UDLS | Home

Welcome!

The Un-Distinguished Lecture Series (UDLS) is a series of free, casual lectures on a variety of topics held Fridays at 5pm in the 8th floor boardroom (X836) of the ICICS/CS building at UBC, Vancouver. These are given by and for students, staff, and faculty at UBC. Although most speakers and attendees are from computer science, everybody is welcome.

The series has included 470 lectures over 17 years since it first began in early 2007 (see History of UDLS).

Questions?

Have a look at the FAQ.

Want to sign up?

Put your name in the signup spreadsheet.

Want to learn more?

Email Ryan, rs0914@cs.ubc.ca or Gautam, gkluhana@cs.ubc.ca

Date

Title

Speaker

An introduction to German politics and national elections

Luhana, Gautam v WestJet

What's Good Cooking Good Looking

Passive Hardware to Passive Income

Sepehr Noorafshan

How Speedrunners Beat Robots

Deep Dive into the UDLS archive

The Art of Disguise (This UDLS was actually about Flags)

Culinary Hacks for Cash-Strapped Grad! How Not to be Broke but Well Fed!

Why office jobs suck, my origin story

A Brief, and Mostly Useless, History and Geography Lesson about Vancouver: with a foreword about UDLS

Summer Conspiracy Series

A Taxonomy of Degeneracy

Dad jokes: humour is my coping mechanism

Wine in one hour

Suprematism: Pure artistic feeling

Paulette Koronkevitch

The Queen of Trees

Come paint and draw stuff while listening to original music

Mishaal Kazmi and Finn Hackett

Guess the Other Song

A Brief History of Synths and Audio Stuff

Reading SMBC Too Closely

The Gang Makes a Dating Profile

The Untold Story of Tech Job Market

Shayan Hosseini

The Home Computer Revolution!

Paulette Koronkevitch

ultimate frisbee is the best sport fr fr

What's the biggest animal you think you could take in a fight?

When the Sus is not Amogus

Can't believe Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are dating. I called this back in like 2015.

The Joys of (Film) Photography

What's the UDLS again?

Pakistani Music: the best music in the world

UBC CS Grad Students: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things?? Let's Find Out!

A quick guide to buying a home before the age of 25

Nichole Boufford

Tax Codes and Tax No's

Architecture and art in the city of Ahmedabad

Competitive Programming

Shayan Hosseini

Iberian architecture - a semi-structured vacation picture slide show

Lip Sync for Your Life: Fantasy Drag Race: The Game

Rubia Guerra and Hannah Elbaggari

Tricking you into hearing drums

Sports: What are sports and how to sports

Women's Movements in Iran

Shayan Hosseini

Scary Lectures to Tell in the Dark

Apartment Vermincomposting

Nichole Boufford

How to Win Survivor from Your Couch

A balcony garden and a neighborhood vandal: A story of how a hobby was had and a nemesis made

A Brief and Mostly Useless History and Geography Lesson About Vancouver

Silence of the Vowels

3arabizi, and other oddities of Arabic language interactions with modern technology

This One Cool Material Will Make WorkSafeBC Hate You (Number 1,2,3, and 4 will kill you)

Victor Sanches Portella

Vine: A history and compilation

Lepidoptera Heterocera

How (not) to Apply to Grad School and Survive your First Year

Paulette Koronkevich

A brief review of using technology to assist with refereeing sports

Earthquakes: Because we don't have enough to worry about

Felipe Bañados Schwerter

A Eulogy for Flash

Alistair the Many Breaks Down Some Original Tracks, Live in the (Virtual) Studio

A Virtual Presentation about a Virtual Pandemic during a Pandemic

Never Gonna Give You Up -- The Rickroll: past, present, future

Got Milk, part one: Farming

Felipe Bañados Schwerter

An Undistinguished History Lesson

I scream, you scream, we all scream!!!! ICECREAM!!!!!!!

Real Actual Magic: Film, VFX, and Mary Poppins

Tool Assisted Speedruns

Noodles: Now More Than Ever

The Cutting Room Floor

Italian Renaissance Architecture

Nico Ritschel & Adam Geller

NOWRUZ (Persian New Year)

Lindy Hop and Swing Dancing

Victor Sanches Portella

Cascadia: The Greatest Nation That Isn't (Yet)

Tim Straubinger

Impromptu UDLSes

Vaastav, Greg, Victor, Nico, Chris, Joe, Noah, Adam, Jimmy, Pauline, Tim

Don't Cross Me: A Rockumentary

German Fairy Tales

Tim Straubinger

One weird trick to advance your career: Twitter

Paulette Koronkevich

Florida Man: The World's Worst Superhero

"cs is just fancy string manipulation" but categorical

Zach Goldthorpe

Giovanni Viviani

Performance Art

Tabletop Role-Playing

Giovanni Viviani

Indian Weddings

Puneet Mehrotra

How to spy on people? Lessons from the NSA

Word Provenance

Cake Engineering

A Brief History of Steves

World War II Air Combat

So you want to buy a home?

