HHC2011 News
#1

Hello All,

The HHC2011 was a real success. HP, through the effort of Tim and Cyril, was generous and hosted our meeting, providing us with refreshments and meals.

It was really nice to see old friends and make a few new ones. The fellowship was absolutely lovely, funny, and fun!

The talks ere very nice and informative. Joe Horn won best speaker for his subject about rounding number (presented as continuous fractions) I gave my talk about comparing the speeds of the HP-15C vintage and the new HP-15C LE. Speakers like Denis Harms were very informative. He was the team leader for the HP-12C. There was also a panel of HP marketing people. I recognized one member from her YouTube video that introduced the HP-12C.

The door prizes were very nice. HP contributed several prizes. We got some extra new HP-20b that Cyril had obtained from the first production run.

The talks by Marcus von Cube and Neil Hamilton about the WP34S were very interesting. Many HP-20b and HP-30b machines were flashed into the latest version of the WP34S.

The last item we discussed was HHC2012 which definitely will be happening.

If you missed it, contact Jake Schwartz through his web site and buy the conference videos!!!

Edited: 26 Sept 2011, 8:32 p.m.

#2

Thank you for the update. Besides NDA info, does anyone have photos or other stories?

Quote:
The door prizes were very nice.

I am seeking one of those "HP 48SX" coffee mugs that I have seen on the door prize "brochure" for several years now. If anyone can assist please contact me.

green chile 505 at yahoo etc.... (no spaces).


Best regards.

#3

Quote:

The last item we discussed was HHC2012 which definitely will be happening.



Any locations tossed out for discussion yet?

Cheers,
Bob

#4

Nashville, Chicago, San Diego, Phoenix, and Dallas.

#5

The London group is planning for a European meeting Oct 2012. This is great for us overseas people.

#6

Quote:
Nashville, Chicago, San Diego, Phoenix, and Dallas.

Thanks Namir! (I'm hoping they'll get ranked in inverse order of longitude...)

Cheers,
Bob

#7

Vancouver, B.C. was also mentioned.

#8

There is an East Coast, too, ya know.

#9

Quote:
There is an East Coast, too, ya know.

About 200 miles east of Yosemite, isn't it?

#10

Yes please, in Europe :+P

#11

Fog on the English Channel - the continent is cut off ;-P

#12

How about 15C-LE issue correction? New firmware coming soon?

#13

All the locations sound nice. Naturally, I'd vote for San Diego given where I live.

I am dying to ask, if the conference will be held in Chicago - which side of Chicago (North vs South)

#14

Quote:
I am dying to ask, if the conference will be held in Chicago - which side of Chicago (North vs South)

Eddie, I'm guessing you're a Southsider :-)
But CHIP is pretty neutral when it comes to that sort of thing. The conference location would likely be Ace Metal in Bensenville, just west of O'Hare airport.
#15

Eddie Shore wrote:

Quote:
I am dying to ask, if the conference will be held in Chicago - which side of Chicago (North vs South)

When Brian Walsh suggested that Chicago be considered, he was talking about the fact that we've had several past conferences at ACE Metal Crafts' facility in Franklin Park, IL, which is within a mile of the O'Hare airport. That would be northwest of the city. Those conferences have all been great, by the way.


Martin Pinckney wrote:

Quote:
There is an East Coast, too, ya know.

These conferences, having been held since 1979, are put on by volunteers (...now I'm beginning to sound like Walter <grin>) who do all the hard work "in their back yards" or elsewhere to organize them and make them happen. When locations for next year were discussed, they were considered based on people who would be willing to investigate getting things organized in their own areas. For instance, John Caddick talked about doing it near Dallas, where he lives. Gene Wright is near Nashville and he talked about looking there. Geoff Quickfall entertained the possibility of doing it near his home town of Vancouver BC, and so on. There have been a handful of them in the East in the past (Brian Walsh did the one in Atlanta in '85, Bill Kolb organized one in Rockville, MD in '81, Irv Weiner and his Rhode Island PPC chapter sponsored one in 1983 in Providence and I did conferences in the Philly area in '82 and '92, plus there was one in Orlando in '83). It takes a ton of work. Are you volunteering to organize one where you want it to be?

Jake

#16

Indeed. I forgot to mention that event. Sorry. It is a special anniversary meeting, if I am not wrong.

#17

Also to mention:

1. Richard Nelson gave a talk Saturday night about the 30th anniversary of the PPC ROM. He explained the Herculean efforts done to track the orders and payments (especially overseas one) create each page of the manual, print the manuals, assemble the packages for each customer, and ship the packages.

I think the PPC ROM is but one special fruit of the genius of Richard as a User Community leader. He makes each HHC meeting seem easy to do. In reality there is a lot of work involved.

2. (father) Joe Horn won best speaker. I thought is was a bit unfair since as a priest he gets to practice public speaking (each Sunday and at special occasion) much more frequently and thus has perfected the art of public speaking and winning his audiences' attention, respect, and admiration. Oh well, life is not always fair. Of course he talk was very nice.

