e559 with Michael R and Andy – it’s a catch-up and geek out on things we’ve been doing, games we’ve been playing, and topics we’ve been thinking about… including Apple history, Retro Computing, and self-hosting services.
A slightly different show format this week, as Michael R and Andy decide not to cover the weekly news stories and links… and instead catch up with one another, across a range of topics.
Michael has backed a new Kickstarter, for a podcast talking about Apple’s background and history in California. Andy talks about his recent visit to the Retro Computer Museum in Leicester, UK.
Then, there’s a discussion of Andy’s latest work project, a new role at the Matrix.org Foundation. There’s a dive into what the Matrix protocol is and how it is used; Michael is considering whether it might be worth trying as an alternative to existing tools for our podcast workflow.
They also stop to discuss Markdown; Michael traces it back to Waterloo Script on IBM 3081 and WordPerfect’s Reveal Codes. Andy brings up Google Cloud’s “Open Knowledge Format” (essentially Markdown + YAML front matter) as an AI-readable standard.
The gaming section covers Michael ordering the D&D-themed Demeo game. Andy has neglected his Meta headset for six months but has been hooked on Forza Horizon 6.
Finally Michael wants a single “home page” for all of his communities (Slack, Discord, RSS, forums). Andy uses Glance on his homelab for a dashboard, with Uptime Kuma monitoring the show’s infrastructure.
Thanks for joining our one-to-one this week! Let us know what you thought!
e558 with Michael M and Andy – slowing things down with games where you walk, fly, sail, throw bananas and play ball, along with 3D printing innovation, a new flip phone from Commodore and a whole lot more!
Michael M and Andy get things started while Michael R is away with cornucopia of games. First up is StonkRider, which bills itself as “motocross meets wall street” where you ride a motorcycle up and down a stock ticker. Then, from the makers of Untitled Goose Game, is a new title called Big Walk, where, as the title suggests, you go out for an unstructured walk. This harkens back nicely to the discussion between Ian and Andy in last week’s episode. And it reminds Michael of a story he saw recently about Google’s take on Flight Simulator using Google Maps. Next, the pair discuss TinyWind, a pixel pirate sailing game, where you might charter an accountant and sail the wild accountancy. Then, an even more retro game appears – Gorilla.JS. This DOS game has gorillas throwing exploding bananas at one another from across a cityscape where you can choose the angle and force to throw. Both cohosts promptly thew their bananas with such little force that it went up in the air and exploded on their own gorilla.
Batter up! Andy and Michael’s next set of topics take them to America’s pastime, and the adjacent sport of cricket. After checking out the game visualization of Ribbie, the pair get into a discussion on what 8-Bit really means. Michael remembers the SmallBall game, and was disappointed to learn that this game is no longer maintained. On the other hand, he is happy about his university playing in the College World Series. Baseball and cricket really lend themselves well to games because of all of the stats that are kept about each player and the games themselves. Andy shared the story of the Wisden Cricketers Almanack which chronicles enormous details in it’s 1,500 pages!
After turning to innovations in 3D printing and visionOS collaboration, the cohosts consider the slow tech movement using the example of the new Commodore Callback flip phone. This phone features the promoted ability to run 99% of Android apps while completely blocking social media and browsers.
Andy and Michael wrap things up with a new LEGO Ideas set – a playable LEGO space themed pinball machine.
Links to all of the fun are below – check them out!
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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.
It’s an all-Brits episode, as Andy welcomes Ian “epredator” Hughes back to the show as co-host, while both Michaels are away.
We take a dive into some recent and current triple-A games as Ian talks through many hours of playtime in Crimson Desert, Forza Horizon 6, and 007 First Light. Although the new open-world Forza Horizon is set in Japan, Andy and Ian enjoy noting that these are games from UK-based studios or with British elements (like the legendary James Bond). Along the way, they talk about a WWDC video shared by Michael Rowe, which brings foveated streaming to the Vision Pro headset, although Ian notes that Varjo has been in this space for several years already.
There’s a second round of gaming conversations that includes the latest XBox Games Showcase, featuring an older game (Sea of Thieves) from another British studio, and a yet-to-be-released game (Fable) with British voice talent and acting, that was also originally from the UK. There’s also a quick nod to an easter egg in the latest LEGO Batman game.
The episode wraps up with a discussion of the recently fully-funded Kickstarter for the Virtual Worlds Museum, that we last talked about in episode 555. Ian mentions some of the recent video content that has been released by the project.
Many thanks to Ian for joining the show this week, bringing a deep focus on games and virtual worlds!
e556 with Michael, Andy and Michael – Michael R’s annual edu-cation, chatbot trickery, data center data visualization, LeRobot Humanoid open source robotics, LEGO and a whole lot more!
Michael, Andy and Michael get things started with Michael R’s annual edu-cation, Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference.
Then the team turns to a news story about tricking Meta’s support chatbot into granting access to Instagram accounts. This is not a new tactic – check out e429 for a link to try this out for yourself with lakera.ai‘s Gandalf game.
Next up is a data visualization for data centers across the United States. And then, a solution for the energy needs of a data center: CrankGPT. And harkening back to the earlier chatbot trickery, there’s a GitHub repo to get Chipotle’s chatbot Pepper to write python code and more. Then, the team considers an article from The Atlantic that spells out a contrarian view that this is in fact the best time for a computer science degree.
A new robotics story captured the team’s attention – the LeRobot Humanoid. Hugging Face developed this robotic set of legs as an accessible, low cost, open humanoid (well, humanoid legs) robot. Another intriguing maker project is a 3D book that has printed on it’s pages the machine code needed to fabricate itself.
Wrapping up the episode, the team takes a look at some of the newest LEGO sets featuring Gaudi’s architecture and SmartPlay sets featuring Nintendo’s Pokemon.
What would you like to have your LeRobot do? 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.
From Apple: "Join us on Tuesday, June 9, for a screening of The Mandalorian and Grogu at Steve Jobs Theater. Doors open at 7 p.m. A pre-show presentation about the role of Apple technologies in the movie’s production, featuring a special guest, begins at 8 p.m." #WWDC26
