On Thursday, the 1st of December, you know what begins? That's right, Advent! A time for preparation for the Holiday season. However, if for whatever reason, Advent isn't confusing or puzzling enough for you, may we suggest something more up your alley: The Advent of Code!

The premise is simple. From the 1st of December all the way up to Christmas Day, 2 new coding challenges will be published every day on the Advent of Code website. There's no time limits or even language limits present: Some even do it by hand! We're aware that many of you are busy with exams at this time, so if you wish, you can still take on the challenges in January.

We have a channel on our discord server where you can discuss and share all your triumphs and difficulties. Join it here: https://discord.gg/XJc6GgZp67

There is a Java template available to help get started with some of the challenges that await you... (it works in various IDE's and BlueJ as well!): https://gitlab.com/Brendan_Golden-aoc/java-template

And with that, we hope many of you put your coding prowess to good use!

UL Computer Society is running an Easter Egg Hunt sponsored by Arista Networks.

This is a week-long event taking place during Week 11 and some of Easter Week (Week of the 6th of April).

There are a number of hidden scannable codes around the UL campus.  Keep your eye out, not all of them will be easy to spot.

There are prizes to be won for those that find the most, thanks to Arista for sponsoring this event.

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Thanks to Arista Networks for sponsoring us. Below are some details for job opportunities they have in Shannon.
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Arista Networks are recruiting Graduate Technical Solutions Engineers for 2022 and 2023
Arista Networks is looking for great Graduate TAC Engineers interested in networking, cloud computing, wireless, automation and troubleshooting to join the team in Shannon supporting our customers for an industry leader in cognitive cloud networking

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RULES

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The rules are simple

1. PLEASE DO NOT TAMPER WITH THE QR CODES

2. PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THE QR CODES FROM THEIR LOCATION

3. This competition is supposed to be a bit of fun, don’t ruin it for others

4. You must find the code in person and take a selfie with the code

5. To be in with a chance to win you need to follow the link, fill out the form and upload your selfie

6. Don’t share the location of the code, remember you are competing against others. 

7. If there is a tie breaker the main prize will go to the person who found and submitted them first

Hi Everyone,      

           Hope everyone is doing well, 

Welcome to UL Computer Society. This year we will be showing off all the tech that the society owns and allowing members to determine what we do with it. We'll set up the 3D printers again with your help and have lots of time to mess around with the VR headset and anything else we have in the server room. We will also do some software events. Introducing and setting ye up on Skynet (our servers) and WordPress, an easy tool to get your website looking slick. There is lots more to come and we hope to see ye there. Every Wednesday. Keep and eye on our socials and wolves for event info.

Relaunch Event: This week we will be hosting our relaunch event today from 7-9:30 at KBG-13 , we will have a load of different tech to show off, and there will also be pizza. Make sure to book a place on UL Wolves Computer Society page!

AGM: We will be hosting our AGM next week, so stay tuned for more info on that!

We are looking forward to the great events that will be taking place over the next year, so make sure to get involved!

And as always,   

01110011 01110100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101100 01100001 01110011 01110011 01111001   

Eve, PRO, Computer Society 

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Hi Everyone,
We want to welcome everyone back to a new semester here at UL and we hope it will be a good one.We hope everyone is enjoying being back on campus or even being on campus for the first time.
Don't forget to sign back up again on wolves if you aren't a member yet. And join our socials for the most up to date information. Discord!

We have many events planned over the coming weeks and we hope you will join us. We have plans for some great virtual events while restrictions are still in place for Clubs & Societies, and we have some exciting in-person events planned for later in the semester. Such as:

Rec-drive:We will be at the First year Virtual rec-drive on Wolves when it is on in week 4. If you or any friends might be interested or are on the fence about joining feel free to come along and ask us any questions you might have https://ulwolves.ie/. Or alternatively join our Discord.
Minecraft Event: We will be holding a Minecraft Event during the recruitment drive for you to hop on and ask us questions, get to know us and have a look around, Hope to see you all there, more info on how to get on at https://games.skynet.ie/ !

Relaunch event: We plan on having a relaunch event/party for all our new and returning members very soon.

Code Off: We will be hosting a quiz called the “Code Off” near the end of this semester, with prizes to be won.

