Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It: Recent Episodes
Jason Scott
Historian and loudmouth Jason Scott shares stories of technology, retrocomputing, documentary filmmaking, and general schennanigans from his decades of travels and research. From experiences on the road while shooting documentaries to often-obscure points of order, Jason keeps a fast-moving pace and even he doesn't know where we're ending up at the end.
The Catching a Break Episode: H3, Accordion Hood, The Lifted Weight, Infinite Breaks, Artuo and the 80 Hours, Passing the Breaks, Infinite Payoff, An Office Break, A Traffic Court Appearance. Thoughts on how both giving and recieving breaks, the lifting of obligation, is some of the best investment on both sides. I didn't mention it in the episode, but interestingly, with a nearly 15 year difference, my office where I caught a break in the lease is located roughly 800 feet from the court where I didn't. There is nothing to learn from that fact.
The Hater Tools Episode: A Pleasant Visit to a Discord, A Pillory, The Right to Dislike, Tools of Response, Public vs. Actual, Walls of Separation, Our Neverending Performance, The Time and Distance, Hills and Mountains, Accepting The Hate. A small rumination on that time I visited a community and they didn't like me.
The Third Act of Collecting Episode: What Drives People to Collect, The Roles, The Responsibilities, The Urge and Drive, My Witness To The Third Act, Sentinels of Oblivion, Redundancy, The Process, Indexing Heartbreak, The Time Crunch, The Future, The Hope. Thoughts on when people have spent a long time making a collection and my experiences when they reach that inevitable end of the process.
The Furious Card Episode: Finding an Old Card, The Handover and the Promise, The Fury, Exclusitivity, Teenage Sharing, Providing Access, Improv Everywhere, MP3 Experiment, Unrecorded Experiences, TinyTIM Open Invitation, The White-Hot Fury, The Boston Group, A Constant Reminder. In this I mention The Latitude. Here's some information about The Latitude. https://www.businessinsider.com/my-experience-with-the-latitude-society-2015-10 https://medium.com/@jeslach/the-latitude-society-a-story-45915e489937 https://nonchalance.com/latitude.html
The Arcade Tourist Episode: Visiting Other Countries, Visiting Arcades, The Uniqueness of Each Arcade, The Unplanned Planned Journey, The Outpost in the City, Hundreds of Years, The Enriching Experience, The Shared Machines. Also: A Note on Health. An episode about my visits to arcades in cities around the world.
The Grey Box Episode: A Fine Purchase, A New Fulcrum, Permanent Storage, Memories and Accomplishments, A Personal Set, The Futures and Destinies of Dreams, The Pitfalls and Losses, Our Place on the Timeline, Plus: I'm Fine. Some ruminations as I start putting together another phase of my own personal archive, and what it means. Plus: I'm doing fine! I'm absolutely fine!
The Clocks Episode: Attending The Clock, The Intercutting, The Supercut, Digital Filmmaking, Silent Labor, One to Four Hours, Time Out of Time, Other Artworks, The Dry-Run, The Future Screening. An episode about attending The Clock, a film project that shows a 24 hour film of the passage of time via clock-faces and references to them. Full context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clock_(2010_film)
The SuperBanana Lunch Episode: A Pleasant Meetup, A Conversation, The Cold Arrow of Criticism, A Recurring Character, Why Go to Meetings, Social Gathering as a Component, A Long and Fruitful Life, Meetings and Gatherings, Conventions and Lunch.
I may have covered this situation before, but I've had more time to think about it and it's just gotten more ridiculous.
The Chowder Box Deep Dive Episode: Progress into the Chowder Boxes, the layers of years, what we see in the boxes, future thoughts to past experiences, scraps and detritus, the story inside myself, the links easily lost, broken lines and connected threads, an exciting plateau. I've never thought I'd get to this part of my collections!
The Ride to New Hampshire Episode.In which I learned an awful lot about myself and life in a very short time.
The VHS Spectacle Episode: An Apartment in New York City, Realizing the Value, The Spectacle, Television Specials, Long-Form Recording, Inauguration, Popes, Funerals, The Rareness of Long-Form TV, The Hidden Cultural Curator. A long overdue thank-you to the family that invited me in to take a bunch of boxes of VHS tapes, and the discoveries within. Under the new office, with 2-3 tapes being digitized at once, the results will be done in a flash but the benefits will last for a long time.
The Tape Baking Episode: The Cult of Baked Tapes, The Problem With Magnetic Media, Potential Solutions, Tape Baking Recipe, Digital and Analog Solutions, The Singular Moment on Tapes, A Very Long Consideration of Personalities. Weirdly, the best page I found on tape baking as an introduction is so retro you aren't 100% sure if they're not intentionally doing an aesthetic, but here it is, courtesy of Wendy Carlos: If I'd Have Known You Were Coming I'd Have Baked a Tape!
The Internet Archive Downtime Episode: Not About the Archive, Downtime, What My Job Is, Switching Gears, Finding Purpose, A Chain Instead of a Pile, Two Hours, Purpose, Other Shifts. A rumination on what I even am, when the Internet Archive experiences an extensive downtime. It turns out, what I am is satisfied.
The Setback Comeback Episode. A rumination on working through dark periods, set to a cadence of strength and resilience but recognition of the realism of life. I'm breaking the usual rule and making this one public immediately on here, for patrons to send to anyone who needs to hear it.
The Shockwave of Proximity Episode: A Short Trip, Los Angeles, Giving the Best Interview, Honks and Sounds, Return and Forget, Documentary Release, Scrubbing and Watching, The Shocking Revelation, The Arc of Dreams, The Blessed Golden Dias. The name of the documentary I mentioned, "Games that Rocked the World" is currently available at this URL: https://therokuchannel.roku.com/details/793efb00a33ba64bbcb44fa4981ca1a2
The Ever-Present To-Do List: The Giving of Advice, Piles, To-Do, Addressing the Options, Understanding the Trudge, The Pile Behind Instead of the Pile Before, The Moments of Confusion, The Dedication, 90 Percent, The Final Tally. Advice and thoughts on dealing with what can feel like an infinite, ever-present to-do list. Since moving to the new office, things have been very productive, but even at 10x productivity, the concerns still reign.
A Large Collection, Stories in a Collection, Capturing Infocom, Financialization, Families and Friends and Grief, Using The Skills You Have, Settling With Your Choices. Someone tried to sell an awful lot of Infocom and Infocom-Related items on auction and is trying again, and I had some related thoughts about collecting, selling, and using opportunities.
No Tragedy Ahead, A Quick Exit, Expectations of Childhood, Stability and Home Base, Approaching the World, Valets and Storage Units, Where The Thinking Takes You, Fainting Spell, Possibilities and Paranoia, Talk Changes, Finding the Stability Regardless. A rumination on my constant contingency planning, ever-present, in everything.
Setting Up Tapes, The Bob Cooper Collection, Bob Cooper Biography, Imaging 3/4 Tape, Fuzziness and History, A Lost Era of Television, Everything Falling Apart, Aiming for the Best, Fixing Without Perfection. I was sent a massive amount of boxes of Bob Cooper, who did Satellite Television related material for years, and who recorded many neat videos in doing so. Bob's site, still working: https://bobcooper.tv/
The Bob Cooper Collection at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/bob-cooper
Officially at the New Office, The Advantages, The Size, The Dimensions, Multiple Projects, Facing Your Own History, Trash and Treasure, Walking Down My Own World, Physical, Deep Storage, The Hope. A few thoughts about the new office, which is nearly 8 times larger, has every project and piece of myself in it, and will hopefully, although not guaranteed, help me finally kill my backlog.
Hearing of the Living Computer Museum, Illegally Parking, Artifacts and Items, The Paul Allen Story (Short Version), A Conversation with Stephen Jones, The Grand Plan, Delchi's Consoles, The MADE, Cryosleep, Highest Bidders, The Billions, A Part of History, The Lessons Learned The Living Computer Museum is not returning and its contents will be auctioned. At least, the big ticket items. I'm not happy about this and neither is anyone else, but here we are. At least there's some glimmers in the darkness. Following my general credo of "Always Take Pictures", here's two Flickr galleries of Living Computers I took over some of my visits: https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157635312051527 https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157700864034805
The Second Part, HOPE's Second New Year, Attendance, Location, Improvements, A Striking Walk Through Classrooms, The Legacy Speech, Friends, Lore, Legacy, Ed Piskor, Cheshire Catalyst, Kevin Mitnick, Sinitar, What We Leave Behind, The Extra Effort, A Summary. I had a wonderful time at HOPE 15 (2024) and consider it my home hacker conference now. I wore three suits and made many new friends, and I'm sure the recordings will be a joy to watch.
