back to article Campus Party: Did it start Silicon Britain or let 5,000 geeks sleep together?

This year's Campus Party didn't hit the target of 10,000 geeks in a giant tent - but it did manage half that and showed them how to program a Raspberry Pi and overclock a PC, the nerd equivalent of ballroom dancing while on a cruise ship. The Pi programming session was overcrowded, with peeps lining up to learn how the …

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  1. Ragarath

    Overclocking a PC?

    Why does a nerd need to be shown how to do this now-a-days when it has been made so easy for them.

    They don't have to cross jumpers or in fact even touch the hardware any more. It is all BIOS / EFI controlled. Jeeze there are even some that can be done from the OS. And this was a nerd camp? Stopped reading there.

    1. Flawless101

      Re: Overclocking a PC?

      Don't forget about the RAM timings.

    2. InsaneLampshade
      Facepalm

      Re: Overclocking a PC?

      Indeed, this was no nerd camp. More of a pissup for the Shoreditch types that want to jump on the fashionable nerd bandwagon.

    3. Simon Harris
      Happy

      Re: Overclocking a PC?

      Overclocking set from the BIOS? Young people, they have it easy!

      When I were lad, you had to snip the wire from the clock and keep banging the bare ends together really fast to make it go faster!

      Tell kids that these days and they just don't believe you!

      1. kmac499
        Happy

        Re: Overclocking a PC?

        Plus ca change

        HitchHikers aproxy-quote

        "and the rest of you the secret is keep banging the rocks together guys"

      2. Roo
        Pint

        Re: Overclocking a PC?

        I don't believe you either, despite being on the wrong side of 40, have an up-vote + beer for making me smile. :)

    4. Down not across

      Re: Overclocking a PC?

      "Why does a nerd need to be shown how to do this now-a-days when it has been made so easy for them."

      Well, quite.

      It was bit more fun and a challenge back in the days of Z80 and 8086/80x86 days when overclocking was soldering different crystals and keeping fingers crossed if any peripherals worked with the increased bus timings.

  2. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Meh

    @ Ragarath...

    To be fair though, we're not all self proclaimed techno gods like yourself. And even though I know most of the hardware component makers now build in some functionality/ability to overclock hardware, and none the less being fairly techy myself - I still kind of get lost in all of the jargon of memory timings, multipliers and such like, and what needs to be done where; so if I was inclined to want to learn more about it, and was getting tired of gnawing my own legs off in boredom - then something like this might be of interest.

    1. Steve Todd
      Stop

      Re: @ Ragarath...

      Techno god? Basic overclocking isn't much beyond pigmy level. If you want to move to exotic levels like liquid cooling then maybe a little higher, but well within the range of anyone who can use Google.

      There is however much less demand for it now that processor manufacturers are making CPUs that overclocking themselves automatically based on load and thermals.

    2. Ragarath

      Re: @ Ragarath... @Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

      What? You don't have to be a techno god, but thanks for thinking I am, even if it is not true.

      Now-a-days you do not have to know about ram timings, multipliers and such other concerns of overclocking. It is all automatically picked up. You choose the speed you want and bobs your uncle.

      I have not overclocked for many a year because it really is not necessary now.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: @ Ragarath...

      I over-clocked a 486 when I was 16 with pretty much 0 knowledge of PC's. FFS it was harder to change the RAM than over clock. Now you just click the Overclock icon.

      Next you'll be telling is plugging in a new keyboard is demanding.

      Kids....Pfffttt

  3. stu 4

    Christian camps

    I am now a confirmed athiest anti-theist, and wasn't really a christian when a kid either, but 2 of the best holidays I had were with a friend at organised 'christian week' camp things in england.

    We had a full week of electronics (building a whole host of different things that we wanted to), and software coding,

    This was back in 1984/85 so it was coding my spectrum and amstrad, and the electronics was things like building infrared sensors, and fm transmitters and working them out in vero-board, etc.

    It was great fun. And to be fair to he happy clappers, all the singing and christian stuff was confined to the evenings and optional.

    I don't know who arranged them at the time but it was some national organisation - they were excellently organised with great accomodation (in a private girls boarding school in the SE) and if still going I'd recommend it to any 12-16yo techie.

    stu

    1. Another Eldo

      Re: Christian camps

      One of the guys at my church used to run something that sounds like this for Scripture Union (http://www.livewires.org.uk/). Last I heard they were doing av, electronics and teaching them python but that was a few years back.

  4. Jemma

    Travelling Godberries

    Stu: gotta agree with you. The happy clappy squad turned up at my uni. The atmosphere was amazing - just wish there wasn't the constant undertone of 'convert the unbelievers'. Kind of interesting your comment re the electronics and the like - I guess the fact that alot of the Christians still aren't keen on science doesn't matter when its kiddie mind warping time..

    Personally I wish they'd ban the whole lot, every single one, the time & energy we'd save not fighting wars, angsting ourselves into an early grave, not to mention the saving on producing songs of praise - we'd solve fusion and warp drive by the end of next year & bankers would be extinct..

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Robert Forsyth

      Re: Travelling Godberries

      Aren't most wars fought for acquiring and protecting resources for the greedy, the ideology thing is a marketing smoke screen to make the non-greedy support the greedy cause?

      Some belief systems are for people who find science too hard, but mostly it allows oversized groups/packs of humans to live together efficiently (in towns and cities). These are the social protocols which allow trust and trade between people - think about the amount of work getting a bank account, if you did not trust them to look after your money.

      Obviously this is an oversimplification.

  5. tsdadam

    Disappointing

    When I read the original article I thought this was going to be a case of a load of hobbyist programmers getting together to make some useful, original apps.

    Instead they seem to have shown some people 'Hello World' in Python on as RasPi (probably) - but wasn't this event intended for developers? And how to overclock a computer. Why overclocking? It seems so pointless. For people playing games, fine, but for developing apps?

    The whole event was talked-up in the original article as being for developers, the post-event write-up sounds nothing like it. What a waste of a potentially great event.

    1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Disappointing

      I'm surprised the post-event write-up wasn't provided by Lord BONG!, frankly.

      "Awesome" developers indeed! This isn't 'Murica, you know.

  6. The Jase

    Just a bunch of

    Just a bunch of code monkeys.

    meh...

  7. ifm
    Windows

    Bah, humbug!

  8. Steven Burn

    Errr ya!

    If they can't even do basic over-clocking or basic coding for a PI, then they're not geeks (hell even leaving out the PI, even newbie geeks can over-clock a machine - machines of the last few years or several, have removed the need to do it the "old fashioned way" ffs!).

    As for social skills - they're over-rated.

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