Compsoc Exec Minnits

25 February 2002

Present

• Henry Southgate
• Tom Cropper
• Dave de la Motte
• Chris Fanning
• Jake Staines
• Tom Ward
• Richard Colfer
• Alexis Birkill
• Chris Smith
• James Ross
• Adam Bowen

NuExec

The AGM was held at s6 on Saturday, and Jake and Chris counted the votes; Jake has assured us that, under no circumstances, was any fiddling involded in any way, shape, or form, and the fact that H beat RON to president was honestly what the members wanted. We remain skeptical.

The results were as follows:

• President*: Henry Southgate
• Vice Presient: Adam Bowen
• Secretary: Dave de la Motte
• Treasurer: Chris Fanning
• Webmaster: James Ross
• Social Secretary: Tom Cropper
• Technical Officer: Phil Stoneman

Jake described the handover process, before introducing the three present new members to their positions, and H to some presedential duties. While doing this, he mentioned some courses that must be taken:

• Duty of Care: Nutsy, who has taken the course last year
• Money: Chris Fanning, still to do
• Equiopps: Adam, still to do.

In addition, Jake must tell ITS that H is now responsible for all of the suada/suahu accounts, which is a worrying thought.

Next Meeting

Obviously at least six of the new exec can make the current meeting time. Dave de la Motte, in his first official task as secretary, to mail Phil and check that Mondays at the City Arms is OK.

This is a somewhat bizarre statement to make, as Phil Stoneman will be reading these minnits (Hi, Phil!), but it’s what we decided, and so must go in regardless :-)

s6

Comments on s6:

• It was cool!
• Too much Diablo II!
• Not enough Diablo II!
• The lack of the Quake3 Tourney was OK; people didn’t miss it, and it seemed no great loss that we didn’t have one.
• James reckoned there weren’t enough racing games and, since that was the only style he enjoys, he didn’t get much out of the LAN. This isa fair critisism; however, people played the games they enjoy, and it’s unfortunate that racers are in the minority.

Here followed much discussion, centering around start times and sleeping patterns. It was felt that starting at 8:00 on Fridays severely screwed with people’s bodies¹. Another point with this was that most people buggered off home to sleep; therefore, if everybody slept at the same time, security could be a little lax.

The conclusions arrived at were that we would continue to start at 8:00pm on Fridays, and that the exec would act like travellers crossing enemy territory and take turns at watches. This would imply that the exec slept at the event. We’d do this at the next event as an experimentation, and see if it works.

Layout

The layout at s6 could have been improved. Essentially, we had not enough behind chairs, meaning that we couldn’t get around the room easily enough, and far too much in the middle or at the front. I suspect that this is a kickback from the B rooms, were we’re more tight than we are in the LIB romms.

The essential solution to this was that people put their PCs on the floor when arriving, thus making the arrangement lots easier. When we arrange the tables, we need to think before just going ahead and doing it.

James Ross to put a note on the webpage that tells people, when arriving at LANs, to put their machines on the floor and not on tables.

BFL

Tom booked the BFL on Tuesday, for the following times:

• Lib 1*: Monday 2pm -> Thursday 2pm
• Lib 2: Tuesday 8pm -> Thursday 2pm

No confirmation has been received yet.

We decided that it would very definitly be a good idea to have two separate signup lists, one for each room. Come near the event, it would be a good idea to put the reserves on the first event onto the main list for the second event, at the end. There are twenty five on the provisional signup list, which is easily enough to warrent two rooms.

Sign-em-ups will go live after Easter, and after we’ve received room confirmation.

Servers

At most of the previous lans, Teapot has been music/file/game server, and it’s only a little box and shouldn’t have so much pressure on it the poor defenceless thing.

With two rooms, we are likely to need the following servers:

• Music Server (LIB1)
• Music Server (LIB2)
• File Server
• Game Host

The music server is perfectly capable of running two hosts, and the CGI script will allow connection to whatever server you want – so Teapot and Brian² can both handle music for different rooms.

In addition, teapot could handle files with Brian handling games, and this would be a good thing.