More reason to get the videos from Jake Schwartz.

Edited: 27 Sept 2011, 11:20 a.m.

#18

As I understand their description of this, the 15CLE firmware bug apparently was introduced late in the game and caught them by surprise. They already know what is likely needed to fix it without introducing more. They are working to impliment the changes and test them thoroughly before releasing them.

In short, no release date for the firmware fix but stay tuned...

By the way, I continue to be impressed even more as time goes by with the skills, expertise, enthusiasm and quality of Cyrille, Tim and the rest of the HP Calculator team. Meeting them again in San Diego was an honor and a treat!

#19

I vote for Reno. And not just because I live there.

The nicest hotel in town, the Grand Sierra Resort, is 1/2 mile from the airport. It was designed for conventions like this and there's almost always one going on. There must be a dozen or more restaurants inside the hotel, ranging from fast food like Johnny Rockets to the typical Reno buffets to high-end stuff if you win big at the slots.

Lots of meeting rooms, of course, in any size we'd need.

#20

Don't forget Eric's updated DIY

#21

Quote:
I vote for Reno. And not just because I live there

I am sure that if you can do the "legwork" to research prices and rooms, etc. and then report it to Richard, it would definitely be in the running with the other places, if the costs are reasonable. Thanks in advance for your help.

Jake

#22

Any clues as how the fix will be distributed? Most of us don't have the special cable to re-flash the calc.

#23

Eric's latest DIY HP-41 calculator demo was amazing. The new high resolution display looked fantastic and the power used by the entire calculator when it was on was so shockingly low, even the HP engineers did a double take. He and his team did an incredible amount of work in a short time to have this prototype available for HHC2011. I hope he updates his site soon to show everyone their latest creation.

#24

I would anticipate the cables will be available (Gene Wright has been instrumental and a stalwart in this regard) and that the user community will come forward to help re-flash machines. Although the WP 34S is new to me, now that I have two of them as well as a 30th Anniv. 12C I will make an effort to get up to speed with re-flashing machines and be available to do it for people attending CHIP meetings, for instance, including released updates for the 15C LE.

#25

The location of HHC 2012 is one of the most difficult in terms of the hundreds of decisons that need to be made. The date, however, is easy. Just start with September 15 and consider the next weekend. If there is a major religious conflict pick the next weekend. For 2012 it is tenatively September 23 & 24.

The facilities decision is based on the total cost to the attendee such as: Travel costs, Hotel room costs, meal costs, meeting room costs, HP support costs (e.g. at an HP facility near zero).

This Conference was "overloaded" with presentations and fellowship time is always an important consideration. Starting at noon on Friday was suggested. For sure we willl have a Committee member present at the hotel in the future. We were 6 Commettee, 4 HP people, plus the HP Facilites crew - 14 total - and still it was a challenge to get everything set up in time.

The HHC List is the media we use for HHC's. http://lists.brouhaha.com/mailman/listinfo/hhc Sign up if you are interested.

X < > Y,

Richard

Edited: 27 Sept 2011, 6:39 p.m.

#26

I shall do this thing.

#27

Lest anyone go "gaga" over Brian's comment, he meant updates for the 15c LE once they are available, which is not true yet.

Regarding cables, I now have more, but am reluctantly going to raise the price I ask to mail them out. I talked with people at HHC 2011 and when I told them what I did and how much time it was taking to fill out the forms, buy the mailing materials, etc., they pretty much all agreed with what I had been thinking.

I must ask for a bit more to mail out the cables. So, here we go:

To ship a cable to a USA address, I am now asking $6 and to a non-USA address, I am asking for $10.

Paypal is the preferred method.

I am sorry about this, but having mailed out 30 cables in the last month, it was beginning to impact the time I needed for other things for just barely covering my costs. :-(

#28

Richard Ottosen and I have been working on this project for over ten years now. Last year at HHC2010 I showed our fifth-generation hardware, called DIY4, which uses ARM processor vs. the Microchip PIC microcontrollers we used in the earlier generations. However, at HHC2010 the DIY4 was only running a hardware diagnostic program, and was not functioning as a calculator.

We finally got the DIY4 working as a 41C-compatible calculator in mid August. However, at about the same time we discovered a new, significantly better LCD display, which is 2.7" diagonal with 400x240 pixels (173 dpi), with excellent contrast and very low power consumption. We kludged the new display onto on of our prototypes, and barely got it working in time to show at HHC2011 this past weekend. We call this version DIY4X.

Unfortunately in the mad rush to get the DIY4X working, I did not have time to prepare any slides for my presentation or a paper for the proceedings. I do hope to write up some information for a web page, and take some photos and videos, but school has me really busy, so it will take me a while. I'll certainly post a link here when I do.

The title of my presentation, "Scaled Reptiles of the Nordic Countries", was inspired by the titles of HP's presentations, including "Deciduous Trees of North America" and "Deciduous Trees of Europe". The microcontroller in the DIY4X is an EFM32G "Gecko" made by Energy Micro in Norway.