Finding A New Space, Failure to Communicate, New Home, Aspects I Like, Enclosed Spaces, The Grand Plan, The Far-Reaching Intentions, One At A Time, Potential Helpers, The Finances, The Future. With the addition of a new office space, I intend to jettison into a new layer of what I do. Let's hope for the best.
Hitting 300 of Anything, Humble Towel Beginnings, Possible Audience Rotation, What Drives The Tales, Finding Subjects, Broken Strings, Eagerness and Dread, An Invisible Audience, The Future. An episode celebrating 300 episodes of this podcast, with a specific bent to telling people how the audience is what matters - while I have what is now dozens and dozens of hours of talking about myself and the world, it needs listeners to be meaningful. As I mention in the episode, I considered ending things here at 300, but I'm still enjoying the process enough to keep going. Here's to more.
Procrastination By Sorting, Memories of Magazines, Computer Awareness, Obscurity and General Interest, Compute!, Creative Computing, Reader Service, The Gained Bricks of Foundation, The Waterfall of Text, A Prayer of Appreciation. Whenever I sow seeds of doubt something good has happened with the work I do, I just look at the magazine rack at the Internet Archive and love walking its stacks and collections. Here's some thoughts on that.
Giving a Speech at HOPE, The Concept of Legacy, The Approach to Subjects, Ed Piskor, Cheshire Catalyst, Best and Worst Speech, Short Deadlines, Light Work, Where I Intend to Go, The Awaiting Deadlines, The Truest Legacy. I'm giving a speech at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) this year, and I figured it might be fun to describe this situation before and after I do it. Here's the before.
Going To A Show, Meeting Robert Harris, Film Restoration, The Brittle Nature of Film, Film Is Dead All Hail Film, Meeting Mister Harris, Inspirations and Permissions, The Prickliness, Living Your Version of the Dream. I was lucky enough to meet Robert A. Harris, who is a film restorer par excellence and who I'd looked up to for decades. What a gift!
Edging Into The Office, Stacks and Wires, Process and Teardown, A Version of a Version, Dreams of the Next Process. As I wind up the current office and move to another one, some contemplations on how messy it is right now.
Emulation, James Gerrie, Weak Specifications, The User Interface Wall, Press SCRL LCK and F2, The Tiny Pipe to the Shot Glass, Inspiration, Kind of Finished, The Relentless and Inspiring Curation.
Some appreciation for someone being so dedicated to a machine (the Tandy MC 10) that they got it working at the Archive and are adding hundreds of new software titles to it across the days. We need this kind of energy, especially as computers age out.
Saying No to the Renewal, Moving Into The Office, A Blank Canvas, Choices Made, The Thousands and Hundreds, The Separation of Home and Work, FInding Limits, Future Unknowns. A small meditation on the office I work in, as I choose not to renew the lease. I'd like to thank Kay Savetz and FAXZERO.COM for being a major supporter of it so that the real estate costs didn't crater my bank account.
An Uninteresting Square Building By The Road, $25, Far as the Eye Can See, Walking the Games, The Usual Experience, Endless Rooms, Experiencing Videogames Again, Memories of Internet Arcade, Broken, Real Arcades, The Joy of the New to Old. A memory of visiting the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Illinois, billing itself as the largest arcade, but at the very least, an absolutely insane amount of hundreds of unique games that you can all-you-can-play.
All-Sport, Megagym, Racquetball Camp, Benches, Numbers, Lines, Designs, Waves Not Blocks, Frog Design, Attachment, The Font.
A rumination on a font and some lines that had an effect on me.
I mention Frog Design, here's an example of the kind of pages out there:
https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-early-apple-prototypes-2014-6
No Specific End, A Couple Boxes, Expeditions, Ham Radio, QSL Cards, The Tapes Arrive, Digitizing for a Week, Exotics, Blur, VHS Feel, Preservation.
A pleasant surprise as a pile of "DX-Peditions" showed up in the inbox. The resulting collection, done by me and Kay Savetz, is here:
https://archive.org/details/dx-peditions
What is Selling Out, This Podcast, The Facts of Working for Money, The Forks and Compromises, Thoughts and Concerns For Others' Journeys, Crossroads, Consistency, Your Own Conclusions. Some thoughts on what "Selling Out" means.
Reminding Myself of a Lost Media Show, What is Lost Media, What is Lost, Turn-on, The Thrill of Finding, Endless Uploads, ZIPs inside ISOs, That Old Razzle-Dazzle, Campfire Stories. Never let it be said I won't talk about a show without telling you where to find it. The Lost Media videos I'm talking about are here on Youtube, scary music and all: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKM8YX6ZzGblS97Y2llFP-HsNKFvlqy7C And here's the "Lost Media" of TURN ON: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDpum0Jp7Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwRYpqTpCU4
A Talk Accepted, Rare Appearances, The Gist of Software, The Accomplishments and the Achievements, What's Next, What's Coming, What Will We Do, The Challenges, The Possibilities, The Purpose of a Talk. About a talk I'll be giving this year, where it is rare that I'm doing any sort of talk that isn't just a (fun) advertisement for the Internet Archive. What's next with emulation and game preservation?
A Double-Tape UFO Conspiracy, A Life of Forbidden Knowledge, The Assumption of Presentation, The Ease of Misdirection, A Momentary Pause, Handing to Next Generations. Plus: An Hour with Wayne Green. Some thoughts that ran through my mind while I was digitizing a UFO Conspiracy tape.
Attending the Game Developers Conference, the Expo Floor, The Booths, The Floor, Pamphlet Game, Meeting Manifestos and Dreams, The Mag Chain. A discovery of a new way to approach a conference floor and make it into a game, which I enjoyed playing very much at the GDC Expo.
An Invitation to a Scheme, Some Thoughts on Lemonade, Wash Trading, The Ultimate Plan, A Special Little Cat. Some charlatans tried to get me to enter into a scheme around the memory of Sockington. This is about to go very not-well for them, but I wanted to share my thoughts on it before going full firestorm. All Hail Sockington.
Yet More AI, The Eye of the Storm, Little Computer People, Eliza, The Sims, SIGGRAPH, Imagination Overload, Analysis, Excitement, Empathy, Curious, Forever. A rumination of the echoes of revolution, told from one person's life. Part 4 of 4.
A Computer Lab, Browsers, Surfing, Electronic Zine, Endless Linking, What's New, Web MUD, Extensions and Add-Ons, CENTER Heresy, TEXTFILES.COM, Early Blog, Finger Servers, Growth and Complication, Lost Taste, Simplicity Underneath, Money Money, Walking Away, My Waiting Piano. A rumination of the echoes of revolution, told from one person's life. Part 3 of 4.
Before My Time, Meetings and Considerations, Terminus, Command Line, FTP and Gopher, UNIX Lingua Franca, MUDs, Endless Time, Waiting for Me, Ghost in the Present, Fragile and Permanent, Doomed to Disappear. A rumination of the echoes of revolution, told from one person's life. Part 2 of 4.
Fishing, Night, Truck, Grandfather, Empty, Modem, Moments, Boards, Phones, Fear, Elation, Soul, Duality, Broken, DIscord, Heights, Memories, Places, Heart, Simple, Enjoyment. A rumination of the echoes of revolution, told from one person's life. Part 1 of 4.
The Transcription and Summarization Episode: LLMs, Modems, Magic, Technology, Infinite Toys, Change, Promises, Reality, Tascam, Amiga, Manuals, Summarization, Weird But Tireless, Always a Revolution. Some quick thoughts on the world of LLMs as they start entering my life (and many others) from the point of view of a half century of technology.
The UMATIC Gems Episode: A Small Hot Room, The Mechanisms, The Robots, 40-50 Years, Sony and From Another World, Tensions and Read Heads, Tapes and Decay, The Lifespan, The Future, The Joy of Saving, The Potentials and Possibilities, Mark Pines. A rumination on the UMATIC tape decks in my office, which are large, loud and hot.
The Bad Review Episode: 2 Stars Out of 5, Bad Cinematography and No Effort, The Timeline of the BBS Documentary, Choices Made, Experiences Lived, 10 to 15 Minutes, A Crew of One, The Unknown End, The Results, GET LAMP, Your Project's Future.
