What The Spaces Look Like (Or, Dougal Plays With A Camera)
One of the most comfortable couches on campus. No lie.
Those are the shiny new CS-department reject monitors, instead of the prehistoric CRTs that were three times deeper than their screen size. A little sad to see those go, but, like, not really.
Those Mac Classics, I’m sad to say, are no longer our primary user computers.
Everyone’s favorite.
We’re watching you….
Major Cleanup
After a marathon five-hour work session in SCCS yesterday, a whole bunch of new things are up.
We’ve installed our security system! With four cameras that can see in the dark, we’ll be able to watch you live from any computer anywhere! This should allow us to continue to offer our services without much fear of theft, and will help us get our video game system live.
There was a major leak in Tarble, and workbox just finished repairing it. The foul odor that was seeping through the entire basement is slowly vanishing, and is hardly noticeable outside of our server room.
We have an enormous stack of equipment in our lounge. If you want anything from it … it is yours!
New Software
We’re currently compiling a list of software to make sure is installed on all of our Macs. If you have any further suggestions, make sure to let us know!
* VLC (video player)
* Adobe CS4 (image-editing, flash, web development, etc.)
* Skype (im/voip)
* Open Office 3 (text-editing, spreadsheets, presentations)
* FireFox 3 (browser)
* Adium (im)
* Cyberduck (ftp)
* Airfoil (allow any software to play over networked speakers)
* Warcraft III + Frozen Throne (game, RTS)
* Starcraft + Broodwar (game, RTS)
* Unreal Tournament (game, FPS)
* Hamachi X (VPN creation)
* Aperture (photo editing/management)
* Audacity (audio editing)
* Switch (audio file conversion)
* Microsoft Office Suite (Text editing, presentation, and spreadsheets)
* Shakespeer (DC++ client)
* Transmission (Bit Torrent client)
* Quicksilver (app launcher+)
* IE 6 (browser, for testing)
* TextWrangler (text editor)
New Mac Pro: Kestrel
Today, SCCS added a new computer to our flock—a Mac Pro.
Stats
One 16x SuperDrive
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
2GB (2 x 1GB) (We’ll be adding more soon)
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (Two dual-link DVI)
The Name
We ran a vote with a run-off. The three finalists were Roadrunner (w/ 6 votes), Puffin (w/ 3 votes), and Kestrel (w/ 4 votes). The final voting gave us:
Roadrunner: Kofi and Trilok
Puffin: Jonah, Andrew, Ryan
Kestrel: Dougal, Alex, Miles, and Will
New Camera
SCCS has acquired a second digital SLR, the Canon EOS 40D:
As is always true with SCCS equipment, it will be available for loan to any current student. It can be borrowed along with one of our two lenses (a telephoto and a wide-angle), our tripod, or our external flash system.
Lounge Re-Done
Over the past week or so, the SCCS staff completely changed the look of our lounge.
We’re working on acquiring new whiteboards, a webcam and Skype kit, upgrading our security, and more.
Our weekly meetings will be on Thursdays, 6pm-7pm. We’ll be setting office hours tomorrow.
Stop by, and let us know what you think.