Michael Oppermann

Yasha Pushak, Vaden Masrani, Clement "The King" Fung, Matthew Chun, Siddhesh "Brown Sugar" Khandelwal, Alistair "John" Wick, Ahmed Elhamy Mostafa

Giovanni Viviani

The Second Undistinguished Puzzle Hunt

A Tour of the Breakfast Cereal Aisle

Eascaping East Germany

The Death and Life of Great American Highways

Siddhesh Khandelwal

Puneet Mehrotra

A Comprehensive Guide to Pinball Wizardry

World Cup Stories

The European Union

> Text Adventure: Escape from ICICS

MUSC 666: Introduction to Metal

Giovanni Viviani

Kazakhstan: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Stories from the 2018 Olympics

Firearm Ownership in America

Amanda Carbonari and Austin Levin

Indian Republic Day

Puneet Mehrotra

Stories from the Shaanxi History Museum

Not Afraid of Heights: An Introduction to Rock Climbing

Explore the World of Flying

Amanda Carbonari and Austin Levin

The Dying Art of Stenography

The Wonderful World of FIFA

Early history of film

Lies, fraud, and a murder hotel

High Speed Railway in China

Bach and the Art of Fugue

The Undistinguished Puzzle Hunt

China: A Short History

Poker (the only casino game worth playing)

Mineral Deposits

Native Advertising and Content Marketing

Fentanyl: The Drug Deadlier than Heroin

Reading from "This Is How You Die" while candles melt

The Science of Martial Arts

The Cultists are the Best

Clement Fung & Kuba Karpierz

Norouz/Iranian new year

Hedayat Zarkoob

The Pug. A comprehensive excursion on its roles and perception with an emphasis on German culture

Of undistinguished Tuesday Teas & Beer Calls

Korean Reunification

Film Appreciation Part 2: Film Styles

Sampoorna Biswas

Beans, gas, poop and what you can do to help

A History of Photography: From Representation Towards Expression

Politics in the animal kingdom

Of Diversity and National Identity

Sampoorna Biswas

The history of Singapore

Exercitus Romanus

Giovanni Viviani

SCUBA diving: the (not-so) dangerous underwater sport

The Rise and (mostly) Fall of Poland

Olives: what are they anyways?

Gambling in the videogame era

Giovanni Viviani

A (brief) overview of modernism

Gentle summary of current AI

DLL Injection and x86 hooking demystified

The History of Ultimate, and other Frisbee games

Julieta Martinez

7 Years of Grad School at UBC: Some Parting Thoughts

Matthew Brehmer

Giovanni Viviani

Grad School - Your Worst Financial Decision Yet

The Pokemon Phenomenon

The trip of the Cavaquinho, Ukelele and Keroncong

Vedic Mathematics

Meghana Venkatswamy

Film Appreciation Part 1: How to Read a Film

Sampoorna Biswas

The Origins of Hip-Hop

Prithu Banerjee, Wali Usmani, Albert Thompson, Prashant Sachdeva, Jason Hartford, Matthew Brehmer, Sam Creed

Science Fiction

Advantageous Disadvantages

Because 71 genders are not enough

Julieta Martinez

How Tricks are Tricked

Prithu Banerjee

Your Kitchen is a First Aid Kit

Sampoorna Biswas

Stories from Greek Mythologies

Free Will - Why it's an illusion and why that's a good thing

Landmark Judgments of the Indian Supreme Court

Prashant Sachdeva

Balkan: A Powder Keg

The Great Switzerland

Giovanni Viviani

Social engineering

And they died happily ever after

Western Philosophy

The first pride parade was a riot

Daniel Rozenberg

Roma Caput Mundi, Part 1

Giovanni Viviani

History of Western Architecture

Daniel Rozenberg

Ferdinand Magellan and the First Circumnavigation of the World

Facts about (human) babies

Table-top Game Design

Intro to MOBA: DotA 101

What happens when experiments are misplanned: the story of Stanford Prison Experiment

Giovanni Viviani

Sharpen your pitchforks: Someone’s wrong on the internet!

A Tour of the Nerd Kingdom, Part II

Prashant Sachdeva

I Only Understand Train Station

A Tour of the Nerd Kingdom

Esport: A brief history of professional gaming

Giovanni Viviani

The Simpsons: Best. TV Show. Ever.

