The following notices are from Oxford Foundry.
Idea Exploration: Who is your customer?
12th November 18.00-20.00, The Oxford Foundry
This workshop a part of the wider ‘Idea Exploration’ series focuses on step one of that journey, and will help you work with your idea to gain an in depth understanding of who your customer is. You will build an end-user profile so that you can start to define your target audience and understand specifically how your idea addresses their needs. You will then look at how to size and segment that market and which segment you should focus on first. Link to sign up: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/idea-exploration-who-is-your-customer-tickets-50533553218
Introduction to Design and Making: Getting started with microcomputers
13th November 19.00-21.00
Get Creative, Get Connected, Get Coding What is a is a microcomputer? Why should you learn to use them? This session will introduce you to the rapidly expanding world of the microcomputer; a crucial tool in learning to code and prototype devices to achieve real world solutions. Understanding this small but powerful kit is essential learning.
Register now: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/digital-design-and-making-getting-started-with-microcomputers-tickets-51504626725
Idea Exploration: What is the value proposition?
19th November 18.00-20.00, The Oxford Foundry
This workshop a part of the wider ‘Idea Exploration’ series focuses on step one of that journey, and will help you work with your idea to gain an in depth understanding of who your customer is. You have an idea and you have a strong understanding of who your customer is. Having an in depth understanding of the value you are adding to your customers is vital in effectively communicating about your product or service.
Link to sign up: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/idea-exploration-what-is-the-value-proposition-tickets-50533572275
The Foundry is hosting a film screening of General Magic on Wednesday 14 Nov from 12pm-2pm.
“General Magic is a feature documentary about how great vision and epic failure changed the world as we now know it - from the smartphones that sit in our pockets to an array of technologies we now take for granted today.” If you would like to come, please sign up on Eventbrite:
The following notice is from the Geography Society.
The Geography society are running this event about what3words- a digital mapping start up where the founders coded the entire world into 3x3m grids each labelled by 3 words- he’ll be disucssing some of the computing behind it as well as it’s applications: https://www.facebook.com/events/755326061481995/
The following notice regards a talk at St Catherine’s College, and is a transcription of a poster describing such.
The Mathematics behind the AI Revolution: Prof. Christopher Bishop, Microsoft Research Cambridge.
The Alan Tayler lecture is sponsored by the Smith Institute.
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 or visit our Website for more information about the society.
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