A rumination on a 2/5 review I got in 2017 on Amazon for the BBS Documentary. Believe me, I'm quite sure the BBS Documentary is quite fine, but it was nice to remember how weird and unknown the project started out as.
The Appreciation For Spaces Episode: A Moment of Recognition, A Time of Containment, The Best Separation, Thanks to Sponsorship and Gifts, The Rooms I've Travelled, A Consistency of Inconsistency, A Moment For You. Perhaps a well-needed acknowledgement of the time of the moment where I have a lovely office to do my work and get things done. Thanks, by the way, to FAXZERO.COM who throw money each month so I can stream from the office without sweating rent as much.
The Industrial Spaces Episode: Hurricane Electric, Ikea Paramus, Customers and Hybrid Customers, Beach Chairs, 19-Inch Racks, Content Delivery Networks, Approaches to Space and Cost, New York Conveyor Basements, Payments in Pain. And Mangoes. A rumination on a few industrial spaces I recently spent time in, as well as a greater and perhaps too-late respect for the costs of poor environments.
The CLIVE Episode: Introduction To The CLIVE, Our High School Parents, Not Just a Salesman, Where Are They Sitting, Working With The CLIVE, Lessons and Learning, The Other End of Layoffs, Reading the Room, Thanks To The CLIVE, A Final Domain Gift. Memories and thoughts about THE CLIVE, the father of one of my high school friends, who was the best salesman I ever met.
The Voice Quality Episode: A Very Bad Idea, Public Speaking, My Thoughts on Audience, The Unspoken Guarantee, Sickness and Health, Voice and Articulation, The Roads Not Taken, Finding Your Voice. Some ruminations on my speaking voice, and qualities and issues related to it.
The Learning Process Episode: My Extreme Oscillation in Learning, Why I Learned The Way I Did, BBSes and Textfiles, Where This Worked, Fastest Temp, The Non-Threat of Failure, The Narrative, What Has Changed. A rumination on my personal learning process and where it has gotten better (or not) and why I think that it all worked out, ultimately.
The Time Bandits Episode: The Dutchess Mall, Movies 4, Suburbia Boring/Excellence, Chaotic Universe, Surpreme Being, Great Evil, Foundations, Portals of BBSes, Robbery of Textfiles, Before It's All Ruined. A short meditation on one of my favorite films, Time Bandits (1981) before a remake arrives. I have many movies that I enjoy, but this is a movie that formed a big part of my worldview when I saw it for the first time as an 11 year old.
The Constant Contact Episode: Why People Write In, Repeats, Questions, Meaning, Culture, Context, Contact, Response, Arms Open Wide. Just some thoughts on how many times I find myself brought into conversations where anyone mentions anything about materials that might need a home. It's probably impossible to filter and tune awareness of when I should be brought in, but I thought I'd try.
The Modern Medicine Episode: Feeling Unwell, Emergency Drive, Portable X-Ray, The App, The Doctors, The Information, The Sense of Well-Being In Mystery, Four Figures. A small visit to the emergency room reminds me how much more amazing medical experiences can be now, even if they cost you.
The Atari Font Episode: Atari Microcomputers, Dark Rooms, Curtains and Shades, Customizing Fonts, Creating Games, Unfulfilled Goals, Unfinished Plans, Rescue from Darkness, The Real Reason for Atari Fonts, A River of Nostalgia and Memory. Some thoughts on my love of Atari and specifically, why I thought escape came in the form of Atari Customized Fonts. If you suddenly feel you need truetype versions of Atari Fonts, here's a great selection of them: https://github.com/a8bit/EightBit-Atari-Fonts
The Nostalgic Web Episode: Ingestion Thoughts, Early Web, Something Lost, Wandering Through Memories, The Early Web, The Lost Form, Expensive and Exclusive, BBS Versus Web, Reality, Mirroring Ourselves, An Evolution.
A rumination on the early Web and what that even means to me, looking back, along with the folly of trying to put myself in the mindset of the way things worked back then. As a bonus, a recognition of just how exclusive it all was. To me, the two peaks of the early web will be SUCK and CAMWORLD. You can see them (sort of) at the Wayback machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20000302182418/http://www.suck.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000905161549/http://www.camworld.com/ You probably have your own.
The Deep Image Analysis Episode: The Fun Toy, The Advancements, Apple II Crack Screens, Transcriptions, A Held Out Hand, The Dark Cloud, A Lifetime of Scanning, The Advantages, The Wishful Thinking, A Critical Thinking Requirement. Thoughts on deep image analysis, which I've been experimenting with and which has been producing amazing results, but is anything amazing anymore without concerns following soon behind?
The Hacking Museum Episode: Friends Bringing Up A Museum, What Is a Museum, What Is Hacking, How Do You Start, The Fundamentals, The Extras, Before You Hire a Staff, Hacking Stories and Lore, Mobile or Static, The Possible Real Hacking Museum. Some pals of mine were talking with me about a hacking museum, and this was something that I was supposed to write a big document about, like an assessment, but maybe a podcast episode is all it needs to be.
The Eyeball Difficulties Episode: A Ring of Light, An Emergency Ophthalmologist, Posterior Vitreous Detachment, Eyeball Tubes, an Unfortunate Curtain, Into the Laser With Remaining Eye, Pancakes, Equilibrium, Next Steps, The Things Seen, A Community of Eyeballs, A Vision for Gratefulness. This episode discusses medical conditions with an eye. If that's not your thing, then be aware that as of this writing, my eyeball is currently stabilized and find. (Skip ahead to other "Eye" episodes to see if something changed.)I've learned more about eyes in a week than a whole lifetime before that. Eyes are amazing.
The Power Wash Simulator Episode: Not Just Battle Royale, Power Wash Simulator, Plot and Intrigue, The Basic Idea, Angle of Attack, Parts Within Parts, The Urge to Clean and Make Things Better, A Messy Childhood, A Small Defined Zen Joy. Power Wash Simulator is a game/adventure where you have a power washer and everything needs cleaning. Either you're hooked or you're running away, but either way I thought I'd mention why I'm playing it to the end.
The Manuals, Manuals, Manuals! Episode: Heading Out To Deal With Manuals Plus, The Manuals Plus Saga, The Latest Part, The Digital Manuals, Aesthetic And Information, My Great Manual Sorting Screwup, Brands and Flibberjibbits, The Future Holds. Plus: The Facade of Brands. Lots of thoughts about two parallel projects: The Manuals Plus Loadout, now about to get a lovely upgrade, and the Manuals Collection at Internet Archive, which is getting an upgrade of its own.
The Cheshire Catalyst Episode: The Brightest Smile, A Long History, TAP Magazine, 2600 Magazine, HOPE Conferences, A Late Start, No Sleep, Close to the Edge, 3-2-1, Space Hobo, A Chance To Remember. Some thoughts about Cheshire Catalyst, a hacker who had a lovely history and who is gone, leaving behind memories and smiles.
The Configuration Episode: Two Configuration Aspects, The Rotating Bulletin Board System, Arcade Fidonet, Power-Switch-Rotation, What Was I Thinking, Happy Life / Lack of Strife, USENET Groups and Configuration, Works Or No Works, Cancelmoose, ROFLCon Panel, I Call Upon My Brain.
I noticed I've been getting heavy the last few episodes, so here's a geek waterfall of the ups and downs of configuration, from my teens and twenties. My memories of the ROFLCon Panel: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2565
The Digital Faith Episode: Obsession and Storage, To-Dos in a Dining Room, The Path from Analog to Digital, The Fight for Perfection, The Battles and Triumphs, Chapter and Verse, Passages to The Light, Losing a Taste for Conflict, The Fan Mail. Some ruminations of how digitization is digitization and what matters is we get the bits. Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It is supported by Patreon subscribers. You can check out episodes before anyone else and help me with various bills and debts as they arise by joining up at https://patreon.com/textfiles.
The Mister Jangles Option Episode.
In which your ol' pal Mister Jangles throws you a possible lifeline.
The Data Dirigibles Episode: Prehistoric TEXTFILES.COM, The Cry of the Leech, TEXTFILES.COM Comes to Pass, Downloading Archives, Downloading More Archives, Kilo Mega Giga Tera, TEXTFILES TIME CAPSULE, What Persists, The Unpretty But Surviving Clump, Slash Internetarchive, Slash Internet, Software Capsules, Ace and I Ride High An episode about my idea that the future is just massive balls of data, floating airships of content that float slowly through our virtual sky. Let's see if I'm right. Meanwhile, come browse the capsules at: https://archive.org/details/softwarecapsules Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It is supported by Patreon subscribers. You can check out episodes before anyone else and help me with various bills and debts as they arise by joining up at https://patreon.com/textfiles.
