e540 — Saucer Separation Button

By | |
Leave a comment
Coffee cup separating from it’s saucer.
Photo by Aneta Pawlik on Unsplash

Published 26 January 2026

e540 with Michael, Andy and Michael – Stories and discussion on mobile controllers, AI playing Anchorhead, Zork & Roller Coaster Tycoon, an isometric NYC, human artistic creativity and a whole lot more.

Michael, Andy and Michael get things clicking with some mobile controllers.  Starting with one of Andy’s latest technology acquisitions, the team enjoys hearing about Andy’s experience with the MCON.  And they especially like the “saucer separation” functionality.  The featured image from Unsplash was selected because there were very few TNG images – if you want to see the saucer separation that inspired this week’s show title, have a look at the YouTube video below.  After discussing the Anbernic controller, which has some interesting features like a screen and heart rate monitoring, the team moves forward with AI.

Claude features in a couple of the stories – first with an article from Fernando Borretti who details how he hooked Claude into the text based adventure Anchorhead.  The co-hosts have been intrigued by this kind of thing for years, and were reminded of the recent open sourcing of Zork.  Ramp Labs also used Claude with Roller Coaster Tycoon, which struck the team as a great way to run optimization routines across a multitude of data points that make us the game.  Next up was a story about using AI to create a SimCity-style rendition of New York City (New York City!) with astounding detail.  There were a couple of jumping off points of note from this story – Nvidia’s Omniverse digital twin, traffic optimization routines and another being the language in SimCity called Simlish – and a translator is included below for the listeners to enjoy.

After all the news on AI – it is refreshing though unsurprising that Hermès selected human creativity, complete with the imperfections that make the artwork more real.  Wrapping up the episode, the team closes with Netflix’s foray into social engagement.

What game would you like to have AI set up to play?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

Hardware: Mobile Controllers

Kickstarter: MCON: The Switchblade of Mobile Controllers by Ohsnap

The Verge article: Anbernic’s next wireless controller adds a screen and heart rate monitoring

AI

boretti.me blog post: Letting Claude Play Text Adventures

Wikipedia article: Anchorhead

Games at Work e534: Hiding in Plain Sight (for Microsoft’s open sourcing of Zork)

Ramp Labs blog post: We Put Claude Code in Rollercoaster Tycoon

atari.com Roller Coaster Tycoon

cannoneyed.com Isometric NYC (click the ℹ️ in the upper right for description)

PC Gamer article: Software engineer creates classic SimCity-style map of NYC—and argues that AI will be good for creatives, actually

Nvidia’s Omniverse

Games at Work e316: Omni Metaverse (for Nvidia’s Omniverse)

The Sims Wiki: Simlish

lingojam.com English to Simlish translator

Inc article: Hermès Just Made a Bold Statement in the Age of AI

acquired.fm Season 12, Episode 2: LVMH

Art

This is Colossal post: Pam Connolly Weaves Family Snapshots on Vintage Potholder Looms

Everything is Social

TechCrunch article: Netflix to redesign its app as it competes with social platforms for daily engagement

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:29 — 49.4MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Podcast Index | Youtube Music | RSS | More

e539 — Wikipedia is 25!

By | |
Leave a comment
Wikipedia logo with the number 25 in a blue puzzle piece

Michael R brings back Ian Hughes to discuss the recent changes with Meta’s VR investments, cool content on Apple’s Vision Pro, the new Creator Studio bundle, and 25 years of Wikipedia.

While Andy and Michael M are not available we look at how large companies cutting back on innovation can allow new startups and companies to flourish. With Meta refocusing more on wearables, perhaps we will see an uptick in innovative uses for VR. Which is a perfect sequel way for Michael to given his review of the NBA’s recent basketball game on the Vision Pro. The experience seemed to him to be the perfect onramp for Michael M, if it were college basketball.

We then review a few older games (Civilization VII and RetroCade), coming to Apple Arcade, before looking at the Board Tabletop Gaming Console. With all this cool tech, Michael introduces Ian to the Apple Creator Studio. Is it worth it? Ian, having recently built an AI server at home via ComfyUI, thinks it may be cheap enough for his pocketbook.

