Picocon 33: Origins has now happened and the SciFi library has stopped looking like a frantic booklet folding factory. For those who aren’t aware, Picocon is a tiny ComicCon, i.e. a mini ultimate nerd fest organised by ICSF. It included talks from guest authors, silly games, readings and viewings of hilariously terrible content with the chance to bid money to make it stop and destruction of dodgy merchandise with liquid nitrogen and big hammers. The one thing that most certainly didn’t occur was a fish duel and I most definitely did not have salmon stored in my fridge, stinking out the kitchen.
Overall, it was just a lovely day filled with happy, quirky people and unnecessarily purchased books, 5 of which are now on my endless reading pile. If anyone is reading this in just under a year, Picocon’s about to happen, so you should go 🙂
super cool logo
In other news, I’m less small now, though still the baby of most societies. I received a surprisingly large bunch of food from a combination of parents and friends and a slow cooker from the former. Work was also lovely and got me some cute lights for my bedroom, which don’t suit the way I tend to act but confirm that I’m secretly domesticated.
PhysSoc is a free society, which you automatically become a member of by studying physics. It organises many a thing, such tours for students. Many of them are proper trips, which cost the moneys, but a free one came up and I wanted to look at a TOKOMAK.
absolutely what a tokomak contains
JET is the Joint European Torus and the largest plasma confinement experiment in the world. It is the predecessor of ITER and DEMO, which should be efficient enough to not only break even, but keep up a self-sustaining fusion reaction (as long as you keep feeding the plasma.)
nom nom
The idea of creating fusion in our humble non-sun environment has been around for a long time and many of us probably learned about the poor unfortunate who was certain he had achieved cold fusion, although he was measuring background radiation.
JET uses magnetic confinement to compress plasma. It then heats it up additionally using neutral beams and radio waves, which cause the precessing particles to resonate, hence gaining more kinetic energy.
Due to neutrons flying around, a lot of the reactor is radioactive enough that generally putting people into it is not the best idea. Hence, a system called MASCOT was developed. It is a remote handling system, controlled using model arms and an advanced feedback system, which allows you to feel the pressure of the item you are pushing/ twisting/ pulling/ generally annoying.
a mascot simulation
Moral: a cool thing happened and cool things are generally likely to happen because physics
The Imperial College BUCS Cross Country 2016 Team. #mudisgood
On the 6th of this month, a Saturday, 48 Cross Country runners represented Imperial College in Gloucester at the BUCS Cross Country race of 2016.
If you didn’t know, BUCS stands for ‘British Universities & Colleges Sport’.
The whole trip was organized and hyped up by our wonderful ICXC&A committee, who had put lots of work in to get us there, have a good time (especially for BUCS freshers – like me) and be safe.
And I did have a good time. The whole BUCS 2016 experience began with a text from a mysterious ‘GH’. The one and only Gary Hoare.
As how I think the myth goes, he was once a member of this club… If you want to know the rest, why not join the ICXC&A club and find out for yourself?
Anyway, the message contained my first challenge: #BakeOrBooze
I was to bring baked goods along with me for post-race consumption, and if not, I would have been “fined accordingly.” Not sure what it meant, but it probably involved paying for booze.
I called mine “orange chocolate chip cookies”.
It was truly the first time I baked anything, EVER. If you read my previous XC blog, then you’ll know bringing baked goods to races is a tradition of this club, and I got to bake something this time. Though I didn’t get an image of my pride, I got this:
I stayed up ’till 2 AM to finish baking, and I paid back my sleep-debt in the coach as we were on our way to Gloucester. We had left on Saturday morning, and the trip had taken about 2 – 3 hours.
Upon arrival in Gloucester, the colder weather and the sound of heavier rain woke me up. Passing by the course, we saw the big, green park in which we would be running laps, but also a large puddle probably was due to the rain. Probably.
I initially thought we had to stay outside, in the rain and cold, as we wait for the races to start, but all runners got a space in a sports complex – with a roof – nearby. As time passed by, I was shocked to see how many university students were in such a small space.
This was just one side of the area. #thatbellythough
We were all brought together in one area for one purpose – to compete and represent our unis/colleges in this race. But also to get muddy. After all, #mudisgood.
Everyone was putting on face paint, chatting, getting to know others in their respective teams better, smiling, making memories.
