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I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
131–140 of 207 posts
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty terrible in my experience. The good stuff for kids mostly moved to tablets and phones, but no keyboard and mouse is a limiting format, and you have to sift through a hundred bad apps to find the good one. Not much that runs easily on modern PCs comes close to the old magic. Though Tux Paint is actually very good, retaining the sense of whimsy that most modern software lacks. It's hard to describe but it almost…
This is a timely post. Just last night my 8 y/o asked if she could create a presentation on my laptop like they do at school. I have no idea what software they use at the elementary school. I've let her play around with Google Docs before. But what I really wanted was something like Creative Writer that is more kid friendly. I used Gemini (sorry) to suggest some software and it suggested "Book Creator" which is inten…
Check out Canva. It might even be what they're using at school already. It doesn't have the simplicity and fun of the old stuff, but it's intuitive to use even for kids. A lot of features where they're broken convention in ways that actually make more sense than the standard, for example resizing images keeps the aspect ratio by default instead of stretching.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Creative Writer is one of the best pieces of software I've ever used. What's the state of kids software nowadays?
Pretty terrible in my experience. The good stuff for kids mostly moved to tablets and phones, but no keyboard and mouse is a limiting format, and you have to sift through a hundred bad apps to find the good one. Not much that runs easily on modern PCs comes close to the old magic. Though Tux Paint is actually very good, retaining the sense of whimsy that most modern software lacks. It's hard to describe but it almost…
I made a paint app for toddlers recently, exactly because I couldn't find anything fun & useable & educational:
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sent steve jobs (sjobs@apple.com) an email saying that MacOS should have an unspoofable dialog for the system password authorization, same way they have for DRM videos etc. I also suggested the user could choose a secret phrase or image to be displayed in the dialog during system setup. Never heard back. This was when Steve was alive and in charge. And to this day anyone can spoof the system password dialog and ste…
I always wonder about how easy that would be to spoof, because it seems like it'd be trivial.
...but obtaining that phrase may be nontrivial.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always wonder about how easy that would be to spoof, because it seems like it'd be trivial.
...but obtaining that phrase may be nontrivial.
Sorry, I mean the current implementation seems trivial to spoof. I agree that doing something like your suggestion would make me feel much more comfortable about those logins.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
8 months later sounds too short to have taken your idea, I'm guessing launching a product at Mars scale takes like 2 years. This is probably why the always say they cannot take ideas sent by external people... but on the other hand if this came from the CEO, probably could be fast tracked. So 80/20. Do you remember who was the CEO?
Only vaguely related, but the Mars family lived in neighboring River Forest and the factory was just north of me in Galewood (it is shutting down or already shut down and the property is planned for redevelopment, but the neighboring Metra station is named “Mars” which means that in Chicago you can take a commuter train to Mars). Sadly the Mars estate was apparently torn down to be replaced with a pair of bland McMan…
Silly person, Mars is a city in PA, not a train station in Chi-town.
The Moon is located just east of the Pittsburgh Airport.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#137As a 10y old, my father taught me about logical ports. I took a very large piece of paper and in a few days, I designed a tic tac toe "computer". It had LEDs that indicated the next computer move, based on the position of the pieces: every single possible state of the board led to a specific "next move" led. I do not think it actually would have worked, but of course I was very proud of my design at the time. Unfortu…
That really hits home. I spent a couple weeks in primary school sketching my own blueprints for great inventions. Nothing that could've ever worked (I didn't know what a transistor actually was, but my machine certainly had a lot of them!), but in hindsight a good start for a curious tech-minded child - switches that opened/closed circuits, wires to connect the various imaginary lasers and electromagnets, and so on.…
Are you familiar with the kids story book Iggy Peck Architect by Andrea Beaty? Same story, with a happy ending though.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#138These letters matter a lot to kids. I sent my video game idea to Nintendo as a little kid and I had the same reaction seeing that envelope from Nintendo in the mailbox addressed to me. I think it was also a bit more special pre-internet as these companies felt a bit more magical and mysterious. You can only read about them through video game magazines and see their names in the credit scenes at the end of the games.…
A lot of companies and organizations actually reply to letters/emails of any kind. Often very appropriately and not just with some boilerplate text. I guess they have to deal with so many annoying complaints, so they are really happy if there is something joyful once in a while.
you can get a lifetime fan just by replying to a letter - like you see here. That's a very effective marketing.
I got a rejection letter once from a company I submitted my resume to (online) and I still remember that and in a positive light even though it was a rejection.
Now they just ghost you even if you went through 5 rounds of interviews and spend a bunch of your time.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 1997 I typed up a letter to Maxis in Microsoft Creative Writer about how much I liked their games and wanted to move to America and work at Maxis when I grew up: https://i.imgur.com/1eHcead.jpeg Unfortunately I made the mistake of mentioning that it'd be cool if you could print out an image of your city in SimCity 2000, as you could in the previous SimCity game. That was enough to get me only this letter from lega…
Love that they took the time to draft a kind letter and let you down easy. Maxis cared.
I can't tell if you're joking or not about the form letter there.
It's such a terrible response for someone that was not in fact suggesting a new feature for the franchise.
And even if it had been, rejecting the entire letter for one sentence is still bad.
It's polite. Being polite is pretty much expected here.
Re: I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was the reason? Anything beyond concerns over ownership of the ideas, characters, etc. (which I presume is the boilerplate legalese)? Did they even admit to reading your letter?
This was a very common thing media companies dealt with and still deal with. There are too many legal risks in even reading the idea. SOP is to send back the envelope sealed and with a canned response explaining that they don't accept pitches from the public.
they have to open the envelope to see what's inside - they get mail that is not ideas and they have to open it.
But I assume the people who get the mail are trained to see if the envelope contains ideas to stop reading and return the mail with the canned lawyer response.