WVU ACM News

Happiness is an Engineering Driven Culture

Mon, 09 Nov 2009

UNIX/Mac programmer, author, and google employee, Mark Dalrymple, came down from Pittsburgh last week to speak at our general meeting. His talk was phenomenal -- covered topics from the fabled Google 20% time to things he wished he would have payed attention to early on. Most importantly, to put all of our code in version control if it grows larger than 100 lines!!

LOUD Platform

Sun, 08 Nov 2009

LOUD Fest drew in a few guests but not really that many. If anyone is interested in checking out the development portal, please see the link below:

LOUD Platform Project

The development portal tells you anything you need to know to get LOUD running at home and also has guides for setting up LCSEE Repositories as well as for making your first Debian package. Highly recommended.

WVU ACM Listserv

Thu, 01 Oct 2009

We have a listserv! The club had one back in 2007, I think, but it has since been closed, so I opened one up with the college.

Details and what you need to know:
- Firstly, the address is wvu_acm@listserv.wvu.edu (case insensitive)
- Before you sign up, please realize that the list is completely open (in the free way) to ALL members of the list. This means that anyone on the list can post to the list, but don't fret! There are multiple ways to get mail from the listserv; you can sign up for a daily digest if you you'd rather not be spammed with tons of emails. But, that's not the vision I have for the list and I hope everyone keeps it clean. I don't want to have to moderate it like a big dictator. I will primarily be using the list for meeting announcements and followup material.
- Also, the list is archived online if you'd rather not get the emails at all and just check it there...
- The subscriber list is hidden, so you're completely safe. Go ahead, sigh it out.
- Dr. Menzies and I have ultimate control of the list. So, if we don't like the configuration it's simple to change.
So, I encourage you to sign up and please be responsible.

To sign up, go to this link: http://listserv.wvu.edu & simply create an account, find the list (hint: at the bottom), and then subscribe (note: you have to confirm the subscription).

GIT Lecture Followup

Tue, 29 Sep 2009

Thanks to everyone who came out to the ACM/FSG Meeting & big thanks to Ricky for presenting! In followup I wanted to provide everyone with a set of boss links to get them going with git:

Lecture Slides, courtesy of Ricky: slides

Where to get git: git scm

Github (free git hosting): github

Pro git (amazing free book, creative commons): progit

Dropbox (share files on different machines): dropbox

Print git branch in bash prompt (be like Ricky): #!/bin/bash

Next Meeting Planned for 9/24

Tue, 15 Sep 2009

The next ACM/FSG meeting will be held on Thursday, Sept. 24th @ 6:30pm in 801ESB. There will be pizza in adequate quantity.

We'll be covering some club business mentioned last time [T-Shirt's & FSG Nominations] and then passing the buck to Ricky Hussmann.

Lecture: Source Control w/ GIT by Ricky Hussmann
GIT is used by many popular organizations to maintain their code base. Several good examples are: The Linux Kernel, Fedora, Digg, GNOME, Ruby on Rails, Samba, Wine... and tons of others. I hope you saw atleast one that you recognize or use; Goes to show how big GIT is becoming and I hope that sparks some interest.

First Meeting of the Semester

Wed, 9 Sep 2009

Our first meeting will be held on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 @ 7:00pm in 801 Engineering Sciences Building, on the Evansdale campus.. We'll have the familar pizza and absolutely everyone/anyone is invited.

The lecture is being presented by Jared Crawford and is on "Apple iPhone Development." If you didn't know, Jared made the iWVU iPhone app (officially supported by WVU). It's free in the app store if you want to check it out.

He'll be covering topics such as his background with the iPhone, what you need to get started, the language used (Objective-C), dealing with Apple (App Store, NDA's, Apple Legal) and how to make money as an iPhone dev.

Jared's website: http://jaredcrawford.org

ACM @ Freshman Engineerfest

Mon, 31 Aug 2009

We'll be tabling at Freshman Engineerfest this coming Wednesday, September 2nd. This event starts at 6:30pm (ends at 8:30pm) and is located in the NRCCE Buidling on the Evansdale Campus. Come check us out! We'll be announcing our first meeting as well as attempting to gain interest from new Freshman.

ACM to Host Linux 101 w/ WVU FSG

Mon, 31 Aug 2009

We'll be hosting a set of Linux Introduction lectures along with the WVU Free Software Group this coming week. The first of these will be held on Thursday, September 3rd @ 6:00pm and 7:00pm in 756ESB. Others will be held on the following week, dates to be announced depending on interest. Sign ups have gone around the CS 110 and CS 111 classes last Friday.