As I had brought a DSLR camera, I tried to capture some of these memories digitally to look back at a year from then or even in later years.
Then the Men’s A race began. It was 10.2 km long, and it was completed insanely fast by Chris Olley – our fastest runner- in 32m:54s. The Women’s race followed, and our speediest girl, Sarah Johnson, finished her 6.1 km race in 24m:22s.
The A Team.
The Men’s B race was last, and at this point, the track was SUPER muddy. As over 1000 people ran several laps in the race course, all the grass was pushed under the rain water and mud in some areas.
Imperial > All other unis & colleges
I knew it would be having a hard time washing my clothes when I got home. Nonetheless, I ran and completed my 7.3 km race in 35m:41s.
After finishing the race, besides thinking that I should train more, I headed directly to my things to drink some water. However, I had forgotten about our second challenge: #memento.
The BUCS freshers were to “take a part of the course” with us to “curry and beyond”. We had curry for dinner, you see.
I only remembered when I noticed other Imperial runners with barricade tape from the course used to border it.
As I removed my muddy shoes, I realized I had a small plant – with leaves and root – stuck inside. I decided to keep it as my #memento. And I still have it to this day!
Back at the travelodge we were staying at, we got cleaned up and got ready to party the night out in tie dye!
While we got ready, GH sent our third challenge: #BUCSSELFIE
This one required to take a selfie of “minimal dignity, and maximal hilarity”. I think I nailed it:
My mom would be angry if she saw this picture.
Then we headed for dinner!
We had curry at a BYOB curry house. It had low tripadvisor ratings and the wait for curry was too long. But I didn’t care about that really. During the long wait, I got to know some of the others XC runners from Imperial much better through conversation and never-have-I-ever.
Tie dye is our uniform.
Our next stop was the BUCS afterparty where we would meet the students from other unis/colleges that we competed against in the morning, but the cue was … you guessed it… too long.
We settled for a Spoons, which was literally next door to the club. It had all we needed – a dancefloor. The fun came with us 🙂
The rest of the night involved dancing, chanting, trying to dance with girls from other unis, but mainly enjoying the night with people I can now call friends.
You can see I was having a good time.
I realized I forgot to mention the final challenges. These were actually announced after GH’s identity was revealed as… the club captain.
For the fourth challenge, we were to get a bit loose by drinking a can of Strongbow. Though I don’t drink much, I admit: alcohol does help to let go and loosen up a bit.
For the fifth and final challenge, all BUCS freshers were to run a longer distance on Sunday than in the BUCS race. Some people actually woke up at 8 AM the next morning to complete this challenge, but I was too tired that I slept through the morning run. However, I later completed my final challenge on the treadmill at my local gym, finishing the run just minutes before the gym closed.
And that was my BUCS 2016 experience. I greatly look forward to next year. But for now, I gotta stop eating chocolates and train, train, train!
Another great trip started off pretty well as the glorious leader, who wasn’t going anyway, fell ill and couldn’t do the shop. While the previous glorious leader dealt with that, three freshers managed to deal with boats. Then people arrived, things happened and we ended up leaving half an hour late anyway. But hey, we tried.
The tall clumsy one, being a pain by nature, needed picking up from Luton, which sucked, but at least we successfully implemented the grab-and-eat-in-bus attitude to food, saving a bit of time. We arrived, tried to create warmth by hoping for it and closing the doors. In the morning, the fresher keen-team and tall-clumsy managed to make breakfast without casualties and we headed fairly early to The Duddon. There were two potential sections to run, respectively 3.5km and 6km in length and the decision was made to do both, increasing the need for reduced faff. Get-on was rather fun, as we lost two people in a car, since some people drive minibuses faster than others drive cars. After a good while of working out what to do, since we had no signal and they had no guide book, we realized that the odd red object directly in front of us could also be used as a phone. In the common tongue, I believe they call it a phone box. Having found humans, sent a shuttle and put correct clothing on, we went to get cold. The river was on low, so not particularly much of anything. Some sections scraped your butt the whole way down, but it did contain 5 or so nice rapids, which saw the capsize of two humans, one of whom ended up with a cracked, duct taped, but nonetheless leaking boat. It suddenly turned out to be a good thing that someone took two boats and we had a spare. Tall-clumsy decided to increase the level of havoc he causes, so threw his paddle gracefully over directly into a tree branch, so we had a minute while he climbed a tree to retrieve them.
