Present

David (Bucko), Christopher (MFJ), Tim, Chloe, Ian (icStatic), Robert (Murphy), benji, Adam (ajmiles), Laurence, sadiq, catherine, Phil (DrWatson)

48 Hour Game Coding Event

IBM are OK with us spending 75% of the money on the event itself, with the rest going towards prizes. Event is good to go next Friday.

Programming Competition

Laurence is going to talk about to Stephen Jarvis about getting a room booked by DCS so we can use the Audio/Visual equipment. The framework also needs to be actually coded…

Choob

The MySQL database locking “bug” needs to be fixed before Choob is unleashed in #compsoc. The bug simply locks the database when ~ 60 !tells are sent to the bot in one second. Faux will finished !events soon, while !dict is a bit verbose with what it says. Choob also has a ticketing system.

Hursley Trip

The trip is booked for November 16th, Wednesday Week 8. The coach will cost approximately £4 per person if the coach is filled with 49 people (the capacity of the coach).

Signups will open either tonight or tomorrow, and it will also get a plug in lectures. Sadiq notes that an industrial trip such as this will be attractive to engineering students that need “PDR” points.

Servers

Compsoc is acquiring two old servers / nodes from an old CSC cluster. RaW has agreed to host them in their racks. Phil (DrWatson) would like to use one as a replacement for Egor, while the other one can be used to experiment with virtual machines for developing “stuff”. They’ll need a new hard drive, but the spec of the machines is a dual P3 866Mhz, 512MB Server RAM. Phil would also need/like a 5 port 100mbit switch costing about £20.

LAN Signups

It was noticed that there were a couple of people that signed up for the LAN but didn’t even turn up. It is suggested that in future people that takes spots at the LAN but don’t turn up should be moved to the bottom (and then to the reserves) of the next LAN by means of a punishment/deterrant to others.

A priority system / a number of reserved spaces for freshers might be a good idea to encourage more freshers to come to the first LAN.

Console Tournament

Overall the console tournament quite well, even with the limited numbers of people participating. If Vince (Rakurai) would like to organise more console tournaments at future LANs then he is more than welcome to.

Music Server

It is noted that the use of the music server was slightly unbalanced throughout the LAN, and overly noisy towards the end. Phil (DrWatson) suggests that more speakers could be bought that could be placed in the middle/ends of each table, so if as a group a table doesn’t want the music on their side of the room, it can be turned off. But generally the volume needs to be kept to levels that are accceptable to those not wanting to listen to it, yet audible to those that do.

AOB

Nope.

Exec Attendance at Gaming

After a brief discussion/clarification about who is a “trusted member” for the purposes of knowing the gaming password and being left to run the session, it is decided that exec, ex-exec and Euan (zx64) are “trusted”.

It is noted that when gaming is finished, any trusted members must make sure every machine is checked to be in working order. The password to the account will also be changed to make sure only the trusted members now know the password.

Hursley Trip

Sadiq has picked up a vehicle booking form which will be filled out with Chloe soon. A meeting will be arranged for next Wednesday with Yvonne to double-check timings/dates. Tim will send out an email to arrange said meeting.

48 Hour Game Coding Competition

An event will be put up on the UWCS website this evening to advertised the event. Signups are required and guest accounts will be provided to people of the VGDS (and others) who aren’t members of Compsoc.

The guest lecture from Blitz Games (the makers of Dizzy etc) entitled “From Concept to Console” will be hosted next week. This event will be added to Tuesday’s newsletter. Video Game Design Soc have posters already prepared and will be putting them up around campus.

Programming Competition

Dates/Rooms will be finalised by Laurence and Adam (ajmiles) tonight and passed onto Sadiq so he can inform Accenture.

LAN Setup

The LAN “techies” will be Euan (zx64), Fred (Fred), David (db_rat) and Graham (BigG), places are reserved for these four. We have the room booked from 6pm on Friday, so setup will start then, but as per the last LAN, no setting up of PC’s until 8pm.

Since the seating plan worked quite well at the BFL another one will be drawn up by Laurence in the next day or so. Signs to be put up on the doors will be modified and reprinted so randoms don’t keep walking into the LAN asking what’s going on. Some smaller signs to stick over the power sockets in LIB1 downstairs will be made too.

Phil (DrWatson) asks for a quick list of who has what in the way of gigabit switches to make sure we have the required hardware.

New Website

There has been a change of plan with regards to the website.

The new events system is quite hard to get working, and a pain to code. It is noted that the current website is not easily maintainable, and if once some of the “older” members leave no one knows how to use it, we’re in trouble. With people like David (db_rat), Euan (zx64) and Laurence involved they’ll be people who know what they’re doing for years to come.

It is also noted that it others outside the main group responsible for the website should be informed how it’s coming along (in case they later take interest).

Ticketing System

Phil (DrWatson) outlines that there three possible ways of going about the new ticketing system.

1. All messages sent to the exec list become tickets except those that come from exec members. One or two exec members filter out the spam from the system, and mark tickets that are worthwhile responding to.

1. We setup an email address such as “newtickets at uwcs dot co dot uk” and tickets are sent there, again with people filtering out spam/rubbish.

1. We setup a webform on the uwcs website where people can submit tickets that way.

Phil may be able to start making the bones of a web ticketing system on Sunday depending on workload.

None of the three possibilities was decided on.

Mailing Lists

Phil (DrWatson) will setup the new social/academic/gaming/admin mailing lists so people are only spammed with the emails they actually want to receieve. Things like the minutes and agenda can go to the admin list.

The spam filter will also be poked very soon so it stops gobbling up so many emails.

BOT / Choob

JafferBOT is a new suggestion courtesy of Phil (DrWatson). The upside is that it still has the initials JB, like JinglyBOT. Skumby suggested Clippy, and “JanglyBOT” is another suggestion we’d need to run past Matt (Banana) if people liked it.

Of the exec members present, Sadiq, DrWatson, Tim, Chloe and Laurence voted in favour of JanglyBOT, reaching a majority. As a backup plan JafferBOT could be used, or failing that “NoodlyBOT”.

The BOT changeover will hopefully happen on Wednesday afternoon.

AOB

Nope!