The Intersection Of Car Enthusiasm And Computer Geekery Is So Awesome: COTD

Some people focus their enthusiasm on one thing. Some folks are sort of into boats, but nothing else. Some folks like planes, but can’t be bothered to get into cars. It’s always fun when people are into different stuff, like when our readers love cars, computers, RC cars, and other gadgets.

First, I want to nominate a comment from a few days ago as a heartwarming comment of the day. I’m thinning my fleet and it feels so great. I have to thank Stephen Walter Gossin for enlightening me on the fact that life is too short to burden yourself with broken cars you don’t actually have any heart for. Geoff Buchholz has a great idea:

I would watch the hell out of “Gossin Motors Backyard Automotive Rescue And Shade Tree Counseling, SON!” (working title), in which Stevie G visits Autopians with entirely too many cars, helps them part with the excess, and rides off into the sunset in the $200 Stratus.

In fact, I’ll produce it. Hardigree, @ me!

I’m so in! I’d watch every episode the second it drops.

Let’s get to the geekery! This morning, Jason wrote about how he created an epic flight simulator setup for the classic game Skyfox. I loved reading your replies. Matt Sexton:

Reminds me – I went off on a tangent in a comment thread a few days ago about B17 Bomber on Intellivision. It was a great game that gave you control of four different gun turrets, pilot, bomber and navigation. Not quite the same as what you guys did, but my friend and I discovered both controllers were active with the game so one of us got assigned guns and the other flew and bombed. We would toggle between screens depending on where the game told us the threats were and then the designated player would take over.

Man I really wish we could have had a dual TV setup for that!

It’s also wild that while these sims didn’t have the graphical performance of anything today, the developers still baked in realism, from Fuzzyweis:

Awesome, that setup would’ve been great for something like Super Huey on the Commodore 64 as well, I’m remembering it as just trying to get the frickin helicopter to take off seemed tedious. 80s flight sims were no joke, they made up for lack of graphics with realism of flight controls and crashing.

This nerdy stuff has me all excited because I’m embarking on some silly projects this year. One is to turn my modified PlayStation Portable into the world’s worst GPS unit:

Cooler Master has also announced a PC air cooler that looks like an engine and has RGBs on the “intake manifolds.” I’m definitely installing one because I’m a child.

I also have a 1/6 Scale Chrysler PT Cruiser in my closet that I want to turn into a computer. Maybe I’ll finally get around to that one this year! Finally, while not a computer project, I’m turning a Hot Wheels car into an RC car. Here’s stellar advice from Harrison_crabfeathers:

Skip the jungle site for most ‘hobbyist electronics’ stuff- it’s regularly overpriced vs. getting it from a better supplier, and to boot it’s usually sub-standard quality and frequently knock-off stuff that’s just plain unsafe.

Luckily, there are great smaller businesses selling exactly the kind of stuff like that battery and battery charger – Adafruit is fantastic about this kind of stuff, and they also do an incredible amount of work that supports the maker/modder/tinkerer community.

This isn’t an exact fit, but I’m pretty sure there’s one to be had if you spend a few minutes browsing, and the pricing is good: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1317

And the charger, for only $6: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4410

Added bonus – small, domestic business with fantastic customer service that sells quality stuff that they’ll stand behind. (I have no affiliation with Adafruit, I just love what they do) Sparkfun, Seeed, and a bunch of other similar vendors are also worth a look for this stuff.

Thanks for the great week everyone. Have a great weekend!