As a side note, I confirmed that drysuits are magical and mine is kind enough to work. Being warm almost felt wrong, so maybe its good that my hands were still freezing. I also discovered that I am capable of losing my watch by storing it in my mouth due to lack of pockets, while finding out just how much fun it is to need to pee in a drysuit with no crotch zip of any kind.
We got off the river surprisingly much before dark and the existence of a car-wielding human made changing and leaving wonderfully quick. Chili was chiliful and it was worked out that poorly washed rice tastes much better when shaped in a volcano, because science. By nine, we were done and tired, so beer pong kept us entertained. A small handful of us then stuck around to observe ginger beer getting suspiciously darker and tall-clumsy failing at spinning a coin.
The second day started off with a really long decision making process. Some rivers were too high, one was too low, some were too far and some were too hard for us little ‘uns. On top of that, we had to drive just to obtain signal and once again lost the car. We settled on the last chunk of The Kent from the rapid before the L shaped drop to Force Falls. We took it really slow, so I had the opportunity to confirm that I can roll in a drysuit while waiting. WHOOP. Since we were only running one section, we had the chance to run it twice and the experienced few went again to search for lost paddles. The Kent was a morning mission last Lake District trip, so it was nice to run part if it again on higher, since it almost felt like a different thing entirely but I still had an idea of what was coming.
Also, no throwing up occured, other than once on the way to rivers. Major WHOOP. We were home damn early and I got free store cornflakes. Overall, I obtained a nice feeling of a good Lake District to balance the previously eugh one.
Having finally finished the lab cycles, I can talk about them in a much less bitter manner. They are split into three sections and there is a lab guide flying around the internet if you wish to see what actually goes on, but I’ll just go over them briefly through the filter of my opinions.
Measurement and Uncertainty
This isn’t really a lab cycle, just an introduction to the pain of error propagation. It’s an unfortunately useful pain and actually clears up some confusion from A-level. I always asked why we calculated errors in one certain way, when more than one appeared to make sense and heard “because they are all valid, but OCR only accepts this one”. Everything now makes sense and you realize pretty soon just how useful this all is as you already feel the burn of it after 4 hours of labs.
Experiments in Optics and Electromagnetism
I rate this section as the worst of the three, but only because it coincides with A-level experiments a bit. This won’t be the case with everyone and there is also no problem with it, so the word ‘worst’ implies bad things that I don’t want it too. There is also only a certain level of accuracy you can achieve during an electromagnetism experiment which involves small magnetic fields, when your desk, the cabinet under it, the whole room, the building, the general area of South Kensington and by this point even your soul are full of metallic objects and mysterious electronic devices.
Demonstration Experiments
These were actually quite cool. The problem of a limited accuracy is and will remain to be an issue, but the experiments were ones I had never seen in school and that involve constants that we use all the time, such as the speed of light. You also get to work with equipment that sounds and looks cool, like grating spectrometers.
Computing
This one was just really interesting as if you have a problem, you can always fix it. You may want to kill something fluffy and cute along the way, but you can theoretically fix it. The introduction to this was very well structured and provided a perfect background for those who were new to Python and a pleasant reminder for those who have delved into it before.
Lab Reports
Ew ew ew. Annoyingly useful to learnt to write well, but also ew ew ew. I secretly enjoyed them once they were done and I could just sit back and feel a bit smug that I wrote something that looks like a real report. Each lab cycle comes with its own lab report at the end, so you get three of these utter joys to look forward to.
Waffles and faff
Difficult and sad things sometimes happen, but I have honestly been overwhelmed by the amount of support and general loveliness I have encountered in the past week. I can honestly say that some people have balanced out actual tears with tears of joy (potentially because matching socks are enough to make me cry when particularly emotional, but still). I doubt these people will read this, but if they happen to, then hey, you’re great, thank you. On a more general note and on a note that it makes more sense to talk about in a blog, these people include members of staff. One said “If you want to get a cup of tea and talk (*cry) to me, feel free”, which is insanely lovely, since I think this is the busiest person in the department anyway. Sorry for being soppy, but I am really grateful to have nice people exist.
