#ThrowbackThursday – My old HP calculators

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HP-21

HP-21

I have previously here on my blog mentioned my preference for HP calculators. Our first calculator at home was the HP-21, with a red LED display, which we got in late 1975 (if I remember correctly), soon after it was released. My parents used it for all different kinds of calculations, especially taxes (back then the Swedish tax system was much more complicated than it is today). My cousin who worked at HP (and got us the calculator) explained RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) to me, and it made sense to me to use that system for calculations.

 

HP-15C

HP-15C

Fast forward to 1983. I was now in 8th grade and we were allowed to use calculators in school. In 7th grade I had learned to use a slide rule (it was already outdated at this time) just to irritate my math teacher, but now I got my very own calculator, the HP-15C. This scientific calculator, often called the best calculator ever made, was programmable with 448 program steps. I wrote all kinds of programs for it, and used it heavily in math and physics classes in school.

 

HP-28C

HP-28C

In 1987, HP released the graphing calculator HP-28C, with 2kB of memory, a display that could show not only graphs but all four levels of the stack, and a flip-open or “clamshell” case, with two separate keyboard sections. I got one as soon as it came out, as well as an infrared thermo printer (HP82240A). My dad took over my HP-15C, and he kept it until his death in 2001.

 

HP-28S

HP-28S

A year later HP-28S was released, with 32kB memory and support for directories and custom menus, as well as a few new fucntions like symbolic expressions. So I sold the HP-28C and purchased the newer model, even if I was almost done with high school at this point.

 

My HP-48SX calculator and 82240A printer

My HP-48SX calculator and 82240A printer

In 1990 HP released the great HP-48SX, with a large graphics display, two expansion ports for memory cards of up to 128kB, a two-way infrared port, a serial port with support for the Kermit file transfer protocol and 32kB build-in user memory. The processor had a clock frequency of 2 MHz and the display had a resolution of 131 x 64 pixel. I got this calculator in April 1990, while I served in the Swedish Air Force. I really had no use for the calculator right then, but I knew that I wanted the latest and greatest in HP handheld calculators. I don’t remember what I did with my HP-28S, I think I may have sold it to an old classmate. I kept the printer, despite the fact that a newer model (HP82240B) had been released. The few changes did not motivate me to spend that extra money.

I have kept my old trusty HP-48SX ever since, for 24 years now. It still works, and in the last 20 years I probably only had to replace the batteries a couple of times.

 

A few weeks ago I happened to search for HP-28S on eBay, and found that there were several of them for sale there. There were also several HP-28C and HP-48SX, as well as it’s successor HP-48GX (which I never owned). I managed to buy an HP-28S, manuals for it and a leather case just like the one I had. I also picked up a HP82240B printer for $30, I could not resist it at that price…

So now I have all the HP calculators I once owned, except the HP-28C. I also plan to purchase another HP-48SX, as my original calculator have a problem. In order to turn it on or off, I have to press lightly in a specic spot on the case. This well known and common issue is due to a shrunken/dried contact pad between the display and the main curcuit board.

I also purchased a non-working HP-48SX just a few days ago for $22, just so I can open it and see what it looks like inside, before I attempt to repair my own original calculator. Of course I hope that the eBay seller never tried the trick to press in that particular spot, so it may just have the same issue as my calculator. We will see when I get it.

Below is my little collection of HP calculators and printers. In the top row you can see the HP82240B printer to the left and the HP82240A in it’s leather case in the center. To the far right is the leather case for HP-28S.

My collection of HP calculators and printers.

My collection of HP calculators and printers.

#ThrowbackThursday – World War 1

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OK, this is a pretty extreme #ThrowbackThursday, but I wanted to promote a blog I have been reading since the beginning of the year.

Arthur Linfoot, who took part in World War 1, wrote a diary every day from January 1 1914 to December 31 1918. It was written in Pitman’s shorthand, and his son Denis Linfoot translated the diary and is now publishing it as a blog, each entry posted to the day 100 years after it was written.

