iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 09/08/2026

I was pleasantly surprised to discover "the Hollywood Carney's, a hot dog stand in a different converted railroad dining car" right by my hotel in LA, and the food was delicious to boot. #trains (TBBT got something right!)

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 28/07/2026

I managed to catch one of the few units that's been painted into the new Great British Railways livery on a recent UK trip, here at London Fenchurch and Upminster. #gbr #uktrains #trains

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 16/05/2026

I spent a three-day train ride across the country adding support for @ticalculators.bsky.social's newest graphing calculator to Cemetech's web-based IDE, SourceCoder 3. View, edit, and export TI-BASIC programs (and other files) for the TI-84 Evo in your browser. www.cemetech.net/news/2026/5/...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 01/03/2026

Thanks to geekboy1011's laser engraving expertise and ablating powder coating, I now have a good way to add durable, attractive labels to my simulator panels.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 09/01/2026

Some of that nighttime ambience from my Class 80x train simulator finally coming together. @trainsimworld.com

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 28/12/2025

In a recent video by UK train company @lner.co.uk, a guest trying one of their simulators commented, "[you] could sell these [simulators ...] imagine going to my boyfriend saying, 'Hi, darling. I've got a new train simulator. This is taking up the entire bedroom, BTW.'" And I took that personally.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 06/12/2025

Another day, another phalanx of CAN bus controllers for my increasingly sprawling train simulator. #trains #simulator

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 31/08/2025

Yeah, Acelabrate is pretty cool, but have you considered Acelabread? #amtrak #acela @amtrak.com

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 01/08/2025

It may just be cardboard, but physical prototyping of my Class 80x train simulator at 1:1 scale has been very helpful in figuring out if I've gotten the size and layout right, not to mention reasonable for my desk: z80.me/blog/tsc-das...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 22/06/2025

In another project completed recently, I added UK-style horn controls to my burgeoning train simulator. 🔊 Thanks to my reusable CAN bus controller, it took an afternoon, mostly of soldering and crimping: z80.me/blog/tsc-hor...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 21/06/2025

I've been writing 3D graphing programs for assorted graphing calculators since at least 2003. Now, after starting a 3D grapher for the TI-84 Plus CE and then pausing for eight years (coincidentally roughly the time since @geopipe.ai was founded), I've released it: www.cemetech.net/forum/viewto...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 15/05/2025

Achievement unlocked: realized I've actually been to today's Worldle, quite a few years ago for an academic conference.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 18/03/2025

I'm loving it so far. It's great for one of the main reasons I wanted it, a nearly-life-sized train simulator "windscreen". Also good for media, and with Windows' PowerToys, reasonably good for spreading ~five applications across, like my old five-monitor setup.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 01/02/2025

What do you do when you want to build a train dashboard, but you don't have a train to measure? You figure out how to parse an obscure 3D model format, derive the planes the buttons lie in, and build a papercraft prototype. z80.me/blog/tsc-das...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 27/01/2025

Okay, that works, and the RS-422 interface spits out...something. Now how do I talk to you?

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 01/01/2025

No thank you, we don't do that here.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 29/12/2024

Caturday: the more shy of our two void kittens briefly being social (on a graphing calculator pillow).

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 06/12/2024

Zephyr (left) and Acela have joined our lives and promptly made them significantly better. #cats

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 27/11/2024

Including my Graph3DC! Great job to the programmers and hackers of the graphing calculator community for another productive month.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 18/11/2024

Thanks to the DC chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society, I enjoyed an in-depth tour of Amtrak's Ivy City maintenance facility. I was particularly struck by the pride the folks there expressed in the quality and speed of their work and its importance in keeping the railroad running.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 05/11/2024

The rest of the world to the US, probably.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 25/10/2024

I'm porting a 3D graphing program I wrote for another platform to the ez80 TI-84 Plus CE; among today's progress was switching graph color themes to palette-swapping. Recalculating per-point RGB values and converting to RGB332 is now an instant change.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 06/10/2024

