- Announce-RedBrick - lists.redbrick.dcu.ie

Downtime Friday 19th (Tomorrow) at 5pm
by Eoghan Cotter 18 Mar '10

18 Mar '10

Redbrick will be rebooted tomorrow evening (19th March) at 5pm in order to facilitate kernel updates to our machines, this downtime shouldn't take longer then one hour to complete. The Admin team apologises for any inconvenience caused. -- Eoghan Cotter DCU Networking Society (Redbrick) Sys Admin

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Botwars || Admin Training || Coding Contest || Geek Meet ups || Hoodies || Upcoming Events
by Emma G 14 Mar '10

14 Mar '10

Welcome to week 6, == Admin Training == Admin training resumes this week. It will be held tomorrow, Monday 15th March, at 7pm. This session will cover advanced networking, switching, routing and firewalling. It will be held in LG26 in the School of Computing. == Botwars == Congratulations to the DCU teams who took part in the coding contest in Galway at the weekend. Two DCU teams took on two NUIG CompSoc teams and basically spend all weekend building and coding a mechanical Lego robot from scratch. The winner of the Botwars contest was our very own DCU team which consisted of Conor Lynch, Tom Cashman and Thomas Butler and the other DCU team which consisted of Lotta Mikkonen and Conor Forde managed to come third. Overall a victorious weekend for DCU :) == Coding Contest == Redbrick is pleased to announce it's coding competition for 2010! There are two levels of difficulty - easy and hard, and anyone is free to enter either (although non first years will be judged far more harshly in the easy category). The easier of the two categories is to implement the board game, snakes and ladders. You may use any language and any tools on any platform. Points will be awarded for the best thought out solution, good quality code, general shininess and other nice things like that. Lots of points for making us laugh. The second, more difficult of the two contests (this one aimed at everyone else, although of course first years are welcome to enter) is to implement a program that is able to tell where you are in the DCU campus using your laptop, or other mobile device. The only rules are that you may not use any built-in location services on the device, such as built-in GPS or Google Maps location services. Other then that, you're free to implement the solution using any programming language on any platform. Prizes for both competitions will be a subset of epic (they'll be announced in the next couple of days). For both competitions you get extra points (and so a better chance of winning) for any extra/cool features you can think of to build on top of your solution. You lose points for using brainfuck or whitespace, we don't want to have to judge that :) There'll also be spot prizes if we think you deserve one. The deadline for the competition is Monday, 22nd of March. Get coding! == Geek Meet ups == Postponed due to admin training this week. We'll tell you more about it in the next announce. == Hoodies == Ok so there's a small problem with the hoodies. The company we got them off mixed up our orders so we're currently exchanging them for our correct ones. We'll keep you up to date when we know more about when we'll be getting them. == Upcoming Events == Tuesday 30th March - Annual Table Quiz - Oldbar. Have a fun week, Till next week, Emma :) -- Redbrick - Secretary 2009/2010 If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice? Save the Earth. It's the only planet with Chocolate :)

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Redbrick Coding Contest || Techweek Change of Schedule
by Lotta Mikkonen 09 Mar '10

09 Mar '10

Hi everyone, ==Redbrick Coding Contest== Feel like a challenge? Redbrick is pleased to announce it's coding competition for 2010! There are two levels of difficulty - easy and hard, and anyone is free to enter either (although non first years will be judged far more harshly in the easy category). The easier of the two categories is to implement the board game, snakes and ladders. You may use any language and any tools on any platform. The second, more difficult of the two contests (this one aimed at everyone else, although of course first years are welcome to enter) is to implement a program that is able to tell where you are in the DCU campus using your laptop, or other mobile device. For full details see : http://techweek.dcu.ie/blog/3 ==Change of Schedule== We have had a small change of plan for tomorrow. The schedule for the following days are now as follows: --Wednesday-- 2pm - Declan Tuite (School of Communications) - Interesting Past Multimedia Talks - QG22 3pm - Jeffrey Roe(Tog.ie) - Hackerspaces - QG22 4pm - Sean Hand - Build Your Own PC - QG22 5pm - Q-Zar. Meet in Hub. Sign-up : https://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/events/signup/?eventid=12 Refreshments will be provided. Strong possibility of pizza. --Thursday-- 6pm - Dave O'Connor (Google) - Sustainable Computing - QG22 7pm - Laura Czajkowski (Ubuntu.ie) - CG04 8pm - Sci-Fi Quiz (Strange Things) - Nubar Entry to the quiz is free. Refreshments between talks. Best of luck! Lotta Redbrick Chair 09/10

