Intoxicating Conversation

I just got back from our end of the month "Losers' Club" meetings (more on these here). In the absence of the one person in our group who maintains an interest in enterprise software, we focussed on the more "blue sky" aspects of software/comp sci.

Topics that came up for discussion - Haptic sensors for robots, micro robots, challenges in building a simulation of the human cardio vascular system, metrics for each component of a research effort, Randy Pausch and his lecture on Time Management, the Bhagavad Gita, Reinforcement Learning as a methodology to learn control algorithms, Computational Fluid Dynamics and Aerodynamic modelling, building SkyNet, using histograms to model discrete probabilistic distributions, Algorithms for probability Density Tree construction, how to keep tight focus on research projects that spin off more areas for exploration with every step taken aka how to balance exploitation and exploration in the context of Rogue Research, proof techniques as weapons in a personal arsenal, abstract problem spaces, Lush as a lisp for day to day work, overcoming the fear of Calculus, Django (yay!) vs Rails (bleh!), the non importance of learning java script, Prototype vs jquery, Goal Driven vs Capability Driven learning styles, continous phenomena in genotype decoding, a proposal for a facebook style app for researchers, Aikido, conferences in Goa, and of course status reports, "iteration reviews" and plans for the next month.

Aaah, Life is Good!