The ScanTailor Dance Episode: A Small Project That Is Huge, The Endless Pages, Crop and Rotate, The Search for an Application, Best and Abandoned (and Best and Worst), The Experience of ScanTailor Advanced, The Missing Mentor, Before Applications, The Dance of Software Destiny. I have learned way too much about ScanTailor in a few days, and I thought I'd share how it felt before my brain tells me it's not good to revisit dark passages of memory and I forget. Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It is supported by Patreon subscribers. You can check out episodes before anyone else and help me with various bills and debts as they arise by joining up at https://patreon.com/textfiles.
The Monotony Episode: My Boring Day, The Crushing of Monotony, How I've Always Adored Repetition, Engagement and Disengagement, Long-Form Information, Temporary Domain Expert, Advice on Handling Monotony, A Web of Friends. Plus: THE ANALYTICS. Some thoughts about handling long form repetition, considering that's all I've been doing since forever and onward forever still. Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It is supported by Patreon subscribers. You can check out episodes before anyone else and help me with various bills and debts as they arise by joining up at https://patreon.com/textfiles.
The Arcade Documentary Arcade Interview Episode: Getting Down to Union Bridge, Eric and Stephanie, Zach, ARCADEDOCUMENTARY.COM, Being The Dream Interview, Always The Last, A Closing Moment.Thoughts as I do an interview for the Arcade Documentary being done by Zach Weddington, "Arcade Dreams" (also called "Arcadia" in some places), which I gave my domain to: https://arcadedocumentary.com
Eric and Stephanie run SAVE POINT in Union Bridge. Here's the address: https://savepointmd.square.site/
Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It is supported by Patreon subscribers. You can check out episodes before anyone else and help me with various bills and debts as they arise by joining up at https://patreon.com/textfiles.
The Last (?) Computer Shopper Episode: Drawing The Line, Ups and Downs, My Hot Glue Enemy, Stresses and Delights, BBS List Highlights, The Ever Forever Scanning.
Some last big mentions of the Computer Shopper scanning project, because otherwise this becomes a series of episodes about Computer Shopper and that's not very enjoyable for anyone. The Computer Shoppers are growing here: https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper I expect to do 2 a week. (Maybe more but it's really a tough process.) I've got a lot of support in the background, so thanks to everyone doing that. Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It is supported by Patreon subscribers. You can check out episodes before anyone else and help me with various bills and debts as they arise by joining up at https://patreon.com/textfiles.
The Video Content Episode: What Is Even On Video; Commerical Tapes, Recordings of Individuals and Events, Television, The Meaning, Loss Versus Lossless, 40-Year Delay on a Dream, The True Nature of Television, The Hope of Doing It Right.A meditation of what video content ends up being, now that I'm several thousand tapes in. Here's hoping I can do a few thousand more!
Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It is supported by Patreon subscribers. You can check out episodes before anyone else and help me with various bills and debts as they arise by joining up at https://patreon.com/textfiles.
The Amusement Park Defunctland Episode: Listening to too much Defunctland, Lessons Learned from the Amusement Park Historians, The Unique Situations of Roller Coasters, The Common Threads, The Lessons and Inspirations.A bit of a love letter to Kevin Perjurer's Defunctland series, a youtube series which brings together, especially as time goes on, a really deep and rich overview of very well-researched stories of rides and amusement parks.
https://www.youtube.com/@Defunctland
Two that represent my favorites:
Walt's Epcot: (Citizen Kane Parody of EPCOT's Story): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKYEXjMlKKQ
Live From the Space Stage (Amazing Documentary on a Space Band):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0rDLvg-Lfs&t=130s
Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It is supported by Patreon subscribers. You can check out episodes before anyone else and help me with various bills and debts as they arise by joining up at https://patreon.com/textfiles.
The Long Drive Hard Drive Episode: A Common E-mail, An Offer of DVDs, A 800 Mile Drive, The Wawa, Fugue State and Explainer Videos, There and Back Again, The Process.
Someone offered me an attic of DVDs. I said yes. And then I drove 800 miles to get them. Here's what that's like.
Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It is supported by Patreon subscribers. You can check out episodes before anyone else and help me with various bills and debts as they arise by joining up at https://patreon.com/textfiles.
The Aboveground Episode: What the Aboveground Means, The Cloak and Cosplay, The Risks Without Risks, Hacker Conferences, The Tech Industry, The Hidden Cost of Underground.Some thoughts on a concept I've been mulling about, regarding "The Aboveground", a cosplay version of being underground used by certain groups, usually for some gain, to bring the delusion of lawlessness and lack of limits, when in fact needing and depending on those limits to succeed.
I also made a blog post: The Great Aboveground Empire.
The Computer Shopper Aesthetics Episode: Last Thoughts On the Project, Every Major Step, Considerations of Contrast, Size and Intimidation, Impossible Perfection, Resting Easy.One last set of consideration about all the aspects of the Computer Shopper Scanning Project before I do whatever it is I'm doing 200 times.
Finished issues will be here:
https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper
This podcast is supported by Patreon and other sources. Supporting the podcast helps with Jason's medical debt and various bills. The Patreon is at https://patreon.com/textfiles and can get your name into the episodes.
The Atari Hotel Episode: The Atari Hotel, Bought and Bought and Bought and Bought, The Concept Drawings, The Drawn-Out Death of Atari, Livery, Hotels, Entropy, Concepts, A Breath of a Seed, The Real Atari Hotel.As of this writing, the Atari Hotels are still being advertised at https://atarihotels.com/
I took photos of my trip through the TWA hotel and the album is here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72177720307661452
Photos of the sketched-out Atari Arcade concepts can be seen here:
https://arcadeblogger.com/2016/02/13/atari-arcade-concept-art-a-glimpe-of-the-future/
The Tiger King Episode: Finally Watching Tiger King, Spoiler Alert, An Overview of the Three Seasons, Big Cats and Shady Deals, The Spectacle and the Madness, What Kind of Documentary, B-Roll, Too Funny to Fail.An overview of the documentary series "The Tiger King", which has three seasons (eight episodes, five episodes, three episodes) and what it feels like to me, watching it from the point of view of someone who cares about documentaries.
The Logistics Episode: The First Computer Shopper, The Hidden Logistics, The Simplest Part, Hot Glue, Orientation, Wayward Pages, Boxes and Checks, Gaming Alexandria, A Future Stack, The Logistics of Empathy.A recognition of how very little of scanning is scanning, and how hard everything but the scanning is, and how if Logistics does its job, you never once think about it.
Thanks to Gaming Alexandria for being part of this project.
The Mike Berlyn Episode: Mike Berlyn, Memories of Mike, The Greatest Love Story, GET LAMP's Shaky Start, Final Approval. Plus: The Archives.On the loss of Mike Berlyn, some links:
The Infocom Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXNLWy7rwH4
Mike's Interview Page for GET LAMP:
http://www.getlamp.com/cast/20060225berlyn/index.html
Mike and Muffy Berlyn Archive:
https://archives.museumofplay.org/repositories/3/resources/219
The TEXTFILES.COM Machine Good Times Episode: A Moment of Reflection, A Previous Moment of Darkness, The Quarter Century of Hosting, A Shifting Window, The Role TEXTFILES.COM Has Played, ARCHIVE.ORG vs. TEXTFILES.COM, a Heartfelt Thank You.Recognition of how the TEXTFILES.COM replacement machine is working so well, and an additional recognition of the context of a hosted machine existing so many years across time in one of the most shaky mediums imaginable.
The Unusual Look Back Episode: Suburban Horse, Warehouse of Broken Dreams, Pennsylvania Pinball, A Mythical Warehouse, Tomb of Arcade, Compuserve Documents, The Nature of Hope, An Infinite Relay Race.A knockaround set of thoughts about things that were only weird when I look back at them.
The photos I took of the pile of vintage equipment and software before I was ejected from the facility is here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157632915159115
The Computer Shopper Episode: A Small Billing Situation, Computer Shopper's Unique Place, The Listings and the Ads, A Happy Life, The Decline and Loss, A Reminder and an Opportunity, Coming Together, Debinding, The First and the Last Scan.A little bit about the comes-out-of-nowhere Computer Shopper scanning project now underway, where I'll be digitizing thousands of pages and materials across the next months out of a multi-hundreds eBay purchase.
