Nerd Nite Amsterdam

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22 September –  Doors open 20:00 – First talk 20:30
CREA Muziekzaal – Turfdraagsterpad 17 – Amsterdam
Free admission for nerds and non-nerds alike

Nerds return with a vengeance! After spending the holidays among dusty books and computer screens, again we don our bandaid-mended glasses and stick a fresh leaky pen in our pocket. Even if you did spend your holidays at a sun-soaked beach resort, surely you’re up for a healthy dose of off-the-charts nerdutainment. The recipe for Nerd Nite is simple and effective: presentations, drinks, and that strange thing called social interaction. In this edition, be prepared to learn the truth-content of Hollywood’s most epic swordfights (with live demonstrations!), and to tackle all of life’s problems with do-it-yourself digital solutions. To top it off, we bring you the first edition of the Nerd Nite quiz. All that will be lubricated by geeky music, hand-picked and melted to perfection by DJ Dirk Diggler (Booktunes). Be there and be square, and if you didn’t get that pun, be there to find out why you should!

Jos Vermaseren – Advanced Algorithmic Puzzling

Would you like to learn how to convert a Japanese drawing into tapestry? Or build your own Mondriaan inspired bookcase? Or design a gigantic 3D puzzle? Or invent Sudoku’s that even Stephen Hawking would have trouble solving? Jos Vermaseren, a computing expert likes to take his quests digital. In his talk he will share a few leisure time projects with us, thoroughly explaining the strategy so that you can all go home to try yourself. Expect this edition of Nerd Nite to bring you to the world where computer algorithms and hardcore brainpower are used to solve the puzzle.

Jos Vermaseren is part of the staff at the theory group of the National Institute for Subatomic Physics (NIKHEF), holds a 4th dan in GO, has a small art collection and a far going fascination for Japanese food and drinks.

Swordfighting in Movies: Truth or Fiction?

The honorable tradition of trying to kill each other with sharp objects goes back to the dawn of times. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for us, the military and even civilian use of swords has all but disappeared in Europe with the advent of gun warfare. Nowadays, we have little idea how it used to be done. This also means that the filmmakers, even our favorite ones, sometimes can get away with a lot when it comes to sword fights. But not anymore! Lousy and awesome swashbuckling on the silver screen as seen by a modern swords(wo)man, now with 30% more live demonstration! (The organizers accept no responsibility whatsoever for any injury resulting from active participation).

Katja Rybakova has almost completed her PhD research in systems biology at the Free University of Amsterdam, where she also stumbled upon a neighboring ZAZ fencing club.

We are thrilled to announce the second edition of the Amsterdam Nerdnite! Come along on April 21st at 8.30 pm (doors open: 8pm) at the CREA Musictheater, Turfdraagsterpad 17, Amsterdam and tune in to role playing and weighing stars.

Neutron stars are more massive than the Sun, but all their matter is squeezed into a sphere not much wider than Amsterdam.  In fact, they’re so dense that a single teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh more than everyone on Earth combined.  Still, inferring something as basic as a neutron star’s mass is hard work – after all, they’re really, really far away and we can’t exactly go there with a scale.  I’ll explain how we can determine a neutron star’s mass by treating it like an ultra-precise cosmic clock and what this can teach us about how gravity and particle physics works.

Jason Hessels is a research astronomer at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) in Dwingeloo.

Boston, Berlin, Chicago, LA, Dublin, and now Amsterdam. An evening where nerds and non-nerds come together for nerdery of all sorts (mostly presentations and drinks). No lengthy colloquia, but passionate, bite-size orations about out-of-the-box topics that you didn’t know you should know about.

Featured speeches are

* 744 and 645: Can you juggle them? I can!
…
The world of juggling has experienced dramatic changes in the last forty years. It all started as part of a buffoonish circus act involving clowns, unicycles and splattered pie. In those days, juggling was no more than throwing around random objects in a predictable pattern while behaving foolishly. From that point on, more sophisticated forms of juggling emerged. One of them is the combination of juggling with music and dance, dubbed “The New Circus”. The other, more “nerdy” side of the new juggling is called “technical juggling”. It involves complicated patterns, combination of different tricks, and a precise realization of all the moves. In this talk, the science of juggling and its relation to mathematics will be introduced. Numbered sets and permutations will be juggled into a beautiful pattern. And of course, some examples will be demonstrated real-time with an increasing number of balls…

Bio: Balázs Pozsgay studied physics at the Eötvös University in Budapest, he also did his PhD there. Since November 2009 he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, UvA.

* On-the-job training for robots

Forget Gyro Gearloose’s Cleanup-Robot and Toothbrush-O-Matic: rigid, narrow-minded, single-purpose machines. The way forward is evolutionary robotics: a swarm of tiny, simple robots that form a symbiotic roborganism that can perform any given task. If a single robot fails, the swarm can pretty much carry on regardless. Also, the robots can reconfigure the organism to suit particular tasks and circumstances, something that large and complex individual robots would find impossible. In this talk, the peculiarities of these multi-purpose automatons are revealed. And, most importantly, how to teach the little rascals to behave.

Bio: Evert Haasdijk is a researcher at Gusz Eiben’s computational intelligence group at the Amsterdam Free University. Before that, he worked as a research consultant for Cap Gemini Innovation and as director of software development at KiQ Ltd.

In between and after, there will be drinks and music by The Benelux, ‘a vintage shock of tasteful noise, beats and resonating vocals’. English spoken.

Date: Thu 17th February, 20.00 hr
Location: CREA Muziekzaal
Admission: free
No reservations.