nerd nite wellington

UPDATE: The prezis from the talks are available here.

As some of you may know, this Saturday (Jan 12th) is the day on which Hal turns 21! We tried to organise a screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey to commemorate this auspicious date, but the rights are incredibly locked down. Sigh.  No matter, though!  You can all still watch it at home with your friends and loved ones, and we encourage that most strongly 🙂

Our first nerd nite of the year looks like it’s going to be a corker, and has been set for January 21st, 6pm, at Hotel Bristol.

Yes, it’s a public holiday, but the Hotel Bristol is open (and NOT charging a surcharge, yay!).

Without further ado, our speakers:

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Electrifying Brains
Gina Grimshaw

Blurb – Humans have been zapping their brains for centuries. Gina Grimshaw will show us how, and explain why we would ever want to do such a thing.

Gina is a cognitive neuroscientist in the School of Psychology at Victoria University. She thinks brains are cool.

UPDATE: to be a test monkey for Gina, contact her.

Look Blue Go Purple
David Bimler

David Bimler is a physicist who went over to the dark side and became a perceptual psychologist. He will not use his talk about Pigments of the imagination as a way of recruiting experimental subjects from the audience.

The present story really goes back 150 million years, when colour vision in mammals turned weird. Things took another strange turn 30 or 40 million years ago: tropical plants started selectively breeding our primate ancestors to serve
as their seed-dispersal devices, and the primates used a clever biological hack to re-invent three-colour vision. Much later, colour perception was hijacked when we discovered language.

However, I will be concentrating on more recent aspects of colour research.
These include:
— the Russian Blues
— the world’s largest survey of colour language, conducted by missionaries in the 1970s
— the field-work used by Estonian linguists as an excuse to stay in Florence.

There will be colour swatches and words like ‘taupe’.

UPDATE: to be a test monkey for David, contact him.

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As always, do get in touch with with me if you or someone you know would like to give a talk 🙂
See you all there!

Borrowed from NIWA’s Critter of the Week – more info on this awesome little guy at http://on.fb.me/V9BAlK

Heyho and merry holidays!

Just a quick note – book your calendars for January 21st, where we shall be having our next nerd nite – sample place, same time! It looks
like a neuro flavour…

Also, I’m TRYING to organise a screening for 2001: A Space Odyssey on Jan 12th. This is proving hellishly difficult (mutter screening rights mutter), but stay tuned!

In the meantime – have a wonderful time, dear people, and see you next year 🙂

Much love

aimee

UPDATE: The prezis from the talks are available here.

Note: To attend this nerd nite, you need to register (it’s free) here.

To celebrate our 13th nerd nite, we thought we’d do something a little different, and so allow us to present nerd nite 13: the Alternative one!

Once again, the show will happening at the Hotel Bristol (our official home!) on November 19th and will be starting at around 6:30 pm (although, please do start arriving from 6pm).

Details as follows (be aware that these may change):

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Card magic
Chelfyn Baxter (@chelfyn)

Chelfyn Baxter will be talking about, and giving a demo on, Card Magic. He will be performing 3 minor miracles of close-up magic that rely on 3 very different principles of magic. He will then take a vote, and will fully explain whichever ONE trick that the audience is most curious about. He’s been handling card for over 30 years and studying magic for nearly a decade.

Chelfyn’s talk will be split into two parts, so stick around until the end!

Chelfyn Baxter is Grand Vizier of Mohawk Media, a DJ / VJ / 3D animator and magician.

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The History of Burlesque
Helen Baxter, (msbehaviour)

MsBehaviour looks at the history of burlesque, from the parody plays of the 17th century to the recent neo-burlesque revival.

MsBehaviour is Managing Directrix of Mohawk Media, and worked in Theatre and Circus at Glastonbury Festival of the Performing Arts for ten years.

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Quick demo: how to twirl nipple tassles
(Still TBC)

A 5 minute demonstration showing how anyone (even boys) can twirl nipple tassles.

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The Physics of Pole: A New Twist
Shirley Jones, aka Miss Taken

In this talk and demonstrations, Shirley and her demonstrators will offer one of the few non-abstract displays of both centripetal and centrifugal forces at the same time. All whilst battling gravity and our own strength.

