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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e538 — MagSafe Stacking

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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

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