This is a fascinating way to follow World War 1, especially since my grandfather also served in it (but on the German side). So if you haven’t visited http://www.arthurlinfoot.org.uk yet, take a look at it and perhaps you get hooked just like me.

#ThrowbackThursday – JMP 101 from Lotusphere 2012

Posted on by Posted in Connect, ConnectED, IBM/Lotus, Lotusphere, XPages Leave a comment


I recorded this video of the session JMP101 IBM Lotus Domino XPages JumpStart at Lotusphere 2012 in Orlando. The conference, later renamed IBM Connect and now renamed again to IBM ConnectED, will take place again in January 2015. Perhaps this video will get you inspired to do some XPages development, or you can show it to your boss as a good example of what you can learn at ConnectED.

Hope to see you in Orlando in January!

Nominations for IBM Champions are now open!

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The nominations for IBM Champions for 2015 is now open. If there is someone in the ICS (IBM Collaborative Solutions) community whom you want to show appreciation for their work, go here and nominate him or her. You can only nominate non-IBMers.

ChampionDefinition

So who is deserving to be an IBM Champion? Well, you can see the a list of qualifications here. It could be people helping out on Stack Overflow or in the developerWorks forums, or people evangilizing ICS products and solutions by speaking at conferences or sharing their knowledge through blogs, videos or other means. If someone in the community have been helping you in the past, consider thanking them by submitting a nomination, if you think they match the qualifications. You can see the list of current champions here.

Remember, existing Champions don’t get renewed automatically, they need to be nominated again. You don’t have to fill out all the information on the submission form. Fill out as much as you can, better an incomplete nomination than none at all! Nominations close on September 17 at 5pm Eastern time. So get yrou nominations in before that.

 

 

Is the break-through for smart watches almost here?

Posted on by Posted in Gadgets, Mobile Phones, Technology 1 Comment

In a few days, Motorola will present their highly anticipated Moto 360 smart watch, and at the IFA trade show in Berlin next week LG will show off their latest entry in the battle for the hearts (and wrists) of geeks everywhere, the G Watch R. Both watches are round, as opposed to previous entries (including LG’s previous model, the original G Watch) and the Samsung Gear series of smart watches.

Motorola_LG

 

There are some differences between Moto360 (left) and G Watch R (right). LG is going with a more traditional watch look, with a bezel around the edge to hide the small blank section at the bottom of the screen that is more visible on the slightly larger (1.5 inch vs 1.3 inch) screen on Moto360. That blank section is where some of the screen components are located, and this “flaw” has been critized by many, even before the watch has been released.

Both watches are protected against water (so you can wear it in the shower), features a heart rate monitor, a touch screen and running Android Gear. Moto36 will use a wireless charging station and also contains a pedometer, and s expected to cost $249 when it is realeased in the near future. No price have yet been announed for the G Watch R, which is expected to be available later this year.

Samsung is also rumored to present something at IFA, probably a round smart watch as well, but no details about it is known. They are also expected to present a new square model in the Samsung Gear family.

I think we are now getting close to the break-trough for smart watches. They look more like regular watches, with a round shape instead of the boxy square look of the first generations of smart watches. Personally I think that G Watch R is more attractive than Moto360, and to me the slightly smaller size is a plus. I think we have an interesting fall ahead of us, especially with the Apple event coming up on September 9, where their smart watch is expected to be announced. The Android Gear watches from LG, Motorola and Samsung only work with Android phones, not with iPhones.

jQuery – A flexible way to show/hide sections

Posted on by Posted in Javascript, jQuery, Web Development Leave a comment

Yesterday Stephen Gainer blogged about a small Javascript problem he had.

Brilliant!  I gave my customer exactly what he wanted!  No muss no fuss!  I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.  As soon as this was done, my customer came back to me and said he needed four more of these.

My solution, which is terrible, was to duplicate the above four more times (me2Show, me2Hide, me3Show, me3Hide and on and on and …..)  Now I realize how stupid this is, but remember how I said above that there are certain simple things that I never really learned because I never had to?  Well this is one, and this is where I would like YOUR help!

I know there has to be some way to loop through all of my element ID’s with a simple piece of JavaScript, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to do that.  Can anyone help me out here?