Finally we get to Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary, and what Ian did on the Cool Stuff Collective for Wikipedia’s 15th Anniversary.

Showlinks:

Meta:

Vision Pro:

Games:

Creators:

Wikipedia:

Cool stuff collective – https://citv.fandom.com/wiki/Cool_Stuff_Collective 

Comfy UI – https://comfyui.org/en/what-is-comfyui 

These show notes were lovingly crafted by a human.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:29 — 53.5MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Podcast Index | Youtube Music | RSS | More

e538 — MagSafe Stacking

By | |
Comments Off on e538 — MagSafe Stacking
cairn with quartz and other rocks on a trail in Blowing Rock, NC
Photo by Michael Martine, Blowing Rock, NC 2022

Published 12 January 2026

e538 with Michael, Michael and Andy – Stories and discussion on CES2026, EuroTech, PhoneTech, AI playing your games for you so you can watch and a whole lot more.

Andy, Michael and Michael take a look at many of the announcements from CES, and share a few of their favorites.  CES is the annual Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas, Nevada.  In the phone technology arena, there are several MagSafe examples that magnetically snap onto an iPhone, such as charger that looks kind of like a floppy disk.  Another example is a keyboard, with tactile buttons you can type with in portrait or landscape mode.  The keyboard creates a form factor that is reminiscent of the Danger Hiptop / Sidekick.  Between these examples and others (like a second screen e-reader that snaps to the back of a phone), the cohosts mull what it would be like to stack several of them in sequence.

After discussing the Punkt phone, and the Proton suite enabled by the AphyOS, the team turns their attention to several other innovations shared at CES.  Lollypops that play music, a vibrating chef’s knife, and the Lepro AMI AI companion all caught their eye.  The Lepro AMI seems similar, at least in the form factor, to the Gatebox, which was first discussed on Games at Work back in 2017.

Next, the team takes a look at a fork of a decompilation of SuperMario 64, where the developer added a physical coin slot and updated the code to allow for micro transactions with physical money.  Then, following on a post from Mike Elgan, the co-hosts consider an article about Sony’s patent to take over a player’s avatar in case they get stuck and want help to continue their game.  It’s kind of like your own personal AI Twitch channel.  The Games at Work team considered a similar story about Microsoft’s gaming Copilot in 2025.

Speaking of Microsoft, Michael M got excited about the potential triumphant return of Clippy, only to realize that it was clickbait.  

Would you like to have an AI show you how to get past a tricky game boss, or play through it for you?  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

CES2026

www.ces.tech The Consumer Electronics Show

Retrododo article: This Adorable Floppy Disk MagSafe Battery Pack Is My New EDC Fave

KBDcraft.store Kit Shamshel Mouse

Liliputing article: Clicks Power Keyboard is a magnetic thumb keyboard & wireless power bank for your phone

ohsnap.com: MCON, the magnetic transforming gaming controller

Vice article: The Sidekick Was Pop Culture’s Most Stylish and Innovative Cellphone

Belkin iPhone Mount with MagSafe for Mac Notebooks

punkt.ch blog post: Punkt. unveils MC03, latest version of its unique smartphone offering giving users full control over personal data and usage.

AphyOS

Mashable article: The weirdest tech of CES: It gets very weird, very fast

Games at Work e520: Cold Fusion Gaming (for the Gatebox virtual companion)

tech.eu article: CES 2026 showcases Europe’s hardware renaissance

Reverse Engineering Microtransactions into Retro Games

Hackaday article: Super Mario 64, Now With Microtransactions

AI

Sony AI plays video games, so you don't have to! futurism.com/artificial-intell

— Mike Elgan (@MikeElgan) 2026-01-09T01:30:33.730Z

WIPO Patentscope : WO2025080356 – AI GENERATED GHOST PLAYER

Games at Work e530: Vibe It!  Ready Player Chum (for Microsoft’s Gaming Copilot)