The act will show them defying gravity, playing with both centripetal and centrifugal forces, and demonstrating the power of the triangles of strength, all whilst wearing hot pants and a crop top – silly heels optional. Of additional physics interest is that the pole will be freestanding!

Shirley performs as Miss Taken (retired, but has been persuaded to begin again by @teh_aimee). She is a pole instructor and New Zealands first Boylesque instructor and coached NZ’s highest ranked Male Pole Dancer.

Pole: making science and engineering sexy, and defying human physical limits.

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As always, nerd nite is a FREE event, so bring everyone you know!

UPDATE: The prezis from the talks are available here.

Our twelfth nerd nite is going to be a bit different!

Still happening at the Hotel Bristol, September 17th,and starting at 6pm, this one will be a little simpler, and shorter.

Update: details below! We’re only having two talks this time, as we expect the one on Mongolia to last for longer than 20 minutes 😛

Further update: We now have three speakers. This happens 😛

UPDATE: The prezis from the talks are available here.

The Southern Hemisphere’s eleventh nerd nite.  Gosh.  It’s been almost two YEARS since we began all this madness!

Once again to be held at the Hotel Bristol, from 6pm, this nerd nite will taking place on Monday June 18th.

And we have some really interesting speakers!  Well, that’s what aimee thinks, anyway 🙂

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Why, exactly, those birds are angry
Mike Dickison (@adzebill)

Angry Birds is the world’s most popular computer game and Finland’s greatest cultural achievement since Sibelius. Very little attention, however, has been paid to the game’s semiotics: what do the green pigs represent? Why do they sometimes have moustaches? Why are their homes so flimsy? And why, exactly, are the birds so angry with them? Mike will outline his all-encompassing explanation that involves Walter Benjamin, the Battle of Midway, and the evolutionary history of little flightless birds.

Mike did his PhD at Duke University on the evolution of giant flightless birds, wrote a best-selling book on how to play the ukulele, and helps scientists visually communicate their data. His talk on the biology of Big Bird is the world’s most-watched PechaKucha.

Some links for the above:
http://www.giantflightlessbirds.com
http://www.adzebill.com
http://www.pecha-kucha.org/presentations/?sort[popularity]=desc

Medical Terminology – what and why
Ted Cizadlo

Electronic medical records have nearly replaced paper-based record keeping in your doctor’s office.  The quality of these records can be a matter of life and death, but is not regulated.  This talk will introduce you to some of the things that are important in medical records, and look at what the future may hold in this area.

Ted Cizadlo was the Group Manager of the National Systems and Infrastructure team at the Ministry of Health until January of this year.  Prior to that he directed the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Lab at the University of Iowa Medical Centre in Iowa City, Iowa. Ted was trained as a physical chemist, taught physics and chemistry.  He is also a luthier with a small workshop in Karori.  Ted is currently working as a part time consultant and part time luthier.

The Return of Dr. Evil,
or: How Not to be a Science Hipster
Matt Mourits

He’s still getting aimee a blurb, but it’ll be something about an exploration of the golden age of science, why today science is often mistrusted and scientists ridiculed and, of course, a call to arms how we can reverse this unacceptable trend!

UPDATE: THE BLURB!

Humans are the first species  of this planet to have mapped its own genome, eradicate some of its most deadly viral and bacterial threats, uncover the particles that make him and put one of their own on surface the moon (after having flung some specimens of the other species involuntary into space first to “test the water”, so to speak).

With all these achievements combined, stack on top of each other, you would think that everyone would be united in admiration for the brave men and women who brought us these wonders and be proud to use the same methods and tools they did it with?
Then why is science still so mistrusted? Why are pseudo-science and superstition on the rise and do skeptics have to be apologetic for their critical questions? Is critical thinking (or as we like to call it “thinking”) really not as natural as it seems?

If we want this age to be a scientific age then it is time for the geeks to rise, (gently) storm the barricades of ignorance and stupidity and proclaim what is rightfully awesome.

Matt is a computer engineer who studied the scientists at the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam for many years. This opportunity to observe these academic creatures in their natural habitat made him wonder what made them so different form the other species of homo sapiens who looked over the fence with a mix of curiosity and bewilderment.

