busy summer

So...a lot has happened since my last post. On the 19th of June I started a five day intensive course learning to use the neural modeling program, Neuron, at the University of California at San Diego. It was taught by the creators of the program and of the hoc (pronounced hoak, not hawk) programming language. It was a very good course in a very VERY nice environment. San Diego never saw temperatures above 75 deg. F, and I had to wear a jacket on multiple occasions. My suite mate was pretty great, Aaron Luchko of the University of Alberta at Edmonton. He is a computer scientist, I figure, working for a company needing optimization of a program they're working on. After the workshop, I took a day to play around UCSD and in La Jolla. The Salk Institute is amazing, at least from the outside and the quality of science coming from there. The offices overlook the ocean...jealous much?

From there, I headed north to Portland, OR to attend a workshop on evolution (Evolution 2010). Portland seems like a great city, and the conference center was quite modern and nice. They had a giant Foucault Pendulum outside the main hall we were in. My jaw dropped when I first saw it, but I'm thinking not too many people were as impressed...considering the majority were biologists in some way or another...a few were mathematicians and computer scientists...not sure how many physicists attended though...excluding myself and Bahar. Anyway, the conference was extremely informative, and I now have a reading list that seems like a mountain of work...but I LOVE mountains, so I think I'm up to the challenge.