The Strike Manual Episode: The Mother of All Manuals. The Assignment. How Many Broom Strokes. Friends of Friends. The Honored Transcription. After-School Activities. Two Weeks Later. A Moment to Make Things Right.A tale told out of school of the best typing assignment I never completed.
The Momentary Fall And Empire of Paper Episode: A Sudden End For a Phone, Bits of Paper, The Units of Communication, Unexpected Archives, The Wonder of That Which Remains, Digitization and Gatekeeping, Glory and Wonder, A Catalyst or a Threat, The Joys of Every Day.
A small reverie on the aspects of digitization and how wonderous it was that things worked out like they did in the 20th century for the digitization by the 21st. Plus: A Eulogy for the phone I've had all through this podcast, who held up very well, considering.
The Cassette Digitizer Episode: Building a Tascam 122 Mk III, The Era of Cassettes, Previous Attempts, Why Cassettes Are Important, My Audio Era Before the Video One, Where The Process Is, The Future Paths, The Joy Of The Cassette Pile.I am finally moving on to digitizing audio cassettes at high quality! Here's some of my thoughts on that. One of the main destinations will be this collection:
https://archive.org/details/cassettetaperecordings
The Space Rogue Episode: A Respectful Trip, A Book Reading, The Works BBS, A Ferret in Massachusetts, Gatherings to Gatherings, The L0pht, Seedlings to Guarding, The Digital Lifeline, The Story of the L0pht and of Space Rogue, Why The Book is Needed, A Joyful Noise, A Family's Witness.
My pal Space Rogue wrote a book called SPACE ROGUE: HOW THE HACKERS KNOWN AS L0PHT CHANGED THE WORLD. It talks about his time as part of that group, of the @stake era, and most importantly, his path in life. It's a great Hacker Memoir and I hope we see many more.
His book site (and his personal site as well) is at https://www.spacerogue.net/wordpress/
The Endless Procrastination Episode: An Illusion of Productivity, The Oldest E-mail, an Exponential Graph. Fast vs. Slow, Easy vs. Hard. Not as Hard as it Seems, the Stress, the Process, Techniques and Cheat Codes. Two Simple Tools. Plus: Good Financial News. A rumination on my procrastination issues and what I try to do to mitigate them.
The Warm Spaces Episode: The Endless Font of the BBS Documentary, Skills Learned, Spaces Found. A Bowling Alley in Kansas. A Starring Role. Kids Hanging Out, My Very Own Rocky Horror, Plastic and Fabric and Wood.Some thoughts on how I loved being in warm spaces, and how many different rooms, including the one I stream in, try to live up to that.
Jim Willing's Interview shots show his now-since-closed-and-opened and multi-owners since bowling alley: https://archive.org/details/20040128-bbs-willing
The Code Grenade Episode: A Lost Summer, A Grey Machine, Zork II, A 13 Year Old Engineer, Modules and Rooms and Graph Paper, The Grenade That Finished Me, A Testimony to Long-Lost Data. When I was very young, I tried to make an Infocom-level Adventure Game. It did not go very well at all.
The Bodged Calculators Episode: A Short Conversation, A Machine Lives, Exactly One Person, The Needlessly Complicated Environment, No FAQ, Hacks and Scripts, The Wonder and the Joy, An Apology to the Future.Reflecting the fact that there's really only me for adding new machine emulators to the Internet Archive, in this case, The Calculator Drawer, adding emulated calculators at https://archive.org/details/calculatordrawer - go forth and multiply.
The Ramifications Episode.
A lot of speculation and consideration of the ramifications of algorithmic intensity and synthetic media from someone who has been thinking about the Blorb for a very long time. Listened best without headphones.
The BIG CHUNGUS Episode: A Lucky Smart Situation, The Rise of BIG CHUNGUS, 8 Terabytes, Distributions, The Culture of Twitch Videos, A Ride Down The Line, Packs and ROMs, Television and Dumps, A Secret Clubhouse, A Half a Petabyte, The Chungus Among Us, The Closed Future And The Bridgers, A Warm Thermos.
Ruminations of BIG CHUNGUS, my ongoing weird project. Nothing stops the Chungus.
The Storage Reckoning Episode: Putting Off Forever, Final Consolidations, The Big Sort, An Unpassable Box, The Nature of Contents and Archives, The Plans and Possibilities, Where It All Goes, The Lack of Guilt, Advice and Concerns, The Empty Future. Thoughts on finally consolidating down to a single storage unit again, and how maybe, I might finally have a to-do list that will actually shrink instead of grow. Recorded using a temporary method while travelling. Listening on speakers instead of headphones suggested.
The Laptop Loss Episode: A Eulogy For a Laptop, Largest and Smallest, A Gift From Above, A Quirkly Little Partner, Memories of the PC Convertible, Suspicious Activity, Presentations and Podiums, Signs of Aging, A Secret Of Hard Drives, The Next Generation. A eulogy for a laptop, brave travel companion, editor of my podcasts, now clearly gone and awaiting one last salvage. Noted in this episode is that I recorded this month's episodes using a different method and setup as I am travelling. Most notably is the lack of a pop screen, which, combined with my proximity to the microphone, makes this slightly tough on headphones. Patreon's scheduling means I can't spend time on surgery to really fix this up syllable by syllable, but I will probably do a bit of work before this goes into the "regular" podcast feed. I'd back on the proper setup for the next month and onwards.
The Remedial College Episode: A Chance to Reboot, Not Quite Rebooted, A Lot of Effort, Boston or Bust, 4.25 Years, Remedial College, 20 Candidates, Roommate Switch, Sketch, Three Teachers, A Couple Suspicious Moments, The Results, The 19 Plus One, A Final Improvement.
A rapidly fading memory of the really odd way I finally got into college.
The Near Miss Episode: A Moment of Glass, The Ever-Returning Concern, Ramificiations, Networks of Interlocking Dependency, Divestment, Discouragement. A Near Miss With a Car, Consolidation, Hopefulness.
Some musings on a very weird phobia (or coping mechanism) I have with regards to near miss tragedy, in this case, some rather unexpected glass.
The Documentary Urge Episode: A Fleeting Moment of Weakness, The Three That Made It, The Reasons for a Documentary, The Untold Efforts, The Unattempted Documentary, A Round of Considerations Along a Technical Level, The People Doing What I'd Do, The Things Only I Can Do. A continued reminder about why I stopped making documentaries and why I'm not going to start doing them again.
The Interesting Collections Episode: Occult Periodicals, Johnson Catalog, Kirkland's Manual Labor, Input Television, The Reality of a Sore Throat and Debt.
Some interesting collections I've stumbled over the last few months. And a little bit about pushing yourself towards commitments. https://archive.org/details/iapsop
https://archive.org/details/iapsop_curio_catalogs
https://archive.org/details/marionstokesinput
https://archive.org/details/a2600-kirklands-manual-labor
https://archive.org/details/snes-kirklands-manual-labor
https://archive.org/details/ps2-kirklands-manual-labor
The Genesis Cartridges Episode: Walking the Stacks, Growing the Pile, The Victory and Choice of the Console Living Room, The Second Christmas Morning, The Advantages of Consoles, Many Distractions and Greener Pastures, Returning to the Scene, The Next Sets of Repairs, Dreamcast Probably Never, Consoles Forever.
Some work on Genesis Cartridges continues, bringing the total up to 18,000 emulated at the Archive, so I thought I'd bring up how I got into this situation in the first place.
The Whispering Episode: A Potential New Toy, Learning of Whisper on a Drive, Throwing the Book and a Nightclub at Whisper, The Aspects of Whisper, The Idea of Unadvocated Material, A Job Nobody Wants, A Massive Success, Kalev Leetaru, Extensive Versus Immediately, Experiment Results, Scary Both Ways, Forging Ahead, Mission Critical, The Road Ahead. Some thoughts on the transcription program Whisper, which works too well or not at all depending on the weather but which is going to, in some ways, revolutionize both the work I'm doing and the work others do.
I mention Kalev Letaru and his website is at https://www.kalevleetaru.com/
The DiscMaster Episode: From Nowhere to Everywhere One Saturday, A Rare Surprise, The Rise of Discmaster, Press and Announcement, Success Stories, The Powers of Searching, The Two Processes, Why DiscMaster Changes Everything, Taking the Brunt, A Bouncer Outside a Nightclub, The Users Not Quite Here, Do It Again Please.
