Alan Turing: the One who became a Zero

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Alan Turing: the One who became a Zero – a lecture by Dr Andrew Hodges – 3rd Annual Oxford University LGBT Lecture.

5:30pm, Tues 7 Feb 2012, University Museum of Natural History

The lecture will be introduced by the Vice-Chancellor.

The Equality and Diversity Unit and the LGBT Staff Steering Group present the third annual Oxford University lecture for LGBT History Month. Dr Andrew Hodges, author of Alan Turing: The Enigma, will give a lecture on the British mathematician and founder of modern computer science. Alan Turing was the chief scientific figure in the Anglo-American code breaking effort in World War II, centred on Bletchley Park. His life as a gay man illustrates the harsh oppression but also the growing consciousness of that era.

Dr Andrew Hodges’s biography Alan Turing: the enigma (1983) has been translated into several languages (winning an Italian literary prize), and a Chinese edition is imminent. It has also been dramatised (as Breaking the Code) for stage and television. For more information on Dr Hodges see: http://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/fellows-staff/academics/dr-andrew-hodges-2.html

Date: Tuesday 7 February 2012 Time: 5.30

Venue: Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PW

Published: January 26, 2012 – 7:08 pm | By grohling | Posted in BCS Oxfordshire, General Interest | Comments Off

Connecting a Smarter Planet

February 16, 2012
7:30 pmto9:30 pm

Andy Piper, IBM Hursley Lab

Interconnectivity is one of the key aspects to enabling smarter working and a Smarter Planet. IBM’s Hursley Lab in the UK has been at the heart of inter-application and inter-device messaging for many years, and this talk will cover some of the innovations that have come from that lab and are now being implemented around the world.

Published: January 25, 2012 – 7:53 pm | By grohling | Posted in BCS Oxfordshire, Events | Comments Off

West Yorkshire Branch Presents The Graduate

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The Graduate is a special project run by the West Yorkshire Branch to aid in employability of IT students and graduates. The Graduate is a mock recruitment event designed to provide prospective candidates with the chance to experience how a real recruitment process might work, and gives them an opportunity to understand how to utilise their skills, as well as teaching them new ones, to give them an understanding of what to expect for a real recruitment.

The Graduate 2012 is progressing really well with the West Yorkshire Branch having a lot more partners already this year, and early application forms look promising. The deadline for applications is the 31st January, 2012. If you want to take advantage of this opportunity there is much more information on their website: www.thegraduate.bcs.org

Published: January 2, 2012 – 4:46 pm | By grohling | Posted in BCS Oxfordshire, Other Branches | Comments Off

BCS Prize 2011–Best Results by a First Year Student

On 18 October, 2011, Sheila Lloyd Lyons of the Oxfordshire Branch of BCS had the great pleasure of presenting Joshua Kilburn with the award of Best Results by a First Year Student. The presentation of the award was done at Oxford Brookes with Nigel Crook, Head of the Department of Computing and Communications Technologies, in attendance.

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From left to right: Sheila Lloyd Lyons, Joshua Kilburn, Nigel Crook

"Receiving this prize from the BCS was a great honour and something that was totally unexpected.  During my first year I was determined to do as well as I could and with the high standards of teaching at Oxford Brookes I was able to achieve the grades I did."

– Joshua Kilburn

After the presentation Nigel hosted Sheila and Joshua to a gorgeous lunch at the Brookes University restaurant. The restaurant, run by the students, is open to the public. Sheila found the menu to be imaginative and the food absolutely delicious.

Published: October 20, 2011 – 4:29 pm | By grohling | Posted in BCS Oxfordshire, Student Awards | Comments Off

[Event Summary] Washing Away Cave Paintings – A technical evolution

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13th October 2011: Ian Hughes, Director, Feeding Edge Limited

Following our short Annual General Meeting, Ian Hughes (known as ePredator online), Metaverse Evangelist, talked about how computer games and virtual worlds are changing the way that we look at technology and the way that we communicate in business. Ian writes an entertaining blog at www.feedingedge.co.uk/blog and is Chair of the BCS Animation and Games Development Specialist Group.

CavePaintings2Ian explained that for the last few years, he has mostly worked as consultant online in a virtual workplace. Anything else now seems strange to him. He is also the resident ‘Super Geek’ on the TV programme Cool Stuff Collective currently showing on ITV1 on Saturday mornings.

