Term 3 Week 5 Newsletter

Sun 23 May 2021 Newsletter

Woah, we're halfway there (nearly)! Woah, living on a pear..... It's week 5 and time for another edition of your favourite newsletter!

Good timezone to you all, my fellow beings! Come and grab a seat ahead of the perusal of this week’s newsletter!

What happened last week?

Short answer: a lot!

Long answer: a lot!

Nettitude CTF

Wednesday saw our Capture The Flag event happen, and a massive thank you to Nettitude for coming and running this event for us! We had lots of fun working on a range of challenges within a web environment, involving techniques such as decrypting data, SQL injection and gaining root access to Linux environments to capture the flags. It was a great event for all!

This week was also a week full of events run alongside Tabletop Society, with our annual Eurovision watch-along and an unexpected Pondcon occurring!

Pondcon

Unfortunately, due to the ongoing pandemonia, our usual CompSoc vs Tabletop laser tag frenzy couldn’t take place. However, a miracle occurred that meant a bunch of members across the societies managed to get vaccinated last week, and combined with the recent easing of restrictions, the two societies decided “Hey, let’s all gather near a pond and all meet for the first time in a year!” And it was here, at this moment in time, that Pondcon was born! Oh, and don’t ask me who came up with the name because I don’t know :D

Pondcon was a fun-filled extravaganza of a 2 hour (maybe?) event, which involved standing around meeting people (many for the first time!), debating whether the ground was too wet to sit down on, and Ares feeding the ducks and birbs (although we later found a sign saying not to feed the ducks… sshhhh, don’t tell anyone that part). Yes, it was birb club! If you are interested, “shockingly reception is poor by the pond” according to Amelie when Sam video-called Amelie to see everyone. There was also a lot of “wait, are you so-and-so on Discord?”, because we all know I’m a child and haven’t met anyone before...

In summary, the first in-person society event was a success! Identities have been exposed and we now all have superpowers. Let’s hope Pondcon 2: Electric Boogaloo can come soon!

Eurovision - written by Hannah, Co-Op Officer at Tabletop

Once again, tabletop society and UWCS did a joint event for Eurovision this year. Done over discord streams due to a little thing called the “ongoing global pandemic”, it was possibly the most chaotic five hours I’ve ever spent in a discord call (rivalled only by the fabled Centaur Discourse). We had many, many, many, bingo cards, which was a fun experience for me desperately trying to predict what would happen with no prior knowledge of Eurovision solely from other people’s cards. Mostly, this meant going “why do so many of these mention twinks?!”

After just barely managing to organise things in time for the main event, we had 26 songs of variable quality, over the top ridiculousness, horny bond villains, and dubious greenscreen, along with the bot almost dying right before announcing our scores. Through it all, we took comfort in how this event brings people from across the world together to give the UK the zero points we deserved, with neither the jury nor the public giving us anything, to the resounding cheer of everyone in the voice call.

After living through the many chaotic had many glorious nations present to give their verdicts on the songs, from Alcoholism to Amislav, the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Somerset to Transylvania, everyoneelseistan to “some points I found on the floor after the actual Eurovision was done”, but in the end we managed to piece together some results (with Daisy singlehandedly giving the UK infinitely many more points than the entire rest of Europe combined):

In conclusion, it was an extremely cool event (and one that will hopefully be in person next year!), even if the consequences of being on a voice call until midnight are slowly catching up to me!

Josh side note: a massive thank you to Alex for hosting our Discord bot and running the stream for this, and to the exec involved from both societies for organising this event!

We need you! (yes you there with the blue shirt at the back)

We’re looking to hear from you, whether you are an official member of the society or not, whether you are a student or graduate, whether you have just heard about us or whether you come to every event we have, about how you feel as part of our society. It would be amazing if you could take a couple of minutes out of your day to complete the following survey, which will ensure we can continue to make our society a welcoming and inclusive space for all. All responses to this survey are completely confidential and will only be seen by the current exec, and no personally identifiable information is collected.

If there is anything else you want to mention to us, or if you have any queries, feel free to drop any one of the exec an email or DM on Discord. In particular, you can contect Ella, our Women’s Officer and Equal Opportunities Officer, me as Welfare Officer, or Amelie as President. You can find our contact details below. Thank you again for taking the time to complete this!

Questionnaire link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1z9qSq1dl-h36CgYyaVqfWL06vImvTdAL0WbQv6GV5Hc/viewform?edit_requested=true

Ella: @SH4D0W_R1D3R#7857 on Discord, womens-officer@uwcs.co.uk for email

Josh: @Koala#2585 on Discord, welfare@uwcs.co.uk for email (the secretary email is also fine!)

Amelie: @distributive law#5486 on Discord, president@uwcs.co.uk for email

WASD Summer

As many of you may already be aware, CompSoc has run WASD: an annual charity speedrunning event that has taken place annually since 2016. This year, we are starting a sister event: WASD Summer, which will take place remotely on the 13th and 14th of August 2021.

When and Where

WASD Summer will take place on the 13th and 14th of August, and will be streamed live to the WASD Twitch account: https://www.twitch.tv/warwickspeedrun

Signups

The event is open to anyone, student or otherwise. The only requirements are that you are able to run a game reasonably quickly, and can support a stream of your event. Signups will be opening later this week, and we will publicise the link on our social media and Discord server when they open.

Want to learn more?

To find out more about the event, or find the VODs from our previous events, check out the WASD website: https://wasd.warwick.gg or checkout the WASD Discord server here: https://wasd.warwick.gg/discord

Merch!

In case you missed it, we’re hoping to do a merch order in the coming weeks! We are looking into offering the following for everyone to choose from:

We are *hoping* to open up ordering next week, to then place an order near the end of term. But for now, imagine in your head what merch you could own soon...

Summer LAN

Summer LAN/BFL/whatever we call it is a thing and will be happening during Week 10! That's 28th June to 2nd July for those of you who want dates. Make sure to mark those dates in your calendar ahead of a fun & pizza filled week! We'll be announcing events running that week soon (TM) so keep an eye out for more info...

This week in UWCS

Here’s our schedule for this week!

A summary of our thoughts from this week:

Hope you all have a fabulous week!

Josh (he/they)

Fancy keeping in touch with us?

🌍Website👪Discord server 💬Facebook group 🐦Twitter

Current student at the university?👋Consider becoming an official member of the society! It supports us out and means you get this lovely newsletter sent directly to your inbox at least once each week! It’s completely free (assuming you have the Societies Federation fee)!

And now, a message from our sponsors!

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