Matt sometimes finds himself bewildered by how anyone can fail to be amused and amazed by the wonders of nature and the joy of finding out how it really works.
He will share his bewilderment with you and his plan to nudge so sense into the world.

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As always, this is a FREE event, so bring your friends, family, pet aliens and enemies (a bit of education never hurt anyone, right?). Additionally, if you think you’d like to write an article/blog post about something nerdy, please get in touch with aimee.

See you there!

UPDATE: The prezis from the talks are available here.

Greetings, nerders nite!

A quick FYI, with more details in the near future, that nerd nite Wellington number 10 will be happening this month, April 23rd, at Hotel Bristol from 6pm.

We’ve changed the format a little and will only be having three speakers from now on, but this one promises to be a good’un, covering quantum mechanics, Mars, and making Mad Gadgets that Do Things (with sound).

Don’t forget to check our Facebook page and Twitter stream (links in right hand column) for more details, or the event listing on Facebook! There’s also some background information on nerd nite on aimee’s blog.

Can’t wait to see you there, and keep an eye out for more information soon!

Your loving host
aimee

Update: Thanks to Brett Wilkins for our new and improved title! [Check the URL to see the first one]

UPDATE! Our full lineup (not necessarily in this order) is as follows:

EVEN MORE UPDATE! Andrew Stephens (one’s #9’s speakers) will be giving a brief celebration of the ZX Spectrum, seeing that tonight is it’s 30th birthday.  He’s bringing his.  There may be games.

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What is Existence? The following is a scientific answer.
Roger Hanson

The early 20th century view of existence as described by Newton and Einstein, is merely the front-stage show in this Universe. Underpinning this is a more fundamental physics, quantum physics, operating back-stage, where the seemingly impossible becomes possible. Without quantum physics, living organisms, for example, could not exist. Dr Hanson will raise the curtain and reveal what is going on.

Dr Roger Hanson has a PhD from Cambridge University. In 2011 he delivered a presentation on The Evolution of Universes to the Flamsteed Society at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich London. He is author of a book, The Cosmic Engine and writes a weekly science article for The Taranaki Daily News and The Marlborough Express. He is currently writing a less academic version of the The Cosmic Engine for the non-scientist.

Kiwimars: NZ’s space race
Elf Eldridge

Welcome to NZ’s burgeoning space industry! Well maybe ‘burgeoning’ is too strong a word…perhaps ‘non-existant’ is a better phrase! Nonetheless, during the last 2 weeks of April, 6 Kiwis are winging their way to Mars. For two weeks, these intrepid Kiwi-naughts will east, sleep, exercise and communicate as if they were marooned on the red planet, whilst inhabiting the most Martian place on Earth: the deserts of Utah. Kiwimars is the latest in a series of NASA experiments to test the habitability of the Martian surface. Mission controller Elf Eldridge will tell how and why the mission came into being, relay messages from the crew and provide a brief insight into Kiwimars living conditions. Elf will look at the science behind the experiments they’re doing, the implications for the the future colonization of Mars, the possibility of a New Zealand with an active part in space research, and wil digress breifly into talking about Ice caves under Austria.

Elf is a Physics PhD student with the MacDiarmid Institute with a keen interest in all things sciency. He’s been interested in space ever since wanting to sell ice-creams on the moon as a child, and now works at Carter Observatory, which is as close as he can currently get.

See you on Mars….

http://www.kiwispace.org.nz/

Zen and the Art of DIY Electronics
Richard Dennis Bartlett (aka Rich Decibels)

Rich tells the story of how his love of weird noises took him from respectable engineer to broke artist, and shares some of the lessons he learnt along the way.

Rich Decibels is an electronics nerd with a passion for open source, DIY, and teaching people how they can make anything.

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As always: it’s a free event, so bring everyone you know who likes to know more! Just bring money for beer and food 🙂 Talks start at 6:30pm, but seating fills fast, so the closer to 6pm you get there, the better your seats.

See you there!

UPDATE: The videos of the talks are now available, and linked to below, under the description of each talk!  You can also peruse the nerd nite Wellington Vimeo channel here 🙂

Greetings, all, and welcome to 2012!