Ian pointed out that most people now play games of all sorts and Gamification is a recognised way to make technology more engaging. Gaming and virtual worlds are also big business. The server side of WoW consists of 20,000 computers, 1.3 petabytes of storage, 75,000 CPU cores, 5.5 million lines of code and 2 million words of text. Second Life’s in-game user-to-user economic activity totalled $567 million in 2009.

We can use this type of technology to improve the effectiveness of what we do and to make it a richer and more memorable experience. For example, the user experience of Second Life can be far superior to that of telephone and video conferencing. We should not regard these technologies as just for amusement; they can help people learn, they can be used to effectively get across messages and can greatly assist the creative process. Ian encouraged us all to embrace these technologies, as otherwise we will be left behind by young people who understand what is possible now and in the future.

Published: October 17, 2011 – 8:40 pm | By grohling | Posted in Archive, BCS Oxfordshire | Comments Off

BCS Prize 2011 – Best Final Year Project Awarded to Stephen Drain

It was with great pleasure that we were able to present to Stephen Drain the BCS Prize for Best Final Year Project at the Oxford Brookes University School of Technology graduation ceremonies. Stephen graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Network Computing and was presented the award by Sheila Lloyd Lyons of the Oxfordshire branch of BCS.

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"It is a privilege to receive this award from an organisation such as the BCS and I am grateful for the recognition of my academic achievement during my time at Oxford Brookes which this brings. An achievement that I would not have accomplished without the excellent teaching and support network in place at Oxford Brookes." – Stephen Drain

Published: July 27, 2011 – 4:07 pm | By grohling | Posted in BCS Oxfordshire, Student Awards | Comments Off

[Event Summary] Extreme Parallel Computing – The Man, Machine and the Maths behind it

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Dr James Anderson’s talk on Extreme Parallel Computing – The Man, Machine and the Maths behind it was well attended with many new faces. James explained the problems for computing resulting from the exceptions that occur in conventional mathematics, such as the inability to divide by zero, and put forward the alternative approach of transreal arithmetic. This concept enabled pipelining of entire programs which is significantly more efficient than conventional parallel processing in terms of the throughput of repetitive calculations. James has been able to demonstrate this through a proof of concept machine and simulator, and is now seeking investment to build prototype machines with a power in excess of today’s super-computers but at a fraction of the price. Plus they don’t crash!

James managed both to challenge our thinking and to show that maths can be fun! After many penetrating questions from the floor, which James answered with real enthusiasm and humour, he left the audience enthralled by the possibilities that this enabled.

The slides can be found on http://www.bookofparagon.com/Mathematics/ExtremeParallelComputing.pdf

A good evening and we all enjoyed the sandwiches etc. especially the strawberries and cream and pinot grigio, a special treat as it’s June and the last meeting of our 2010-11 season.

Published: July 27, 2011 – 3:51 pm | By grohling | Posted in Archive, BCS Oxfordshire | Tagged , | Comments Off

[Event Summary] Cryptography: From Black Art to Popular Science

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10th March 2011 – Cryptography: From Black Art to Popular Science, Part 2 – Professor. Fred Piper, University of London

Prof. Fred Piper returned to lead us again through the intricate and fascinating world of Cryptography. This talk was a follow up to Part 1 which was our Christmas lecture for 2009. Fred reprised the basics of cryptography presented previously but then went on to explore a little more detail on the key aspects of the technology involved.

Fred yet again proved what an engaging and amusing speaker he is on this complex subject on which he has been employed for virtually his entire professional career, making the subject much more accessible to the layman. Difficult concepts began to make a lot more sense and triggered the imagination as to what future developments in this arena might be used in future real world applications. Anecdotes and amusing stories from his experience and from those of many well known technology theorists flowed throughout.

Crypto_1Subjects included in Fred’s talk were:

  • The basic concept of secrecy & confidentially
  • Secure channels & early cipher system definitions
  • Strong and weak algorithms & potential threats & attacks
  • The Enigma machine, military use & early Polyalphabetic ciphers
  • Enabling factors in the development of cryptography and attacks on cryptographic implementations
  • Historical attitudes to its use and development
  • Social threats and legislative control
  • Human rights
  • Details on popular current cryptographic techniques
  • New directions in cryptography

Because Fred had so much he wanted to impart from his many years as a leading light in the world of Cryptography, the audience was entirely left feeling the need for what would be a very welcome return for a Part 3 at some time in the future!

