[Liverpool] Comic Relief 2009 - A call for programmers...

[Paul]

Hi,

This is a two part mailing (well, it's one part with two emails in
it!)... It's a bit long, but keep up at the back...

Part 1.

Every 2 years in the UK we have a fund raising event called Comic
Relief[1]. Comedians, singers and generally everyone gets together to
raise money which is used for grass roots programmes (in other words,
they build the infrastructure, teach people to be self-sufficient etc)
in the developing nations around the world as well as at home (home
being the UK).

Next year is one such year and in a moment of insanity, thought it would
be kind of cool to not only raise money for Comic Relief but also have a
world record attempt for the most number of programmed hours in a
day[2].

The idea is this. Everyone codes for an hour on a project and gets
sponsored for this hour. I'm sure any coder worth their salt can spare
an hour in a day for this and even if the sponsorship is in pennies, if
enough people do it, then pennies mount up to pounds.

Put it this way, if 744 do this then that will be the equivalent of a
months programming in a day. If they each raise 10UKP, that becomes 7440
UKP raised - all for just working for an hour!!!

I'm not sure yet of the full details (all work on one project, submit to
svn etc), but would certainly welcome ideas.

I will now return you to your scheduled things.

TTFN

Paul
[1] http://www.comicrelief.com
[2] The day being the 13th March

Part 2

The plan is this (as it stands)

1. Everyone works for an hour on a single application (which takes an
hour to write) (see below)
2. Check it works
3. Upload to the server (preferably as a zip file) (see below)
4. Done.

If you're working as a team of three, then each needs to upload after an
hour (so person 1 uploads, person 2 takes over then uploads - well, you
get the idea). The rule is no-one person works for more than an hour.

The upload *must* contain a registration text file (I'll send this out).

The single application must follow a set criteria

1. It works.
2. You cannot include copyrighted material (i.e. no sound files or the
such ripped from elsewhere).
3. Licence has to be one of the FSF recognised ones.
4. Source must be included.
5. See 1.

I don't care what it's written in[1] as long as the binary works on the
platform[2] you've designed it for. If it's command line only, great, if
it's got a funky display, even better.

I'm talking to both Comic Relief and the Guiness Records people
currently about this to see if it's a good idea.

Please, if you have any other ideas, let me know

TTFN

Paul

[1] Really, I don't care. If you decide to write it in COBOL, I'm cool
with it. Got a ZX81 around, fine, not worried about that. There are no
restrictions, but if it's for a dead machine, then there has to be an
emulator available to test it on. This even includes the likes of
Basicode!
[2] I don't expect a RISC OS compiled binary to work natively on a Linux
box, however something in .NET should work fine on anything
supporting .NET.

Okay, you all got that. I'm trying to not only raise massive amounts of
money for Comic Relief, but also have a world record attempt at the same
time.

As it says, don't care about the language, don't care about the
platform, but I do care about the hour maximum.

If anyone has any comments or queries or just wants to get involved
(sponsorship, employment, stuff like that), then let me know.

TTFN

Paul
(who is going to be shattered by the end of this if it comes off!)
-- 
Sie können mich aufreizen und wirklich heiß machen!
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