PCWorld article: Microsoft pushes huge Copilot update with features like Clippy 2.0

Microsoft blog: Meet Copilot Mode in Edge: Your AI browser

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:47 — 43.0MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Podcast Index | Youtube Music | RSS | More

e537 — Reading, Listening & Building Together

By | |
Comments Off on e537 — Reading, Listening & Building Together
guitar chord
Photo by Scott Gruber on Unsplash

Published 4 January 2026

e537 with Michael M and Andy – ringing in the new year with the amazing power of music to move and heal, LEGO and retro builds and a whole lot more.

Andy, Michael and Michael would like to wish all of our listeners a very happy 2026!

Michael M and Andy start off 2026 on a good note – or perhaps better said – a series of good notes.  Michael shares some of his vacation reading, beginning with the book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel Levitin.  In this book, Levitin highlights the power of music to move and heal, and provides a Linktree to listen to the songs featured in the book, which is included in the show notes below.  One particular example from the book was the Ella Fitzgerald recording of Mack the Knife in Berlin, and the magic she created in the moment when she forgot the lyrics.

Andy highlights an amazing musical creation moment with Jacob Collier’s improvisation with the National Symphony Orchestra.  This reminded Michael of Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander’s book, Art of Possibility, and maestro Zander’s TED talk on the power of classical music.  Michael also brought up David Byrne’s book, How Music Works, and his learning in Puerto Rico on how dancers conduct the musicians as they perform together.

Byrne discussed mixtapes in his book, and the modern equivalent of them are the playlist, which is exactly what Levitin’s Linktree leads to.  Michael created a mixtape to express musically what he was trying to say in words for his NCSSM convocation speech at the start of the 2025-26 school year.  Andy shares a couple of intriguing ways to create music through retro devices and common household products – all of these are in the links below.

Moving to the building part of the episode, Andy and Michael start off with LEGO, and this is about to be a banner year for the company with so many new sets coming on the market.  There’s a new LEGO Icons building, which has in it a music store and includes a sousaphone player minifig.  The cohosts touch on the Star Trek Enterprise set which was also just launched, which includes a minifig of Commander Riker with his trombone.  Andy describes the awesomeness that is the LEGO GameBoy with the inventive buttons on the device, and the team then touch on a couple of retro consoles such as the Commodore 64 reboot.

The team wraps up this episode with a mention of Andy’s grumpiness on the year end Tech Grumps podcast.

What music has inspired you in 2025?  What builds (LEGO, retro or otherwise) are you planning for 2026?   Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Selected Links

Reading

I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel J Levitin

Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Die Driegroschenoper – listen to the “Moritat von Mackie Messer” excerpt sung by Bertholt Brecht in the Featured Audio & Video section

Games at Work e485: Barbarians at the Rhubarb Bar (for flow, and of course Barbara’s Rhabarberbar)

Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander

Benjamin Zander’s TED talk: The transformative power of classical music

Games at Work e9: Reality is Broken (for Jane McGongial’s book, and Benjamin Zander’s Ode to Joy)

How Music Works by David Byrne

Listening

Wikipedia article: Mixtape

Listen to the songs featured in A Secret Chord – https://linktr.ee/secretchord

Michael M’s Apple Music Mixtape for NCSSM’s convocation

Michael M’s Spotify Mixtape for NCSSM’s convocation

Making of Boléro by Linus A Kesson

Building LEGO and more

LEGO Icons Shopping Street #11371, with sousaphone musician (see picture 13 in photo gallery)

LEGO Icons Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D™ #10356 with trombone player Commander Riker

minifigs.me 

LEGO Gameboy #70246 build and additional new Retro Console #31380

Wired article: Review: Commodore 64 Ultimate

The Lost Outpost blog post: Retro-tastic!

Other Stranger Things

Woe Industries game 

TechGrumps 3.3.5: – Bless The TechGrumps (Special holiday special) 

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:13 — 44.9MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Podcast Index | Youtube Music | RSS | More