That was a great interview. I didn't realize model trains had so much computer stuff going on inside them these days! Maybe I should get into the hobby now that I'm an adult with space at home and disposable income.
Yeah, apparently the whole controlling the train by the voltage¹ and polarity of the electricity in the rails has been replaced with little digital chips in the locomotives that let you control each locomotive independently and not have to have them in separate zones on the layout. I have a bunch of stuff in the basement from when I was thinking of getting back into the hobby around 2001 and then, well, 2001 happened and put that all on hold. Maybe sometime in the future or maybe I’ll just sell it all off.
> I got my first model train when I was 2 years old, and my dad wouldn’t let me play with it. So he ran it around the Christmas tree and I had to watch.
I never realized that Al Lowe was involved with Donald Duck’s Playground, I loved it as a child. I guess I have to be thankful to him for two things now.
I used to play it on my dad's mac at work (which he hated, it was a non-computer role and management forced a switch from Windows to Mac). It had a great look that does seem similar to LLL.
Of course on those machines, most of my time was spent dealing with the "insert disk for the program you were previously using" bug!
He got so associted with Leisure Suit Larry that some people thought he was Larry. Quite the opposite (his own words) - he's happily married 50+ years and just loves technology and creation.
I first really started to learn how to use computers playing Leisure Suit Larry on a friend's dad's computer. Started with copying save-games to/from floppy disks, to using MS-DOS in general, to BASIC, etc. and so forth.
It's interesting how much of the humor in those games flew way over my head yet I still had a blast playing them. And looking back as an adult, the "risque" stuff was tame as hell but still fun. Sigh, good times.
I’m not entirely sure why I did this, but when I was an adjunct for a few semesters, I emailed him for advice on teaching since he did the transition from teacher->programmer and I did the opposite.
He responded back very quickly with very helpful advice [1] and was very understanding and nice. I like him.
[1] I don’t want to share the emails since they are a bit personal, but the TL;DR was that he recommended I consider finding some training on how to be a teacher.
Much like Factorio - bringing too much tech/automation into your hobbies (such as model trains) just turns a fun weekend hobby into "work". It's really cool to see the progress with digital controls in model trains (read up about Neil Young and Lionel [0]) but I don't want to have to ask AI to rewrite my train handling config files just to get some little motor to spin.
[+] [-] jfengel|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] baxtr|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] smokel|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] hulitu|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] bigstrat2003|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] dhosek|1 month ago|reply
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1. Or is it current? I have no idea,
[+] [-] baxtr|1 month ago|reply
You don’t want to be 80 and saying: I should have at least tried!
[+] [-] jacquesm|1 month ago|reply
I wonder how many kids had this happen to them.
[+] [-] kirubakaran|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] mrighele|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] throaway146|1 month ago|reply
Of course on those machines, most of my time was spent dealing with the "insert disk for the program you were previously using" bug!
[+] [-] sgt|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] deepthaw|1 month ago|reply
It's interesting how much of the humor in those games flew way over my head yet I still had a blast playing them. And looking back as an adult, the "risque" stuff was tame as hell but still fun. Sigh, good times.
[+] [-] tombert|1 month ago|reply
I’m not entirely sure why I did this, but when I was an adjunct for a few semesters, I emailed him for advice on teaching since he did the transition from teacher->programmer and I did the opposite.
He responded back very quickly with very helpful advice [1] and was very understanding and nice. I like him.
[1] I don’t want to share the emails since they are a bit personal, but the TL;DR was that he recommended I consider finding some training on how to be a teacher.
[+] [-] ta9000|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] t1234s|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] js4ever|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] linkjuice4all|1 month ago|reply
[0] https://thrasherswheat.org/tfa/trains-neil-young-1993.htm
[+] [-] sodapopcan|1 month ago|reply
[+] [-] unixhero|1 month ago|reply