Here is a look at the lecture slides:

Call for Speakers Fall 2009

Wed, 12 Aug 2009

Greetings All,

I sent out a call for ACM speakers in early Spring for the Fall 2009 semester. I'd like to poll everyone once more to see if there is any interest in signing up to speak at one of our general meetings.

The WVU Chapter of the ACM hosts speakers throughout the year to introduce a wide variety of topics to curious undergrads. This could be something you're a self-taught expert on or even what you're currently researching. It's a great way to let undergrads know what's going on out there in industry as well as academia and gets them excited about new technologies/ideas. We appreciate hearing what you have to tell us.

In years past we've had topics such as:
- The CDBS packaging system
- Version control with subversion
- Java web toolkit
- Open source
- Intelligence in strategy games
- Datamining: truth, justice, the American way of life
Among many others...

If you're interested in sharing your topic with the club or have an idea regarding a topic you would like to see at a meeting, please send me an email.

Thank you,

Andrew Butcher
--------------
ACM President - WVU ACM Chapter && LCSEE Sysstaffer
Andrew.Butcher@mail.wvu.edu

FSG to Host Richard Stallman

Wed, 05 August 2009

http://csee.wvu.edu/~abutcher/stallman.jpg Stallman, The Man
FSG (The WVU Free Software Group) will be hosting the creator of the Free Software Movement and founder of the Free Software Foundation. The date is set tentatively for February 17th of the 2010 Spring Semester.

Here's a little blip about Richard Stallman:

Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award, and the the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates.

Here is a tentative abstract for the talk: Copyright vs Community

Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by the printing press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks, and only draconian punishments can enforce it.

The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for draconian punishments, and to increase their copyright powers, while suppressing public access to technology. But if we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright--to promote progress, for the benefit of the public--then we must make changes in the other direction.

If you're at all interested (which if you've come here I would hope that you are) I encourage you to check out the following links:

Stallman's Personal Site
Event on Facebook

Meeting 9/10/2008

Sat, 13 September 2008

Here are the minutes from our first meeting of the year (9/10/2008) as transcribed by Joe. Big plans include the yearly LAN party(s), movie nights?, speakers for the year as well as hypothetical topics, and travelling meetings. If you have any further ideas or comments, please forward them to Greg.

Minutes 9/10/2008

Image Galleries

Tue, 20 May 2008

I finally got everything together for the new image gallery section so, check out the images from the Ted Nelson talk and look forward to more image galleries soon.

http://wvu.acm.org/gallery2/

An Evening with the Inventor of Hypertext: Theodor Holm Nelson

Sat, 22 Mar 2008

When: Thursday April 3, 2008.

Where: Room 113, Mineral Resources Building, Evansdale Campus.

"The computer field has accepted an ancient definition of documents and locked it down. They think paper is rightful just because it's customary.Indeed, today's systems simulate paper under glass: you can't write on it or connect to it. There is no connection of quotations to their origins-- a fundamental issue widely ignored. There are no authorial aids except those which enforce hierarchy (outliners). And today's hypertext systems,including the Web, embed connections so that none can be added by others.We seek to correct these errors with more general forms of structure:parallelism, cross-connection and interpenetration, implementing the openly-defined transliterary data structure in a different kind of 3D (folding space)."

For more information, visit: http://wvu.acm.org/activities/2008-04-03/

Finalized LAN Party Information

Thurs, 6 Mar 2008

As per the meeting tonight, we were able to finalize all the plans for the upcoming ACM LAN Party. Here are the details.

When: Sunday, April 13th, 2008
Time: Starting at 2pm
Set-up at 1pm

As a reminder: The ACM LAN Party is open to all students. The LAN party will be structured as a team based tournament involving several games on multiple consoles, which include:the Xbox 360, PS2 and Wii.
The tournament requires that teams consist of at least two and contain no more than four members, although singles are encouraged to sign up and may possibly be matchedwith smaller groups or other single players. An admission fee will be necessary for entry into the tournament but the amount has not yet been determined.

The games that will be played include:
1. Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
2. NCAA Football (PS2 or Xbox)
3. Excite Truck (Wii)
4. Possibly Guitar Hero or DDR
5. Super Smash Brother's Brawl

A champion will need to be chosen from each team to represent them in the single player games. Prizes will be available for the top teams in attendance.
We look forward to seeing you there!

Next ACM Meeting + Wireless LAN Networks/LAN Planning

Thurs, 6 Mar 2008

The next ACM meeting will be this Thursday, March 6th at 6:30 PM in room 849 ESB.

Our guest speaker will be Mohammad Hossien Yaghmaee, a visiting professor from the Ferdoswi University of Mashhad. His talk will be on Wireless Sensor Networks.

We will also continue planning for the upcoming gaming party.

