Just from the title, I suspected that Steam Locomotive had something to do with it. So I quickly glanced through the article up to the point where the locomotive shows up. Sometimes there's the idea hanging in my mind to make a version called Slow Locomotive, where the train slows down every time you press ctrl-c.
I once reimplemented in Perl Nethack's logic for phase-of-moon and Friday 13th computation and notification, and added the resulting cute little script to the root .profile on our consulting firm's main web hosting boxes.
I didn't get fired when my boss found it by surprise a couple months (and lunar cycles) later, but I did learn a valuable lesson about how one may wisely limit one's exercise of whimsy.
Google took a few years more to achieve the same discovery, as I recall, but presumably this has to do with pedagogical methods involving not as many ex-sergeants.
> If you press ^Z does it stop entirely?
Great idea, if I ever end up doing this I will steal it :D
> And do these sorts of ideas ever get you into trouble?
Not so far, but an idea is never a problem in itself. The problem can be the context. I don't see any issue in publishing a project like this on GitHub, while I see how I could get in trouble if I install it on a corporate server.
If you press ^Z does it stop entirely?
And do these sorts of ideas ever get you into trouble?