Migrations in European History

Antoine Ponsard

Cured and Pickled Fish

Winter Special — PowerPoint Roulette

Jason Hartford, Prashant Sachdeva, Jolande Fooken, Antoine Ponsard, João Cardoso, Sampoorna Biswas, Nodir Kodirov, Neil Newman

The Franklin Expedition: A Canadian Myth

Storytime: Ramayana

Nayantara Duttachoudhury

Neil's Roundup of the World's Scariest Robots

Janteloven — The Very Essence of All Evil

Are Poor People Stupid?

Antoine Ponsard

The Old Friends of the Chinese People

From Bean to Cup: A History of Coffee

How your native language shapes your world

Daniel Rozenberg

Stereotype Canada

Michael Phan-Ba

Crazy things a brain can/cannot do

Mardi Gras in New Orleans

Rock Climbing through the Ages

Spring Celebrations around the World

Prashant Sachdeva

Carrying the Torch

It's Chinese New Year

Decedents of the Dragon

Long Distance Bicycle Trips

The Most Badass Quotes in History

Antoine Ponsard

Space Commercialization and More

Dance and Happiness

Prashant Sachdeva

Stereotype Germany

Brain Chemistry

Burmese Copy Tunes

Space Photography

Coffee Shops Around Vancouver

Traveling Around the World (As a Student)

Prashant Sachdeva

How to Hide your Money in the South Pacific

The Kivu conflict in the eastern Congo—When bad people fight bad people for the wrong reasons and innocent people die

Árni Már Þrastarson

Transporters, Translators, (FTL) Travel… oh my!

Sara Bainbridge

The Placebo Effect

Homemade Liqueur and Infusions: The Basics

Curling: Shuffleboard on Ice

Christopher Head

Árni Már Þrastarson

Language and Human Nature

Prashant Sachdeva

Neti Pots and Other Fun Cleansing Techniques

Quaint European Towns (outside of Europe)

Makers Making Making Machines: The Magical World of DIY CNC

Vignesh Sankaranaray

Future Transportation

Sara Bainbridge

December 21, 2012: The Mayan Apocalypse

ABCs of Brewing Coffee

alexandru totolici

Human Pyramids Worldwide

The Northern Cities Vowel Shift

Vancouver’s Live Music Scene

Serial Killers: bet ’cha can’t brutally murder just one

Urban Gardening 101: Grad Students Edition

“This Will Not End Well”: Dystopian Literature

25 Years in 25 Minutes

Is Pinterest Legal? US Copyright Law and Fair Use of Digital Works

Coffee Vs. Chocolate Battle Royale: War of the Chemical Stimulants

Mihir Nanavati & Nathan Taylor

Musical Avant Gardin’ 2: Spectral Boogaloo

Strength Training for Novices

Molecular Gastronomy

Metalheads & Headbangers: 30 mins of Heavy Metal

Suman Mukherjee

alexandru totolici

An Introduction to Contemporary A Cappella

Vignesh Sankaranaray

Different Ways to Make Stuff

Algorithmic and Computer-Composed Music

Breakfast Cereals

Swordplay: Taste of the Renaissance

Murray Patterson

Aristocrats, Backpackers, CouchSurfers

Famous and Successful Grad School Dropouts

The Habit-Changing Lecture

The Invisible Armpit: The world’s most bizarre economies

How to build a bicycle, and some other neat stuff about bikes

Electromagnetic (and Other Esoteric Means of) Eavesdropping

alexandru totolici

The Golden Age of Personal Computers: The Apple II

Digital Currencies

2012 Republican Presidential Candidates

Amateur Economics

Teenage Paranormal Romance Novels

Go (the game, not the programming language)

A Random Photographic Journey Through India

Mohan Rajamanickam

Behind Enemy Lines: Espionage and Covert Operations

Light and Color

Mikhail Bessmeltsev

Ben “DJBJ” Jones

The HeLa Cell Line

Avalanche Safety: on playing hard and reducing risk in the backcountry

The Loudness Wars

Boston, California: The Vancouver Film Industry

Psychoneuroimmunology

Nimalan Mahendran

A History of Hardcore in 30 minutes or Less

The Companions of St. Nicholas

Ryan O’Connor

The Darwin Awards

Debunking Death Panels: A Foray into Health Care Systems

Minecraft: Games Without Goals

A Rough Guide to CBC Radio

Impress Your Friends with Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic

Leigh-Anne Mathieson

A UDLS that words cannot describe

Racing, the Legal Way

Social Media: Trends & How to make them work for you

Andrej Karpathy

Ultimate Frisbee

Sour Beer: Brewing Beyond Brewer’s Yeast

Ryan O’Connor

Masterpieces in 4096 bytes: the Demoscene

0x5f3759df the magic of FastInvSqrt()

A Culture of Bricks (A UDLS about Lego)

The Undersea Internet Backbone

Starcraft craze: the funny, the interesting, and the disturbing

Andrej Karpathy

What happened in Toronto and why it matters?

