The Gathering of the Nerds
So, we had the annual tech forum today at UCLA; a chance for all the best nerds around to come share the most recent nerdiness of our times. Sadly, I missed some of the best talks in the morning (I really wanted to hear the nanotech/bio-informatics/health care presentation) because I had to be in a class, but I got back in time to listen to the presentation about technology and national defense, mostly about the latest cyber threats that have been emerging. Overall, the talks and presentations this year weren't quite as good as previous, but that's probably just because I missed out on the interesting ones I wanted to hear in the morning. The most interesting thing I got to see was a professor who had hacked modified an iphone to work in conjunction with sensors embedded in shoes to create a portable DDR game. They even demoed it, with one grad student dancing (he actually got a pretty low score) and showing it respond on the screen. Obviously, the technology was designed for more important things (namely, as sensors to monitor elderly people walking and act as an early warning system that they aren't walking steady and may fall), but I guess grad students can't help but make something more...amusing...out of it. Fun stuff; wish I could have been around for the more interesting stuff though.