The Router

Internet as an everyday necessity for many of us, we browse through many websites from social medias, search engines, to breaking news on the internet. One minute of website downtime can cost companies of example Apple to lose tens of thousands of dollars during the release of newest MacBook, have you ever thought about what goes behind maintaining functionality of websites when high volumes of internet traffic wanting to funnel in at the same time? What are the precautions to maintain a website's functionally when it is struck by massive loads?

Today we are joined by Ricky Blacker he is a self taught web professional from WP Engine. Ricky has been active in co-hosting Sunshine Coast & Brisbane WordPress Meetup Groups, and loves sharing his knowledge about Word Press to help out the new learners. Find out more in this episode of The Router!

Connect with UQCS!
Discord: https://discord.uqcs.org
Facebook: https://facebook.com/uqcomputing
Twitter: https://twitter.com/uqcomputing
Website: https://uqcs.org

In this episode of the router, we welcome David Gwynne to share some insights into making contributions to open source products. David is an Infrastructure Architect here at UQ, and has co-authored changes to the OpenBSD kernel. OpenBSD is a completely open source operating system that aims to provide transparency with the software that runs on your computer. At 25 years old it has seen many contributors, but still making that first step can be daunting! David talks about how he got started, and what you can do to contribute to open source projects like OpenBSD!

Connect with UQCS!
Discord: https://discord.uqcs.org
Facebook: https://facebook.com/uqcomputing
Twitter: https://twitter.com/uqcomputing
Website: https://uqcs.org

Today, Rachel has a chat with Graham Cummins from KJR, all about consultancy, KJR’s graduate opportunities, community in KJR, and their latest projects.

Graham is a general regional manager at KJR. KJR is a Software Quality Engineering consultancy, and one of UQCS’s silver sponsors this year, with over 25 years of experience in tech consulting, software testing and IT solutions. They provide services like software quality and assurance to DevSecOps for a range of industries across both public and private sectors in Australia. Apart from that he’s also involved as a QLD Council Member for the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

Connect with UQCS!
Discord: https://discord.uqcs.org/
Facebook: https://facebook.com/uqcomputing
Instagram: https://instagram.com/uqcomputingsociety
Website: https://uqcs.org/

As you may know, the UQCS AGM is coming up, and at the AGM we will elect a new committee for 2022. UQCS has been around for just over 10 years, and we thought that now would be a great time to have a chat to some of the past president and talk to them about what they learned during their time at the helm of one of UQ’s largest technology focused societies. This is the history of UQCS, as told by six former UQCS presidents, Jackson, Taylor, Cameron, Nick, Madhav and James.

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Jackson is a former UQ student of IT and maths who, with two other friends, co-founded the UQ Computing Society in 2011. He served on the executive committee until he graduated in 2014, including two years as president. He now works at Google in Sydney, building software to support network operations teams.

Taylor was treasurer in 2015 and president in 2016 and 2017. She currently works as a software engineer at Cubiko, and graduated with a dual degree in software engineering and mathematics.

Cameron was the UQCS President in 2018, and currently works as a Software Engineer at Microsoft working on Microsoft News. Things he has worked on include the new tab page for Edge Chromium and the Widgets feed that is coming to Windows 11!

Nicholas is a UQ computer science graduate and was UQCS president in 2019 before joining Canva in 2021 as a Machine Learning Engineer.

Madhav is a computer science/mathematics student at UQ who was UQCS President in 2020 (that-online-year) and is currently on the General Committee. He works at a startup and tutors, and likes board games and plants.

James (Jimmy) is in his final semester of computer science at UQ and currently works as a software developer at the QLD Department of Environment and Science. In his spare time he enjoys watching cartoons, playing video games, and working on various software projects.

Today, Liv has a chat to Dave Durbin from Canva, all about image processing and computer graphics, and their application to one of the largest graphic design platforms in the world.

Dave is a team lead at Canva with a passion for computer graphics and computer vision. He has been with Canva for three and a half years, moving between different teams before finally settling into the image processing team. With many years experience, Dave is a leading expert in all things image processing, having worked on features such as image style transfer and background remover tools during his time with Canva.

