TEDxZurich 2011: Ideas worth spreading from Zurich

I am proud to have been on the organizing team of TEDxZurich 2011. With the help of great sponsors, including the Swiss National Television Network, at which the event was held, amazing speakers and performers, and a full house of 450 attendees, we celebrated and shared “ideas worth spreading”. I was on the speakers committee, moonlighted with a bit of tech help, and the day of was rushing around making sure all the speakers were happy and prepared for their big moment on stage. Here are the videos; it’s extremely hard to pick a favorite, but the speaker I am most proud of and moved by is Dr. Eleanor Dobson who gives us a peek into the belly of CERN and how modern big science is done. Dr. Dobson’s talk was one of the talks I helped curate, in conjunction with the TEDxZurich team, and came about after I heard her passion on the subject and suggested she speak. Don’t stop there though, there are 20 videos from the day and hundreds of ideas ready to run loose. Read More …

pv-astro poster, simulating the Milky Way, and supercomputer lovefest

I gave a short presentation Friday about pv-astro at the Swiss National Supercomputer Center’s User’s day. We also got to hear a few talks, including about Lucio Mayer’s recent work on a realistic simulation of a Milky Way type galaxy similar to our own. Finally we got an update about the machines at the center being upgraded in October. Some people like fast cars, motorcycles, and airplanes. Me however, I like big machines, with lots of cores and an obscene amount of RAM. Read More …

The Intersection of Productivity and Joy (over the past months)

Since last we spoke a couple of months ago, I had a hell of a time personally: I moved house, went from one location to another too often, had a major and very stressful financial crisis and had some rough times with friends which rocked the emotional boat. Although there are many things which didn’t Read More …

Wikileaks Research Project–Final Report: Background and Methods

The Motivation https://twitter.com/#!/corbett_inc/status/11049922849673216 https://twitter.com/#!/corbett_inc/status/11050551278051330 https://twitter.com/#!/ario/status/11053875767279616 Check my Wikileaks Research Project midpoint report out for more details but a bite sized background piece quoting from the blog post is as follows: A week ago I hatched a plan to educate myself in a more structured manner on what exactly Wikileaks stands for, its history, and its Read More …