Zishan Rahman

He/him. 23. Computer Science @ King’s College London (ongoing PhD candidate, BSc First Class with Honours in 2023). Jumping from one thread to another.

4 minute read

Hi, everyone! A quick announcement, albeit a rather exciting one, if I do say so myself ;-)

This August (2025), the University of East London are hosting a campus “takeover” by its CDT Maker Club (I always keep forgetting what CDT stands for in this context, silly me) at its Royal Docks Centre for Sustainability campus in the London Docklands. In this pilot program, which will hopefully be the first of many such events and not just a one-off, a bunch of people will be holding STEAM-related sessions (Science, Tech, Engineering, Arts and Maths) at that campus from now (it already started on August 4th) until August 22nd, and I and a friend are two of such folks, so I invite you to join us for the sessions we’re holding!

The tickets themselves are free and “sold” through Eventbrite. Here’s the Royal Docks Centre for Sustainability’s Eventbrite profile, if you want to have a browse at all the other sessions going on. Here, I’d like to advertise three sessions specifically, two of which I’m holding and one of which a good friend of mine is holding.

I’ll advertise my friend’s session first. Kabilan is hosting a “Terminal Tools” talk tomorrow (Thursday 7th) at 6pm-8pm, and, as the name suggests, it will be on using various terminal-based tools (on Linux and other Unix-like OSes) to significantly increase your productivity. The session’s Eventbrite page here lists the tools you’ll be learning there, a few of which I’ve touched on in previous blog posts here! Afterwards, there’ll be an informal networking session, where you’ll get to meet up with the other attendees to discuss what was taught at the talk and ask some more questions, so if you’re interested in and/or curious about this kind of thing, do make sure you show up and give my friend Kabilan your support. He definitely deserves it!

As for my sessions, I’m hosting two separate sessions, one talk on running Windows applications and games using Wine and Proton, and another more hand-on workshop/tutorial on the basics of LaTeX. In my talk on Monday 11th at 1:30-3pm, which I’m calling “Borked, Corked and Forked”, you will learn about the opportunities you’ll have to run certain Windows applications using the Wine compatibility layer, as well as Steam games using the Wine derivative Proton (I will touch a bit on Virtual Machines in the talk as well, but far more time will be spent on Wine and Proton), with, of course, some demonstrations. The LaTeX hands-on workshop on Friday 15th at 4-6pm, which I’m calling “Get TeXnical” (get it?), will be a complete beginners’ tutorial on how to use LaTeX as an alternative way to write any kind of document, from papers to even presentations, and how you can grab hold of its method of typesetting as yet another skill in your arsenal of skills, even if it doesn’t completely replace any use of office suites (and to be fair, I honestly don’t expect it to). The link to “buy” your “Borked, Corked and Forked” ticket is here, and the link to “buy” your “Get TeXnical” ticket is here.

I’d really appreciate if anyone reading this would pass this information on to anyone in London during this time who they think may want to come to any of the sessions I advertised here, whether that be my Wine talk, my LaTeX workshop or Kabilan’s terminal talk taking place tomorrow.

As I mentioned earlier, the tickets for all of our sessions are completely free. However, spaces are limited, so make sure you’re able to grab a place before they sell out (if they sell out; it is a pilot program after all).

Kabilan and I are taking part in this pilot program as volunteers who are trying to help the organisers get this thing off the ground. I offer my sincerest thanks to Graham Ogunleye, Kiran Patel, Jameelah Webster and all of the other takeover and specific event organisers for setting up this pilot in the first place. I got to know Graham quite well over the past few months thanks to his Tech Exploration Club which takes place in Redbridge Central Library, every Thursday at 2-4pm during the school term, and I really appreciate his insights into various tech topics. He told me and Kabilan about this takeover and encouraged us to take part, which I am incredibly grateful for as this is an amazing opportunity for all of us. I am hoping that the success of these events allows the organisers to run future events with more funding, and I really do want this takeover to succeed.

I’ll let you know more about how this all goes once I get the chance. In the meantime, though, please spread the word about the UEL CDT Maker Club Takeover and the aforementioned events going on and register your interest. I hope to see you at either or both of my sessions. And to those of you who are coming to Kabilan’s terminal talk tomorrow, I’ll see you there! Peace!

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