As always, new members are welcome. Refreshments will be served, and this event will count as an out-of-class experience for freshman engineering.

Next ACM Meeting + Gaming Party News

Mon, 18 Feb 2008

The ACM Gaming Party has been postponed due to lack of time to get things organized and advertised. We will reschedule it at our next meeting.

Our next meeting will take place on February 28 at 6:30 PM in room 849 ESB.

Raghu Doppalapudi will give a talk on AJAX-based web app development using Google Web Toolkit.

As always, refreshments will be provided and new members are welcome. This will count as an out-of-class experience for freshmen engineers.

-Greg

Engineering Week LAN Party 2008

Wed, 13 Feb 2008

******CANCELLED******

What: LAN PARTY
When: Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Where: Room 756 Engineering Sciences Building (Evansdale Campus)

As a part of engineering week, the WVU ACM chapter will be hosting a LAN Party/Competition which is open to all students. The LAN party will be structured as a team based tournament involving several games on multiple consoles, which include the Xbox 360, PS2 and Wii. The tournament requires that teams consist of at least two and contain no more than four members, although singles are encouraged to sign up and may possibly be matched with smaller groups or other single players. An admission fee will be necessary for entry into the tournament but the amount has not yet been determined.

The games that will be played include:
1. Halo 3 (Xbox 360)
2. NCAA Football (PS2 or Xbox)
3. Excite Truck (Wii)
4. Possibly Guitar Hero or DDR

A champion will need to be chosen from each team to represent them in the single player games. Prizes will be available for the top teams in attendance.
We look forward to seeing you there!

LAN Party notes from Dugald

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 21:27:25 GMT

Here is a rundown of what was decided at last night's meeting for the LAN party:

I will post an online survey to determine the games between Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake 3, Battlefield 1942, and Call of Duty. (Do we want to use two games for the tournament?)

We would like to get away from using the CS101 labs so we have more room to stretch out. However, we will have to find someplace willing to give us ample time for an acceptable cost. The suggestions were NRCCE, and the Towers rooms (only good for a weekend).

I will be attempting to get my hands on a Wii in the coming week to use as a prize. I mentioned after the meeting that we may want to raffle off the Wii and offer up something smaller such as a Nintendo DS as a prize. The Wii would probably be a hefty fund-raiser. Other prizes will be Gift Certificates and ACM swag TBD after we have a head count for the tournament.

We will be trying to get sponsors to provide us with product, coupons, and any appropriate door prizes. The Sponsors suggested are:
Redbull: Daniel will handle this again
Kroger area restaurants: Adam Dorsey
Downtown area restaurants: Joe D'Allesandro
GameStop:Ricky is going to get something good for us.

Anyone want to volunteer to talk to some drink vendors?

The task for next week will to see what we've been offered, review current survey results (will 2 weeks be enough?), and start deciding on advertising. We should get the word out fast. Make mention of potential prizes and games.

Would a meeting next week at the same time and place be acceptable to everyone? We can even start earlier since Brian won't be holding us up with a review session.

Thanks for the help everyone!

~Dugald

PS, if you're talking to businesses on our behalf here are some things to mention that could help attain sponsorship:
We are a student organization
We are the computer science professional society
Time frame (11/27-12/1)
We could advertise on our fliers
~50 participants
Mention we have potential prizes as a Wii, DS

Site in Internet Explorer [updated]

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 17:30:03 GMT

My appologies to all IE (Internet Explorer) users. I loaded the site in IE6 and things look a bit funky. I'll try to get the CSS sorted out ASAP.
- Daniel

[update]
OK, things should be fine now. If you notice anything out of the ordinary, drop me a note at dshaw@csee.wvu.edu.

[November 1st] SIGGRAPH - Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 17:27:53 GMT

"Dr. Tim McGraw of the CSEE department attended the 2006 main conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH). He will be discussing the conference in general, some of the exhibit events, and the student volunteer program (which covers the conference registration fee of $345+, among other things). For anyone interested in computer graphics (a category that includes game development), SIGGRAPH is a great place to meet new people, gain a wealth of knowledge, and network with professionals in the field.

In addition to Dr. McGraw's talk, the ACM officers will be speaking briefly on just what the ACM is, what we do, benefits of membership, etc."

More info at http://wvu.acm.org/activities/2006-11-01/

LanPartyTWO planning meeting update

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:44:44 GMT

Note that the meeting will be in ESB 756, not 728 (which probably doesn't even exist). Sorry for the confusion.
- Daniel

Special Meeting for LanPartyTWO planning

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 23:06:25 GMT

Dugald has scheduled a meeting for Monday, October 23rd in ESB ~~728~~ 756 to discuss and begin planning LanPartyTWO.