brightly colored food

One of the unexpected ways in which Pittsburgh excels is in its number of pinball machines. Pinball is a bit of a dying art - there aren’t any more machines in production and few repairmen to maintain the remaining ones, so it’s a nice surprise to find myself in a city with so many machines still working.

The other night I was playing Junk Yard at a nearby bowling alley while listening to this band called Z.O.W.I.E. play spy-rock from a nearby lane. Yes, they were playing on the lane. I was just getting started on my second ball when everything stopped, just like I’d tilted it. A bit confused, I wasn’t sure what I’d done. A few seconds later the machine roared back to life, announcing that it was time for Midnight Madness and sending me directly into multiball mode, where I quickly garnered a nice little replay.

I love it that the pinball machine designers put in such a nice serendipitous little touch. It was that little bit of sensitivity to my context - in this case, the time of day - that makes that experience so memorable.

When have you been surprised that something was aware of your current context and changing its behavior as a result of that knowledge?