In this, the first nerd nite of 2012 (and hopefully not the last session, it being, well, 2012 and all*), we’ll be covering superheavy elements, our history with computers, negotiation and radio and our relationship therewith.

Getting a special mention are speakers Peter Schwerdtfeger and Heinz Gäggeler (who is actually based in Switzerland), who are flying down from Auckland to be with us!

It’s taking place on Feb 13th, from 6pm, at the HOTEL BRISTOL (Cuba St). Please do get in touch if you have any brilliant leads on venues which can seat over 100 people, are in central Wellington, and have a good ambience.  No function rooms 😛

And, as always, please do indicate by RSVP whether you’ll be coming! Our Facebook page is a good way to go about that 🙂

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Beyond the Periodic Table – Going for the Super heavy Elements

Peter Schwerdtfeger and Heinz Gäggeler

The first Periodic Table of the Elements was proposed by Mendeleev in 1869, compiled on the basis of arranging the elements in ascending order of atomic weight and grouping them by similarity of chemical properties. He predicted the existence and properties of new elements. At that time it was not known how far in the atomic number we can go before an atom becomes too unstable and radioactively decay. A century later, it was assumed that the Periodic Table would end at nuclei with about 100 protons.

In the last decade we have seen the production of new elements for the Periodic Table up to nuclear charge 118, the so-called superheavy elements. They have fascinating chemical properties related to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Experiments on these exotic species are currently in progress at an atom-at-a-time scale. How far can we go? Where does the Period Table end? Can we do some chemistry with such exotic elements? What is the chemical and physical behavior of these exotic elements?

Peter is the Head of the Centre for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics at The New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study, Massey University Auckland. He is a recipient of the New Zealand Hector Memorial Medal, and the Humboldt Prize.

Heinz is joining us from the Paul Scherrer Institute in  Switzerland.

Videos of talks here and here.

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Personal Computer Revolution: Our Changing Relationship with the Machine

Andrew Stephen

In the 60 or so years since the first electronic computers the role they have played, and our relationship with these remarkable machines, has changed as profoundly as the machines themselves.  From huge, building sized computers that used enough electricity to power small villages, to pocket sized devices that run for days on a battery, these have inspired, augmented and frustrated humanity like no other invention in history

This talk will look at the evolution of these machines, and our changing interaction with them.
Andrew got his first computer at age 10, and today collects early personal computers of the 70s, 80s and 90s.  He works by day as an Information Security boffin to support this borderline unhealthy habit.  Andrew lives with a surprisingly tolerant wife, two children, a motorcycle and approximately 180 dusty, recalcitrant computers.

Video of talk here.

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Negotiation for Nerds

Breccan McLeod-Lundy

Nerds have a reputation for being poor negotiators, some of it is deserved; however, nerds happen to also generally be the types of thinkers that are capable of becoming great negotiators if they take the time to improve their skills.

The field of negotiation covers everything from the car salesmen to convincing friends to help you move a couch. As a practice negotiation has evolved significantly over the last few decades and become far better recognised as a develop-able skill. This talk will illuminate some of the ways the practice of negotiation has developed and some of the methods that have appeared for creating agreements that satisfy everyone involved.
Breccan does things, mostly to do with the web. He alternates between developer, project manager and ranty consultant. He can be found at http://breccan.com

Video of talk here.

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Our Wireless Love Affair

Emily Cotlier

For a hundred and thirty years, radio-wave technology has evolved in response to our social demands. Learn about the basic principles of wireless radio transmission, our intense social relationship with radio throughout its consumer availability, and how wireless technology is adapting to today’s tremendous demands on limited radio bandwidth.

Emily Cotlier is a Senior Technical Writer at Aviat Networks, where “we make wireless work.” She is also vice-president of the Technical Communicators Association of New Zealand, and an occasional cabaret emcee around Wellington.

Video of talk here.

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Nerd nite Wellington is a free event, held in Wellington every two months or so and hosted by aimee whitcroft (@teh_aimee). It gets three or four people to get up and talk, for about 20 minutes, on subjects about which they’re passionate. So far, we’ve had everything from cryptic crosswords to scrabble, geonengineering to flinging things into space in expensive and dangerous ways, and about everything else in between. It’s generally held in bars, because aimee believes that alcohol, learning and socialising go well together.

