Compsoc Exec Minnits

8 March 2003

Present

• David Buckley
• Phil Stoneman
• Henry Southgate
• Adam Bowen
• Christian Bates
• James Ross
• Richard Wilson
• Euan MacGregor
• Christopher Boyle
• David de la Motte
• Sadiq Jaffer
• Christopher Fanning

Guest Lecture

“Dr Solomon” agreed to do a talk. Phil to confirm date and ask about travelling costs. The talk is likely to be about programming and personal anecdotes about starting a business. It was suggested that we use one of the library lecture theatres for the talk.

Activity Session

This is basically a group learning session on some of the more interesting aspects of Computer Science. The structuring so far is to cover four topics over an afternoon, with a ten minute talk on that topic followed by (randomly selected) groups of four working on a problem related to the current topic over an hour, hand in their work and move onto the next topic. To finish off, there might be a general (computer related) knowledge quiz, then finally the marking and prize giving. Topics that were suggested we use were:
* Towers of Hanoi (i.e. recursion)
* The Seven Bridges of Koenigsberg (i.e. graph theory)
Further discussion to happen in the next term on when, where and other topics.

Perl Tutorial

David Buckley obtained Henry’s slides and is to book the room.

Comic Relief

Phil finished the poster, but was to revise the map before we could post it around campus. Recommended locations for putting up posters were the labs in DCS, the Ramphal building and either end of the ITS corridor. Phil is to make printouts of the posters and distribute to the exec via their pigeon holes, and to also make an announcement to the appropriate newsgroups. Entry fee was decided at two pounds per person. People to be placed in teams of four at random, with teams competing in a league style (rather than a knockout style). It was decided to only allow people to join in up until about an hour after the announced start time. In anticipation of more people turning up than available PCs, Phil is to check with ITS that we can use the other PC lab. In the interests of raising more money, bids can be countered (and the counter-bids can be countered and so on). Things that can be bought include changing the server settings, swapping teams. Sadiq is to talk to the administrators of the local Direct Connect hub about getting them to advertise our tournament in their MOTD, and Phil is to add a plug to the various MOTDs on the services.

Society Jobs

Some societies need help setting up sites. James to publish his websetup script. Sadiq suggested inviting members to help out by offering their services which are to then be pooled and then people can be assigned to work on specific jobs, with someone from the exec overseeing the job. David Buckley to write a system to help organise this, although the requirements for this system need more discussing. Christian to talk to the LARP society and Sadiq to mail the Polis society about what requirements they have.

LANs

LAN rooms to be booked tonight.

Shop

David Buckley has fixed it. Phil is to update the list of books present. David Buckley suggested extending the interface to the shop so that e.g. http://www.warwickcompsoc.co.uk/shop/cs118 would bring up a page listing all books related to the course CS118. James to implement this.

Servers

It is desired that each server run as a different user for security reasons. David Buckley to administrate the tetrinet server, Robert Stacey to administrate the Quake3 servers. Richard Wilson will perform a security audit.

Compsoc Exec Minnits

1 March 2003

Present

• David Buckley
• Christian Bates*
• Adam Bowen
• James Ross
• Henry Southgate
• Phil Stoneman
• Sadiq Jaffer*
• David de la Motte
• Euan Macgregor*
• Christopher Fanning
  (* new exec)

Agenda

Tutorials, new exec, budget, Comic Relief, University of Portsmouth Computing Society, LANs, shop, sponsorship, VNC.

Tutorials

Perl tutorial to be held in weeks three and four, possibly also in week five of term three.
Quake3 tutorial to be held in week three or four.

New exec

There are three courses run by the Union for incoming exec members: duty of care, equal ops and managing finances. Sadiq is to take duty of care (things like getting insurance for trips), Phil to take equal ops and Christian (by virtue of being the incoming Treasurer) to take managing finances.

Budget

We’ve budgeted for more games, and a new LAN server to replace Teapot.
Sadiq raised the question of what it could be used for outside of LANs.
One possible use put forward was to host the various patches and demos of popular games, and try to get it hosted somewhere on campus. Sadiq offered to have a talk with people at Warwick Piazza and Phil noted that we might be able to use the Filmsoc cupboard.
Other goodies to go on the budget:
About £50 for tutorials (e.g. for slides) and about £20 for the freshers feyre stand. Some business card CDs for members in lieu of membership cards. These CDs to contain: a bootable micro Linux distribution, phoenix, putty, VNC, etc.

Comic Relief

At the LAN, we decided to have some sort of tournament for Comic Relief, Sadiq volunteered to contact them to get information and it had not arrived in time for the exec meeting.
The game most likely to be played is Counterstrike, pending the resolution of a problem with the sound (the fairly recently added voice mod kills sound). Options to explore are 1) Prod the configuration some more, 2) Run an older version or 3) Run something else.
It was noted that the problem with 3 is that CS is more well known than any alternatives, and that People would bitch about using an old version of HalfLife and/or Counterstrike.

Advertising the tournament:
Mention it in a newsletter, try to get it mentioned on the unofficial Direct Connect hub, newsgroup postings, post it on website, posters at DCS, Union and around the University.

It was agreed to hold it on the 14th of March (which is Comic Relief night), even though it was the last day of term.

Phil offered to do the posters, and Sadiq offered to talk to people (e.g. general plugging, DC hub admin, etc.)

The printing of the posters was left to be discussed later, although LazerLizard was mentioned as an option.

University of Portsmouth Computing Society

Now hosted on Molotov, including DNS.
A weekend road trip to Portsmouth was suggested as an activity for the third term, probably just before the BFL and also possibly invite a few of their members to attend. Phil to speak to people over there. It was suggested that we hire a minibus to transport ourselves down there, and it was noted that the UPCS people would have to arrange any transport themselves.

LANs

It was discussed whether there were any other available locations that could house a similar capacity as LIB1 and LIB2 (combined rooms has a power limit of twenty PCs per room, although recent LANs have “borrowed” power from downstairs to accommodate everyone in LIB2). There were none.

Since there are exams in the third term, it was questioned whether to bother with having a LAN towards the start of term as well as the BFL. We decided to have one at the end of week two.

The BFL is to run from Monday (or maybe Tuesday) until Thursday of Week 30. The rooms are to be booked ahead of time.

Shop

Part of the Compsoc site that isn’t available from the main page is the shop, which has links to various books that can be purchased via a referrer link. David Buckley is to update and fix this.

Sponsorship

Not much done so far, we’ve possibly missed when most of the companies come looking. It was noted that the main thing Compsoc does is gaming, and not as many academic related things which would attract sponsors.
Sadiq mentioned that a company that does LANs in London often gets sponsored by big names like ATI (e.g. free Radeon 9700 for a LAN related competition), even though their turnout is comparable to this year’s LANs. He said he would investigate what sort of sponsorship our LANs could get.

VNC

Sadiq brought up the idea of hosting some Linux desktops accessible through VNC which members could sign up for to try Linux without installing it. Since this would be demanding of resources, Sadiq proposed we approach DCS to try to get some hardware and said he would talk to Mike Joy about it.
h5.