Connect with UQCS!
Discord: https://discord.uqcs.org
Facebook: https://facebook.com/uqcomputing
Twitter: https://twitter.com/uqcomputing
Website: https://uqcs.org

Today, we have an exciting episode at the intersection of computer science and mathematics! Ben Burton and Rhuaidi Burke, from the School of Mathematics and Physics at UQ, both work in the field of computational topology. They’re here to give a brief introduction to computational topology, as well as some of the unique challenges that arise when writing software for mathematicians.

Benjamin Burton (pronouns he/him) is a professor in the School of Mathematics and Physics at The University of Queensland, where he spends his time teaching supercomputers how to untangle knots. His mathematical career has spanned geometry, cryptography and finance, and he enjoys puzzling over how to find fast computational solutions to difficult mathematical problems. Benjamin is passionate about bringing mathematics to the public, and he has worked behind the scenes for many years to help organise the International Olympiad in Informatics and other secondary outreach programmes. He also volunteers for the Debian GNU/Linux project, and knows more about Eurovision than you will ever need to know.

Rhuaidi Burke is a PhD student working on 4-dimensional computational topology. Specifically, he is investigating combinatorial representations of "exotic" 4-dimensional spaces — these are spaces which can be continuously deformed into one another, but not smoothly deformed into one another — a phenomenon which only appears in dimensions 4 and higher.

Some links:

• Regina: https://regina-normal.github.io/
• SnapPy: https://snappy.math.uic.edu/
• Curved Spaces, “a flight simulator for multi-connected universes”: https://www.geometrygames.org/CurvedSpaces/index.html
• The Shape of Space by Jeffrey R. Weeks: https://www.routledge.com/The-Shape-of-Space/Weeks-Weeks/p/book/9781138061217
• The four colour theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem
• Persistent homology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_homology
• Jeff Erickson’s course on computational topology at Illinois: http://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/compgeom/

Today we’re chatting to Tony Lykke, @tl on Discord, 2015 UQ grad and current infrastructure engineer at Hudson River Trading in New York City. Join us as we explore both the world of infrastructure engineering and SRE in automated trading…and the world of the Big Apple, New York City.

Tony works as a software engineer at Hudson River Trading in NYC, working on a variety of infrastructure projects with a focus on improving developer experience. In his spare time he enjoys exploring the city, playing video games, and weightlifting.

For some Hudson River Trading swag: http://hudsonrivertrading.com/swag, access code hrtspring2021 (note: this code will expire soon!)
Careers at HRT: https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com/careers/
Email Tony: [email protected]

Kendrick Tan, also known as @kendrick on Slack, has worked in the blockchain space for many years, and currently works at DFX in decentralised finance, where he is the Chief Technical Officer. He’s here to give us a 20-minute rundown on blockchain, Ethereum, decentralised finance and more, as well as addressing some of the concerns regarding the past, present and future of cryptocurrency.

Kendrick graduated with a computer science degree from QUT in 2019. He also has a cat!

EY and zero knowledge proofs: https://github.com/eyblockchain/

Join us for a brand new episode of the Router, where we chat with Dr Rob Bell, also known as “Dr Rob”, of Scope and Network Ten fame! He’s been inspiring students to pursue STEM on television for many years, and is joining us to talk about his experiences as a science educator.

Dr Rob Bell, also known as Dr Rob, is a scientist, television presenter, communicator, and writer (and chocolate appreciator). He is known for having hosted the Australian TV programme Scope on Network Ten for eleven years, where he breaks down the science of subjects relevant to school-aged children. He has a Bachelor of Science with Honours, and a PhD in materials chemistry from the University of Queensland, and has worked as a Science Education Officer for the CSIRO.

Dr Rob's homepage: https://www.doctorrob.com.au/

Harry Guthrie, also known as @guthers on Slack, is a recent UQCS alumni, studied software engineering, and has a wealth of experiences to share, from travelling in Illinois to China to co-founding a software company, Autop, and everything in between. Tune in to hear about how “saying yes” to opportunities can lead you to exciting and unexpected places.

Harry is Co-Founder of Autop, a Brisbane-based company delivering real-time business analytics to employees and marketing company owners to automate and optimise business efficiency. He graduated with a Bachelors degree in Software Engineering in 2020 and was a member of the UQCS Committee in 2018. He was a research scholar at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA and also participated in the 2019 Start-Up China Program in Dalian.

Autop: https://www.autop.online/