Skills Talks

We feature a skills talk once a week at the DTG Monday meetings. Speakers are encouraged to provide insights and the results of personal experience with the topic under discussion rather than re-iterating the contents of a manual.

Speakers: please add your talk to the list below and also as a "Skills Presentation" in the DTG presentation archive.

15-Oct-2007, How to draw a diagram, Andrew Rice

A discussion, using examples, of what makes a diagram useful (or not). The talk will also contain pointers on some of the tools I currently prefer to use when drawing diagrams and graphs.

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22-Oct-2007, A few introductory topics in typography, Jonathan J. Davies

This presentation will describe computerised typesetting and introduce a few topics in typography which are particularly pertinent to researchers writing papers and theses.

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5-Nov-2007, Programming Languages, Simon Hay, David Cottingham, Robin Message, Tom Craig, Oliver Woodman, Joe Newman, Francisco Monteiro, Andrew Rice

One slide per speaker demonstrating a particular distinguishing feature of their chosen programming language. We cover: Haskell, Perl, Scala, C++, C#, Python, Matlab and Prolog.

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12-Nov-2007, Kernel Development: A Primer, Ripduman Sohan

An introduction to Linux kernel development.

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12-Nov-2007, MATLAB - The Language of Technical Computing, William R Carson

An introduction to MATLAB.

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19-Nov-2007, Programming ATMEL Microcontrollers, Simon Hay

In this skills talk, I will discuss my experiences with the ATMEL range of microcontrollers and offer some tips on how best to take advantage of them in your research. The talk will focus on getting started with hardware and microcontroller programming, in what circumstances they can be useful and some common pitfalls to avoid.

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21-Jan-2008, Significant Software Engineering Tasks, Simon Fothergill

A presentation of considerations when programming, including UML How-To, Program Verification Systems & Type-setting code.

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28-Jan-2008, The Research Process, Robert Harle

The basic research process, from academic rank to how we get grants to how to give a presentation.

The Research Process

04-Feb-2008, Everything You Wanted to Know About Revision Control But Never Dared to Ask

Gives a brief overview of what revision control is and why it's useful, then goes through the basics of using a repository (in particular SVN, which is used in the DTG), before exploring how you can get yourself into a tangle with branching and merging (and ways of sorting out [pruning?] the mess). Finally, introduces distributed revision control systems, with a focus on Mercurial, and tries to convince you that you should use that instead of CVS or SVN.

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25-Feb-2008, Analogue Electronics, Anthony Hylick

A basic introduction of analogue electronic components and some simple circuit demos.

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03-Mar-2008, Keeping private information private, Alastair Beresford & Brian Jones

A basic introduction to disk encryption, communication encryption, tor and phorm. Download the  presentation slides.

28-Apr-2008, How NOT to review a paper, Ioannis Chatzigeorgiou

Tips and examples on how to avoid writing a poor quality review.

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6-May-2008, An introduction to OpenGl (and JOGL), Oliver Woodman

This talk will provide an introduction to OpenGL. I will outline the OpenGL architecture, describe its uses, and explain the potential benefits of (hardware accelerated) OpenGL relative to software rendering. I will also explain how to use OpenGL in conjunction with a higher level language such as Java or C#.

 Download the presentation slides

12-May-2008, From analog to digital circuits: A fenomenological overview, Bogdan Roman

This talk will make an effort to present the evolution from the analog to the digital domain. Starting with insulators, conductors and semiconductors and reaching full scale digital circuits, it will present an overview of the underlying fenomenology and functionality of the basic components such as diodes and transistors up to digital logic gates and circuits.

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19-May-2008, Introduction of using MATLAB with test and measurement instruments, Ruoshui Liu

In this skill talk, the functionality of communicating with instruments by applying MATLAB built-in Instrument Control Toolbox is going to be explained. This brief introduction will equip you with some practical techniques to effectively generate data in MATLAB to send out to an instrument (e.g., function generator, oscilloscope), or read data into MATLAB for analysis and visualization by using the Instrument Control Toolbox.

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19-May-2008, Generic Programming in C++, Tom Craig

An introduction to writing generic code that is type-agnostic whilst remaining type-safe, with a focus on C++ templates.

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27-May-2008, Writing reports, papers and theses based in MS Word, Visio and MathType, Francisco Monteiro

What was supposed to be a user-friendly word processor gave at one time or another bad experiences to the users of MS Word or dislike of the printed outcome. The prevalent idea in some circles is still that a long document with figures, a table of contents and the looks of a professional work require other editing tools, in particular when the document contains many mathematical expressions. Did the MS solution progress in the mean time? This talk looks at what is possible to get from a solution based in MS Word, Visio and the Math Type add-on.

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20-October-2008, An Introduction to Operational Amplifiers, Brian Jones

An introduction to Operational Amplifiers, showing reference circuits and examples of use.

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18-May-2009, Deploying web user authentication with Shibboleth, Sören Preibusch

Shibboleth is a set of policies and protocols providing an access control system for web-based resources. It is similar to that currently provided by Raven, but extended and standardised to allow users from multiple organisations to access resources provided by other independent organisations. Compared to Raven, Shibboleth involves a higher implementation effort, yet supports a broader range of platforms for deployment. Service providers can define more fine-grained rules for access control and the identity of authenticated users need not be disclosed (privacy-preserving single-sign on).

This talk is intended for Web authors and developers envisioning to set up user authorisation and authentication. I will briefly review the architecture and underlying Web service infrastructure for Shibboleth and sketch typical deployment scenarios. More prominently, I will share my own experiences in becoming the owner of the first Shibboleth-protected web site in the University.

 Talk announcement on talks.cam
 Presentation slides (PDF)