Wednesday November 18th: Objective-C Presentation
This Wednesday at 4:30 in the engineering building, room 1010, Jarod Luebbert and Mark Sands will be giving an Objective-C presentation. The presentation will cover a little history, some basic syntax, and some interactive coding of either a mac or iPhone application.
There will be pizza and soda! Link to forum post.
Upcoming Events (a recap)
Dr. White’s SIGGRAPH Presentation (A MUST SEE!!!) Wednesday, Nov 4 EB1027 4PM
FREE Sun Microsystems Netbeans certification (see post below) Nov 7-8
The Boeing Company – College Recruiting Presents Opportunities in Information Technology with The Boeing Company Nov 11 6-8PM, Illinois Room, MUC Link to forum post
CAOS Regular Meeting Nov 12 EB1010 4:30PM
Language of the Month, Objective-C (used for cocoa/iPhone development) Nov (16ish) TBA
Monday, Nov 2nd: Computational Necromancy with Reinforcement Learning
Who: Dr. Bill Smart, Associate Professor of Computer Science, WUSTL
When: Monday, Nov 2nd at 3pm
Where: EB 1012
What: Animating the Dead: Computational Necromancy with Reinforcement Learning
Anthropologists are often interested in questions such as “What do
chimpanzees optimize for when they walk, and when they climb?”, “What
would Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis) look like when it walked?”, and
“How did the modern human musculoskeletal system evolve from its
evolutionary ancestors?”. All of these problems can be cast as learning
a controller for a complex biomechanical system that optimizes some
criteria. Reinforcement learning offers a set of techniques to address
this problem formulation, if we can overcome the problems of learning in
a high-dimensional, non-linear system, continuous in states, actions,
and time.
In this talk, I will outline the types of biomechanics problems that
anthropologists are interested in, and show how reinforcement learning
can be used to address them. In particular, I will describe how
Differential Dynamic Programming can be used to learn controllers for
complex musculoskeletal simulations of humans, chimpanzees, and extinct
hominins, and how these learned controllers can be used to answer
fundamental questions in physical anthropology.
Upcoming Events and Information
Hey Everyone,
Mark has posted Blake Mizerany’s presentation on Ruby and Heroku, we should have Kyle Quevillion’s Adobe presentation soon. We are also in the process of scheduling a BUNCH of events. Keep checking back for updated details. Here is what the agenda looks like:
Tues October 27th SL 0225 1PM – Chris Lintott of Galaxy Zoo from Oxford University
Wed October 28 – Regular Meeting EB 1010 5pm
Wed Nov 4th EB1027 4PM – Dr. White’s SIGGRAPH Presentation ( one amazing presentation too!)
Nov 7th 8th – FREE Sun Microsystems Netbeans certification (see previous post for info)
Nov 12th – Regular Meeting, EB1010 4:30PM
Week of Nov 16th. – Language of the Month, Objective C (used with Mac’s and Iphone development)
We are also looking for ideas for a nice end of year blow out event. Bowling, Laser Tag ? Give us ideas.
Thanks,
Scott
Free Netbeans Certification
On Saturday Nov. 7th and Sunday Nov. 8th Tom Wheeler will be coming into give a NetBeans certification course.
This will be happening on campus from 9am-5pm each day and don’t worry pizza will be provided.
Everyone who attends both days will get a certificate that says you are certified on the NetBeans platform.
This is a link that shows all of the topics going to be covered and a more in depth explanation of what is going to be going on.
http://edu.netbeans.org/courses/nbplatform-certified-training/
We are not sure on the location yet but it will for sure be in the EB and i will post it as soon as we lock it down.
Thanks to VP Jarod Lubbert for setting this up and Dr. Stefik for getting us in contact with the presenter.
If you have any questions post here: http://caos.cs.siue.edu/forums/index.php?topic=2181.0;topicseen , or stop one of the officers if you see us on campus
and we will try to answer your questions as best we can.
Thanks,
Travis
CAOS Regular Meetings
CAOS would like to begin hosting regular meetings again. This way members can hang out, talk with one another and geek out a bit. It would also provide a chance for new students to get involved. We are thinking about holding these twice a month. Each meeting would contain something short and informational as well as conversation time.
For all the details, and to contribute your thoughts on the idea visit the forum discussion: http://caos.cs.siue.edu/forums/index.php/topic,2174.0.html
Adobe Representative to Present Flex
On Tuesday October 13th @ 4pm Kyle Quevillon from Adobe will be presenting Flex in the EB Auditorium (1033). I have personally known Kyle for almost a year now, and I’m pleased to have him stop by. This will be a great chance to get an introduction to a new language, as well as Adobe’s development platform.
A discussion can be found here: Flex Forum Discussion
Thanks to Travis Wisnasky for setting this up.
Scott
Blake Mizerany to Talk about Sinatra, LAN Party @ SIUC.
Firstly, thanks to everyone who stopped by the BBQ. I also want to congratulate the sole winning 140 student who showed up.
Secondly, I am trying to get about 1-2 more people who are interested in going to the HUGE LAN party at SIUC on Oct. 3rd. We need names THIS WEEK. Check out info here: http://caos.cs.siue.edu/forums/index.php?topic=2152.0;topicseen
Now, as I am sure most of you are aware Blake Mizerany from Heroku will be on campus next Thursday to talk about Sinatra (a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby). Blake has an impressive resume as he is an industry and community leader. This will make for an awesome opportunity to see what he has to say and ask questions. We will also be bringing pizza in since its roughly dinner time. For more information see the page dedicated to the event Blake Mizerany comming to SIUE.
Hope to see you all there.
Scott
BBQ Thursday Sept. 10th
Just wanted to remind everyone that CAOS will be hosting a BBQ on Thursday September 10th from 11am – 2pm. We will be located right outside of the Engineering Building between the EB and the Art building. We will also be holding a special raffle for 140 students (no purchase necessary). We will be giving away CS t-shirts, Microsoft Research schwag, blank DVD’s, and Best Buy gift certificates. All 140 students should be receiving raffle tickets this week during class.
Everyone stop by, get some CHEAP food, see what CAOS is up to, and meet new people.
BBQ Discussion on the forum: http://caos.cs.siue.edu/forums/index.php?topic=2158.0;topicseen
Scott
Welcome To The New CAOS.siue.edu
Welcome to the new face of caos.siue.edu. Don’t worry the forums haven’t gone anywhere! You can find them by going to http://caos.cs.siue.edu/forums, or by clicking on the “Forums” link above. Your fellow CAOS officers and I have recognized that we have outgrown our forum. The success of event series such as Language of the Month, and requests for event videos left the forum falling short of our needs. That being said, I commissioned Wed Admin Mark Sands to come up with a solution, and this is the result!
The new CAOS home site provides a single location to view videos of past events, find announcements about upcoming activities, and keep up to date with what your officers are currently working on. Our hope is to make finding what you want faster, easier, and to provide information you may have otherwise missed.
No more searching through hundered’s of forums threads, no more clunky looking links on the top of the forum, just a clean looking blog-like location for all the information you need.
I would like to note that though there WILL be blog posts and activity announcements, we WILL NOT allow for direct commenting on the home site. Instead all discussion will still occur on the forum, keeping discussions in one place, and the home site looking clean.
I hope everyone enjoys this new approach, and I welcome any comments or constructive criticism. You can find a forum discussion about the new site on the New Site Forum Thread.
Finally I would like to extend a special thank you to Mark Sands, Greg Bartholomew, and the others who helped make this new site possible.
Sincerely,
Scott Miller
President Computer Association of SIUE