Newsletter for 6 February 2004

Fri 06 Feb 2004 Newsletter

CompSoc Annual Elections
1 Election Details
2 Positions Available
Academic
1 Steve Jarvis lecture
2 Bletchley Park Trip
3 Java Swing Tutorial
LAN Followup
Technical
1 SQL Downtime
CAT5
Contact

1 CompSoc Annual Elections

1.1 Election Details

The Computing Society Annual General Meeting will be held at 8pm on Saturday 14th February (end of Week 6) in Meeting Room 4 and 5 in Union North. If you don’t know where these are, email the exec and we can help you get there.

This is an excellent way to get involved in the Computing Society, and help decide what happens to the society in the coming year. If you don’t like how CompSoc is at the moment, this is the best way to change things - If you do like it, come along to vote anyway and help the best person get the job!

1.2 Positions Available

The following positions (in no particular order) exist within the Computing Society Exec:

President: The President has the job of organising the rest of the exec into doing things day-to-day, and has ultimate responsibility for all society activities, and final say in all decisions.
Vice President: The Vice President provides a backup to the president, and also provides an insight into the longer-term direction of the society.
Treasurer: The Treasurer looks after the accounts, keeping a record of what money’s going where, and getting money from the union when we need to buy things. The Treasurer will also help to come up with a budget to submit to the union for the following year’s budget.
Secretary: The Secretary is responsible for taking accurate minutes of the decisions of the exec at exec meetings, and organinsing an agenda for those meetings. The Secretary is also ultimately responsible for all incoming/outgoing communication by the society.
Technical Officer: The Technical Officer is responsible for organising the Technical Team, and ensuring that CompSoc’s Linux servers remain running in a smooth and orderly fashion. Membership of the Technical Team is open to all society members. The Technical Officer also is responsible for the network and power distribution at LAN Parties.
Academic Officer: The Academic Officer is required to ensure that the society continues to do useful academic activities like Guest Lectures, Tutorials, Competitions, and the like. The Academic Officer heads up the Academic Team, and organises that team into running good events. Membership of the Academic Team is open to all society members.
Social Secretary: The Social Secretary is responsible for researching, organising, and booking a whole bunch of fun events for CompSoc members to relax, meet new people, and generally chill out at.

If you wish to stand for any of these positions, please let the exec know your Name, Email Address, and University number by Midnight on Wednesday evening of Week 6. If you don’t, please come along to the elections to help decide what happens to the Computing Society in the coming year.

2 Academic

2.1 Steve Jarvis lecture

Dr Steve Jarvis, infamous for throwing pieces of fruit around the stage of L3 in CS118 lectures, has kindly agreed to hold an hour’s talk as a brief introduction to Grid Computing. This will take place in the next few weeks; watch this space for details of the exact date and time as soon as they are confirmed.

I’m sure you all know how entertaining Dr Jarvis’ lectures are; this is definitely one not to miss!

2.2 Bletchley Park Trip

We are organising a trip to Bletchley Park on the Saturday following Week 9. Bletchley Park is where Alan Turing worked, where British Computing started, and where the German ‘Enigma’ code was cracked in the Second World War. Prices will be around &£15 per person. In order to arrange the event, we need to know how many people would be interested. An interest sign-up is on the website now, at http://www.uwcs.co.uk/events/. If there is any possibility you might want to come, please complete the interest signup so that we can gauge how many people might wish to come.

2.3 Java Swing Tutorial

Next Wednesday afternoon(Week 6), Andrew Sully and Phil Stoneman will be holding a Swing Tutorial. Swing is the most common way of creating a GUI in Java, and so is an essential talent for the second year Introduction to Software Engineering course. Confirmation of the exact time will be sent out early next week.

3 LAN Followup

The LAN was had, and it was good. If you missed out, bad luck! The next LAN will happen at the end of week 8, watch out closer to the day for a newsletter with details of sign-up dates.

4 Technical

4.1 SQL Upgrade

The SQL service on Molotov has been upgraded to MySQL version 4. If you experience any peculiarities with your SQL account, let the technical team know (techteam@warwickcompsoc.co.uk), and we will do our best to sort it.

4.2 Memory Limitations

All user accounts on Molotov are now limited to using a maximum of 50Mb of system memory, in order to prevent any processes accidentally causing problems with the server. If this inconveniences you (for example, in starting Java processes), please let the technical team know.

5 CAT5

We still sell CAT5 cable to our members. The price is a 50p base charge plus 50p per metre for the first 10 metres plus 40p for every metre thereafter. For example, 20m will cost you &£0.50 + &£5.00 + &£4.00 = &£9.50.

6 Contact

Website: http://www.warwickcompsoc.co.uk/
Exec Email: exec@warwickcompsoc.co.uk
Academic Team: academic@warwickcompsoc.co.uk
Technical Team: techteam@warwickcompsoc.co.uk
IRC Channel: #compsoc on irc.warwickcompsoc.co.uk