Bring your friends, family and everyone else who like learning! But beware, the venue fills up fast 🙂

UPDATE: videos up! Prezis from the talks are available here.

The next coupla months are gonna be busy.  Just warning you.  There is going to be MUCH nerdnite-related awesomeness happening.

But for now!  Presenting nerdnite #7.

It’s about data.  All kindsa tasty data, and what we do with it, and how it affects us.  Oh, yes, and we will also have a special outro (details below).

NOM

As usual, it’s happening on a Monday – the 19th September, to be precise.  And at Club Ivy.  Also, and this is important: September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.  So don’t be surprised if you see many piratey people, and hear ‘aarrrr!’ a lot.

Aaaaand, some of our speakers for the evening are, in no particular order:

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The extended mind

Matt Boyd

Traditionally materialists (i.e. those who don’t believe in spooky stuff like souls) have taken the brain to be the object of study when we want to learn about the mind. But a lot of important information processing goes on outside of the brain and outside the body. We use fingers to count and respond to our own gestures when we talk. We refer to instructions or lists we’ve made in order to remind ourselves what it is that we believe. We physically rotate objects to solve spatial rotation problems rather than doing it in our brains alone.

In many cases it is only a kind of brain-bias that prevents us from calling these information processing acts ‘thought’ and counting the external objects as parts of our minds. But, even if we resist claiming that minds are partly constituted by external objects, looking at these interactions focuses our attention on how important stuff ‘out there’ is to our thinking. We really can give someone a lobotomy by hiding their notebook and iphone, tying up their opposable thumbs, and preventing them from using written symbols. In fact there was a time when none of this was actually available to us, and we would have thought in very different ways back then. This begs the question, if minds ‘extend’ in any meaningful sense then what psychological changes will waves of new technology bring?

I will introduce the idea of the ‘extended mind’ and suggest that this way of thinking about the way we think, raises interesting questions about who owns various thoughts, and the impact of technology on our minds.

Matt has recently submitted his PhD thesis ‘As We Build Our World We Build Our Minds’ to Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests are philosophical topics in evolution and the mind. When he’s not arguing with Richard Dawkins in the academic literature, Matt enjoys writing bad philosophical fiction. After nine years in Wellington he is about to take up an academic post at the University of Auckland (the recent snow had nothing to do with this decision).

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Gimme the cache!

David Preece

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Musical outro!

Zuni Preece

Zuni learned to play “Still Alive” (the outro music from best-computer-game-ever Portal – ) for a school thing and could be persuaded to play music for nerds. Maybe even with a bouncing dot over the words or something…

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Bummer of a Summer? The science of seasonal forecasting

James Renwick

How come some winters start early? Why is summer a non-event some years, and a scorcher in others? Can we know these things in advance? This talk will bring you up to speed on why the climate varies from one year to the next, what’s predictable and what’s not, and will tell you everything you could possibly want to know about El Niño, La Niña, and the Southern Annular Mode.

James is a principal climate scientist at NIWA. He got interested in climate forecasting after mastering weather forecasting back in the 1980s. He’s interested in how and why the climate varies on pretty much all time scales, from days to centuries, and what the future holds for the climate of New Zealand.

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Steampunk DH

Sydney Shep

Digital Humanities is an alternative approach to humanities and social science scholarship using new digital tools to reinterpret and visualise traditional data. This talk presents some of the local and international e-research projects in the humanities that move us beyond the current “Mix ‘n Mash” competitions and challenge us to think about how and why we create new knowledge.

Dr. Sydney Shep, is Senior Lecturer in Print and Book Culture at Victoria University of Welllington, NZ, and The Printer at Wai-te-ata Press, a letterpress teaching, research, and fine press publishing facility. She has been involved in humanities eResearch over the last decade from the “Print History Project: Wellington’s Book Trade 1840-2000” to the current Print Culture eResearch Hub which hosts “The Printers’ Web: Typographical Journals and Global Communication Networks,” the “NZ-Reading Experience Database,” and “The Digital Colenso,” a prosopographical collaboratorium. Sydney is currently the NZ representative for the newly established Australasian Association for Digital Humanities.

