![[Down The Road]](/crossroads/images/mars/down-the-road.gif)
by
Sara Carlstead
Most of us in the computing world know the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign as the home of the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications, creators of Mosaic
and other supercomputing tools. It comes as no surprise that at a campus
with such a strong influence over the computing world, computing
exerts an influence over most of the campus. In this issue we see how
students with an interest in computing at UIUC work together to form a
large active ACM student
chapter.
The UIUC ACM has over 200 members. The principal organizational
structure behind this large group is the SIG (Special Interest Group).
Like their counterparts in the larger ACM world, the SIGs, sixteen in all,
allow ACM members to gather to discuss and learn about their special
interests, and to work together on projects. Besides the sixteen
SIGs, the group has an executive board that
plans whole group
activities and coordinates the SIGs.
The chapter has its own two-room office, and a plethora of hardware
and software donated or lent from a variety of sources: a
DEC Alpha borrowed from the CS
department, an IBM RS/6000
PowerStation 360H (Sleepless) purchased with a grant from IBM, a Mac
Quadra 610 on loan from their computing services division, a LaserJet
4M Plus from Hewlett Packard, and other Macs and PCs. In addition,
they have a library donated by Motorola and O'Reilly and
Associates, and a Netsite Commerce Server from Netscape Communications
Corporation.
The chapter newsletter, the Banks
of the Boneyard, edited by Doug Beeferman, has a circulation of
2000 and an incredible presentation thanks to layout and design
specialist Dan Simms.
Special Interest Groups
The SIGs work as independent organizations under the umbrella
of the ACM. They have their own chairs, meet weekly, and develop
projects. In addition to their own projects, the SIGs sponsor
presentations and workshops in their areas of expertise. They also
work with other SIGs and groups on campus on larger projects and cross
discipline presentations.
The group for computer architecture, chaired by Jonathan Stark, is
involved in numerous projects. The most active seems to be CamBot
(named after the MST3K
character), "a project to rebuild a commercial video camera to output
digitized, compressed video through a standard Ethernet port." Other
projects include a cylindrical RGB display, bit-mapped chase lights,
an FPGA white noise machine, digital nametages, a Z80 based
controller, ACE research and design, and an LCD driver/display
controller.
One of the more entertaining past projects of SIGArch is their
scrolling sign. A digital 64x8 pixel array of LEDs that scrolls
messages in a number of ways is mounted outside the ACM office. The
sign is on the 'Net, and anyone can display a message on the sign by
sending a message via a Web page
or email
The special interest group for the applications of computers and biology is
currently working on a point and click anatomy book. It also undertakes
smaller biological modeling projects.
SIGGraph is developing many projects related to computer graphics.
The largest one is a networked game called DataRace
which is a puzzle based, 3D game for DOS based clients. The group is
also working on an SGI Game, an Animation and Art compendium, long
animation, and a protected mode TCP/IP library. They also put on
workshops in the use of OpenGL.
SIGCAS (Special Interest Group for Computers and Society) is a ``forum
... to gather and report information, exchange ideas, and arouse
concern about impact of computers and society. The main concern is
ethical and philosophical implications.'' Topics of interest to SIGCAS
range from repetitive strain injury to law and the Internet. Last year
they sponsored a talk on Sex, Censorship, and the Internet by
Carl M. Kadie, a UIUC alumnus and moderator of the Computers and
Academic Freedom newsgroup.
The special interest group for microcomputers' focus is on education. They
sponsor workships on Emacs and C, and have a Web published imagemap
tutorial. They also work with SIGArch and the Astronomy Club on a
telescope.
SIGMusic's current project is a regular semester concert featuring music
composed and ``performed'' by members of the group. In the past they've
developed music for SIGArch's promotional video. They also have plans to
develop some analog effects.
SigNet focuses on computer networking issues, especially security.
One of their projects is a DNS
Redirector, which changes the way UIUCs terminal servers do DNS
lookups to a more distributed system. They've also developed MUMBLE,
a program similar to IRC that doesn't need a server, uses less
bandwidth, and allows multiple people to communicate over multicast
channels. A beta version of MUMBLE
is now available. Other projects include a Multicast
reflector, a hierarchical
subject index, and a real-time weather project called SkyView.
The special interest group for software development specializes in C
and C++ programming on a variety of platforms. They have lots of
projects under way, including: Arena, a networked car battle game for
Macs written using the Think C development environment; Morpheus, a
program to morph two animations together on the ACMs RS/6000; Oscope,
a program to replace oscilloscopes for a basic physics class; MacBiff,
a Macintosh mail alerter program; Realms of Darkness, a networked,
medieval adventure game; a Laser Printer Archive Program that encodes
data on a 9x11 sheet of paper as black and white spots--simply scan
the paper to restore the data; Batmann, a comic book style
semi-animated spoof of the Batman TV show; and Xtalk enhanced to
provide a better interface and services for a talk session.
The group for Unix related topics is working on a number of projects
including a Web interface for the campus' Illinet Online library
search system. The IWI uses Perl,
HTML, and Expect scripts to provide the interface. They've also
sponsored a HTML Forms Workshop, and are working an a news browser
that will allow the user to down load new news articles from selected
groups as a tar file, read them, and upload a reply file.
The Virtual Reality group is working on a head mounted display. They
are also working with SigGRAPH to create a virtual UIUC campus.
The Linux group provides support and information for the users of Linux, a
popular operating system, at UIUC. They provide a Linux Tips Page,
a Linux Setup Page, and a PPP Setup Page. They are also working on a UIUC
distribution of Linux for the power user.
The
Webmonkeys, who could also be called SIGWEB, is the newly formed web
interest group. Their projects include a number of HotJava animations
and two stories that Internet users can add to. They are also
experimenting with Netscape's Netsite Commerce Server.
In addition, UIUC supports special interest groups in business (SIGBiz),
Artificial Intelligence (SIGArt), information retrieval (SIGIR), and
Operating Systems (SIGOps).
Although this chapter's activities might be daunting to the average
computer science school, it's important to realize that UIUC is one of
the largest ACM student chapters. If it seems like your chapter would
never be able to do some of these things, use UIUC as a model, and cut
their activities down to your size. Remember some of the things that
make UIUC successful -- strong departmental and corporate support,
groups of enthusiastic people who do what most interests them, and a
strong umbrella organization to pull it all together.
Visit the UIUC ACM chapter online at http://www.acm.uiuc.edu.
I'm always looking for chapters doing interesting things. If your
chapter or one you know of is doing anything of note, drop me a line
at saracarl@rice.edu.
Copyright 1995 by Sara M. Carlstead
Last Modified:
Location: www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds2-2/chapters.html