Nerd Nite #71

MMMarch

M is for Math – Wes Maciejewski: How many shapes are there? The answer is two.

What makes one shape different than another? For elementary shapes like triangles and squares, the answer is simple: how many sides do they have? But what about shapes like that of the earth and of the universe? This idea of understanding the essence of “shape” spurred a great deal of philosophical thought for millennia. It took a 19th century polymath to give us the right way of thinking about this: does the shape have a hole in it or not? This led to one of the biggest unsolved problems known to humankind…and to this presentation.

Wes is a mathematician. This is odd because he, growing up, never knew this is something people do. He became mathematician because he found math to be the most wonderful playground of ideas created by humans. He finished his undergrad sometime ago at the UofA, went on to a Master’s at the UofC, then a PhD at Queen’s. Since then, he’s held academic positions in Vancouver, Auckland, and California, presented at conferences all around the world, and is happy to now be back in his home province as a faculty member at Red Deer Polytechnic.

M is for Mastodon – Chad Ohman: The Accidental Community: Reimagining Social Media

Curiosity kills the cat, and if it doesn’t it makes it stronger. How an experiment grew to a community of over 35,000 members in the span of a month and how it’s managed to reshape how we interact with each other online.

Chad runs the massively popular Mastodon instance mstdn.ca.

M is for Marc-Julien – Marc-Julien Objois: Subtractive Synthesis: The Circuits that Make Music

Marc-Julien is a software architect by trade, photographer and musician by hobby. He has had a long relationship with science, skepticism, and Nerd Nite Edmonton. He never passes up an opportunity to write about himself in the third person.

Synthesizers come in many forms, but many of the sounds you hear in music from the last 60 years come from circuits generating oscillating voltages that get turned into sound. You’d be surprised at the simplicity of the origins of the sounds you hear, and also the rich variety that can be achieved. Marc-Julien will talk about how synthesizers from manufacturers such as Moog, Korg, and Roland make the bleeps and bloops you enjoy.

• Nerd Nite
• $25.00 inc $3.00 fee
• March 30, 2023
• 180 minutes
• 19:30
• Fringe Theatre Arts Barns
• Studio Theatre
• 18A