The first of many various and awesome special editions, master classes and so forth, we’re pleased as punch to present ‘Tell Us A Story’!

“Tell Us a Story” is Victoria University’s very first story-telling competition for Post Graduates in the Science and Engineering Faculties, with the aim being to ‘woo’ the audience.  Not for this dry journal-type papers!  Instead, stories of pain, passion, struggle and, likely, whiteboards and failed experiments*.  In 7 minutes.

And nerdnite will be presenting the winning stories! Apparently, singing is allowed, although @teh_aimee insists she has veto rights over what is presented at nerdnite 😛

It’s all taking place on Monday, October 17th.  At Club Ivy, from 6pm.

It’s gonna be aaaaawwweesome!

* Damn the little bastards for dying unexpectedly in their petri dish!

UPDATE: VIDEOS AVAILABLE HERE http://vimeo.com/channels/224745, prezis from the talks are available here.

Hellz yeah! We have another nerdnite, coming straight to your geeky, geeky brains, on July 18th at Bar Bodega. From 6pm. And it’s gonna be _great_. A veritable feast for the senses.

Seriously – check out the lineup, and then ask yourself: why the hell would I _not_ be at this nerdnite?

So, and in an order that’s likely to be this one, but might change, let us present our speakers and their subjects:
…
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Alchemy In Your Glass
Allyn York (@allyn)

In its various forms beer has been with us for thousands of years. And for most sectors of most societies over that time it has been extremely popular.
A brief look at the history of beer, how it’s made, an overview of various styles, and specifically what’s in your glass right now… assuming that you’re partaking in this divine beverage.

Allyn York starting drinking beer when he was 6 and started brewing a couple of decades later. Allyn, and his partner in zymurgy, Chris Mills took the overall silver medal, and best in class (NZ pale ale) in the 2008 NZ homebrew championships.

Weep quietly and twitch
David Tossman (@obel)

Weep quietly and twitch will explore cryptic crosswords from both the solver’s and the setter’s point of view, showing how they not only test, but also amuse, entertain and stimulate the brain. And yes, geeks, although pen and paper or even, if you must, pencil and paper, are good, you can tackle them via mobile apps.

David Tossman is best known for his prodigious somnolence but is also widely reviled (think needles and wax effigies) for his work composing cryptic crosswords for the New Zealand Listener.

Film Editing: Another Version Of The Truth
Nick Swinglehurst (@nickscale)

Ever since we started recording people on film, another bunch of people have wanted to change that recording, to reframe and reinterpret its indelible truth into something that better serves the purpose of the filmmaker.

This process is film editing. Usually it’s a force for good – making complex arguments accessible, making protracted events succinct, or simply for making a dull story more compelling.

But the reversioning of the truth which is so intrinsic to editing, can be deceptive in the wrong hands. It started as a tool for propaganda and continues to manipulate audiences today.

In this talk, I will demonstrate and explain some common tricks of the editing room – and make examples of some of their most nefarious abusers…

3d printing, rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing: your own little factory
Patrick Herd (@patrickherd)

The ability for invidividuals to conduct their own 3d printing and rapid prototyping is relatively new – up until now, stunning material and infrastructure costs have prevented it. Now, however, things are changing, and Patrick will take us through what can be done, how, and why it’s considered to be some of the best fun one can have with one’s clothes on.

Patrick has worked with artists, engineers and computer scientists on projects that examine bleeding edge technologies ability to articulate contemporary ideas. He is particularly interested in eclectic mashups of technologies, ie what happens if you put this with this and that. Technologies that go bang and those that can activate interventionist situations. Other projects include music videos and feature film effects work.

Suggested prior reading:
www.makerbot.com
www.ultimaker.com
www.reprap.org
www.thingiverse.com

NOTE: Patrick will be bringing a 3d printer along for y’all to see running and get up close and personal with.

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A reminder. Nerdnite’s a free event, where we encourage conversation, the bringing along of people you know, and the serious drinking of beer (or other such liquids).

We hope to see you there 🙂

FB event page here