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Techweek || Upcoming Events
by Emma G 07 Mar '10

07 Mar '10

Hey Redbrickers, Techweek is finally here and that means awesome techy events all this week. ==Techweek== So what do we have in store for you, you ask? We have Qzar, talks on various techy topics, a quiz, a filmshowing and a trip to Galway to compete in Botwars, a robotics and coding intervarsity. So there's something fun for all :) Below is the proper list of when and what's happening each day this week. So *Drum Roll* Redbrick, Gamessoc and Strange Things present: **Monday 8th March** 1pm - Jeffrey Roe (tog.ie) - Hackerspaces - C166 7.30 - Launch party - Nubar **Tuesday 9th March** 6pm - Tom Cashman - Game Design - Q220 7pm - Eoghan Gaffney (Demonware) - Django 8pm - Strange Things - Film - CG02 **Wednesday 10th March** 2pm - Declan Tuite (School of Communications) - Interesting past Multimedia projects - QG22 4pm - Sean Hand - Build your own PC - QG22 5pm - QZar - Meet in the Hub **Thursday 11th March** 6pm - Dave O'Connor (Google) - Sustainable Computing - QG22 7pm - Laura Czajkowski (Ubuntu-ie) - Ubuntu Ireland - CG04 8pm - Strange Things Sci-Fi Quiz, Nubar **Friday 12th - Sunday 13th March** Botwars with NUIG Galway (Attendees will be contacted soon) ==Upcoming Events== Admin Training (Ongoing) 12th - 14th March - Botwars (Galway) Monday 15th March - Geekmeets begin Tuesday 30th March - Annual Table Quiz - Oldbar. Saturday 17th April - UCC Coding Contest (Cork) That's it for this week. Till next time, Emma :) -- Redbrick - Secretary 2009/2010 If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice? Save the Earth. It's the only planet with Chocolate :)

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Pints || Admin training || Botwars || Techweek || Upcoming events
by Emma G 28 Feb '10

28 Feb '10

Hey Everyone, Hope all those who were in Limerick over the weekend had a good time. So here's what's happening this week. == Pints == We haven't had a good drinking session in a while so we felt we deserve one. So tomorrow in the NuBar at 7pm, be there :) Will be a fun night. == Admin training == Have an interest in computing? Want to manage your own server? Looking to improve your chances at a technical job interview? Then come along to our admin training session on Tuesday, 2nd March, at 6.30pm. Meet in clubs and societies office (upstairs in the Hub). We'll bring you from the level of a novice Linux user to a system administrator with a set of tutorials and workshops on server setup, system management, services, network security, web hosting and more. This year we can offer a far more hands-on approach than last year by giving participants virtual machines to experiment and learn on, break, fix and break again. We’ll be mostly covering administering servers running the Linux operating system, but we’ll also have introductory sessions on OpenBSD and maybe FreeBSD or Solaris, depending on interest. We’ll be showing how to host services such as e-mail, IRC (chat), Apache (web services), DNS and LDAP, and how some of these systems are used in the real world by Redbrick, DCU and other small, medium and large organisations. So again. Tuesday. 6.30pm. meet in the Clubs and Societies office (upstairs in the Hub). == Botwars == There's still 3 places left. Again it's in Galway and we'll be going on the 12th of March. It'll cost about €10 which covers your accommodation for two nights, your entry fee to the competition and 60% of your Bus Eireann ticket. Email committee(a)redbrick.dcu.ie if you want to go. Here's what will be happening: 1. Design Build Code Challenge In this contest competitors must design, build and program a Lego NXT Robot to solve a set problem in less than 8 hours on location in NUIG on Saturday, the 13th of March. The tools used are the Lego NXT Kit(supplied) and the Microsoft Robotics Studio (you will need a laptop with it preinstalled and with bluetooth). A starter kit will be supplied on the day so do not worry if you are not fluent in C# and the MS Robotics Studio. Full details check out: http://www.compsoc.nuigalway.ie/wiki/botwars_designbuildcodechallenge 2.Botwars : In this contest competitors are asked to expand a starter kit with weapons and armour to create the ultimate Battle Bot. Rules: http://www.compsoc.nuigalway.ie/wiki/_media/nuig_bot_wars_rules.pdf Other events that will be held over the two days include a LAN, Metal Gear Solid drama production, games room and movie room. So basically an awesome weekend for next to nothing, you'd be crazy not to come. DO IT!! EMAIL TODAY :D == Techweek == Next week is techweek and we have loads of stuff planned for all of you. >From talks to Qzar. There will be a link is the next announce where you can sign up. So it will be an awesome week. == Upcoming events == March 8th - 13th Techweek (Week 5) yeay :) Tuesday March 30th Annual Redbrick Tablequiz (Week 8) That's all for this week. I haven't given a random video link in a while. Here for your viewing pleasure is my favourite link at the mo. Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5wDq_DRtXg Till next week, Emma :) -- Redbrick - Secretary 2009/2010 If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice? Save the Earth. It's the only planet with Chocolate :)

