I slept till almost 10 am !!!.. latest I can remember sleepign in a. long time. I got up and headed over to gabes.. Gabe, Diane. Nova and I took a quick run.. then we spent the rest of the day helping gabe pack up the last bits of his house in prep for his move to Wüzburg.
In the evening, Gabe went off to his Mandolin lesson, then we all (me, diane. gabe, mya, max and becky) me up at the Moon and Sixpence.. its now officially our favorite bar in Portland.. it’s a really authentic english style pub (We know.. we lived in england !) with live irish music.
We had great fish and chips and got to talk to Gabes amazing mandolin teacher Rene and his freind Jeff Elliot.. a welll known guitar maker. They are both such wonderful peope. Rene has been an amazing teachor, mentor and freind for Gabe.. he’s a gentle, kind sou l and an amazing musiculs
I got in earlier on sunday.. .. the hackers had until 1 ( i think) to finish their project..s .. they were all still workign furiously.. writing code, training models, soldering, painting.. it was amazing to see
Then came the time for the projects to be judged.. the judging criterion were reviewed again. then a team of judges from AMD and Hackclub began visiting all the teams. Teherewere some amazing projects that all hilighted the DELL AI laptops with AMD Processors and Radeon GPUS as well as a the Open Source LeRobot robotic arm platform.
We had violin playing robots. whackamole playing robots, soda dispensing robots, card playing robots, chess playing robots scalpel weilding robots, bowling robots, date ettiquite managing robots, tool sorting robots.. and many more.. . judging was hard work !
THe judges visited all the teams.. then went of to think.. and then came back with their sleection.. The winners were a card playign robot, whackamoe and the drink despensor robots.. It was really fun to see the winnign teans reaction, The prizes were really significant…
And jusut like that.. it was over !.. we all said our good byes.. its amazing how quixkly you make freinds in these sort of competitions.. I hoe to see many of these kids particiipating in futre hackclub programs..
The core crew hanf aroudn for a coupek more hours cleanign up the venue.. we’d made a huge mess but by 7pm .. it looked great again. . I got in my rental car and drobre up to SFO only to find that my plne was like 3 hours late.. I eventually got to our airbnb in portland aroudn 3AM..
my 3rd 3am day in a row.. DIane was ther easleep.. I was so glad to be with her again..
what an adventure ! now switching to holoiday mode. Max and becky show up tomorrow. gabes already here.. looking forward to being with family !
I got up around 8 and took a quick run then headed back to the venue.. Many of the hackers had stayed up all night.. thye were making good progress I think .
we had to do a little teaching on soldering safety after soemone melted through the solderign irons cord with their iron
the venue was split in half, the other half was a gamign bar.. really a cool place
Around lunctime.. my dear friend Rafe came by.. It was so great to see him.. it was fun showing him what I did for fun. Rafe is a mathematician (was the head of the math dep at stanford for many years) We had a good time comparing the ways that math and engineering rech out to younger students. I think there’s much we can learn from the concept of ‘math circles’ that the math community has used for almost 100 years.. its an idea that came out of the soviet unioon for identifying early talent..
It was great hanging out with rafe.. we took a walk and got bon-mih and caught up.. he really is one of my oldest and dearest friends.
then I was back in the grind at the hardware table. the thing I learned most was that I in handing out hardware, I got to hand out hardware advice.. I learned abotu each teams projects from start to finsh. I was so impressed with how much electronics many of these kids knew
Late night I got out my musical tesla coil and hookediy up to the Vermein project that my freind Va nan d I created several years ago (http://ibm.biz/veremin) /. that was good fun
at midnight we had a surprise birthday part for one of the kids who was turnign 18.. I played happy birthday on the tesla coil.. we had cake !
I stayed till about 2AM .. and when back to the hotel for sleep so far so good !
Went for a quick hacking run this morning.. taking in soem of downtown san jose’s art.. it was completely empty.. which was strange for a friday morning !
there was a winter carnival and christmas market that was nice to check out
I got to the hackathon venue around 10 and helped the team get set up . my job was to lead the hardware table.. thatr meant giving out hardware. but it was more about giving out electronics help ! Hackers started tricling in throigh out the afternoon.. there were 68 pf them from all over the US. Thias hackathon is being generaously supported by AMD…. hye also supplied the laptops and robots that will be used in the hackathon we so appreciate their support..!!!!
I really enjoyed meetign the AMD folks.. they were so smart and so helpful !
Aroudn midnight, I put on a santa suit that the guys had bruaght and handed out ice cream !
I stuck aorudn till about 2:30 AM .. then went back to the hotel for about 4 hurs of sleep..
