Termcard for Michaelmas Term 2006

Freshers' drinks

Thursday 12th October, 20:00
Lamb and Flag

This is a chance for freshers (and others new to Compsoc) to meet existing members and find out about the society. We'll be there all evening, so drop by whenever you're free. We shouldn't be too hard to find. :-)

Tour of OUCS

Tuesday 17th October, 18:00
OUCS

A tour of the University Computing services, with a chance to see the computers that run the network, some shiny bits of networking kit, and meet the people who keep it all running smoothly.

Computer Games Development

Speaker: Harvey Wheaton (Electronic Arts)

Thursday 19th October, 20:00
Pusey Room, Keble College

A senior engineer from Electronic Arts will present on what he does on a day to day basis as far as developing on next gen consoles (i.e. Nintendo Wii etc.) and also gaming career opportunities for CS grads. In addition, Harvey Wheaton (Senior Development Director) will show some of what EA are doing with the Harry Potter franchise and give some insight as to what a development director does.

Architecture of the Linux Kernel

Speaker: Jon Masters

Monday 23rd October, 20:00
Comlab

Jon Masters of Red Hat will talk about the modular nature of the Linux kernel; in particular, how this helps make porting the kernel to new platforms easy. (This should be an accessible talk, despite the subject matter — don't feel put off if you're unfamiliar with kernel programming and so on.)

Mice, llamas and IBM Pervasive Messaging middleware

Speaker: Dr Andy Stanford-Clark

Wednesday 8th November, 20:00
Denis Sciama Lecture Theatre

"What do mice and llamas have to do with IBM Pervasive Messaging middleware?"

Dr Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM Master Inventor, will talk about some of the more unusual applications of the Pervasive Messaging software that he and his team are developing at IBM. From monitoring oil pipelines in Alaska, to tracking llamas on the Isle of Wight!

Applying Good Practice to a Misused Language

Speaker: David Goodwin, Kat Goodwin

Wednesday 15th November, 20:00
Comlab

Over the past few years, PHP has become the tool of choice for aspiring web developers everywhere — picked up and misused by millions. As a language that is easy to get started with, through examples and code snippets across the web, it is cut and pasted to death, leaving a legacy of unreadability and insecurity and a reputation as a 'bad' language.

David Goodwin and Kat Goodwin of Pale Purple will discuss some of the pitfalls of PHP development and introduce a range of tools and techniques that can be used to transform a lacklustre PHP amateur into a polished professional. It will focus mainly on applying good design and testing to projects, and introduce some of the popular tools that will help developers to achieve clean, secure, maintainable code.

Get the slides from this talk.

Termly General Meeting

Thursday 23rd November, 18:00
Big Bang

Come tell us what you liked and disliked this term, and what you want to see next term! Followed by a meal. This is traditionally a curry, but the current committee seem more keen on sausages.

Google's Distributed Computation Infrastructure

Speaker: Murray Stokely

Friday 24th November, 20:00
Denis Sciama Lecture Theatre

Murray Stokely of Google will introduce four of the key components used to build massively parallel applications on Google's infrastructure: GFS, MapReduce, Sawzall, and Bigtable. The talk will also describe the recent Summer of Code program which several Oxford students participated in.

Hardware Virtualization Technology

Speaker: Martyn Spink, Geraint North

Wednesday 29th November, 20:00
Denis Sciama Lecture Theatre

Martyn Spink and Geraint North will speak about Transitive's QuickTransit® technology, which allows software compiled for one processor and operating system to run transparently on a different processor and operating system without recompilation or patching. The most famous use of this technology is probably Apple's Rosetta, which allows applications compiled for PowerPC Macs to run on the new Intel-based Macs. Martyn and Geraint will show this in action as well as demonstrating another use of the technology.