An episode about discmaster.textfiles.com, a new search engine created by a developer that completely upends our entire relationship to the software on the Internet Archive.
http://discmaster.textfiles.com.
The Two Decisions Episode: Lagarith Becomes FFMV1, Large-Scale Digitization, A Future Job Opening, A Sizeable Backlog, The Big Plan, We All Get The Point, An Advisory Future.
A musing about two big Decisions made, one about tape and one about life. We'll see how they both do.
The Unstuck In Time Episode: Men in Black 3, Griffin, Timelines, Out of Timelines, Inspiration, Gathering of Voices Silenced, Digital and Analog, Lessons Learned, Hope. Plus: Mundane Headlines. Some ruminations on a supporting role character in Men in Black 3 and what it means about my memories and purposes with the flow of time.
The Fanzine Back Throw Episode: A Long Trip, A Special Collection, Slash Fiction Fanzines, The Coordinators, Calling in Lodrina, 1550 Pounds, Hardcore Lifting, 33 Boxes, The Next Steps, The Event Horizon, Back Damage, Next Steps, Hired Hands and Hotels.
In which I do what may finally be the last large-scale lifting in which I play any part except coordinating. And also, putting my doctors through their paces! I don't have a link for the Fanzines at this point, but they look great. As soon as they can be put up, they will.
Watch Your Back!
The Atlantic Festival Episode: A Very Long Drive, A Quid Pro Quo, Getting Back on the Horse, The Real Staff, Late Arrival, Rehearsals and Clarifications, Booties, A Short Relief, Out The Door, Respect, Twitter Spaces, Money and Time, A Turning Away, An Appreciation.
About my presentation and appearance at Atlantic Festival 2022 and how it all happened. My short presentation is on Youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=j9YQUo3dUvg
The Stress Management Episode: Recognizing Stress, How Fast Things Change, Mitigating Responsibility, My Air Travel Issue, Your Place in Time, Rarity And Prototype, A Track From and Into Fog.A hopefully-helpful essay on stress, and how to do your best to avoid the pressure when faced with it. I'm answering the question because it comes up a lot. If you have other questions you want me to answer in this fashion, hit me up.
The Luna City Memory Episode: Vintage Quarters, The Vector Dream, The Rise of Luna City, The Family Days and Personal Visits, The True Artistry of Luna City, The Downfall, The Power of Luna City's Memory.
I've discussed Luna City and Vector Dream before, but I wanted to touch on how important it stands, even as a memory, to so many people and how inspiring it is to have been this effective at its intentions, looking back across years. Much love to Peter Hirschberg.
The Longest Nap Episode: Arriving for Thanksgiving, The Nap, A Sleeping Beast, Why Was I So Tired, A Balance at Work But Also Overbalanced, Pushing So Hard, The Riptide. Also: A Stood-Up Date.Have you ever had a nap so epic you remember it 20 years later? Or make a podcast episode about the philosophy behind it?
The Transient Hardware Episode: A Prayer, A Realization, The First Openings, A Deeper and Deeper Misunderstanding, Two Technical Friends, Occasional Upgrades, A Different Person, Each Machine, And Now, A Finished Task.A rumination on me and my relationship to computers, especially hardware, as a break from tackling a short-lived card installation program. (I finished recording, went back, and it was all working properly.) Sometimes, you really do just need a break.
The HOPE Transplant Episode: Going to HOPE 2022, A Sketch History of 2600 and HOPE, Hacker Cons, Podium Drink, Hotel Pennsylvania, St. John's, A Good Experience, My Only Hacker Con, The Foundation.Some thoughts on attending HOPE 2022 in St. John's University in Queens NY and how happy I am they're keeping the events going. There was a presentation I gave and I'll link to the talk when it comes up.
The Rock Tapes Episode: A Link To An Auction, The Results of the Victory, Digitizing VHS Tapes, Bootleg Culture, Not a Phone in Sight, The Purpose of a Bootleg, The Easy Process, The Endless Music Ahead.You can enjoy the Diamondhead collection here as it grows:
https://archive.org/details/diamondheadtapes
The Return of TEXTFILES.COM Episode: A Problem Worse Than Thought, Remote Work, Saint Spencer, I Was Once Spencer, Replacing The Machine, The Overkill Beast, The Specs, Fixes and Improvements, SCENE.ORG, Bitsavers, Stone Oakvalley, A New Day for TEXTFILES.COM, Forgotten Love, A Bright Future.It turned out the problem with the TEXTFILES.COM was a bit more than I expected, but luckily, it all got fixed in the end. Here's the process and the progress, and what got better.
TEXTFILES.COM is at http://www.textfiles.com.
The Inside Out Episode: A Long Thought in a World of Quick Takes, Growing Up Online, The Inside Out Problem, Solutions If Any, Infinite Friction, A Stunning Plan, My Own Private Inside Out.A particularly thorny and weird consideration I've been mulling out for years, trotted out into a podcast for others to finally here. As downer as it sounds, I'm doing quite fine.
The TEXTFILES.COM Downtime Episode: A Strange Voicemail, E-mails, Downtime!, Considering Loss, Host Loyalty, A Simple Job, Bringing it Back, a Momentary Skip, The Meaning of It All. Plus: Ignore the LettersAn article on the occasion of the unexpected downtime of TEXTFILES.COM. Here is an interesting situation for the Patreon backers of the podcast - the machine is actually still down. After editing the episode, I discovered catastrophic disk errors and while the machine can come "back", the disk issues cause it all to come down a few hours later, so a replacement has been ordered and the sites are all down. They'll be back, but I guess enjoy the fact you heard this episode in the twilight zone before I set up the new server.
Thanks again for everything.
The Secrets From The Future Episode: Fun But What About Projects, Faces in AI, MC Frontalot, Damien Hess, Focus and Exacting, A Midjourney Music Video, Key Phrases, Banned Words, Interesting Limits, Shipping to Frontalot, A Final Work, The Fake First. Also: QUESTION BEDTIME.
The tale of using my Midjourney account to illustrate an MC Frontalot song.
The result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVm8oZx9WSM
Images from the MC Frontalot video: https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72177720299757001
The Midjourney Descent Episode: Where It All Goes Wrong, The First Few Notes, What We've Already Changed, What Is Coming, Nightmares and A Shifting Lens, The Role of the Artist, Drawing People Wrong, What Art in Prompts.What goes up, must come down - some thoughts on what Midjourney and products like it could bring to the world, and some stirred memories long ago of what art even has been to me.
This is the second of three episodes about Midjourney.
The Midjourney Ascent Episode: Not a Pitch, A Long Forgotten Feeling, Text to Image in A Few Sentences, The Moment of Power, The Sharing of Friends, The Excitement, A Small Chat, A Hope For More Moments.An introduction to the Text to Image generator MidJourney which I've been spending some time playing with, getting in while the getting is good, before it all comes crashing down. This is the first of three episodes about the situation.
The Basquiat Episode: Visiting the Museum, The Phases and Rooms, The Nightclub and Giftshop, Lessons Learned, What is the Purpose, Ice Cream Machine, Inspiration from Logistics, A Strange Lesson Learned, The Real Work of Art.Some thoughts after walking through an exhibit of the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988).
The Prank Call Episode: An Early Call, The Disappointed Monk, Phones and BBSes as Refuge, Learning Voice Skills, An Eternal Battlefield, The Landline Stare, Middle Distance, Holding Your Own, A Breakdown Of The Disappointing Challenger, Inviting The World to Prank, A Welcome Second Prank Call.A rumination on prank calling and the unspoken rules within, as well as why people know my number.
Some time ago, I compiled the many hours of recorded prank calls people had uploaded to the Internet Archive, and they're listenable here:
https://archive.org/details/prankcallarchive
The U-Matic Episode: A Brand New Brand Old Format, The Tapes of Mark Pines, Broadcast Quality, Working But Not Working, A Street Corner Transaction, The First Steps, Success, The Unintended Bought Pain, Integrating U-Matic, A Cave of Wires.Some thoughts on the event of the reception of a U-Matic tape machine into my workflow and the near-miraculous situation that I haven't broken it yet.