JUGGLING VARSITY HAPPENED
and it was great fun. I finally learned to juggle (only 3) the day before, so I felt not entirely out of place. Even though a rolla bolla board was broken, I was hit in the lip with a bouncy juggling ball, so solid rubber, and I crashed into solid floor with my knee and am now still in pain, it was awesome! Cambridge won, but I manged to suppress my competitive side and accepted these people nonetheless. I also confirmed for the second time, both of which were due to juggling, that Nandos has rather lovely and very edible veggie food. Whoop.
You know, I can answer this question by just re-reading the Union’s page ‘What is Imperial Plus?‘ and paraphrase the things I read there.
However, I figured that would not be as interesting (and as easy) as me just writing on what Imperial Plus has meant to me so far, and what experiences I’ve had until today.
I initially learned of the Imperial Plus (let’s abbreviate it to IP) scheme in an e-mail from Imperial before the Autumn term started. Of course, I read the page linked above, but I finally understood it when I attended a volunteer fair in the Great Hall in the South Kensington campus on the 13th of October, 2015.
Community Connections (CC)
There, I met the current Deputy President of Education, Chun-Yin, who answered my several questions on IP and CC.
I believe there were more than 20 organizations in the room, and they all had links with Imperial College, facilitating connections that Imperial students can make with these organizations based around London. This is Community Connections.
In the fair, I spoke with representatives of the numerous orgs., which mainly included charities. Through the process of jotting down my e-mail several times and saying I’d return to sign a form, there was one charity that I had a strong interest in – Kith & Kids.
I believe I already touched up on what the charity does and aims, but I really appreciate their slogan: supporting disability – focusing on abilities.
It is through CC that one is able to find organizations they may be interested in, and through the IP scheme, an Imperial student can log the hours he or she has spent volunteering with that organization.
Hour logs
As an IB Diploma Programme graduate, I have gone through the struggle of recording my CAS (Creativity-Action-Service) hours and later reflecting on all my volunteering activities. However, if it wasn’t due to the pressure I got from initially seeking places to obtain hours, I would not be volunteering as much as I do now.
Volunteering is actually one of the things that makes me happy.
The logging of hours can be done through the Imperial Union website, which every Imperial student has access to with their usernames and passwords.
It’s different from what I’ve become used to in the previous 2 years, but it’s simple and I guess it gets the job done. However, if I could improve it in a certain way, I would like to upload images of my volunteering experiences/memories with the organizations I volunteered with so that a collage can be automatically made, and possibly be used as a template to print a certificate.
Don’t you think it’s a good idea?
Imperial Plus Workshops
After having volunteered with various organizations back home and a few here in London, I feel that I have gained certain skills and traits I did not have before having my first set of hours signed
-I have become less fearful of approaching a stranger and promoting a cause.
-I am able to speak to new people I meet with more respect and attention.
-I have become more conscious of how I distribute and balance my time.
These are just a few things, but I could go on.
What I like about the IP scheme is that there are workshops in which an Imperial volunteer, but I believe a student in general as well, can learn about volunteering skills so you can develop them.
They’re a total of 6, and at the time of writing this, I have attended 4, but my most favourite one was Personal Effectiveness. You can find out about them here.
Recognition
Students can get recognized with certificates for the time spent and achievements met through volunteering.
They mainly require the student to complete a set number of hours, but one specifically requires writing reflective assignments based on 4 of 6 workshops attended.
Last term there was a celebration evening that I attended, though I hadn’t achieved the minimum number of hours for the first certificate yet. However, it was interesting to meet other volunteers at the event and hear of what they do for volunteering. I also got a chance to speak to the current President of the Union, Lucinda, and meet a recent MEng Biomedical Engineering graduate.
What was most surprising to me was that some students completed 100+ hours in just one term! I find that very difficult to do, so kudos to them.
I’m currently working toward the Volunteer Accreditation certificate, which requires me to have recorded 100 volunteering hours (66.50/100 at the time of writing this) and write 4 reflective assignments based on volunteering experiences or activities and the workshops I attended.
~
At the moment, I’m part of the Student Volunteering Week (Feb. 22nd – 28th) team at Imperial, and we’re working on several projects to do throughout the week and until then. Stay tuned for an update!
Working on weekends kills the relaxation aspect that they are associated with, so I’ve adapted to consider Tuesdays and Wednesdays as the weekend. Mainly because they contain clubs, so since I have things to say about them, here’s a general overview of the clubs you should go join.