An Early History of Rails and Things That Run On Rails

Matthew Dockrey

The Constitutional Context and Ramifications of the Afghan Detainee Scandal

Canadian Forces

Unironically Terrible Artists

Andrej Karpathy

The Voyages of Captain Cook

Tool Assisted Speedruns

How to Not Kill Fish: the Saltwater Aquarium Hobbyist

A Curious History of Medicinal Cannibalism

Snow Monkeys, Onsen, and Other Fun Things

The History of Westerns

Aussie Rules Football

The Longboarding

Nimalan Mahendran

An introduction to Vancouver Craft Beer

Ryan O’Connor

The Fangirl Obsession with Girly Men

Language Isolates

Evolutionary Psychology

Limited Speed Motorcycles

Michael Welsman-Dinelle

Sailing Part Deux

A Random History of Mining (and thus the industrial revolution)

Matthew Dockrey

Ian South-Dickinson

Those crazy Dictators

How to Appreciate Modern Architecture

Michael Welsman-Dinelle

Heuristics for Cognition

Conspiracy Theories

Spring Framework for Java

Geohashing: the funnest application of MD5

Elizabeth Patitsas

How To Ruin The Economy: Housing, Banking, the Man, and You!

Mixed Martial Arts

The Joy of Drumming

Random Stuff I Find Interesting

Matthew Dockrey

Technical Interviews (my experience at Microsoft)

Brad Swerdfeger

Why voting sucks and how to fix it, learn about the BC-STV referendum

Alternative Medicine

Japanese Dating Sim Games

Finding a Supervisor Help Session

Matthew Dockrey

Michael Welsman-Dinelle

Psycho-Accoustics

Debunking Biology—The Kingdom Protista

Things Every Human Who Lives on Earth Should Know

Bollywood Remakes of Hollywood Movies

Pooja Viswanathan

Spinning Rifles

Epic collaborative UDLS experiment

Matthew Dockrey

Mountain Biking

Pareidolia: One way our Brains Eff with Us

Canadian Politics

Lessons from the Life of Richard Nixon

US Election Update

Popular French Culture 101

Go’in Sailing

The Art of Shaving

Dude, where’s my spaceship?

The History of Clockmaking

Mind-Altering Parasites

Ian South-Dickinson

Ashiqur KhudaBukhsh

What makes people ridiculously good-looking?

Brad Swerdfeger

Logic Puzzle & Games

Ian South-Dickinson

Discourses Upon “Discourses Upon Livy” (and also Livy)

The Global Food Supply

Michael Welsman-Dinelle

Thoughts on the use of Analogies in Understanding and Solving Complex Problems, Muthafuckaz

Cognitive Dissonance

Fermi’s Paradox

Matthew Dockrey

Psychological Disorders

Rebecca Strautman

Electro-acoustic Music and other WTFs

A cross-country tour of Canadian music

What everyone should know about teaching others

Chinese Philosophy

Wikipedia (rerun)

The Stock Market

Navigation Techniques That Don’t Rely on General Relativity: How We Got Around Before GPS

Matthew Dockrey

(Not necessarily) Great Philosophers

Brad Swerdfeger

Mario Made Me Do It: Violence and Video-games

The U.S. Supreme Court

Ancient History of Russia (IX-XV centuries)

Evgeny Maksakov

.NET Orientation For Academics

Processed Foods and Food Processing

2008 US Presidential Election

Logical Fallacies 101

Archaeolmetallurgy

Matthew Dockrey

Cross-Platform OpenGL Graphics with GLUT

A Review of Linear Algebra

Our Victorian Now

A History of Vancouver

Did Medieval Disasters Cause Modern Technical Progress?

Evgeny Maksakov

Canada vs. Germany: Une réflection

Marcus Rohrbach

The Pacific Theatre of WW2

Brain-Computer Interfaces

The ABCs of the Bible

Signal Compression and JPEG

Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Slipping the Surly Bonds

Human Nature and its Consequences

Marcus Rohrbach

Top Super-models of Computer Graphics

Gordon Wetzstein

Proportional-Derivative-Integral (PID) Control

A Brief History of Cryptography

Florian Deckert

Eigenvalues in a Nutshell

Marisol Flores Garrido

SMART Goals and Feedback (Project Management)

Marcus Rohrbach

Peer-to-peer Systems

Mayukh Saubhasik

C Code and the Art of Obfuscation

Probability Theory

Communication is Viral