Wear your anorak* with pride, my son

Humble Bundle a month or so back was Train Simulator, which I'd eyed previously because the company is based locally and therefore the local line is one of the things they offer. I could have tried it out for just a dollar, but in the end went for the full ten bucks package (IIRC, might have been $20), as that got me not just my local line here, but a version of the line through my home town in the 50s/60s, plus a lot of other stuff. I think it ended up being something like $280 worth of content for your money - a mix of UK, US and German trains and routes.

They then promptly had a major sale on Steam, and when you could pick up extra trains for a dollar or two, and routes for not much more, I ended up buying some more. (I'm not paying full price - £15-25, Train Sim is legendary for its amount of DLC, which is well into the multiple hundreds of DLC items; you can potentially spend something like £8000, but the odd package at 80% off, that I can afford, especially for the older stuff that is only £5-7 to start with)

So I haven't actually spent a huge amount of time playing it, but I've been noodling at it, and teaching myself how to drive it with the simple controls, which you can run with the mouse - basically accelerator and brake, plus gears. (The 'expert' controls involve using the mouse to shift the actual controls in a model of the driver's cab, which strikes me as a little too much like hard work). It even has an 'Academy' to teach you the basics of driving the the trains, though that's not perfect as a couple of times I've done exactly what it wanted me to and it hasn't registered.

The routes come with preset scenarios, plus the option to just take a train out and drive it around. I've cocked up one or two scenarios through not reading the manual, and others through not working out what I was doing in advance - last night I managed to run the New York to Philly Acela Express into the back of a stationary local train not once, but twice, at exactly the same place. But today I finally managed to take an antique British local train from start of route to finish without getting anything wrong enough to abort the scenario. Result! 

(Admittedly it's the line from my home town to the East Coast Mainline, and I've been riding it multiple times a year since the mid-80s, so I have no excuse for not knowing what's coming up around the bend, but it's progress).

I don't think I ever wanted to be an engine driver when I was young, but clearly I'm a late developer. What I like about this is it's one of the few games where you can potentially just sit back and watch the countryside go by, and I could do with a game that offers finite timescales for a scenario, and not a lot of stress (especially right now)

* British trainspotters are traditionally known as anoraks, for various very British reasons. I've never been tempted to become one, but my neurodiverse urge to dive into the engineering esoterica has clearly been tweaked. There may be a spreadsheet.

The Hills Are Alive With The Sound of ... COVID?

This is really good. The lead vocalist is creepily good at matching Julie Andrews' singing voice:

https://www.facebook.com/Parks187/videos/10163244998300635/?t=30