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October 6th 2008
Volume 3, Issue 5
Compiled and Edited by Angela Short
Assistant Editor Margaret Clarke DkITimes
DkIT’s Chinese Student Society celebrates National Day of the People's Republic of China
On Wednesday night, October 1st more than 200 people from DkIT joined together to celebrate the People's Re-public of China’s National Day. The event was organised by members of DkIT’s Chinese Student Society, with help coming from DkIT Students Union, Clubs and Societies Office and the International Office in DkIT.
The National Day is now an annual event in the DkIT calen-dar and is organised to coincide with celebrations through-out mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau.
The event which was held in DkIT’s PJ Carroll’s building brought together the Chinese Student community in DkIT along with members of other college societies including the Irish Traditional Music Society and DJ Society.
The event was also attended by a number of staff and lecturers from the college including DkiT Registrar ,Stephen McManus. During the night, the assembled crowd remembered the various disasters which occurred in China over the past year, including the earthquake in the Sichuan province and the snow disaster which hit parts of the south and east of the country in February. However the night was
about celebrating the past year in China and the major world events which it hosted included the 2008 Olympics games and the Paralympic Games which were hosted so successfully in Beijing.
More pictures continued on pages 12 and1 3
Dare to be Digital is a video games design competition targeted at college students. In this contest, the winning team gets to compete in the UK and Ireland Protoplay grand final in Scotland. In order to prepare for this grad final, the winners of the Irish Dare to be Digital get to work in a microcosm of a games development company under tight a deadline (ten weeks) to finish a functional game prototype. The main objective of the competition is to help talented students gain real life working experience. With mentoring support from games companies, a link is built between the students and their potential future employers.
This year a team from DkIT won the Irish competition. The team members were Ben Williams, Chris Duffy, David Reilly, Ciaran Culleton and Eoghan Carpenter. All five members of the team
were from Games Development 3rd year. Their game was called “The Manhattan Strain”.
I caught up with the team and asked them a few questions about their game and the competition.
Can you give me a brief outline of your game idea and what was it that inspired you?
The Manhattan Strain is a strategy and resource management game that is centred on the con-tainment of a viral outbreak in Manhattan. The player acts as the director of the Federal Emer-gency Management Agency, and must use the police and Centre for Disease Control’s biologists to prevent the virus from spreading and treating those who have already been exposed. The game is played from a high angle point of view of the city. This gives the player a good overview of the situation and allows the player to order quarantines, place road blocks and assign police and biologist units to key areas.
What did you do in Trinity College & Scotland? We spent ten weeks developing the game from concept to prototype in Trinity. During this time we received help from industry professionals in areas such as 3D modelling and project manage-ment. Then we brought the game to the Protoplay event in Edinburgh, where we were able to demonstrate our prototype to both the general public and to various members of the gaming in-
An Interview with “Dare to be Digital” Irish Champions
dustry. We got to talk them through our game concept and gameplay and allowed them to try it for themselves. After demonstrating the game for 3 days, we then attended the award ceremony. Naturally, this was followed by a pretty cool party for all the competitors.
Is there a benefit for students in entering into this type of competition?
If a student is looking to get into games development, then “yes” there is a huge benefit in enter-ing into these competitions. Right from the application, the students need to be taking the long term view in developing their game. They need to think it through, plan it properly, and pitch their game, all of which are integral elements of the industry. By actually winning the Irish Dare to be Digital competition, and going on to develop and present the game, you gain the closest kind of experience to working in the industry that a student can get. You are also able to make contacts with, and get feedback from, the people who matter in the industry.
Article by Daryl Cole, 2nd Year Games Development
The final chapter of Jim’s trilogy, the earlier chapters have been well received by staff and some computing students were fascinated by the early history. Thanks again to Jim, Liam Grimes and John Keane.
As our experience with the machine developed Brendan Brady and myself, and later Frank Carter, introduced the students to machine code programming using manual translation. Later we unravelled the mysteries of the 'Editor' and 'Assembler' packages bringing the whole process to a more professional level. All of this work was challenging but interesting for both staff and students. There were no text books but DEC did provide very extensive hardware and software manuals. These were mostly in paper back format, rather like a Zane Gray western, but a lot more daunting to read and interpret. From these manuals we wrote up our own notes and examples.
