e561 — For the Birds | Games At Work dot Biz

Seagull in flight — Photo by Michael Martine, South Yarmouth MA, July 2026

Published 13 July 2026

e561 with Michael, Andy and Michael – arial-aquatic robotic locomotion, Puffin wingspan, e-ink mini PDAs, maker marketplaces such as Tindie, Lectronz and SmallRun, custom vinyl, cooperative LLMs and a whole lot more!

Michael, Andy and Michael get things started with a new robot that can fly and swim, and transition between the air and water on it’s own. This amazing feat was inspired by diving birds such as the puffin. This story inspired the cohosts to consider the wingspan of the puffin, and while writing up the show notes, the Wingspan boarding game and the airborne velocity of the swallow.

Switching to non-robotic tech, the team take a look at the PocketMage PDA, which then opens up a whole discussion on (dare we say vintage) other PDAs, and the maker culture of EMF Camp, where Andy is spending some time as discussed in e560. Crowdsupply’s Open Printer article primed the team for a number of favorite maker marketplaces which you can check out in the show notes below. Examples like Tindie, Lectronz and SmallRun all get the benefit of the Games at Work bump. And a google search turns up another SmallRun website that provides the service of creating custom vinyl for recordings, and inspires Andy on a potential gift.

The team then looks at a couple of YouTube videos where a number of different LLMs are tasked to work collaboratively to play Pico Park. You can see these below, and it is an intriguing way to consider how multiple autonomous agents may work together (or not) in other contexts. In e173 in 2017, the cohosts discussed an example of two Google Homes talked to one another on Twitch.

Rounding out the episode, there is an Inc article on what happened when the Starbucks app had a failure. The behavior was very reminiscent of last week’s discussion on Ian Bogost’s new book, The Small Stuff. The article concludes “Connivence creates its own fragility” – what an interesting turn of phrase.

Have you had an example of when convenience created fragility for you? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!