Newsletter

h4. Contents

* LAN Signups
* Console Tournament
* Gaming Sessions
* Socials
* Exec Meeting
* LUG
* IRC
* Ethernet Cable / Web Hosting

h4. LAN Signups

Only a week and a half to go until the first LAN Party of the year, which means signups to members open tomorrow evening! Currently we only have allocated space for 38 people, but there is a chance this could rise to nearer 55 depending on power, and demand for signups. So, how quickly will 38 signups for the first LAN of term go...? Answer: very quickly.

Signups will open bang on 9pm tomorrow, Wednesday 12th, and they won't last for much longer than about a day I reckon. So if you want to come to the LAN on Friday 21st October, 8pm -> Sunday 23rd October, 8pm then don't hang around too long.

For anyone that hasn't been to a LAN before (I know I hadn't before coming to Warwick), simply put, it's a room full of 40 (or more...) gamers playing multiplayer games for 48 hours. Given how long we're there for, and how many people are there, you are sure to find other people that like playing the same games as you. Also we all bring our own machines so there is no limit to what we can play (unlike at our gaming sessions where we daren't try Battlefield 2!).

As per the last newsletter, for a bit more information our LANs visit:

http://www.uwcs.co.uk/gaming/lans/ for some general information, or
http://gallery.uwcs.co.uk/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=lans for some photos.

h4. Console Tournament

Alongside the LAN Party in LIB2 will be a console tournament downstairs in LIB1. There will be tournaments in Pro Evolution Soccer 4 and Tekken 5, while casual play will include Halo 2, Need For Speed, Street Fight 3 among others.There will be signups for the console tournament on http://www.uwcs.co.uk , while signups for individual tournaments will take place at the event itself.

Friday evening will be a Free For All event with the tournaments not taking place until Saturday afternoon between midday and the late evening. More casual, non-tournament play will happen on Sunday all day until 7pm. Exact details of the tournaments and how they will be run will be available when signups go live this Wednesday at 9pm. If you are able to bring any equipment such as consoles and games, there should be a field for this when you signup!

h4. Gaming Sessions

Last weeks Friday/Saturday gaming sessions were wildly popular as expected, filling two rooms to capacity, ~40 people. With almost a 50:50 split between freshers and old-timers it made for some new competition at games like Raven Shield, Counterstrike, Warcraft and TetriNET :). Gaming is running again this week from 10pm Friday and Saturday in the ITS Room along the Physics Concourse, with the pre-gaming social starting at 8:30pm on Friday only in Rootes Reception/The Bar.

Remember to bring headphones if you come to gaming as using the built in speakers isn't allowed for everyone's sanity. Do remember too that Gaming Sessions can get oversubscribed, so signing up beforehand to guarantee a computer is a good idea. Head over to http://www.uwcs.co.uk and see the events list on the right hand side.

Gaming is cancelled the week after next because of the LAN Party, so all the more reason to come this week, and to the LAN the week after.

h4. Socials

Compsoc's weekly trip to The City Arms (Monday) will be on again next week, and as mentioned, a pre-gaming social at 8:30pm on Friday in Rootes Reception.

h4. Exec Meeting

Compsoc's weekly exec meetings are at 7pm in a Meeting Room along the Union North corridor, so if anyone has anything they wish to bring up, or simply want to come and listen about what we have planned/are discussing do come along. If you do wish to bring anything specific up, please send a quick email to exec@uwcs.co.uk outlining what you want to say/discuss.

The meeting tends to last somewhere between an hour and 90 minutes depending on how much there is to talk about, and we head straight over to the 8:30pm pre-gaming social when we're done.

h4. LUG

Sorry to anyone that is interested in the Linux User Group, I failed to mention it in last week's newsletter. The LUG meets every Wednesday at 7pm in Xanana's Lounge. This week there will be a "Bash Scripting" tutorial, which can come in very handy for anyone doing CS. If you have installed Linux, or even just want to install Linux and need help with it in any way at all, just pop along and they'll be plenty of people willing to help.

h4. IRC

Another mention for Compsoc's IRC server again, with the added influx of freshers we now have over 70 members (and non-members) in the channel. Xchat is a very easy client to get used to, and the server/channel to join is still:

* server: irc.uwcs.co.uk - (if the default port doesn't work from campus, try 6668 instead)
* channel: #compsoc

h4. Cable / Web Hosting

Straight from last week's newsletter:

Compsoc provides many services to it's members including the sale of Ethernet RJ45 cable, and a shell account and webspace on a Compsoc server.

Base charge for a cable is 40p plus 20p per metre. So,

For 5metres: 0.40 + (5 * .20) = £1.40
For 10metres: 0.40 + (10 * .20) = £2.40
For 20metres: 0.40 + (20 * .20) = £4.40

Very reasonably priced, and a lot cheaper than a certain amphibian sounding shop near costcutters.

The shell account on our server Molotov is free, and comes with 20MB of storage and is accessible from the url: http://.uwcs.co.uk . Extra quota is only £2.50 for an extra 500MB, far cheaper than any hosting provider you're likely to find. The server is on campus so uploading to it from the residential network/campus machines will be at LAN speeds. More information about our Web Hosting here:

http://www.uwcs.co.uk/services/hosting/member

That's all folks...

Adam Miles ("ajmiles")