As we gained further familiarity with the system we started to examine how it worked in terms of its digital electronic circuitry. The circuitry was well documented with good quality circuit diagrams and explanations provided in the service documentation. The approaches used were usually fairly straight-forward applications of basic digital techniques. We would open up the machine and get access to the internal printed circuit boards and use a Digital Voltmeter and Oscilloscope to examine the signals present as a very simple endless loop program was executing. This was actually great fun to do and the fact that this machine was now very much the College Computer, added to the challenge. I will always remember the apparent consternation on the face of Columb Collins, Head of School of Science, as he had to wait until the students put the system back together before he could start his computer science practical. As far as the electronics students were concerned they learned the basic cycle by cycle operation of a computer system and it helped them get over the fear of opening up a large, complex machine and working on it 'live'. As far as I recall we had no casualties - neither human nor electronic! It was all a great foundation for young technicians/engineers heading into the industry of the later 1970s. Several of our current technical support and teaching staff including
Early Perspectives: Computing in the Early days of Dundalk RTC Jim Maguire
Liam Grimes, Liam Caffrey, Peter Marquis, Ray McEneaney, Martin Crawley and Peter Gosling had their first contact with computer technology using the PDP8. Many of our Certificate and Diploma graduates of those years began their careers with companies such as DEC, Data Products, Technicon, Centronics, Amdahl, Prime and many, many more.
Eventually the College's needs outgrew the power of the PDP8 and it was replaced by the 11/34, another DEC system. The early 1970s saw the development of the first microprocessor and semiconductor memory Integrated Circuits [ICs] by Intel, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Rockwell and others. As development kits for these processors became available our course emphasis shifted from the PDP8 to these newer, cheaper, more available and potentially more powerful systems. Sets of development kits for the Intel 8085 and Motorola 6800 were bought in so a complete lab group of students, rather than one or two, could work simultaneously. In principle the tasks involved remained quite similar - low level programming, interfacing, examination of hardware operation and hardware software interaction. The experience gained with the PDP8 was very valuable and applicable to the newer technology.
In conclusion, there is an extensive range of single chip micro-controller devices on the market today - the PIC series from Arizona Microchip and their machine level instruction set displays a great resemblance to that of the PDP8. This is not as remarkable as it may first appear as the original PIC was developed by General Instruments Microelectronics in the mid 1970s. It is highly likely that some of the GIM design team had worked on the PDP8 for DEC.
Insert image description/names here...
Calling all singers interested in joining the DkIT Gospel Choir – Tuesdays, 6pm, Old
Black Box Theatre
Are you interested in joining this vibrant Gospel group? Sopranos, Altos and Tenors needed….staff and students
all invited to join…..
This type of music is a lot of fun, but it’s not just ‘whooping and hollering’! From the haunting strains of the Ne-gro Spiritual, or the rich choral ar-rangements of church standards, to the jazzy, R&B contemporary songs making their way into the repertoires of Gospel choirs worldwide – DkIT
Gospel Choir is building a selection of music that captures the spirit of each
style.
If you are interested, and can commit to a weekly evening practice on Tues-days from 6:00 – 7:15pm, come along on Tuesday, October 7
th. We’ll be in
the Old Black Box theatre (Business Studies Building, corridor behind the
Coffee Well)
DkIT Community Gospel Choir
Mathematics Week at DkIT
(1) WORKSHOP: Dr Jenny Piggott
SESSION FOR TEACHERS: (This workshop will run if there is sufficient interest from teach-ers)
VENUE: DkIT (Directions at the Main Reception Area)
DATE: Tuesday, October 14th 2008
TIME: 4 PM or 4:30 (session will take about 1-1½ hours)
“The Art of Problem Solving”. We will work on some problems together with the aim of thinking about how can we encourage our learners in their problem-solving. Jenny will show us where to find FREE resources on the NRICH website to help us, including curriculum mapping documents. Teachers from the morning session are welcome back for this session.
WEBSITE: All the materials used in the workshops can be found on the NRICH web-site: http://nrich.maths.org
DKIT students interested in teaching and solving maths problems are welcome.
(2) TALK: Shane Dowdall (DkIT)
TITLE: 'So you think you're smarter than a bag of sweets...' '...see how bags of sweets can be trained to play a perfect game of
Noughts & Crosses'.