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Announce Correction
by Lotta Mikkonen 22 Feb '10

22 Feb '10

Hi everyone, A correction to what was said in the announce. The part about jobs at Google is incorrect. It should say "We have been given the details of someone at Google who is offering to help people and give advice on how to apply for jobs. If you would like her details email us and we will forward them on to you." Apologies for any confusion. Lotta

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First Irish Collegiate Programming Competition - IrlCPC
by Lotta Mikkonen 21 Feb '10

21 Feb '10

We thought this may be of interest to our members. Would you like to put together a team? -----Original Message----- From: Dr Sabin Tabirca [mailto:tabirca@cs.ucc.ie] Sent: 12 February 2010 16:15 To: David.Abrahamson(a)scss.tcd.ie; Mike.Scott(a)computing.dcu.ie; gerard.lyons(a)nuigalway.ie; joe.carthy(a)ucd.ie; annette.mcelligott(a)ul.ie; adamw(a)cs.nuim.ie; eecs-hos(a)qub.ac.uk Subject: First Irish Collegiate Programming Competition - IrlCPC Importance: High Dear Head of School/Department, We will be very grateful to you if you can forward this email to your school/dept's students. This is a call for participation to the first Irish Collegiate Programming Competition for teams of students. I hope you can encourage some good students from your undergraduate degrees to participate into. Best Regards, Sabin, Barry and Anne ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dear Student, This email is to invite student teams from the Irish Universities and Institutes of Technologies to participate to the first Irish Collegiate Programming Contest. There is no limit for the number of teams from the same institution. The competition requires the students to have knowledge of algorithms, good programming skills and abilities for problem solving. Irish Collegiate Programming Contest (IrlCPC) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The UCC ACM Student Chapter and the Department of Computer Science, University College Cork are hosting the 1st annual Irish Collegiate Programming Contest (IrlCPC) on the 17th of April 2010. Rules ~~~~~ The IrlCPC competition is based on teams of 3 students and a coach, all from the same third level institutions. The students must all be registered on undergraduate degrees, while the coach can be either a full time researcher or member of academic staff. The team will have only one computer to solve a set of 10 problems within 4 hours. The difficulty of the problems will vary from simple (course work level) to challenging (ACM competition level). No internet connection is allowed to the teams. The teams may use any programming language they like, however Java and C/C++ are favoured. Each problem will be tested against several data input tests and will receive up to 100 points. The team that scores the highest number of points will win the IrlCPC competition. Registration ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Online team registration must take place before Friday 19th of March 2010. Online registration will open shortly available at http://acm.ucc.ie/irlcpc/registration. The registration requires to each team to provide the names of the 3 students and the name of the coach. A registration fee of 50 euro is also required for each team which is payable during the competition day. Competition Day Program (17/04/10) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The most likely program for the competition day will be as follows: 09.30 - 10.00 Registration and welcoming of the participants 10.00 - 14.00 Competition and internal meetings for coaches 14.00 - 15.00 Break 15.00 - 16.00 Problem Solving Discussions 16.00 - 17.00 Final Conclusions Important Links + Emails ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The IrlCPC contest page http://acm.ucc.ie/irlcpc/ The IrlCPC registration page http://acm.ucc.ie/irlcpc/registration University College Cork page http://www.ucc.ie Computer Science Dept @ UCC page http://www.cs.ucc.ie Organiser Emails: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Anne Magner, Chair of UCC ACM Student Chapter, annemagner(a)acm.org Dr Barry O'Sullivan, Computer Science Dept, b.osullivan(a)cs.ucc.ie Dr Sabin Tabirca, Computer Science Dept, tabirca(a)cs.ucc.ie _________________________________________________ Dr Sabin Tabirca, Senior Lecturer National University of Ireland, Cork Dept of Computer Science, Western Gateway Building College Road, Cork, Ireland +353 21 420 5915 http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~stabirca _________________________________________________