We could also have a DNS server set up, facilitating access to everywhere.

Molotov

Tom hasn’t done anything with either quotas or PostgreSQL yet; he’ll either have to put this off to Phil Stoneman or save it until Easter or somewhen.

In addition, Jake apologises for using 350M of hard disk for Sluggy.

Phil has found some ports on Molotov that we could use potentially to run Servers on: 8008, 8009 are two of them.

Tom to meet Phil over a pint of beer, some peanuts and a set of poker chips and tell him how all the game servers are arranged.

Gamesoc

Chris mailed Edinburgh Gamesoc inviting them to a game of something. They have a Counterstrike clan, and are starting one for RTCW; they also play Starcraft, and wouldn’t mind a game of Quake.

Chris to mail Gamesoc and organise a QW friendly soon. Tom Ward to start a QuakeWorld server on port 8008-ish, so that our friends from outside the university can connect.

Academia

All of the feedback received from members wrt academic stuff was very positive; all email of it. New ideas springing forth from the fountains of ideas that are the new exec (you are all fountains of ideas, right?) included:

• Networking tutorials, possibly extending to samba, ftp etc
• C++ Tutorials
• 3D / D3D / OGL

s7

Nutsy to book; End of W22, Friday 8pm to Sunday 10pm.

¹ To the extent that Jake went to bed at 11:00 on Sunday evening!!!

² Tom’s server

Compsoc Exec Minnits

18 February 2002

Present

• Alexis Birkill
• James Ross
• Chris Smith
• Dave de la Motte
• Jake Staines
• Richard Colfer
• Tom Cropper
• Henry Southgate

Apologies

• Tom Ward

s6

Seeing as we are unable to hold an event without at least mentioning it in the meeting, we figured that we’d better have an ‘s6’ item regardless of whether or not we actually have anything to discuss.

But torrents from mere streams do grow, and we ended up with many many points raised and discussed.

The first was that James should add a ‘confirm’ option to the signup screen, which people must check in order to confirm their signups.

Scheduling

• Quake3 Tourney: Saturday, 10AM start
• AGM: Saturday, 5:00–6:30-ish
• Challenge: 6:30-ish. Old Exec vs New Exec, crossovers to balance
  the teams. Quake3 TA, then Eating of Pizzas, then UT.
• StarCraft to take us through the night.

AGM

Jingly to bring a hat and count a vote. Or seven.

It was then noted that the ‘funny’ quote count had reached an all-time minus three over the last few meetings. This prompted Jingly.

“You know it’s time for the new exec to take over when we can’t think of anything funny to say.”
* Jingly Chris

Bookings

James Ross looked into the Panorama room. Hiring the entire room for one evening would cost around a thousand quid. Alexis to put on Capital Budget Form.

E-Commerce Society

The E-Commerce society have mailed us giving details of two of their events, which may be of interest to our members, one of which was an evening devoted to female IT professionals. We decided that at least one person should attend, and this ended up with the classic:

“I think Tom [Cropper] would make the best woman.”
* Jake Staines

H to mail members wrt E-Commerce events.

Scapegoat

With the imminent pipe-and-slippers-donning retirement of Chris Smith, Compsoc are going to need a new scapgoat. Nominations for this fine
exec position were:

• Adam Bown

The vote was passed unanimously, and will take effect irregardless of whether Adam is elected to the exec.

Web

At last, the cookie logins are working! Jingly took exception to this, and threw some mayonnaise at Nutsy who, in returning the favour, missed and hit Dave. Dave glowered before getting out his Lightspeed Ketchup Blaster, taking out Alexis and James before being flummoxed by Toaster’s Brown Sauce Rush.

“Will you please stop throwing condiments around!”
* Jake

James still has the maintainance site to do.

Backup

Currently, the only backup of the website is that James has on his laptop. While we don’t think that this is unreliable, hard drives have a “MTBF” for a reason; and the “M” stands for “Mean”, not “Max”. James to main a copy on CDRW.