VENUE: DkIT (Directions at the Main Reception Area)
DATE: Thursday, October 16th 2008 TIME: 5:00 PM
SESSIONS FOR SECOND LEVEL STUDENTS
(1) WORKSHOP: Dr Jenny Piggott (UK)
SCHOOL GROUP: Transition Year/5th year (15-16 year olds)
VENUE: DkIT (Directions at the Main Reception Area)
DATE: Tuesday, October 14th 2008
TIME: 9:30 AM or 11:30 AM (each session takes 1½ hours)
In these two workshop sessions Jenny will focus on visualising as a tool for seeing and doing mathematics. She has titled them “What you see is what you get” and hopes to challenge stu-dents and teachers to share ideas and learn from each other. Each workshop will each cater for up to 30/35 pupils and Jenny will introduce problems and engage with the students as they work through them. She hopes that teachers will be able to accompany the students, and do some mathematics with them. We are hoping that about twelve students could come from each school and this would allow us to cater for about six schools.
Further information Seamus Bellew 93370295 or [email protected]
Did you know? In a group of 23 people, at least two have the same birthday with the probability higher
than 1/2. This could be reformulated the following way. There is a bag of 365 different items. We pick an item at random. Note which one it was and return it back into the bag. The question: how many items should we pick so that with a probability higher than 1/2 we would have picked the same item twice. The items in the bag are assumed to be thoroughly mixed before every trial. Is it not surprising that all it takes is 23
items?
To prove our assertion let us start with just two people. What is the probability p2 that two random per-sons have the same birthday? It's easier to answer a related question. What is the probability q2 that two random persons have different birthdays? Obviously, p2 + q2 = 1. Thus answering one question we auto-
matically get an answer to another.
Thus we have a person with a birthday which falls onto one of the 365 days and ask what is the probabil-ity that another person has a different birthday. Since any day out of 365 but the birthday of the first per-
son would make a different birthday, q2 = 364/365.
Consider now three people. What is the probability q3 that no two of them have the same birthday? Ob-viously p3 + q3 = 1, where p3 is the probability that at least two of the group have the same birthday. As before, take one fellow and his birthday. The second has now 364 days to choose from and, if the third was born on any of the remaining 363 days they would form a "no-overlapping-birthday" group. Thus q3 =
364/365�363/365.
Proceeding in this fashion we'll get q4 = (364/365)�(363/365)�(362/365), and so on. Since every fraction in these products is less than 1, the sequence q2, q3, q4, ... is decreasing. Therefore, the sequence p2, p3, p4, ...
is increasing. Now, perhaps, it would be less surprising to learn that p23 > 1/2.
Source: http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/coincidence.shtml
Newstalk Student Enterprise Event Register your team at http://newstalk.ie/newstalk/studententerprise/index.jsp
At the recent launch of the Newstalk 106 Student Enterprise Competition Dr. Colette Henry of the Centre for Entrepre-neurship Research at DkiT expressed her delight with the level of engagement amongst students in DkIT. IT was only through the enthu-siasm of the academic staff that the competition was proving to be a roaring success in DkiT. Lecturers both encouraged and assisted stu-dents to get involved by combining the competition with continuous assessment requirements. This was Dr. Henry says an very appropri-ate way to measure learning outcomes on many Entrepreneurship courses. Colette had a special word of thanks to the DkiT in-terns Mary Larkin and Ronan Lynch who had organised the event and of extended a warm DkIT to Mary Sherry who at-tended the launch on behalf of the competition. Pictured left is Dr. Colette Henry of the Centre for Entre-preneurship Research at DkIT and below Ms. Mary Sherry, Competition Manager.
‘This is not an easy competition’ Dr Henry continued ‘but then if it was everyone would be involved. It al-lows students to apply academic theory in a practi-cal setting through the analysis of a real live cases study. Working in teams, students will pool their knowledge and skills to solve problems and make recommendations. They will then be asked to make a formal presentation to a panel of high profile
judges’
And of course the prize had to be mentioned. ‘A fan-tastic prize is up for grabs - a trip to the Caribbean - combining work experience with a relaxing holiday and an opportunity to meet one of Ireland's leading entrepreneurs - Denis O'Brien! I would strongly en-
courage you to get involved - you won't regret it!’
Meeting of the DkIT
Bicycle
Users
Group 1.30 pm Wednesday 8th October 2008
Clermont Room (Library)
All welcome! Come along to lobby for improved on-
campus facilities for cyclists!
This Week’s Caption Competition. Send your captions to
At least he can’t make a pigs ear out
of that!
Congrats for this witty cap-tion go to this to Frank
Keenan.