Metro North kindly opened up their Croton Harmon facility for a great open house yesterday, a previously annual event of which I have fond childhood memories. #trains #metronorth

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 29/08/2024

Today in rare #calculators that have joined my collection: a TI-Nspire CAS+ prototype, similar to the TI-Nspire CAS that was released in 2007. I'm glad they reworked the center "joystick". www.datamath.org/Graphing/NSp...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 28/07/2024

My UK Networker power/brake controller is now here (in bits), and I have the fun challenge of reverse-engineering the connections to its massive 48-pin milspec connector. www.cemetech.net/forum/viewto...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 26/07/2024

I bid a very fond farewell to the peerless, $18 Perixx #gaming #mouse that has served me incredibly well for over 10 years. Here's hoping the replacement is as dependable (cheers to geekboy1011 for the new recommendation).

A photograph of two computer mice side-by-side, the left metallic and worn, with right shiny and matte black plastic printed with a stylized G. The edge of a keyboard and wrist rest are visible at the left of the image.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 19/07/2024

The train simulator setup continues to grow, now with exactly half of a power/brake controller from a Class 365 train. The other half coming soon! #uktrains #trains #trainsimulator

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 10/06/2024

Overly attached LinkedIn worries you've forgotten it exists in the past 12 hours.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 21/05/2024

Time for more buttons and switches in my #Train #Simulator controller setup, which can only mean starting up my assembly line and making more of my CAN bus controller boards (z80.me/blog/can-con...). #ee #trainsimulator

Three partially assembled printed circuit boards in a row, above which are placed three Raspberry Pi Pico printed circuit boards, and to the upper left of which are six RJ-45 jacks in various orientations.

Three completed rectangular printed circuit boards in a horizontal row, each at an angle, and each populated with various components, including a prominent white stencil of a stylized raspberry present on a secondary PCB attached to each board.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 01/04/2024

Software-wise, pretty clean and simple: OBS at 2K with my game window taking most of the screen, with a small landscape portion of Restreamio chat at the bottom-left. Now that I'm playing #TrainSimulator with my physical controller, I have a camera cropped to show that view at bottom-right.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 25/02/2024

In my ongoing quest to build a physical controller for Train Simulator, I'm building a module to fully control real UK train speedometers, including the ATP LEDs and alphanumeric status display.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 25/01/2024

I did not appreciate just how massive UK trains' speedometers are.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 25/01/2024

Amusingly, at an open house event, my friend and I were baffled by exactly the mechanism in question on the new R211T trains for operator egress to the tracks, which is indeed only on one side of the train:

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 11/01/2024

I finally got around to writing up a blog post about my first master controller prototype for my physical Train Simulator controller. It's far from finished, but it's a start! z80.me/blog/control...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 05/01/2024

I used up a spool of solder last night, and in my search for a new one, uncovered a relic of a forgotten era.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 07/12/2023

Ever wondered what's inside an Automated Warning System (AWS) "sunflower" on a UK train? I found out in my pursuit of a physical dashboard for Train Simulator. z80.me/blog/aws-sun...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 03/12/2023

You should! It's a great museum in East Haven, CT, a few miles from the New Haven MNR station. Other than trolleys, the museum has a variety of restored, running NYCTA equipment from a Hi-V and Lo-V up to an R17. There's even an opportunity to run cars on Guest Operator days.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 18/10/2023

Apparently we all think the same way. I also tried to do some simple color correction.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 10/10/2023

Achievement unlocked at last! This is my version of striving for airline status.

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 08/06/2023

I think someone at #LinkedIn wanted to leave early on Friday afternoon...

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Christopher Mitchell @kermmartian.z80.me · 27/05/2023

In the cab of a #Class125 HST in the secondman's seat today visiting @colnevalleyrailway. It's so nice to see HSTs in preservation, and I also got in some great research on my ongoing physical Train Simulator control console project.

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