I commented on Stephen’s post and suggested that he use jQuery to easily loop though all elements with a specific class and add a listener function to them to detect a click. Since it is hard to get all information into a comment, I decided to post a simple code sample here instead. My code is easy to expand on, e.g by adding more sections.

There are of course many different ways to do this. You can of course use .toggle(), but I prefer to have better control of when to hide and show the sections. You can break out the lines $(“.mySection”).hide(); into a separate function and call it from the two locations. This is of course not saving anything in this particular code sample, but in more complex code it would make sense to break down the code into separate functions if they are called from multiple lines.

Hopefully this code will help someone, or inspire someone to start playing with jQuery. I like jQuery, as it easily integrates with classic Domino web applications, and even can be used with Xpages.

<html>
<head>
    <title>jQuery hide/show</title>
	<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js"></script> 
	<script>
		$(document).ready(function () {
		// Hide all sections when the page is first loaded
		$(".mySection").hide();
		// Setup all elements with class "myButton" to react on click
		$(".myButton").click( function() {
			// Check if the section is already displayed
			if ($(this).html()=="Hide") {
				// Hide the current section
				var sectionID = $(this).attr("data-showsection");
				$("#"+sectionID).hide();
				// Set the button label to "Show"
				$(this).html("Show");
			} else {
				// Hide all sections, using the class mySection
				$(".mySection").hide();
				// Set all button labels to "Show"
				$(".myButton").html("Show");
				// Show the section we want to display
				var sectionID = $(this).attr("data-showsection");
				$("#"+sectionID).show();
				// Set the button label to "hide"
				$(this).html("Show");
			}
		});
	});	
	</script>
</head>
<body>
    <button id="btnOne" class="myButton" data-showsection="sectionOne">Show</button>
    <div id="sectionOne" class="mySection" data-btnID="btnOne">This is the 1st section.</div>
    <br>
    <button id="btnTwo" class="myButton" data-showsection="sectionTwo">Show</button>
    <div id="sectionTwo" class="mySection" data-btnID="btnTwo">You are now seeing the 2nd section.</div>
    <br>
    <button id="btnThree" class="myButton" data-showsection="sectionThree">Show</button>
    <div id="sectionThree" class="mySection" data-btnID="btnThree">This is the 3rd section.</div>
    <br>
    <button id="btnFour" class="myButton" data-showsection="sectionFour">Show</button>
    <div id="sectionFour" class="mySection" data-btnID="btnFour">The 4th and last section.</div>
    <br>
</body>

IBM ConnectED 2015 – registration open

Posted on by Posted in Connect, ConnectED, IBM/Lotus, Lotusphere 1 Comment

Connected

IBM ConnectED, the conference formerly known as Lotusphere and Connect, has now opened the registration for the 2015 event.

The “early bird” conference fee is $1,595 and on October 4 it goes up to the full price, $1,795. This is less than Lotusphere/Connect in the past, but the conference is also 20% shorter at 4 days instead of 5. The cost per day is actually less than previous years, if you look at the full price (if I did the math right).

 

I am a victim of identity theft

Posted on by Posted in Financial, Life, Personal 6 Comments

This weekend I found out that I am a victim of identity theft. It is very unsettling, and feels like a total violation of my privacy.

My girlfriend Chrissy and I were discussing the potential of me getting a new car in the next few months. I am having some repairs coming up on my current car, like the air conditioning leaking refrigerant, fixing a small oil leak and a few other little but annoying things that will add up. It would be nice to avoid those repairs and getting a new car where I don’t have to worry about service for a few years.

We looked around online for cars that could be interesting and I found some good deals. I started working on a budget to figure out what I could afford and Chrissy asked me what my credit score was. I had to admit to her that I had no idea. After my divorce in 2003 I took some bad hits to my credit, as I was not able to keep up with all the bills for the house by myself plus my car payment, utilities and other expenses in addition to paying child support all of the sudden. So I had been scared of even looking at my credit score.

