[HPCC-Conf] Update and Some Of My Impressions

[Tony Duell]

> -I could not locate the HP-65 at the science museum, and regret that I =

A couple of months back it was in the 'Computing then and now' section on 
the second floor. At the back of a 'creatively lighted' display case so 
you couldn't really see it.

In any case, you saw my 65, I think. Which means all you missed was 
seeing the inside of the CPU hybrid circuit. I can tell you there are 6 
dice in there. It is assumed they're the A&R. C&T, clock/init, card 
reader controller and 2 RAMs. The clock/init die is obviously the 
smallest one (it's tiny by comparison to the others), and I guess the 
largest one is C&T.

> was unable to visit the museum with "the group."  I did take a quick =
> look at the place myself.  It's a great museum, and I was happy to see =

I find it to be a relatively poor museum owing to the fact that many of 
the descriptions are dumbed down (or plain incorrect in a couple of 
cases) and that some of the exhibits are displayed in a way that makes it 
difficult to view the interesting bits.

I guess I like old-fashioned museums with wood/glass cases and accurate 
descriptions designed for the clueful.

> 
> -I would have liked more time to hang out and chat with people during =
> the conference, especially those who could only be there on Saturday.

That was my biggest moan too. There were many interesting people at the 
conference who could have given me a lot of information and I didn't have 
a chance to chat to more than about 10% of them.

> -It was very good to have Tony Duell there to provide some very =

Thanks, but I really don't think you mean this.

> interesting hardware insights.  It would have been nice if he could have =
> explained to the HP people about his HP-IL system which was set up on =
> the front table, for I believe that they do not have a clue about what =
> it is and what its capabilities are.

I would have liked to have demonstrated in informally (it all works, I 
use those units a lot), but alas there wasn't time for things like this. 

As I've said many times, IMHO there were too many presentations for the 
time available. I know it's difficult to tell people that 'no, you can't 
give us a talk this year', but I seem to recall that many talks were 
offered essentially at the last minute (and that certain of the 
organisers actually invited people to give talks at the last minute), and 
at least some of those should have been rejected for the lateness alone.

-tony