The slides from Prof. Pipers’ talk are available from the download area of our Web Site.

Published: April 10, 2011 – 6:00 pm | By grohling | Posted in Archive, BCS Oxfordshire | Tagged | Comments Off

[Event Summary] Testing Agile Projects

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17th February 2011 – Testing Agile Projects – Dr Stuart Reid, CTO, Testing Solutions Group

Our February talk was held in the impressive setting of Sophos’s UK Headquarters based in Abingdon. Sophos laid on a superb spread of sandwiches, delicious cakes and biscuits, tea and coffee to begin the evening in the Atrium of their main building.

For this talk, we had one of our largest audiences for the year with 93 people turning up to hear Dr Stuart Reid present on the advantages and disadvantages of Agile methods and particular techniques that he had used in testing Agile projects.

He introduced the Agile manifesto and principles and focused particularly on how you integrate test engineers into Agile development teams for a successful outcome. He highlighted a number of independent resources which had researched the statistical success of Agile projects, reasons why these projects fail or succeed and, in particular, how much more popular Agile now is as a methodology.

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As Stuart’s talk gained momentum, he went on to look at the different process options that could be used to make Agile scalable in a real world context such that very large projects could be addressed.

Following the talk, enthusiastic debate on the subject continued late into the evening in the Spam and Lettuce bar.

The slides from Stuart’s talk are available from the downloads area of our Web Site.

Published: April 10, 2011 – 5:48 pm | By grohling | Posted in Archive, BCS Oxfordshire | Comments Off

Late afternoon visit to Prodrive!

April 28, 2011
4:30 pmto6:30 pm

Thursday 28th April 2011, 4 for 4:30pm start

Prodrive, Acorn Way, Wildmere Industrial Estate, Banbury OX16 3ER

SOLD OUT

 

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Prodrive is one of the world’s largest and most successful motorsport and vehicle technology businesses with annual sales of £100 million and employing more than 500 staff in the UK, India, Australia and China. In the UK, Prodrive has manufacturing facilities and offices in Banbury, Warwick and Milton Keynes.

Our tour will start with coffee in the Prodrive heritage centre where we will be able to view race and rally cars from Prodrive’s 25 years in world motorsport which have included such greats as Richard Burns and Colin McRae. There will be opportunities to see the manufacturing facilities including rally car transmission, engine build and dynos – see what it takes to make an £80,000 gearbox! We will tour the workshops where they build Subaru rally cars, the Aston Martin GT1, GT2, GT3, GT4 and the current Gulf liveried LMP1 sports cars. We will also see the advanced machine shop and CNC equipment where we hope to talk to the specialists making the parts which go into their cars.

The tour takes around two hours. At the end of the tour, the merchandise shop will be open.

There is a charge of £5 for BCS members and £10 for non-members which is a heavy discount on the normal cost of such a tour.

Spaces are limited, so book now to avoid disappointment!

Click here for a map and directions to the Banbury location.

Ample parking is available on site.

On arrival, head for the Main Reception area.

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For overseas delegates who wish to attend the event please note that BCS do not issue invitation letters.

Cancellation Policy
Full refunds will be issued if a cancellation is received by 12pm on Thursday 21st April 2011, name substitutions will be allowed after this date.
Bookings close 11:59pm on Tuesday 26th April 2011.

Name Substitutions
Name substitutions are accepted at any time prior to the event by email.
Email: helen.long@hq.bcs.org.uk

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As a body for IT professionals BCS Group regularly communicates with its interested parties by email. I understand that BCS Group will not pass on my email address to other organisations.

Data Protection Act 1998
BCS Group will hold your personal data on its computer database and process it in accordance with the Act. This information may be accessed, viewed and used by the Society for administrative purposes and conducting market research. All of these purposes have been notified to the Commissioner.If you are based outside the European Economic Area (the ‘EEA’), information about you may be transferred outside the EEA in accordance with the requirements of the Act.

Published: March 16, 2011 – 1:54 pm | By grohling | Posted in BCS Oxfordshire, Events | Comments Off