Having visited the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) twice before, Dr Colin Wright will be the group’s guest speaker again on Monday, 20th November, 2017.
Colin has visited the group before, in 2001 and in 2008, with the subject of both talks being RADAR – in particular, RISC OS-based RADAR systems. Those systems used the Iyonix and RiscPC, and ran a suite of applications that Colin helped develop at Denbridge Marine Ltd, a company that provides marine vessel traffic systems, to keep track of and direrct the location and movements of vessels in local waters – a sort of marine equivalent to air traffic control. There is a very detailed write up of the 2008 talk online, as well as a selection of photographs.
Those systems used the Iyonix and RiscPC but, with both machines now long out of production, they have mostly moved over to being Linux-based – so for his third visit, Colin will be discussing a completely different subject: Hard problems, and why they’re important. The talk will cover algorithms, mathematical proofs, and problem solving, with an emphasis on how they all relate to cryptography – so it may be of particular interest to those who attended Dr Nat Queen’s visit to the group back in June.
Colin has a Ph.D. from Cambridge in Combinatorics and Graph Theory, both areas of mathematics, and he gives many presentations around the country. Subjects can be varied, and even include juggling – and in particular the mathematics involved in doing so, making for particularly entertaining and educational talks (though having watched a few this morning, I still can’t juggle!)
The meeting takes place on Monday evening at the usual time of 7:45pm in the restaurant, upstairs at:
173 Borough High Street,
London,
SE1 1HR.
The venue serves a range of hot and cold food, and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, and is found between London Bridge and Borough tube stations – both only a short walk away through well lit main streets, covered by CCTV. There is ample cycle parking very close by, which is also covered by CCTV.
Anyone coming by car should be aware that the cut-off time for the Congestion Charge is at 6:00pm, long before the meeting starts, but you need to take into account that the meeting takes place in central London; be prepared (allow extra time) for the capital’s traffic, and to find somewhere to park. It’s best to park after 7:00pm on single red or yellow lines, and parking is restricted at all times on double red lines.
For help finding the Blue-Eyed Maid, or for any other relevant information, ROUGOL can be contacted via Twitter, by email, or by telephone on 07970 211 629