Geoff Quickfall took that one step further and titled his talk "Smooth Scaled Deciduous Trees of the Southern Nordic Countries".

#29

That display is awesome! Your talk about the "Super Gecko" was exciting too. The prospect of double digit car insurance discounts guarantees that I will be back for HHC 2012.

:)

#30

Quote:
I am seeking one of those "HP 48SX" coffee mugs that I have seen on the door prize "brochure" for several years now

The coffee mugs were given to me by Jim Carter and I have been giving them out at past conferences. The one on the prize table this year was the last one. I even checked my cuppord and I don't even have one. Sorry.

X < > Y,

Richard

#31

Richard, please list all these people by name and HHC 2011 function, so that they can all get recognition here for their hard and successful work.

And thank you for yours. It was a great conference!

#32

You're referring to the "Giant Gecko".

The DIY4X uses the EFM32G280F128 "Gecko" with 128 KB of flash and 16 KB of RAM. The DIY4X already uses nearly all of that memory, so there currently isn't enough room for four -41 ROM modules, HEPAX support, and other features I want to provide.

The DIY5 will use the EFM32GG380F1024 "Giant Gecko" part, which has 1 MB of flash and 128 KB of RAM. The Giant Gecko also adds USB support.

The Giant Gecko parts are said to be sampling now. I've requested a few samples for development but have not received them yet. We should be able to test a Giant Gecko (except for USB) on the DIY4X with a few cuts and jumps.

Regrettably we will not be able to arrange the car insurance discount for you. You'll have to negotiate that with your insurer.

#33

Quote:
Regrettably we will not be able to arrange the car insurance discount for you. You'll have to negotiate that with your insurer.

No worries, mate! :)

#34

There is an East Coast, too, ya know.

About 200 miles east of Yosemite, isn't it?

This reminds me of the early 1960's when I was working out on Long Island. I discovered that to most New Yorkers "out west" wasn't Pittsburg and beyond. It was the other side of the Hudson River.

In the 1980's I was in a conference in Boston when an Easterner couldn't remember whether a state that he was referring to was Ohio or Iowa and said "One of those states with too many vowels."

#35

Wow, that gives a whole new meaning to the concept of the calculator crashing...

#36

Quote:
About 200 miles east of Yosemite, isn't it?

This reminds me of the early 1960's when I was working out on Long Island. I discovered that to most New Yorkers "out west" wasn't Pittsburg and beyond. It was the other side of the Hudson River.


I took as my guide those wall posters that show a New Yorker's view of the world. New Jersey barely registers, let alone California.

Quote:
In the 1980's I was in a conference in Boston when an Easterner couldn't remember whether a state that he was referring to was Ohio or Iowa and said "One of those states with too many vowels."

What, like "Massachussets?"

#37

Quote:
Wow, that gives a whole new meaning to the concept of the calculator crashing...

One does not want to mention "crashing" when there's a giant gecko insurance agent around.

#38

Spot on regarding what I meant to say, Gene. I agree, charge what you need to on the cables.

#39

Looking forward to more details and pics. What are your plans for the project, just a DIY for your own enjoyment or some kind of commercialization/distribution?

#40

NO NO NO NO!!

The date is NOT easy. You keep holding it in September and you keep annoying those in the educational community who cannot attend during term time.

Anyone considering venues, PLEASE ask for costs for August as well, and perhaps we can finally put the canard of "it's cheaper out of season" to bed. That may have been true two or three decades ago but not now. Just find a business rather than tourist hotel and they will be short of customers in August.

#41

Thanks for looking, Richard!

Best regards.

#42

Quote:
The date is NOT easy. You keep holding it in September and you keep annoying those in the educational community ...

The principal market that calculators are made for.
Quote:
Anyone considering venues, PLEASE ask for costs for August as well, and perhaps we can finally put the canard of "it's cheaper out of season" to bed. That may have been true two or three decades ago but not now. Just find a business rather than tourist hotel and they will be short of customers in August.

For some reason I have to pay 2x as much for a room in NY after US Labor Day (Sept 5th this year). So I do not believe that after August is always cheaper.

Something to consider is what KFest (think HHC for Apple II users) does. Some universities rent out their dorms + conference facilities for less than $100/person/day in the summertime. Cheaper if you double up in the dorm rooms. No cars or hotel needed.

#43

You can get resort rooms ($300-$400 in season = well after September) for ~$100 in Phoenix in August. The only problem - it's >110 F most days!! Of course, this crowd would all be in the meeting till 11 PM, at which point it may have cooled off to below 100.

#44

Bruce,
August 11-12 appears to be feasible, but the 18-19 does not due to Jewish holidays. The following weekend (25-26) isn't good for me since I have people in from out of town then and I *really* would like to attend next year's conference and possibly give a talk.

It would be great to see you!

#45

Thanks for looking into it Brian, 11-12th August would be fine.



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