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.
> 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.
Can I reuse the tracks (not the locomotives, just the track) from my Marklin HO and switch to digital trains? Sounds cool.
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.
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!
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.
It might be time for HN to shift to a font that distinguishes better between "Al" and "AI".
AI is a hype, Al Lowe is a legend.
How dare you call Weird Al hype?
Especially confusing when there’s the word model up there as well
And “trains”.
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.
⸻
1. Or is it current? I have no idea,
And that's just DCC. You can also add in I2C, MQTT, Canbus, Ethernet, BiDiB, Modbus, etc the list goes on
Have a gander at https://www.jmri.org/help/en/html/hardware/index.shtml#netwo... for a good list of protocols
> 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.
Can I reuse the tracks (not the locomotives, just the track) from my Marklin HO and switch to digital trains? Sounds cool.
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.
Al Lowe is actually a pretty nice dude.
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.
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!
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.
[0] https://thrasherswheat.org/tfa/trains-neil-young-1993.htm
Ya, I was wondering if this made it to the top because people though "Al" was "AI," heh.
does it really matter? it's a good topic either way. actually it's even better because it isn't about AI.
What about Larry 4 Roar and Al