2001-10-21 - Newsletters - About - CompSoc

h3. Newsletter for 21 Oct 2001

h4. Computing Society Newsletter

# LAN
# Laserquest
# Open Source Project
# Tutorials
# Cat 5 Cable
# Sierra Leone

Hi everyone, and welcome to the latest edition of the Compsoc newsletter. Things are looking "interesting" on the CS academic side at the moment - first years programming funky robots (or so I'm told); second years being forced to learn Swing to attempt an assignent that has little or nothing to do with Swing and everything to do with concurrency, and the Third Year project specifications due in. It's a good job Compsoc are here to relieve some of that stress!

So, without further ado, grab a coffee or beer, sit back and enjoy this edition of the newsletter.

h4. LAN

LANs are the most popular Compsoc event by far; so much so that the signup list was entirely filled by the end of the first social. Many apologies to everyone on the waiting list; we're trying to get more power; a 40-player LAN would be cool!

The LAN will be taking place from 10am until 10pm in Lib1 (underneath the library, next to Kaleidoscope), on the Saturday of Week 4 (that's the 27th of October, folks!). Confirmation of the time and place will be posted to the Compsoc newsgroup (uwarwick.societies.computing).

If anybody currently signed up to attend cannot make it, please let us know ASAP - even if it's on the Friday night! Other than that, we look forward to seeing you on Saturday, when many frags will be had.

h4. Laserquest

In the far more immediate future is the first Compsoc outing of the year to Laserquest. The event is this Wednesday (24 Oct), and we shall be meeting up at 2:00 in Rootes Reception, to be leaving for Coventry at 2:30. The session will last an hour, and the cost will be a fiver for playing and around £1.50 for the bus. Bring exact coinage, as the Bus drivers are tight-fisted sods, and will happily take your pound coins without giving you any change!

If you've not signed up on the list then you can still come along - the venue should be able to easily cope with all who would like to play :-)

h4. Open Source Project

One of the major activities of the society last year was the Open Source Project. For the uninitiated, this is the society's attempt at writing a game - in this case a fully 3D version of 'Lightbikes', based upon the movie 'Tron'.

The first meeting of this term is scheduled to take place this Sunday (28 Oct), in Union North. The existing team will demo the game thus far, explain the rough outline of the structure, and just generally introduce people to the method's we're using.

The project is being written in C++ with OpenGL, and will look great
on your CV!

h4. Tutorials

Due to popular demand. Compsoc tutorials are back!

The first such event will be held on Sunday 28th (the same day as the Open Source Project :-), and will be tackling the topic of JFC, aka Swing. "Swing" is the Java GUI library, and the topics will be particularly of interest to second years who not only have to complete a Concurrenty programming assignment, but also have an ISE project.

With any luck, we will be getting Chris Salmon, a professional Java developer, to give the talk. Chris is a First-class Honours graduate from Warwick, and his talks are not only informative, but interesting also. I would recommend anyone needing to code in Swing to attend.

Full details will be posted to the Compsoc newsgroup, as and when we receive them.

h4. Cat 5 Cable

As advertised in the last newsletter, Compsoc are now selling network cable, in both patch (normal) and crossover varieties. The prices are *extremely* competitive, and are as follows

* 50p base price
* 50p per metre for the first 10m
* 40p per metre for each metre thereafter.

So a 15m cable would be:
| £0.50 + 10 * £0.50 + 5 * £0.40
| = £7.50

Which, I'll think you'll agree, is cheaper than Lazerlizard :-)

Requests should be e-mailed to compsoc@warwick.ac.uk, and we'll be only too happy to help.

h4. Sierra Leone

We've had an e-mail from Chris Phillips (www.ribenaboy.co.uk), telling us about a project he's involved in. The aim is to refurbish old PCs, and then ship them to Sierra Leone, as part of the One World Link charity (http://www.warwickdistrict.org/owl).

They're looking for any volunteers who would be interested in being involved in this cause. It's based in north leamington, and is still on a farily small scale, and as such it's a fairly close-knit group.

Once up and running, the project should generally consist of checking over old machines, (ranging from 286's to Pentiums), and installing DOS / Win95, depending on the machine.

Anyone who's interested in joining this cause should contact project organiser Janet Alty at janet.alty@virgin.net.

h4. Wrapup

So, that's it for this newsletter. I'd advise everyone to subscribe to the newsgroup (uwarwick.societies.computing), as any updates / new times / new places will be posted there before anywhere else.

We hope to see most of you sometime this week, at one of our many events. Have fun!

--
Henry Southgate

Secretary, University of Warwick Computing Society
http://www.warwick.ac.uk/compsoc/