On a similar note, Jingly is to burn a copy of /backup/ onto CD. H would do it but he’s not about to dl the 120mb via 56k modem.

Gamesoc

Jingly and Chris looked into Starcraft on the Internet – and the only way we can play Edinburgh is via Battle.net; each player will need their own CD key. Chris to e-mail Gamesoc – Sandy, one of the blokes from i8, is sandy@jedimasters.co.uk – offering a match.

Weasel to be a judge of the A,B,C teams.

BFL

Nutsy looked into times available for the BFL. Lib 1 was booked from 5–8 on Tuesday W30, and Lib 2 on Friday 1–3 and Thursday 7–11.

We decided to make the following bookings.
* LIB1: 8pm Tuesday – 4pm Thursday
* LIB2: 12pm Monday – 4pm Thursday

Nutsy to book ASAP.

It was suggested that we split the signup list into two separate rooms, an idea that carries merit.

At the end of possibly the shortest exec meeting in recent history, everyone went home to sleep.

Compsoc Exec Minnits

11 February 2002

Present

• James Ross
• Jake Staines
• Chris Smith
• Tom Cropper
• Dave de la Motte
• Alexis Birkill
• Tom Ward
• Richard Colfer
• Henry Southgate

1. s6

Nutsy chased and chased and eventually Room Bookings got around to handing us confirmation; s6 is go for Lib2.

The Quake3 tourney will start at 10:00am on Saturday morning. This will help get it out of the way quicker.

1.1 AGM

The AGM will start at 5:00. Members may raise issues with us beforehand, and we will discuss these issues at the AGM. We’re not, however, obliged to decide on anything there and then, because that would be daft.

1.2 The New Exec

The newly exlect exec will be invited to the meeting on Monday of week 18; this is entirely optional. They must, however, attend on the meeting during week 19; this will be so that we can teach them our 1337 3×3c sk11lz. The following week (being the last one of the term), they’ll come in an actively take over. Old Exec to come along and prod. From week 21 onwards, Compsoc will be solely run by the new exec; old exec members are, as always, free to come ot the meetings.

2. Big Lan

What to call it?

Options are:

1. The Final Frag
2. FBL (Fcking Big LAN)
3. BFL (Big Fscking LAN)
4. LAN

A vote was held; options 1 and 2 tied, but in the end we went for option three – “BFL”.

Nutsy to book it for Week 30. Hopefully we can get Lib1 and Lib2 and hang CAT5 cable between the windows. Either that or we can use Alexis’ wireless netwrock.

3. CAT5

Alexis’ Dad doesn’t want any.

Jevan does.

Cable has been bought from H’s pocket, and we will make this up.

4. Server

4.1 Quota

Quotas aren’t fixed. Tom to sort. This may be a problem with the kernel.

4.2 PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL to be put on in addition to MySQL. Tom to attempt to install PostgreSQL while valiantly attmepting to stop MySQL from attacking it.

5. S.Salah

This dude has mailed us asking why we’ve not replied to his e-mails. The slight flaw here is that we have. His domain wasn’t resolvable, and so H to mail him at CSV with a reply. As we’re feeling exceptionally generous, we’ll offer him a discount for this year.

“This is supposed to be an exec meeting, not a ‘Who can say the most meaningless thing’ competition.”
* Toaster

“Sorry, I don’t use spout.”
* Toaster

6. BBQ

Will be had.

7. Academia

As Jake and Chris Smith have argued feverently on IRC, the society doesn’t do enough academic stuff. So what can we do? Suggestions on a postcard please. Current entries are…
* S390 demo
* Revision booklets
* Revision classes
* Exercise / Answer sheets
* Second Hand Bookshop
* C++ Tutorials
* Linux Users’ Group

Tom to sort out a LUG

8. OSP

Chris Smith’s overwhelming impression of the OSP is that it’s too small, too much of a close-knit group. For new people, this makes it as easy to join as it would be to stop Jake from liking mecha.

James Ross reckoned this wasn’t so – Level creators, sound artists, playtesters are still needed.

The next OSP will be something nice and easy – the next exec to decide.

