We finally have a step-by-step guide on how to join us on IRC! It can be found here:

https://uwcs.co.uk/cms/about/services/irc/setup/

We encourage all of our members to join our IRC network, as it’s a fun, interesting and sometimes very useful (coursework help etc)!

We had our AGM today! It was very long, so thanks to everybody who turned up and voted, and congratulations to our new exec:

Academic president: William Seymour (mcnutty)
Gaming president: Alistair Crook (phillammon)
Tech officer: Rayhaan Jaufeerally (rayhaan)
Secretary: Rhiannon Michelmore (rhiba)
Treasurer: Tom Hoare (MisterMarmite)
Social secretary: Martin Dalzell (robot527)
Publicity officer: Alice Fitzgerald (hermit)

Greetings CompSoc,

As you may have been aware, the 6th of June is world IPv6 day. IPv6 is a new version of the Internet Protocol (IP) specification that was designed to fix the exhaustion of the IPv4 address space. Unfortunately switching from an internet where the majority of service providers, corporations, and users have their equipment already setup to work with IPv4, to one where services can be accessed from both IPv4 and IPv6 networks is not a trivial problem to solve.

IPv6 day is intended to get more people to test out their IPv6 support, and as such the compsoc website is now also available from IPv6 networks at the following address: https://ipv6.uwcs.co.uk/

If you have any problems accessing this website or just want to know more about IPv6 feel free to come along to the programming workshops on Tuesdays or XING on Fridays and have a chat about the exciting future of the Internet Protocol.

The results of the AGM which took place today are:

Academic president: Christopher Leonard (veltas)
Gaming president: Maddy Young (metalgabu)
Tech officer: Rayhaan Jaufeerally (rayhaan)
Secretary: Tom Hoare (MisterMarmite)
Treasurer: Will Seymour (mcnutty)
Social secretary: Martin Dalzell (robot527)

Congratulations to all new exec!

We also decided to create a new marketing/publicity officer role. This role would involve creating posters and generally publicising the society better, and helping get the word out about all academic, gaming and social events. We will hold an election for this new role shortly, watch out for an email if you’re interested!

The 2014 Annual General Meeting of the Computing Society (UWCS) shall be held on the 5th of February at 3pm, in the Student Union HQ’s Central Meeting Area.

The AGM is the opportunity for members to vote on changes to the society’s constitution, and also the time for members to elect the new executives of the society.

Details about the event, as well as the election process, can be found on the event page.

Thanks a lot to everyone who took part in our speed programming competition yesterday evening, sponsored by Red Gate. I was really surprised with the number of people who had a solution to all four problems! The winner was David Purser, who solved all four problems, solving question 3 in O(n) time, who gets the fabulous prize! Most people who solved question x gave the minimax style solution, however a special mention goes to Alex Best who came up with the max flow style solution although unfortunately didn’t have time to implement it. All solutions emailed to me are uploaded here.

Thanks to everyone who took part!

Announcing our lightning talks from RedGate next Wednesday, from 4:30-6pm in MS104.

RedGate will be coming in to give us 4 lightning talks on different topics:

Tom Smith (Software Engineer and former Intern) – ‘Programming in the real world’
Forbes Lindesay (Software Engineer and former Intern) – ‘Ventures’
Aegir Thorsteinsson (Web App Developer) – ‘Down Tools Week’
Chirayu Shishodiya (Software Engineer and former Intern) – ‘Developing at Red Gate’

RedGate are a very cool company – they have been announced as the best small software company to work for in Cambridge for 6 years in a row! So we are very excited for their talks.

********

Secondly, announcing the results from this week’s progcomp!

In first place this week was Alex, a discrete maths student, who successfully managed to solve all questions! In second place was Ben (zed0) who solved the first 3 questions. People’s solutions are being uploaded as they are sent to me here. Thanks to everyone who took part!

Announcing our guest talk from Steven from ComputerMinds next Wednesday. The talk will take place from 1-2pm in LIB2.

Title: Do IT projects always fail, go over budget, and disappoint?

Abstract:
Between the theoretical dream of Agile software development and fixed price waterfalls of project management there is the hard reality of delivering a IT project with a fixed budget but changing requirements. We explore some real world examples of how software projects have run and what compromises have had to be made to deliver on time and on budget.

ComputerMinds are a small software company with offices in Bristol and Coventry, specialising in Drupal based websites. Their portfolio includes BCS, UCAS and the Sainsbury’s website (so big clients!).

Some of you may remember Stephen from last term when we came in to give us a talk on Drupal. It was a really good talk and this is a great opportunity to find out about Computing in industry (the real world, shocker)! There will also be an opportunity to ask about jobs and internships in ComputerMinds.

*****

Secondly, announcing the results from this week’s progcomp!

In first place this week was Daulet Zhalpakov, who successfully managed to solve the first 3 problems and had a good go at question x! This week quite a few people managed to solve the first 3 problems so 2nd and 3rd place are quite unclear! People’s solutions are being uploaded as they are sent to me here. Thanks to everyone who took part!

This evening we ran our first speed programming competition of the term. This was the first of a series of fortnightly programming competitions we are running, which will hopefully have a sponsored prize for the best overall competitor at the end of term! Stay tuned for more details on this.

The competition was won by Thomas Kiley, a third year Discrete Maths student who managed to successfully answer the first three questions and had a go at the fourth. In second place with Richard Townsend who got question 1 right and nearly almost the next 2. Special mentions go out to Matt Dawson, whose answers in Java had a fantastic UI, and to Estel for his enterprise answer to question 1 (code here).

The questions and solutions can be found here.

Congratulations to our new Socials Officer hir142.