illuminating science

Well, the conference is nearly over - just the last few speakers to go. We just had Michael Nielsen, who always gives good talks, and this was no exception. He was talking about “cluster state quantum computation”, which is a really cool way of building a quantum computer where making measurements on your computer actually does the computation for you. It sounds kind of strange, but that’s the quantum world I don’t completely understand it, of course, but Michael’s talk was really comprehensible, even for someone with little experience in quantum computing like me, and I do now feel like I understand the principles if not the details. So that’s a good result!

Just lunch to go and then we head home - I’ve remarkably tired given that I’ve just been sitting in talks all week. Incidentally, my talk went really well. I spent a lot of time preparing it, revamping it completely from my previous versions, and trying to make it as both accessible to those who aren’t really in my field but also informative to those who are. I got lots of positive feedback, which was very welcome - I really was quite nervous going up there! Then again, I’m always nervous before doing a talk, show, etc, and I think that’s actually a good thing. Anyone who isn’t at least a little nervous is probably overconfident!

Anyway, that’s it for this conference. Ciao for now!