Hey everyone, Welcome back to college. Here's some of the things we've lined up for you this week. == Week 1 Talk and Welcome Back Drinks == This Thursday , 11th February, at 7pm in QG22 we will be holding our first talk of the semester. The title for this talk is "Real World Low level optimisation" and it will be presented by Colm McCarthaigh (colmmacc). This talk will cover optimisation and performance hacks that are rooted in low-level details of how systems work, but are also applicable and usable in high level programming languages such as Java and Python. Caching, pipelining and probing strategies, performance-oriented data-structure design and statistical profiling. But don't worry, each topic will be covered in plain language and explained from the ground up, and hopefully we'll have some fun along the way. After the talk we will be heading out to the NuBar for some "Welcome back" drinks and food :) == Hoodies == Hoodies will cost €25 each. They are black with the logo embroidered on the chest, large logo embroidered on the back and you have the option to get your username embroidered on the arm. We will start taking payment for these this week. You can pay with Paypal (remember to say what size hoodie you would like and what you would like on the sleeve) or you can give your order details and payment to a committee member at designated times. The first such time will be at the first talk of the semester so 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. We will organise a table in the Hub and will have someone there for a few hours during Week 2 as well. == Admin notice: Clear out your /fast-storage == To all members who have space under /fast-storage (if you don't, or you don't know what that means, you can ignore this section) - We'll be shortly removing the /fast-storage space from carbon as the main storage array is now faster. We recommend that if you have anything that you'd like to keep there, you move it back to your home directory as soon as possible. We're removing the space as we'd like to wipe and put a newer OS on carbon to support its role as a user development server. We will of course double check to make sure nobody has anything stored there before we go and wipe it, but it'd make things go more smoothly if members clear out their space in advance. If anyone needs assistance with any of this, please email admins@redbrick.dcu.ie and we'll try to help. == Engineers Week == TOG's Engineers Week is this week. For those of you that don't know "TOG is a hackerspace based in the centre of Dublin. It is a shared space where members have a place to be creative and work on their projects in an environment that is both inspiring and supportive of both new and old technologies." For more information on TOG or to see the details of events coming up check out www.tog.ie == Upcoming Events == . Videos from the 26th Chaos Communication Congress (26C3) - Wednesday week 2 (details tbc) . Intersocs trip to Limerick (karting, drinking, socialising) . Botwars (http://www.compsoc.nuigalway.ie/wiki/botwars) - Rescheduled to March 12-14th. . Techweek - Week 5 That's all for this 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 :)