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Ragweek|| Botwars || Links from Talk || Events Officer || Hoodies || Spaces for Limerick trip || Jobs in Google || Events coming up
by Emma G 21 Feb '10

21 Feb '10

Hey Everyone, What's happening this week: ==Ragweek== Dare day: will be happening this Tuesday, 23rd February, at 4pm. For those who don't know what's involved in dare day: . Basically it's teams of 2 or more. . Teams are given a list of tasks to complete, these will range from swapping clothes with a member of the opposite sex to doing a good deed, and for every task completed teams need photo evidence as proof. . First team back with the shorest time, all tasks done and photos shown wins. . Awesome prizes to be won :) Note: Cameras won't be supplied so best to bring your own. Even use your phone's camera, if it has one. Adopt-a-brick: All this week you can adopt your very own brick. We came across a very sad looking bunch of bricks that need loving homes. For only €1 will you "Adopt-a-brick"? Guaranteed cuteness :) and all money is going to Ragweek. Look out for us around campus selling them :) Tech Advice: Computer problems? Need help with something Techy? We'll be giving Tech advice all this week. Make a donation and see what we can do :) ==Botwars== The ultimate finale to Techweek. Redbrick and Gamessoc will be heading to Galway on Friday the 12th of March to compete in Botwars, NUIG's robotics competition. 1. Design Build Code Challenge In this contest competitors must design, build and program a Lego NXT Robot to solve a set problem in less than 8 hours on location in NUIG on Saturday, the 13th of March. The tools used are the Lego NXT Kit(supplied) and the Microsoft Robotics Studio (you will need a laptop with it preinstalled and with bluetooth). A starter kit will be supplied on the day so do not worry if you are not fluent in C# and the MS Robotics Studio. Full details check out: http://www.compsoc.nuigalway.ie/wiki/botwars_designbuildcodechallenge 2.Botwars : In this contest competitors are asked to expand a starter kit with weapons and armour to create the ultimate Battle Bot. Rules: http://www.compsoc.nuigalway.ie/wiki/_media/nuig_bot_wars_rules.pdf Other events that will be held over the two days include a LAN, Metal Gear Solid drama production, games room and movie room. The cost? About €10. Your accommodation for two nights, your entry fee to the competition and 60% of your Bus Eireann ticket will be covered. If you would like to compete please email committee(a)redbrick.dcu.ie as soon as possible. This is an all ages event. == Links to slides and vids from the talk == Links to Tobi's slides and vids from last weeks talk can be found at: http://redbrick.dcu.ie/~muelli/stuff/26C3-publicviewing.pdf The Links to the talks can be found by browsing http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/events.en.html. We watched : http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/events/3596.en.html http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/events/3567.en.html" ==Events Officer== We would like to congratulate Stephanie Coleman (steph) who is now our new events officer. == Hoodies == Just a quick note: Hoodies have been ordered and should arrive in the next 2 weeks. == Spaces left for Limerick trip == Two spaces have opened up for the Limerick trip due to drop outs. Again it'll be on Friday the 26th of February and we'll be coming back on Sunday the 28th. So anyone who wants to go email: committee(a)redbrick.dcu.ie == Jobs in Google == Anyone looking for a job or tips on how to get a job in Google. Email us at: committee(a)redbrick.dcu.ie and we'll forward on your details to our people at Google and see what they can do. == Events coming up soon == Feb. 26th - 28th Limerick Intersocs trip to see Matt Zimmerman/Ubuntu and opensource talks Admin Training starts (Week 4) March 8th - 13th Techweek (Week 5) Tuesday March 30th Annual Redbrick Tablequiz (Week 8) That's it for this week. Enjoy Ragweek and be generous :) Till next week, Emma :) -- Redbrick - Secretary 2009/2010 If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice? Save the Earth. It's the only planet with Chocolate :).