Social Events: We will hold a social event or two during the semester for everyone to get to know each other.

Some other possible events this year include:

• Retro gaming with an old Amstrad CPC and raspberry pi retroarch, 
• 3D Printing,
• Daily driving Linux, how to set it up and use,
• Setting up your own Discord Bot in python,
• Guest speakers,
• and many more
  

We look forward to seeing you at our events and hope you will enjoy your time with CompSoc.

We are proud to announce that we have developed our own Cryptocurrency called Sharky Coin and it will be available from midnight tonight.

This took a lot of planning since the start of the year. To earn Sharky coin you attend events and interact with the society. This can then be exchanged for merch discounts.

We also plan to give a full in-depth overview of how we did it and how its run in a future event.

You can sign up for it here (https://skynet.ie/sharkycoin/) and you can also see what merch we currently have on offer. 

We will be hosting an online talk with Dr. Richard Stallman (rms) on A Free Digital Society at 7PM on Wednesday the 10th of March.

Dr.Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the head developer of the GNU Operating System (gnu.org). His work focuses on Free Software, that is, software that is free as in you have the freedom to use the software however you want, modify it and redistribute it (think of the French/Spanish word libre) and not necessarily free as in free of charge (i.e. the word gratis).

The talk will open with the moral issue of free software and why nonfree programs are unjust, then go on to other forms of widespread digital injustice that damage our freedom and privacy.

In the spirit of Free Software, we must stream this talk on our own server using Icecast, so the maximum number of viewers we can have will be limited by our connection. If you know a group of people who want to watch, you could get into a call on Jitsi Meet (https://meet.jit.si/) and have one person share the video and audio with the others. If the stream has reached capacity, you will still be able to watch a recording later.

The link is https://skynet.ie/stallmantalk/ and it will redirect you to the stream at 7pm Wednesday the 10th of March. You may need to press play if it doesn't automatically start after a few seconds, if you have trouble watching try refreshing. If you still have trouble try a different browser. 
If you still have issues you can open this file https://skynet.ie/stallmantalk/stream.webm.m3u in windows media player or VLC to watch the stream, it should work much better but the file won't work till 7pm on the 10th.

If you have any questions you would like us to ask Richard Stallman during this talk, please email us at talks@skynet.ie with your question and include "rms question" or "Richard Stallman question" in the subject line. Also feel free to contact any committee member directly.

Hi, 

This week is the virtual recruitment drive so we won't be having an event but we will be in a zoom call where you can ask us questions and just have a chat. We might play some Among us on our discord server with new members as an intro to the society.

The week after we will be doing a "WFH/Gaming setup tour". In this people can show off their current work from home (WFH)/gaming PC setup. We will be sharing some tips and tricks to making your setup looking clean and gamer ready. We will have some prizes for the best setup voted on by you guys. More info to follow.

In the meantime, tell your friends about the society and come to the virtual recruitment drive to ask us questions and interact with the new committee.

Hi all,

in the last week, we went through the COVID-19 tracker app and explained to our members how the app worked and answered some important questions about the app. Like:

• Is the government tracking you through the app?
• What data is actually being gathered, where is it going?
• What is going on with that access for location services on your mobile phone?

It was explained well by our President, Mark, First-year rep, Patrick and a member of the society, Nikita. 

Here are the slides/notes they made to inform us about the app. (worth a read)  Slides

Take a look at our Minecraft build of the UL Foundation Building. This build was done on our own minecraft server "Skycraft" ,which is hosted on our own server cluster Skynet. This video shows off our build https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0MGCk1-408 

The server is free for all members to join. We have separate creative and survival worlds. You can learn more about how to join at games.skynet.ie and see the live map at http://games.skynet.ie/map/. 

College may be closed for the time being, but that doesn't mean we can't continue virtually! That's right, from now on CompSoc will have all our events, competitions and socials online for the rest of the semester!

We just ran our Virtual Pub for St. Patrick's day, which went very well. Our members had a laugh chatting and playing games like Jackbox! We will continue to host more events for the rest of the semester.

Use this link to join our new Discord server:

https://discord.gg/KpFJkC6

Stay safe everyone!

