e542 — Vibe Coding Vowels

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multi colored backlit keyboard
Photo by Mihai 👑 on Unsplash

Published 9 February 2026

e542 with Michael, Andy and Michael – Stories and discussion on programming language localization, Virtual Boy hardware & emulation, LEGO terrestrial & orbital dwellings and a whole lot more.

Michael, Andy and Michael get things rolling with an article on programming language localization, specifically using the Welsh language as syntax.  Next, the co hosts consider Matt Ballentine’s thoughtful post about the the speed of technological change, and the recommendations to capitalize on the innovation that is happening.

Then, the team takes a look at the Virtual Boy hardware, newly made available by Nintendo for the Switch and Switch 2.  This reminds Michael R of the View-Master and a Vision Pro emulator for the Virtual Boy.  Next up is a story about a Quest 3 virtual keyboard.  The experience Michael R had back in 2017 with a laser keyboard was a good reference, as is his more recent VR experience in using a hardware keyboard with his Vision Pro.

Rounding out this episode are a pair of LEGO stories – the first, a replica of a 1799 house and a of the Project Hail Mary spacecraft.  Check out the links below for the awesomeness.

How are you and your team taking the greatest advantage of the speed of change in 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

AI

Hackaday article: YSGRIFENNU CÔD YN GYMRAEG (WRITING CODE IN WELSH)

Raku

Sacha Chua blog post: Sketchnote: Fun With Dead Languages: Damian Conway

Matt Ballentine blog post: Is it really happening that quickly? 2025 edition

Wikipedia article: Connections

Game & VR Technology

The Verge article: Nintendo’s new Virtual Boy is more fun to look at than to play

Virtual Boy for Nintendo Switch

Wikipedia article: View-Master

9 to 5 Mac article: This Vision Pro emulator brings Nintendo’s Virtual Boy back to life

TechCrunch article: Roblox’s 4D creation feature is now available in open beta

Gizmodo article: Meta’s Quest 3 Has the First VR Keyboard That Doesn’t Totally Suck

Karrello Laser Keyboard

Games at Work e164: Addictive AR

LEGO

Reddit r/lego post: My brother and I collaborated on a 17,000-piece model of a family home

Slashfilm article: New Project Hail Mary LEGO Set Gives Ryan Gosling A Close Encounter In Space

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: 30:01 — 41.8MB) | Embed

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e541 — Invisible Llamas

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llama blending into the background - edited picture from Lars H Knudsen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-close-up-shot-of-a-llama-7845603/
edited picture from Lars H Knudsen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-close-up-shot-of-a-llama-7845603/

Published 2 February 2026

e541 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on AI with local Claude (and Clawdbot, Moltbot & openclaw), collaborative agents, 25 cent physical microtransactions ( quarters ), invisibility cloaks, LEGO SmartPlay and a whole lot more.

Michael and Michael get things rolling with a series of intriguing innovations in local AI.  First up is a local instantiation of Claude via Ollama – see notes below for the installation instructions if you care to give this a shot.  Then, the team checks out Trae for it’s orchestration capabilities. Michael M makes the mistake of trying out one of these innovations while recording the show and nearly crashes his machine.  Then a discussion on the startup Humans& and how this company is planning for how human + digital combinations will power the future.  The post from Thomas Ricouard illustrates how agents are collaborating with one another.  Michael and Michael stay at the surface level on the whole clawdbot —> moltbot —> openclaw story which has been rapidly evolving this past week while still marveling at the speed of movement.

Switching then to the makers making things, there is a fantastic example of how to enable the original microtransaction for current software.  How?  Implementing the hardware mechanism for accepting a quarter to allow the game player to continue.  Next, from MIT, a significant improvement on the umbrella by using a quadcopter and computer vision tracker to create a flying mobile shelter that protects the user from the elements.  And then, a story about an invisibility cloak from Duke in the news this week, which harkens back years – check the show notes below for prior discussions on this capability.

LEGO has announced a new innovation – the SMART Play system, replete with SMART Bricks, SMART Tags and SMART Minifigures.  It will be so intriguing to see how this fits in with the LEGO robotics, FIRST LEGO League and more.  The longer arc going back to LEGO Serious Play may provide some hints.

Michael and Michael wrap things up with another long arc from the show – Doom running on a plethora of devices and screens.  This time?  Doom on earbuds.  Check out the links and discussion for more.

Are you considering trying out openclaw.ai ?  Why or why not?  Have your openclaw (or other) 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

AI

Tessl blog: Ollama helps Claude Code run locally on open-weight models

trae.ai 

ollama.com 

“ollama run slekrem/gpt-oss-claude-code-32k:latest”

TechCrunch article: Humans& thinks coordination is the next frontier for AI, and they’re building a model to prove it

Agents are now brainstorming on how to be proactive instead of passive

moltbook.com/post/562faad7-f9c

— Thomas Ricouard (@dimillian) 2026-01-30T14:23:57.561Z

Scientific American article: Moltbot—what happens when AI stops chatting and starts doing

openclaw.ai 

More Makers Making

Tom’s Hardware article: Gaming PC charges you quarters every time you want to power it on, restoring oldest form of microtransactions — $135 in tools and supplies, plus a lifetime supply of quarters to kick it old school

quarters for microtransactions
photo by Michael Martine, Jan 2026

Popular Science article: We may not have flying cars, but we have flying umbrellas

Games discovered on the Hacker News Show HN: HN arcade

National Geographic article: How scientists are making the power of invisibility a reality

Games at Work e396: GAN vs GAN (for references to earlier discussion on invisibility cloaks)

Forbes article: Duke Researchers Perfect The Original Invisibility Cloak

Duke Stories: Beyond Materials: From Invisibility Cloaks to Satellite Communications

LEGO

hackster.io article: This Switch Controller Is Made of LEGOs

LEGO Smart Play sets

LEGO Smart Play system

Games at Work e130: The Final Countdown (for LEGO Serious Play)

Doom

hackster.io article: This Whole Doom Thing Has Gotten Out of Hand

doombuds.com 

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: 29:33 — 41.2MB) | Embed

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e540 — Saucer Separation Button

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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

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e539 — Wikipedia is 25!

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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

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