It might be time for HN to shift to a font that distinguishes better between "Al" and "AI".
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.
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.<p>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 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.<p>Of course on those machines, most of my time was spent dealing with the "insert disk for the program you were previously using" bug!
Al Lowe is actually a pretty nice dude.<p>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.<p>He responded back very quickly with very helpful advice [1] and was very understanding and nice. I like him.<p>[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.
Al model train ... I was not expecting that article... To much AI in my life
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.<p>[0] <a href="https://thrasherswheat.org/tfa/trains-neil-young-1993.htm" rel="nofollow">https://thrasherswheat.org/tfa/trains-neil-young-1993.htm</a>
Ya, I was wondering if this made it to the top because people though "Al" was "AI," heh.
What about Larry 4 Roar and Al