But this… does put a smile on my face...

Finally after being delayed twice, our members finally built our incredibly powerful €2000 PC last week. It's now up and running in all its shining RGB-LED glory. Check out the time-lapse of us building it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTTF94WoK7U 

We plan to use it for tasks like highly demanding virtual reality, video editing and rendering, and gaming!

Some specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i9900k 3.6GHz
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8GB
• Motherboard: Gibabyte Z390 AORUS PRO
• Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16GB
• Cooling: Master MasterLiquid
  

Hey everyone, unfortunately, with no free rooms available in the SU, we cannot have a Tuesday meet-up this week.

They'll be back next week, don't worry!

Our website creation event however is still on this Wednesday, if you'd like to learn more about hosting your own free website on Skynet, or designing your website with WordPress then come along!

Last Wednesday, CompSoc held our annual coding competition. After some very tough questions and a lot of RedBull, we are delighted to announce that Quinn Painter has won the first place prize! Congratulations to Sean Lynch and Evan Cassidy who came second and third!

The competition was sponsored by RedBull and the programming language everyone used was Java.

This is our last proper event of the semester, but next week we will be having a social night and we will also having a VR fundraiser for #TEAMTREES in the courtyard!

At the start of last summer, a few lucky members from Computer Society got to go on a fun and educational trip around Europe. In Compsoc, we are very interested in learning about the history of tech, computers, electronics and its application. We planned to visit Paris and Milan, both cities renowned for their industrial and technological development. We choose to visit various scientific, engineering and computing museums and exhibitions. 

Day 1

We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport and started sightseeing around Paris. After a quick metro ride we arrived in the centre of Paris. We saw the ruins of Notre Dame, the roads around it were blocked off. We took a leisurely stroll along the River Seine towards the Louvre museum, where we stopped to take a break. After that we visited the Eiffel tower and relaxed on the green Park in front of it. Then we headed back to our hostel but first had dinner at a restaurant.

Day 2

The next day we visited the Musée des Arts et Métiers, a museum dedicated to scientific instruments and inventions. The museum showcased many fantastic objects and mechanical marvels. After that we visited Cíte des Sciences et de l'Industrie. We saw many cutting edge technologies, including gaming, aeronautics, biology, etc.

Day 3

This was our cheat day. We enjoyed some play time in Disneyland Paris. We went on all of the rides and really enjoyed the day. We all sank into our beds tired and ready for our next day of traveling to Milan.

Travel Day to Milan - Day 4

Before we traveled to Milan we visited another science museum in Paris called Palais de la Decouverte. It was another technology museum full with interesting old computer parts and lots about science and physics especially. After this we went back to Charles de Gaulle Airport and flew to Milan. We spent the rest of this travel day relaxing and bonding in the hostel and a pizzeria right beside the hostel where we spent nearly every evening reminiscing the day gone.

Day 5

Firstly we visited the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci which was an amazing museum. It had various fascinating exhibits such as materials, transport, energy, communication, Leonardo da Vinci, art and science. After that we went to Castello Sforzesco, a beautiful 15th century castle in the centre of Milan. Near the castle we saw Arco della Pace which was a huge triumphal arch. We then visited Italy's oldest shopping centre, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. Finally we visited the Duomo di Milano, the magnificent 14th century Cathedral of Milan.

Day 6

2019 marks 500 years since the death of Leonardo DaVinci, the greatest technologist of his time. There was a special exhibit in Milan to mark the occasion. The exhibit had various recreations of his models and we got a chance to examine and learn more about his work. The rest of the day we spent sightseeing. We ended up at Bosco Verticale, vertical Forest, which are two residential towers with plants and trees and other plants growing on the balconies and rooftops of the building. We also popped into a Tesla car dealership and looked at two models of the Tesla line-up, the Model 3 and Model Y. Towards the end of the day we also visited a planetarium called Civico Planetario Ulrico Hoepli. It was a spectacular show and a good way to finish off the trip.

From the beautiful sights of Paris and Milan, to the awesome exhibits of engineering, every part of this trip was truly unforgettable. Everyone who went on the trip really had a great time and learned so much. It was a great experience, and we are looking forward to next years’ trip already!