Computers and Mice – Mister Rogers Neighborhood | Hacker News Reader

Computers and Mice – Mister Rogers Neighborhood

misterrogers.org

One of my core memories as a kid was when I watched the Mr. Rogers' episode about how crayons were made[0]. I came home after my first week of 1st grade, Grandma making dinner in the kitchen, my Mom getting ready for work. On the days it rained, which were many in the PNW, I would spend my afternoons coloring and watching reruns of Mr. Rogers'. My Grandma had begun recording episodes of Mr. Rogers' to VHS when I was barely even a year old for me to watch when I was older.

Still with the fresh smell of crayon and marker on my hands from school, I grabbed my blue tin cookie can full of crayons from my room, stopping by the gigantic office desk where our brand new Hewlett Packard computer and Deskjet 500 printer lived. Barely tall enough to reach the front paper hopper, I snagged a sheet of paper, sandwiching it between my index and middle fingers.

I popped in the VHS, seated in front of our Magnavox with crayon tin and paper in hand. The episode began and a core memory was made. That distinct crayon smell in combination with that episode will always stay with me.

I left software to become a grade school teacher last year and I have Mr. Rogers' and a shortlist of male teachers to thank for planting the seed of curiosity and play some decades ago.

0. https://youtu.be/MWAhnVYUPZo?si=kdg7-iY0Wcd8IRne

I have a fond memory of that episode too. My 2-year-old daughter has been watching Daniel Tiger (a modern Mr. Rogers spinoff) and I showed her that episode so she would understand where all this comes from. She was just as mesmerized as I was.

Nothing to add here other than to say thank you for becoming a teacher. Our world needs more “community helpers” like you.

I just watched that episode on PBS Kids this week with my 2 and 6 year old.

I really like the crayon factory and the saxophone factory too

About two years ago, I left 15 years of teaching to go back to software. I got started teaching when an elementary school teacher I knew asked if I wanted to volunteer a few times a week. It was mostly reading and math in small groups. I loved it.

Stuff like this brings tears to my eyes. Not so much the mouse subject matter, but how the values brought by this show are now in short supply, and it saddens me to think Rogers' efforts are becoming obsolete to modern people.

A few examples I noticed, but not all in this episode are: Promoting high self-esteem, expressing a love of life, advocating for using your imagination, addressing people with respect, settling for something if it isn't perfect, and belief in the good in humanity.

It's such calorie-dense goodness, and he keeps it consistent and almost candid, even on long camera shots.

From the episode: "You know, your own imagination is far more wonderful than any computer could ever be. You know why--you're a living human being, and a computer is just a machine. Human beings are far more wonderful than machines!" -Fred Rogers

I appreciate that a computer has become such a wonderful tool for realizing ideas that come from my imagination.

It really is amazing isn’t it? I teach 4/5th grade where many in this cohort are behind in reading/writing due to the pandemic. It was an uphill battle to get the approval to incorporate AI in my lesson plans but admin quickly changed their tune after they saw the engagement and improvement in my students after using AI to generate images. While many of us adults, find prompting and chat based AI’s cumbersome, it has been a boon for my student’s writing skills. The tight feedback and reward loop text based image generation provides between what is nestled in their minds and what the AI creates is incredible. The iterative and interactive nature of the product compliments and reinforces the foundational writing skills introduced at the 4/5th grade.

Specifically the skills of: 1. Research skills 2. Varied sentence structures 3. Transition words and phrases 4. Editing and revising 5. Voice and tone 6. Descriptive language

Whoa what a great way to get kids to want to learn language! FWIW some of the things I’ve generated via AI I’ve had made into stickers, and I generate coloring pages for my nephew and niece with their prompting. Nothing quite like bringing the digital into the physical.

Yet I feel that AI gives such instant gratification that the boredom and struggle required for imagination is short-circuited and atrophies.

Here's a version of the website from the video: https://web.archive.org/web/20001203204700/http://www.pbs.or...

> CozyCardigan99

A green user for a single joke?!

It's really wild how Mister Rogers Neighborhood had this slow, thoughtful cadence with long pauses, quiet moments, no flashing graphics or over-the-top antics. It engaged the audience (mostly kids I guess) with something calm and sincere. You don’t see that much anymore.

I sometimes wonder if a show with that same deliberate pacing and emotional intelligence could even succeed today or if it would get buried under all the noise.

True. I was born in the 80s so had a few tastes of the programs of those early days when people still appreciated a smiling face, calm words and long explanations without flashy special effects. They were quite good actually.

How did he plug in the PS2 mouse and have it work instantly? Normally you had to reboot the system for the PS2 mouse to be recognized, or worse, it would freeze the system.

Kudos to the designer of the web site back then. Very cool.

You might be confusing it with COM port mice on DB-9 connectors. I seem to remember those had to be set up and the machine rebooted.

No, RS-232 (serial/COM/DE-9/DB-25) could be freely plugged and unplugged. PS/2 peripherals however always warned against hot-plugging [1]. The reboot you are remembering is because serial mice needed drivers installed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS/2_port#Hotplugging

Shot swapping mice and keyboards COULD damage some systems - but most, if they booted with it connected, could be disconnected and readded.

Also why “no keyboard detected-press F1” - it wants you to connect a keyboard and then press F1.

Me, too. I got anxious when Mr. Rogers began to do the unthinkable. Surely he is not going to plug a ps/2 mice into a live PC, is he? And he did. Oh, so many memory of me crashing my PC whenever I did that, forgetting that the PC was powered on.

I didn't appreciate, or even notice it at the time, but he had legit jazz musicians backstage.

I think that sums up a lot of what he did. For example, every word in the script was carefully considered and rewritten for maximum understanding of his audience, which I didn't even notice when watching but can definitely appreciate now as I try to explain things to my own children.

https://kottke.org/18/06/freddish-the-special-language-miste...

I have found in life that the true art of doing things very well is to look into those countless small details that no one notices when they are going well, but everyone notices when a few are not.

Kinda like system admin or devops teams.

Someone's cutting onions. I couldn't finish reading it to my wife, that was a great person. I can barely finish this comment. Thanks for that link.

maybe today's technology will become a fad and people outside of Hacker News will rediscover the joys of imagination.

It's funny how reality is distorted for those who pursue profit at any cost: https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/03/zuckerberg-declares-the-end-...

I wonder, are smart glasses being thrust upon us, or is society just picking them up like tablets, which were once awkward to use?

That 1998-era website with mouseover graphics seems more functional, intuitive, and faster on a 30 year old PC than any framework-laden digital dreck produced today.

I've recently picked up a Macintosh SE...and they really got everything they could out of an 8Mhz 68000

I want to know what computer he was using. It looks so familiar but I can't tell which computer it was.

It’s a Premio. Here’s an example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/405445420895

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