Using RSS to access the DkITimes Newsletter
A tutorial by Paul Scollon, Computer Services
This tutorial is designed to introduce you to RSS news feeds and to help you subscribe to the DkiTimes' very own feed at http://ww2.dkit.ie/rss/dkitimes
Firstly, what is RSS? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. For a detailed description of how it works, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss
2 of the more common ways to subscribe to an RSS feed is to set up your mail client eg. Thunderbird to import the feed (ideal for staff), or to have it display in your browser eg. On your Google homepage (ideal for students)
Basically, using this method, you get updates from a website without having to go near the site in question – the information comes to YOU. For our purposes, the DkITimes will arrive in your Thunderbird email program as an attachment (or appear on your Google homepage) without Angela needing to send out any emails at all. You won't need to click any links, navigate any pages – it will just appear as if by magic!
You can also use this method for other feeds around the college eg. Podcast Feed, Careers Office Feed, DkIT News Feed etc
Thunderbird Method (ideal for staff)Before you begin, check your Thunderbird version using Help->About Mozilla Thunderbird
Your version should ideally start with 2.0 – but anything above 1.5 should work. If you need a version upgrade (recommend as newer versions also support calendars etc) you should create a ticket on the Helpdesk Application (http://helpdesk.dkit.ie) or contact myself directly.Once you are on the right version, carry out the following.
Setting Up an RSS AccountYour first step is t o set up an RSS account in Thunderbird. This is similar to setting up a mail account..Follow these steps to set up a Thunderbird RSS account :1. Open Thunderbird2. Click File > New > Account. The New Account dialog box opens.3. Click the radio button next to RSS News & Blogs, then click Next.
Click “Next”. The defaul Account Name of “News & Blogs” is fine. Click “Next” again. Click “Finish”.
You now have an RSS account with which to manage your “subscriptions”. You may have as many subscriptions to RSS feeds as you want, including external feeds eg. RTE, Sky News, Stock Exchange information etc etc. Next we will subscribe to the DkITimes RSS Feed – after this you can subscribe to any other feeds you like using the same method.
Looking under your main email account now in the Thunderbird Account View, you will see a new account called “News & Blog”. This is where all our feed subscriptions will be stored.
Right-click on this folder and choose “subscribe”. The following box will appear:
Click “Add”. Enter the following for the Feed URL and tick “Show the article summary”:http://ww2.dkit.ie/rss/dkitimes
Like so:
Click “OK”.
You will now have a new subscription to the DkITimes in your News & Blog account. The latest issue will now always download automatically and appear similar to an email with a Title, Subject, Summary and attachment. There is also a link to the original webpage. The attachment is your copy of the weekly newsletter hot off the presses- seriously, it is so hot Angela herself will not yet have received the email from me telling her the latest copy is on the site! No more sitting around waiting for an all staff email that might not even get moderated until the following day!
Other feeds you may also be interested in subscribing too are as follows:DkIT News Updates – all news reported on any part of the website, as it happens (highly recommended - a suggested replacement for all.staff emails altogether)http://ww2.dkit.ie/rss/news
DkIT Podcasts – all the latest podcasts from DkITalk and other podcast projects. This feed can be pulled into Thunderbird, or even better, straight into iTunes or any other RSS supporting media player.http://ww2.dkit.ie/rss/podcasts
DkIT Careers Office – all the latest information for students and graduates from the girls in the Careers Officehttp://ww2.dkit.ie/rss/careers
Many other feeds will be emerging across the Institute over time. As you can see, this is a growing technology and is incredibly useful. Feeds can be sent to TV screens (see Main Restaurant), mobile phones etc Setting up the DkITimes RSS feed would be a good exercise for all staff as we plan on using feeds more and more from now on.
Google Method (ideal for students)Most students are exposed to RSS feeds on a daily basis without even realising it, including our own news feed appearing the Wireless Network whenever they login. This method details how a student could add the DkITimes feed to their Google Hompage (similar options exist on Yahoo and other websites).
A Google homepage differs from a regular Google page in 2 ways – the URL is slightly different eg. http://www.google.ie/ig instead of http://www.google.ie. Many people with Gmail accounts will already be using the former. The second difference is that this page is personalised with news stories, tools, links etc that the user chooses.What many people don't know is that these personalised items are actually RSS feeds. So, knowing this, you can have DkIT newsletter updates display in your Google homepage alongside all your other news items!
I've demonstrated this below:
Adding the DkIT news feed to Google couldn't be easier . Go to http://www.google.ie/ig and login. If you don't already have a login for Google, set one up. Once inside, Choose the “Add stuff” link on the upper right hand side. Then “Add by URL”. Enter the URL http://ww2.dki t.ie/rss/dkitimes and ADD. Click the “Return to homepage” option. That's it!!
Again, you can use this same method to add further RSS feeds to your homepage.
Hopefully you found this tutorial useful