Chrissy had used Credit Karma before for herself so Sunday I started setting up a new account there. I entered my social security number, address and some other information to setup the account.  I selected a password and submitted the form. To my surprise the reply from the site said that I already had an account, but using another email address. It did not show the address in clear, it was masked so I could only see the domain (@att.net), but I have never had any address in that domain. I sat there shocked for a while and tried to think of what could be going on.  Chrissy and I talked about it and worried that it might be identity theft.  So we called a lawyer who is a relative of hers who also works in this field.  We found out quickly that the act of someone accessing my credit report without my permission is a felony at the state and federal level. If they tried to take out credit or did take out credit in my name it is another felony.  Doing these things over the computer is yet another charge.

So to figure out the truth I had to make copies of my id and fill out a form that we sent through the mail to Credit Karma, to prove my identity and get access to “my” account. This will probably take a little while though.  :-(

But I am furious that someone managed to find out enough about me to be able to setup an account to monitor my credit. The person must have my social security number, my date of birth and probably also my address. A lot of people have this information, actually. This article mention some ways people can get unauthorized access to someones credit report, for example a rogue employee in HR or a company or law firm otherwise allowed to pull a credit report.  It could just be someone who have your social security number, address and knows a little bit about you.

Just a few years ago, both Chrissy and our friend Mark were victims of identity theft. Someone broke into the mailboxes in their neighborhood and stole pre-approved credit cards and other personal information, and were able to take out credit cards in their names.  Before moving here, I know there were a couple of mailbox break-ins at my old place. The persons who stole their identity were caught using the stolen credit and arranged a plea deal that resulted in 40 years in federal prison.  Thought they will likely serve only half of that, 20 years is a long time.

I recently went through surgery, and I was in contact with different medical providers, both in person and on the phone. I had to give out my full social security number and address several times. Seems like there have been a number of cases where nurses or other medical staff have been stealing personal information from patients. I am not saying this is what happened in my case because I don’t know yet, but very few other people should have my social security number so I am looking very carefully at that.

I went to another site and ran my credit report there, and I did not see any unknown accounts taken out in my name. So I put a fraud alert on my credit report, so it should be harder/impossible to setup any accounts in my name without me knowing/being alerted.

So what else do I need to do? I have been doing some research, and one of the first things I had to do is to file a police report. If I didn’t do that, and someone takes out a credit card in my name, I may be responsible for the charges or seen as being part of the crime.

As we were told by the lawyer, it is a federal crime just to access someones credit report:

Under the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), any person or organization who knowingly and willfully obtains a credit report under false pretenses (such as getting a credit report on an individual without a permissible purpose as outlined below), is subject to a fine of up to $5,000 or imprisonment of up to 1 year, or both.

So even if no credit cards were taken out in my name, just the act of accessing my credit report is a felony.  And I am still not completely sure that there are no accounts taken out fraudulently.

I live in Texas, and the state laws regarding identity theft is actually stricter than the federal laws. So the person that did this will face a felony charge in one of the two jurisdictions.

We also requested Credit Karma to provide me with the email address was used to sign up for “my” account, as well as what IP address it was done from, as well as the date/time and all the times it was accessed.  The police can then contact the Internet provider that owns that IP address and request to know what customer used it at that specific time. So it should not be too hard for the police to find out who it was.

I am furious. I feel violated and like I am looking over my shoulder all the time. Did my doctor or nurse do this? Did someone break into my mail? Could someone have hacked my computer? It is almost as bad as when my house was broken into back in 2004 and I lost a lot of personal items. I hope this will not affect my credit rating, or cause me not to be able to get the car I want. I am worried about that but it seems like with a police report and cooperating with authorities I can get things cleared up.

From years of tracking down spammers back in 1999-2002, I know how you can find out a lot from electronic tracks left behind. As soon as they have the information from Credit Karma about the account the authorities will have no problem to find out who it was. And then I get to file charges and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. I will enjoy that!

 

Update 2014-08-28: I have found out who did it, and the issue have been dealt with. There was no major financial loss, just some time and money spent driving to several different police departments trying to file in the correct jurisdiction. Thanks everyone who supported me!