9. LUG

To register:
* warwicklug.co.uk
* lug.warwickcompsoc.co.uk

We can also register with lug.org, and get a subdomain from there; Tom can set up a majordormo list, and everything can be fine and dandy. H to mail other LUGs asking for info.

10. Starcraft

We’ve had some contact with GameSoc a while back – but nothing since. Nutsy and Chris Smith to try and sort out StarCraft over the Internet, so we can play GS.

Compsoc Exec Minnits

3 February 2002

Present

• Henry Southgate
• Alexis Birkill
• James Ross
• Tom Ward
• Jake Staines
• Shris Smith
• Richard Colfer
• Tom Cropper
• Dave de la Motte

1. s6

So far, we’ve still to have confirmation from Room Bookings about s6. Nutsy to chase them up.

Concerns were raised about the security aspect of the room. It is, however, surrounded by curtains, so these may be closed in order to give some semblence of protection.

All people who are not playing multiplayer games will be politely asked to leave. This is to maximise game time.

AGM

Voting will take place via paper slips. The AGM to start at 5:00pm, with the voting commencing at half past the hour, on Saturday. The cutoff for nominations will be Thursday, mid-day.

Signups

After the humongous cock-up that was the signup fiasco for s6, we now have a list full of people when it shouldn’t be. H to mail the list asking people to cancel if they’re not going to come along to the LAN.

If future, we’ll open signups two weeks before the event.

Another issue of contention WRT this LAN is that we were asked by Chris Fanning if two of his friends from home could attend, each paying a tenner. A vote was held, the three choices being:

1. Yes, irrefutable entrance this time.
2. Friends to be added to the bottom of the signup list.
3. No, no entry.

The votes recorded were 0, 4 and 3, and the motion that they be added to the foot of the signup list was carried.

In future, we will allow guests to sign up one week in advance of the event; this gives members a better opportunity. James Ross to create a ‘Guest’ web account to facilitate this.

2. BFL / The Final Frag

Since we’ve had a lot of contention with this LAN, the exec have decided to hold a moderately-large LAN during Week 30. JR to put up a preliminary signups in order to guage numbers; this will be non-commital on either party.

Nutsy to book.

3. Budget

Nothing’s happened yet – no forms filled.

Alexis has investigated UPSs. An APC UPS will cost £75, and will have USB control. He’s looked into Linux compatibility, and it looks OK. The UPS is capable of running a machine on half load for 21 minutes, which should give ample time to shut down.

4. CAT5

The CAT5 business is finally in the black – with £5 left over – and has already taken over 100m in pre-orders. Henry to buy a crimping tool and 300m of CAT5 cable. The currently used crimping tool to be returned to Nick, and the new one to be claimed back from the Union.

5. Molotov

Molotov currently has many many passwords, almost all of which are the same password. These need to be sorted.

• Level 1 – This will be the root password, and will be used for all systems administration tasks, including MySQL and the DNS.
• Level 2 – This will be the password used by the exec for exec business. For example, operserv, exec-MySQL, the exec account, and suada login. It will be the Heniz password
• Level 3 – This password will be used to administer services – for example the ‘servers’ user account, and the associate logins. The L3 password will be the password formally known as Atomz.
• Level 4 – This password will concern gaming activities. It will be the rconPassword used for game servers, as well as the login for the suahu ITS account. This password may be distributed to trusted members.

H to organise the changing of the passwords

6. Shop

The shop is back! Current problems include:
* It would be nice for the categories to appear in the breadcrumbs.
* Netscape is lame.
* The blue buttons look bad; this is because they’ve not got the background and bookends for which they were designed. Jake to draw.
* The search page needs a “Can’t find what you’re looking for? Search on Amazon!” box.
* The Add Wizard: A note needs to be added such that if a book being entered has more than one author, the surname should end in “Et al”. Films should have the director entered as the author.

7. Academia

By this time, everyone was bored and fed up with the meeting and so decided to sod the rest of it and come back next week.

Everyone to write a revision guide if they feel like it.