The Boundary Check Episode: Why I Like Frameworks, Limits, The Edge of What I Thought Computers Could Do, ASCII and High Code, Magic Tricks, A Non-Existent Friend, Custom Sprites and Characters, Frames, Boxes, Music, Art, Being Comfortable In The Box, Being Aware of the Box, Finding a New Box. Also: Explaining the NES.Some ruminations of how much I really fall into boundaries and limits rather than trying to constantly upend structure, and where that might come from. I do still dream of how to do custom sprites on Atari 8-Bit machines, though!
The Limited Time Episode: Under the Weather, Goals, Plans, Assessments, Considerations. Ends Are Always Messy, Roller Coaster Lifespans, Plans, Priorities and the Legend of Cheese Hands.
A quick self-assessment of priorities and goals in life; an affirmation what has happened and what will happen.
The WJST Episode: Airchecks, Mike Schweitzer, Special Days, Radio Transition, The Discovery of WJST, Songs in the Air, Rubber Tubes, Reel to Reels, Baking, Digitization, The Miracle Flight of Jet Radio Audio, Jet Music Everywhere. And: Justifying The App.Some discussion of WJST radio, a collection of easy listening for the air, collected and digitized and listenable right now at https://archive.org/details/chriscromwelltapes as well as many related materials from the same group.
The Mike Schweizer Aircheck Collection is at https://archive.org/details/schweizerairchecks and is part of the larger aircheck collection which is at https://archive.org/details/airchecks.
The Wonderswan Episode: A Little Extra Free Time, 35 Minutes, The Wonderswan's Story, Boring Emulation, Vertical/Horizontal, The Extra Work, Joy From Obscurity, The Perfect Grey Market, Hashes and Dumps, The Joy to Play.Announcing the Wonderswan collection at https://archive.org/details/wonderswan-library which has settled down to about 260 games, all playable and all rather interesting, especially if the Swan was never a part of your life, like me.
**The Tax Bill Episode: The Bill, The Reasoning, A Silly Misunderstanding, A Misunderstanding Without End, Understanding Stress, Living a Life, A Giddy Fire, A Walk Well Taken, A Promise.**
A quick meditation on some current tax issues I'm dealing with because of the podcast.
The City Reliquary and Panorama Episode: My Friend Eric Drysdale, A Last-Minute Spot, The Experience of the City Reliquary, The Mid-Century Panorama, Curation of Collections, The Success of the Experience, A Look Instead of a Glance, A Drowned Car, An Inspiration.Some words on the Mid-Century Stereo Panorama. The website:
https://midcenturystereopanorama.com/
Which took place at the City Reliquary:
https://www.cityreliquary.org/
The Severance Fox Episode: Two Media Experiences. Puzzle Fox, Zelda Not Zelda, Bewilderment, Ancient Instructions, Severance, Offices, Eero Saarinen, T. J. Watson, Visitation, Hallways, Warrens, Fonts, Machines.
An acknowledgement of two modern media experiences I've had that push back through childhood and memories, and the unexpected love I have for a sterile place.
The Compuserve Miracle Episode: Keeping Secrets, Compuserve's Place, Incredible Ads, The Cost, Dinner Jacket, How a Teenager Got On, The Miracle That Is No Longer a Miracle, Hints and Rumors, The Big Announcement.Regarding a bounty of Compuserve that has fallen (partially) into my hands, and what Compuserve means to me.
The Blunders and Mistakes Episode: Pick-Up, Zappa, Disk Switch, Rocking Tow, Crash Cart.
Some stories of me in the middle of blunders both due to me and completely out of my control.
The New Generation of Sorting Episode: A New Feature Lands, A Rediscovery of My Love of Sorting, Pulp Fiction Redux, The Approach and the Result, A Teenager's Categories, The Next Mountains, The Reason Behind it All.A rumination of the act of sorting and presentation, and remembering why I do this.
https://archive.org/details/pulpfictionarchive is ready for your attentions and enjoyment.
The 75 Bad VHS Tapes Episode: A Simple Review, A Horrible Revelation, Diagnosis, Determination, A Crossroads, Volunteer Rescue, The Solution, The Forward Moving, An Iterative Process.A story of a terrible mistake found by random, and the efforts to unravel the knot.
To enjoy some fansubs with goodsound: https://archive.org/details/fansubmarine
The Mini-Appler Episode: A Classroom Epiphany, Beautiful Boot, 612 BBSes, Safehouse, Midwest Pirates' Guild, Gods Among Us, BBS Documentary, A Living Room Interview, The Art of Luding, Applesauce, A Day Late, The Golden Wake.
A full interview with MPG is here: https://archive.org/details/20040125-bbs-612
Here's beautiful boot in action: https://archive.org/details/Dung_Beetles_Ms._PacMan_Pooyan_Star_Cruiser_Star_Thief_Invas._Force
There are many games and programs by Mini Appler/Matt Dornquast around, here's a terminal program written in his teens: https://archive.org/details/a2_Megaterm_v3.0_1984_Novation
The HarvardNet Redux Episode: HarvardNet Memories, Fraud and Deceit, The Wonder of a Datacenter, Tiles and Carpet, Loud and Cold, Remote at Any Cost, A Difference of a Year, Smiles and Grimaces, HarvardNet's Doom, See Ya, Pal.
A rather ramshackle and rambunctious episode in memory of a wild friend now lost.
Also, HarvardNet Sucks.
The Blender Episode: Learning Blender, Doing Nothing, 3D Studio, The Raytraced Canvas of My Yore, A Canvas In Time, Capsela, Knobs and Tubes, The Tools I Now Have, Boom Box, The Missing Imagination.
Less a review than a set of thoughts of my interactions with Blender, the free 3D Program now at version 3.0. https://www.blender.org/
The Job Evaluation Episode: A Yearly Check-in, My Strange Job, The Heaps of Inbox, 100,000 Wojacks, Why It Gets Done, The Need to Continue, A Prediction.
January is job self-evaluation at the Archive and it put me in the mood of why I keep doing all this, and here's where I am about my place in this magnificent contraption.
If you need 100,000 Wojacks, they're here: https://archive.org/details/wojak-collections
The Mountain of VHS Episode: Back in the Saddle, The Depth of VHS, The Variant Quality, The Results of Digitizing VHS, VHS Vault, A Very Large Auction, 3 Days to Victory, Why Save VHS, Helping Hands, The Foggy Road Ahead.
A tale of how I went from having what I thought was a lot of videotapes to having entirely too many videotapes. These tapes are safe and will begin getting digitized later this year.
As I explain in the episode, my health is back to normal; thanks for all the kind words.
The JoCo Cruise Crazy Episode (4 of 4)
Endings, Disembarking, Memories. Never Again, Inner Ear, The Food and The Sea. Highlights and Memories, Not Another Community, Ever Shortening Time, A Cruise as Reality, The Continuing JoCo Cruises, Memories Forever. Plus: A Sickness.
The JoCo Cruise Crazy Episode (3 of 4)
Days at Sea. Meeting The Crew, A Lifeboat Break, A False Island, The Acts and Shows. Wil Wheaton. Coulton as Conductor, Poverty and Vacation, Capsule Hotel, Laser Tag Near Laser Tag, I Got It, No I Really Got It, Lost at Sea.
The JoCo Cruise Crazy Episode (2 of 4)
Onboard, Walking The Ship, Industrial Luxury, Joco Cruise Convention Crazy, The Realms of a Ship, Meeting the Acts, Connections and Discussions, David Rees, The Internet Temperance League, A Well-Seasoned Seagoing Couple.
The JoCo Cruise Crazy Episode (1 of 4)
Who is Jonathan Coulton, A Thinking Musician, New Things, Home Concerts, Cruise Offer, Geek Cruises, First Signup, A Series of Shocks, An A la Carte Vacation, Boarding the Gangplank.
The Most Precious Manual Episode: Dude Ranch, Open Door, Asteroids, The Purpose of a Manual, The Secrets Within, My Awakening to Arcade Creators, The First Collection, The Millions of Manuals, Forgive Me.A story of a summer I risked electric shock to get a different kind of shock.
The Million Paperclips and Midday Nap Episode.Two intertwining stories of youth wasted at the International Business Machines corporation.
The Ballad of Ricky Jay Episode: A Visit to Sotheby's, The Story of Ricky Jay, The Auction, The Magician as Storyteller, A Collection Remixed to a Collection, Broadsheets and Posters, Showmanship, The Secret to Magic, A Life Well Lived, The Circus Leaves Town.
As I mention twice in the episode and mention here, the Ricky Jay book Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women is easily one of my all-time favorite books, a glory to enjoy, and one of Ricky Jay's lasting legacies. I recommend it highly.
