Termcard for Michaelmas Term 2007

Pubmeet

Thursday 11th October, 20:00
Lamb and Flag

We'll all be meeting up in the Lamb and Flag for a friendly welcome and introduction to the term and society.

There will be someone on the look-out for people in case you can't find us, although we're usually quite easy to spot...

OUCS Tour

Wednesday 17th October, 17:30
OUCS

Somewhat of a CompSoc tradition, we'll be having a tour of OUCS' machine room, with several mostly-willing OUCS people on hand to show you around, answer questions, and suchlike.

It's normally a great insight into the bowels of this most important of departments, and offers many great challenges (such as figuring out quite what their naming scheme is).

Meet at the main OUCS entrance on Banbury Road for 17:30; there will be a sign up so you know you're at the right place.

Telepathy

Speaker: Robert McQueen

Thursday 1st November, 20:00
Stafford Crane Room, Keble College

Robert McQueen of Collabora will extol the virtues of Telepathy, the instant messaging framework used on the Nokia N800, the One Laptop Per Child project, and on a Unix desktop near you. He'll introduce D-Bus (the IPC system underlying Telepathy), discuss novel uses of IM (such as collaborative editing and podcast recording) that Telepathy makes feasible, and will demonstrate how to do useful IM-related things with surprisingly few lines of Python.

There will be someone at the Keble Porters' Lodge to show you to the talk; this may involve a short wait outside if the porters don't let us keep the door open.

(NB. This talk was originally in Week 3, but has had to be been moved.)

Bletchley Park Trip

Saturday 3rd November, 09:55
Bletchley Park

We plan to go and visit Bletchley Park, one of the homes of modern cryptography, and home of the World War I codebreaking effort.

We'll be travelling to Bletchley using the bus and train; the X5 from Gloucester Green bus station to Milton Keynes, and then taking the train from there to Bletchley.

Travel costs should be less than £14 (the X5 prices are somewhat cryptic). Admission to Bletchley itself is £8*, and if you plan to eat at the cafe there you'll need more money (expect standard visitor-attraction-cafe prices).

*(You can get £7 tickets via the website and a credit card)

We're meeting at 9:55 at the X5 stop in Gloucester Green bus station (bay 11), getting to Bletchley around 11:30, and returning sometime in the afternoon.

Video Night

Thursday 8th November, 20:00
(venue to be announced)

In the finest CompSoc tradition, we'll be showing one or more 'traditional' geeky films - suggestions (or, indeed, DVDs of films) are more than welcome. Even better, if enough people have joined this year to refill the coffers, we'll invest in some popcorn and other filmish snacks.

The Carbon Account

Speaker: Tom Dyson

Wednesday 14th November, 20:00
Roy Griffiths Room, Keble

Tom Dyson, of Torchbox, will be coming to talk about their in-house Django project, aimed at helping people cut down on carbon emissions. He'll delve into the technical aspects of implementing such a computationally-heavy web application, as well as giving a few general tips and pointers on this sort of web development.

Meet outside/just inside the Keble Porter's Lodge at 8, and a Very Nice Compsoc Person will walk you down to the right place.

Lightning Talks

Thursday 22nd November, 20:00
Morley Fletcher Room, Worcester

One room, one projector, and many speakers. Everyone is invited to give a short talk on something they're involved in or interested in; don't worry if you don't like public speaking, you're more than welcome to watch the rest of us screw it up (although, of course, this would be a great place to give a talk if you've never done so before).

Talks don't have to be computer-related, or even technical; if it's interesting, entertaining or pretty, then give it a go! If you don't feel like giving a talk, don't worry; come along anyway, there's looking to be a wonderfully varied range of talks.

We'll have a projector and a laptop there to show presentations on, but if you're using a particularly obscure file format or prefer your own computer, bring it along.

There will be someone at the Worcester porter's lodge to take you along to the room!

TGM and Christmas Party

Monday 26th November, 20:00
Oscar Wilde Room, Magdalen

The Termly General Meeting, the pinnacle of democracy. We'll go over the term, make sure everything is in order, check our Treasurer hasn't fled to a foreign country with CompSoc's fortune, and hopefully get it over with in a reasonably short amount of time.

After that's over, we'll be having a small Christmas party, with some free food and whatever else we can think of - suggestions, games, or whatever are more than welcome!

There will be someone at the Magdalen porter's lodge to guide you over to the room.