Juggling and Circus- This used to be just juggling, but I wasn’t around in that era. It now consists of people standing in a room playing with various crap – perfect. There’s a bit of poi, staff, diabolo, uni cycling, rolla bolla joys and balls flying around. Outdoor sessions also involve a slackline, until the guy I borrowed it from remembers that I have it. Random games tend to happen, such as ugly gladiators (oh my, that sounds exciting, what could it be? Come and see), which is my particular favourite, as it’s a juggling-less version, so perfect for us useless ones. Membership is only £2, which is frankly worth the FREE CAKE. *Usually Tuesday 6pm in various places.*
I have no better photo, but look- people doing things
Come to the Fire Night this Friday in the UCL main quad at 8pm.
Canoe Club- We basically go have fun in a swimming pool, which is perfect for practicing various rolls and playing canoe polo. There is also a steam room and hot tub for those, who are laze inclined. All boats and kit is provided and if you have your own, the stores may be accommodating. Membership is £35 a year, which is understandable, since kayaks are just THAT BIT more expensive than juggling balls. *Tuesday, Ethos pool, meet at 7.30 in Beit Quad*
There are also biweekly trips, which tend to be to Wales, Devon or the Lake District. They’re a great place to go whoosh down white water and feel like you did something cool. Mainly because everything tends to look more impressive than it is difficult.
long human in a tiny boat
SkateSoc- This consists of many things. There are usually people learning and thus people teaching how to move when needed, but also stop when needed. Slalom cones provide more fun for those who can move, though there is an inevitable competition of some kind. Towards the middle, a hockey pitch is set up and we play gravel hockey
A few weeks back, a spontaneous trip to Buckingham Palace took place and we were extra entertained!
Look at us all sane-looking
SciFiSoc- So I only recently discovered that there is a room full of books, DVDs and nerds under Beit Hall. Now this is already the perfect combination, but there’s also a screen, usually playing something cool and intense discussions about the feasibility of film technology and sorts. You know the people are good when they meow back and each book they’ve recommended so far has been dang good. It is officially open every weekday for lunch from 12-2, but there is usually some lost soul wandering it at most other reasonable times. In fact, it is 8pm on a Wednesday and I’m in here writing this, watching Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, after getting into the Ghibli mood with Howl’s Moving Castle yesterday. The membership of £8 allows you to take out up to 3 items, one of which may be a non-book, i.e. dvd, comic etc. Currently enjoying Temeraire by Naomi Novic.
Come to PICOCON on the 20th of January. It’s a mini convention with guest authors, fun games and all that jazz.
Now that I’m a chunk into term 2, I finally understand enough of term 1 to talk about it. This is due to my own stupidity and laziness, not the difficulty of the course, so don’t be put off much. Here’s an overview of what happens in the first bit of 1st year Physics. I’ll include the not-particularly-physicsy bits and everything to do with the year in Europe and Theoretical courses too. If you are reading this because you want to study this stuff, do remember that you may have different lecturers and some of the aspects may change.
LECTURES
The first term contains five lecture course, none of which span the term, though I believe mechanics comes close.
Functions – This is basically a chunk of A-level maths plus a bit more. There’s some limits, integration and its uses, differentiation, including partial and total derivatives and a bunch of polar coordinates. I would recommend going over how polar coordinates work if you haven’t used them before. The course was well structured and paced and enjoyed on the whole. There is a full set of notes, which were handed out by chapter, so it as easy to keep track.
Mechanics – This starts with the stuff that you already know, but moves into things like non-inertial frames, center of mass frames, rotating extended bodies and angular momentum. This was probably the best lecture course in the 1st term, though an argument could also be made for functions. The structure and pacing was really comfortable, i.e. the perfect balance between boring and impossible. Most people enjoyed this course the most, possibly because it created the nice feeling as though you are doing physics. There is no official set of notes, but there are a few student-made ones circulating. I actually liked having to make your own notes, as it felt less like being a lazy cheat.
Complex Analysis – If you have seen and worked with complex numbers before, this course is hardly anything new until the end, where you get into differential equations. There is also a full set of notes for this, produced by the lecturer, which was helpful.
Vectors – Once again, this is nothing new if you’ve experienced further maths A-level and there is also a full set of notes.
Vibrations and Waves – Most people were fine with the vibrations bit, but some got put off by the fast pace (due to lack of lecture time) and got lost during waves. The lecturer has created a bunch of extra material though, so I think we’re mostly fine now, though we still burst out laughing when a lecturer mentions an assumption of out vibs and waves knowledge.
PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
There are four tutorials a week, each lasting 50 minutes. Due to the magic of some lecture courses being shorter than others and some not overlapping, each course will have its own tutorial, at least for a bit. The fourth 50 minutes is dedicated to the wonders of professional skills. This course may be tedious, but it is useful, since it consists of writing CV’s and covering letters and a mini group research project. Spoiler: term 2 then contains a topical review and problem solving.
LANGUAGES
As part of the year in Europe course, there is an hour a week dedicated to special language, which is to prepare you for the part where you actually learn in German, attend lectures in German and pretend that you know what the hell you’re doing, but in German. My favourite chunks of knowledge obtained so far are the names of tools, the word for oxyhydrogen and an extensive idea of the Brazil nut effect.
There is also a program called Horizons, which allows you to go learn more useful stuff, such as employability skills. As part of YiE, it’s obligatory to take your language. This is two hours a week.
Overall, it can get intense, since an hour of language technically requires an hour of homework. Then again, if you are serious about running off abroad, you are probably also serious about learning the language.
THEORETICAL
The theoretical and straight courses are absolutely identical so far, which also means that you can switch between them for now.
On Wednesday (it’s Friday today) I participated in another London Colleges League race. This time, it took place in Alexandra Palace, or as others call it (myself included now), Ally Pally.
This was the fourth and penultimate LCL race of the yearly series, but third for me.
The journey there from South Kensington campus took about 50 minutes, including tube, national rail train and walking. Upon arrival I noticed that the course already had red and yellow markers used to border the track. But what stood out most to me was the mud and slope of the terrain.
The Imperial Ally Pally LCL race team. Credits: Harveen (club member & friend)
The run consisted of 3 laps around the marked course, each lap 2.2km long. This was my run, at least. The run for the girls consisted of 2 laps, same course.
For this course, many of Imperial runners wore spikes, and I was one of them. They are new to me, as I never had to use them back home. They come in varying sizes, but I feel my 9 mm spikes may not have been long enough.
Throughout the race I tried to keep up with others beside me, who may be runners from the Imperial team or from other unis. I find it motivating to keep going when another uni student is beside me, and as an Imperial representative, I don’t want to lose. As such times, I feel energy surging through me, and I feel energized to keep pushing.
Just after finishing the race, a team mate of mine handed me a brownie, which was extra delicious at the time. Our XC&A club has the tradition to bring baked goods to races like this. I really like it, and I’ll try to bake something for the next LCL race.
As expected, I was bathed in mud, or at least my legs were. I knew it would be a pain to wash everything when I got home, and it was.
I had to change in the train station because I was so dirty.
After the LCL races, the club usually plans social events in places around London. Yesterday, the plan was to go to the Spoons (a pub) in Fullham Broadway, then for Karaoke at the Chelsea Pensioner, and finally to The Slug at Fulham, a bar, for late night drinks.
Unfortunately, I had to wash all my clothes when I got back to my hall after the race, so I wasn’t able to make it to Spoons on time. However, I did make it in time for the karaoke!
It was a full room in the Chelsea Pensioner karaoke room. Credits: Anna (club member & serious runner)
We run, we don’t sing. (We were horrible). Credits: Anna.
It was very fun and it made me remember about last week Friday, where the Bioengineering Society organized a karaoke night in our building.
After the karaoke, I headed home, so I didn’t get to go to the Slug. I heard that the rest that went had a lot of fun! As for me, I was glad to be in bed; I was very tired.
The next race for me will be the British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) race in Gloucester. I have never been out of London, so this should be a new experience for me, and I am very excited! We will be leaving next week Friday, and arriving back in London in time for lectures on Sunday the 7th of November.
If you’re interested in the Cross Country & Athletics (XC&A) club, drop a comment down below and I’ll answer ASAP!
BAH stands for Bad ad Hoc Hypotheses, which is rather self-explanatory and already promising, but the host was a comedian and the improvised key note speaker used paint for his presentation. Perfection. It was a really good laugh and probably the best source of nerdgasms, other than the SciFi library.
The event was spread over two days and consisted of Evolution on Friday and Big Science on Saturday. I was busy on Saturday, leading to increased appreciation of the live stream on Youtube. Speaking of