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Web Server Maintenance, Saturday 20th Feb 21:00
by Andrew Martin 17 Feb '10

17 Feb '10

Hey, Apologies again for the second announce mail this week. We'd just like to make members aware that the Redbrick web server will be undergoing maintenance from 9PM on Saturday evening. Websites will remain mostly available during that time (we have a backup web server that will be running for the duration of it) but users will not be able to log in to murphy. When murphy comes back online, it will be running Linux (instead of Solaris 10). This will allow us to better meet the needs of users in terms of software they might require to build web applications, among other things. Any users who are crazy enough to have compiled CGI programs will need to rebuild them for Linux afterwards :) Thanks, -Andrew

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26C3 Viewing || Limerick Trip || Hoodies || Google || Botwars - Galway Trip
by Emma G 14 Feb '10

14 Feb '10

Heya, Here's Redbrick's news for this week! Oh and reminder only 3 weeks to go to tech week :) ==26C3 Viewing== The Chaos Communication Congress is an annual event that takes place in Berlin right after Christmas. It is held by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Germany. This years iteration (26C3) made headlines by having GSM cracked or LegicPrime security subverted. Talks of the conference were recorded and the best ones will be shown at DCU! :-) Tobi will also introduce you to German hacker culture and answer your questions about the CCC. The Public Viewing will take place on Wednesday, 2009-02-17 in LG26 (School of Computing) from 4.30pm, followed by traditional post talk drinks. ==Limerick Trip== We will be going to Limerick on Friday the 26th of February and will be coming back on Sunday the 28th. We will be attending a talk by Matt Zimmerman, the technical leader of the Ubunti project on the Saturday. Skynet (Limerick's networking society) will then be bringing us out so we can experience University of Limerick's nightlife. To sign up for this event follow this link and click on the sign up link at the bottom of the page : https://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/events/signup/?eventid=11 == Hoodies == If you'd like to order one then bring €25 and remember to tell us what size you'd like and if you'd like your username on the arm. The final date for placing your order is this Thursday as we will be placing the orders on Friday. Times we will have a table set up in the Hub to place orders : Monday : 1 - 2pm Tuesday : 12 - 1pm Wednesday : 1 - 2pm Thursday : 1 - 2pm We will also be taking orders at our talk on Wednesday and you can grab a random committee member and place your order at any time as well. == Google == Redbrick met with Google last week and were given some useful links to Google projects that may be of interest to our members. Google's Code University has tutorials on topics such as C++, Java, Python, Ajax and algorithms. http://code.google.com/edu/ Summer of Code is a programme where students are paid to work on open source projects. The 2010 programme has been launched and you can apply through the following link http://socghop.appspot.com/ == Botwars - Galway Trip == This was rescheduled to the weekend of Techweek ( Week 5 - March 12th - 14th). We're still working out the final details but if you're provisionally interested you can email committee(a)redbrick.dcu.ie and we'll keep you posted on updates. All all for this week till next time, Emma :) -- Redbrick - Secretary 2009/2010 If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice? Save the Earth. It's the only planet with Chocolate :)

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