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Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney
- mrighele 8mo agoI 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.
- throaway146 8mo agoI 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!
- sgt 8mo agoHe 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.
- tombert 8mo agoAl 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.
- js4ever 8mo agoAl model train ... I was not expecting that article... To much AI in my life
- sodapopcan 8mo agoYa, I was wondering if this made it to the top because people though "Al" was "AI," heh.
- em-bee 8mo agodoes it really matter? it's a good topic either way. actually it's even better because it isn't about AI.
- sodapopcan 8mo agoSure doesn't! Was just a funny thought (depending on your definition of funny, of course).
- linkjuice4all 8mo agoMuch 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 https://thrasherswheat.org/tfa/trains-neil-young-1993.htm
- jclulow 8mo ago> I don't want to have to ask AI to rewrite my train handling config files just to get some little motor to spin. I reckon you could probably still figure out how to just edit the text file. And if it's not fun to do that, then, surely it's just not the right hobby?
- deepthaw 8mo agoI 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.
- unixhero 8mo agoWhat about Larry 4 Roar and Al
- jfengel 8mo agoIt might be time for HN to shift to a font that distinguishes better between "Al" and "AI".
- bigstrat2003 8mo agoThat 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.
- dhosek 8mo agoYeah, 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,
- TacticalCoder 8mo ago> 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.
- dhosek 8mo agoYep. And you can simplify your wiring since you only need to put in insulators where there would be a potential short (e.g., a Y loop) and not split the layout into zones for operation.
- dhosek 8mo agoAlso adding the chip to a locomotive is a pretty simple thing so you can retrofit older locomotives (it’s also possible to mix non-digital locomotives with digital locomotives).
- t1234s 8mo agoAnyone who played LSL1 on a 5 1/4 floppy disk please stand up.
- jacquesm 8mo ago> 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 wonder how many kids had this happen to them.
- kirubakaran 8mo agoI’d say at least one
- ta9000 8mo agoWhat’s great about Al Lowe is that he’s great at sleazy humor but as far as I can tell not at all sleazy himself.