Hello, World! - Offbeat Computation Club

We are a mathematics and computation book club that began in the world of IRC networks. We plan to pick classics from the field of mathematics and computation, and read them together. The books and literature we pick for reading are of slightly offbeat nature, hence the name of this club! Our focus is on picking reading material about concepts and technologies that have been around for a long time and have an air of timelessness around them.

In particular, we will not be chasing the latest trends in technology most of the time. But we are not a retrocomputing club either. For example, we are likely not going to talk about BASIC programming on Commodore 64. The topics we pick for our club meetings are largely going to be topics that are still quite relevant and important in the field of mathematics and computation but they may not be what is considered to be mainstream. For example, we will read books like Introduction to Analytic Number Theory or talk about Common Lisp programming. Sometimes these topics may intersect with modern trends or retrocomputing but most of the times they would not. That is the kind of sweet spot we want to hit.

Here is a little bit of history about our community. This community was born on the Freenode IRC network when I announced on the ##algorithms and ##math channels there that I would be hosting book club meetings on analytic number theory. I created a makeshift channel named #susam to discuss the book club activities and plan the meeting schedule. Several members joined this channel and the book club was formed.

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