[HN Gopher] Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working wi...
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Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney
Author : thelok
Score : 72 points
Date : 2026-02-07 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spillhistorie.no)
(TXT) w3m dump (spillhistorie.no)
| mrighele wrote:
| 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.
| throaway146 wrote:
| 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!
| tombert wrote:
| 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.
| js4ever wrote:
| Al model train ... I was not expecting that article... To much AI
| in my life
| sodapopcan wrote:
| Ya, I was wondering if this made it to the top because people
| though "Al" was "AI," heh.
| em-bee wrote:
| does it really matter? it's a good topic either way. actually
| it's even better because it isn't about AI.
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| 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
| deepthaw wrote:
| 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.
| unixhero wrote:
| What about Larry 4 Roar and Al
| jfengel wrote:
| It might be time for HN to shift to a font that distinguishes
| better between "Al" and "AI".
| baxtr wrote:
| Especially confusing when there's the word model up there as
| well
| smokel wrote:
| AI is a hype, Al Lowe is a legend.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
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