The TEAC Drive Episode: A Little Drive Kerfuffle, The New Difficult Life of Floppy Drives, Sustaining the Flux, Circuit Boards, Jumpers and Software Configurations. Plus: A Dream of a Future Superfluxer.Some thoughts on the TEAC drives that make up the vast majority of the dozen-plus floppy drives I use for imaging disks with my Applesauce DOS work. (TEAC stands for "Toyko Electro-Acoustic Company", I recently found out.)
Applesauce FDC covering DOS disks has been a major new chapter for me - hundreds of disks in the backlog are disappearing into digital form. (And then stored physically forever.)
The Streaming Episode: A Try at Streaming, Winamp, Shoutcast, College Radio, Bifurcated Timing, The Manager Phone, Top Of The Hour, Justin, Twitch, The Running Mind, Streaming Forever.I'm streaming a lot of days at this point, at twitch.tv/textfiles and twitch.tv/sketchthecow. Services are so transient and changes come so quickly, I don't expect these to last forever, but for now, they're neat.
The Paul Andrew Mitchell Episode : A Relatively Infamous Presentation, Lifetimes Ago, A Quick Recap, What's Happened Since, What P.A.M. Represents, Podcast Fuel, A Bit Player, The Most Important Lesson.A little revisiting of that awesome time I was sued for two billion dollars.
The presentation, if you've missed it, is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSWqx8goqSY
The DOS Applesauce Episode: A Package Arrives, The Difficulty of DOS, The Rolls Royce of Drives, The Variations, The Extra Steps Applesauce Takes, Reading Directories, The Cog in the Machine, The Software Future.Some words appreciating the release of the newest Applesauce utility disk reader, now capable of reading DOS disks, which make up the vast majority of my backlog.
Applesauce FDC: https://www.applesaucefdc.com
The Death Threats Episode: A Favorite Co-Worker, Stairs and a Truck, The Ease of Communication, Wikipedia Real Names, A Threat Through a Window, BBS and MUD and Internet, The Vintage of Threats for Internet Archive, Homeless With a Phone, 13 Years of Mail, A Price Worth Paying. Plus: A Matter of a BillDeath threats I've gotten over the years, plus some thoughts regarding my opinion of them and how it's shifted over time.
The Music Tour Episode: Visiting the Music House, Waiting Outside, Tour by Tom, The Saloon and the General Store, The Magic of Tour Guides, The Missing Archive Tour Guide, A Moment With Tom.The Music House, in Traverse City, MI: https://musichouse.org/
The Wires and Sleeping Episode: Decades Among a Bed of Wires, The Connection To My Work, The Secret Sleeping Place At Work, A Low Hum, An Experiment to Split the Wires.I have taken on a separate office to do my archive and history work, and it is paying dividends, but I look back on a lifetime of living like a cross between a hacker and a raccoon.
The Stolen Account Episode: A Need to Get Online, TERMINUS, Harvard Square, Harvard, A Machine Room, A Useful Utility, A Ghost Among the Terminals, My Musician Buddy, What Did We Learn.A sordid tale of internet access acquisition representing times in need of more of a hustle.
Terminus is long dead, but someone kept the name for a text adventure: https://web.mit.edu/mprat/Public/web/Terminus/Web/main.html
The Carousel of Nightmares Episode: Rocks and Mineral Apertif, The House on the Rock, My 30 Year Wait, Roadside Obscurity Lost, The House, The Rooms, The Collections of Collections of Collections, Was I Always In The House, A Bonus Dream
The House on the Rock: https://www.thehouseontherock.com/
The Yours Truly Johnny Dollar Episode.
A strongest recommendation for a cure of one of my biggest problems.
The ZX-81 Episode: A New Old Machine is Reborn, A Giggling Child, A Beige Beauty, Rampack Wobble and Cassette Loads, The Process of Booting, C64 Cassettes, The Keystrokes, Scroll Lock and F2, Everything Works, Thanks Aschmitz and Trumad, Screenshots and Zen, The Cup of Tea, Well Worth The Search.We added ZX-81 emulation to the archive, something that probably made no sense to do years ago, but why not. If you want to visit the collection as it stands:
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_zx_81_games
The Liminal Spaces Episode: A Late-Stage Discovery, Transitions, Hallways, Contrasts, Checkerboards, Trees in Light, Gateways, Emulation as Transition, Pantone, Your Own Late-Stage Discovery. Plus: A Dead End.
A musing on the concept of liminal spaces, the strings that have guided my dances in the theater of life.
The PCs I Have Known Episode: Emotion vs. PCs, Our First IBM 5150, Dining Room, Word Processing, Dawn Surprise, Two Room Perfection, Out of the House, Focus PC, Hand-Delivered BIOS, More Plastic, LAN Party, DEFCON PC, A Faithful Set of Horses.Some thoughts on PCs that have been a part of my life. I definitely use them until they barely function, and I sense the changes in my life reflected in them.
The Directions Episode: Possibilities, A Monster, Where It Goes Wrong, The Choices Made and the Hardest Choice of All, Why Patreon Works, Why Youtube Wouldn't, A Likely Mentor.I've made this offer in various ways before, but I am always up for being a voice in a project for anyone working on something that you think would benefit from my assistance. Silent or quiet awesome folks helped me with all my projects, and the least I can do is help others in the same way.
The Individual Incorporated Episode: A Simple Temp Job, A Strange Office, Off-White Shirt, Packed to the Gills, Postage Paid Envelopes, The Business, Two Full Shifts, Personalized News, Rubber Gloves.One of my shorter temp jobs gives me insight into a world before it becomes commonplace (and before machines do all the work), along with learning a general hatred of bored people with envelopes.
The Multi-Culti-Level Episode: Two Boxes of Tapes, Concentrated Evil, Organized Groups and Our Nature, A Concert and a Phone Call, Innoculation, Cynical Forever, What I Look Out For, A Hard-Won Allegance, The Tapes, The Fundamental Pitch, What We Gain, What the World Will Be.That time that two large boxes of multi-level marketing tapes showed up in my possession and what that all means to me.
My pal (in the story) is doing fine and is a home renovator.
The Limited Time and Structure Episode: Aching Muscles, Third Time's the Charm, Statins, Liver, Changes, Unlimited Resources to Limited, Choices, Discordant and Structured Living, No More Documentaries, Counting Pennies, Every Moment.A meditation on how structure affects my life differently than it used to.
The Art of Noise Episode: A Video On A Television, Punk Girl and Destroyed Instruments, Record Store and Tabs, Cassette, Who's Afraid, Later Albums, Favorite Band, An Unexpected Tour, Paul Morley Artistic Expansiveness, The Band.Some thoughts on my favorite band, Art of Noise.
The music video I saw:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sFK0-lcjGU
The Waterfall of Plastic Episode: A Most Impressive Uploading, The Various Focused Uploaders, ShivaShaw, Walnut Creek and Wayzata, Niche, Rental Prices, Gigabytes, Half of all CDs, The Obscure Ones, Tireless Effort, A Small Portal.An episode shouting out Shiva Shaw, an unprecedented uploader of CD-ROMs. A listing of the CD-ROMs is at https://archive.org/details/@shivashaw
The Deep Appreciation Episode: The Flow Of Items, The Modern Day Miracle, The Fun We Have, The Momentary Life of SItes, Inevitable Doom, Thanks and Correspondence, Drama and Decay, The Good in That, BBS Title Screen, A Day But Also Forever.
An episode about appreciating the day and the things we have instead of the things we don't.
The Workshop Episode: A Realization and Realignment, What I Specifically Do, The Joy of Sharing and Streaming, The Lessons and Conversations, My Three Potential Careers (And the One I Chose), Workshops, Planting Seeds.
Some ideas on where I might go next, as well as a look back on where I might have headed.
The Process Episode: Expert or Expert on Time, The Rush of a New Project, Determining What Is Best, How I Find a Place, The Relationship of Time to Work, Why Do All Of This, A Relay Race or a Finish Line, The Process That I Believe In.Some thoughts on how I do things, the rules I follow, the pitfalls people fall into, what it's all for. It might not help anyone, but I hope it does, a little bit.
The 2000 New Games Episode: A Fundamental Question, A New Spin on an Old Project, The Emularity, You Have to Ask MAME, 2000 Games, Slot Machines, Secret Buttons, Mahjong, Old Favorites, The Heart and Soul of an Arcade Drive, A Magic Moment That Never Ends.Recorded on the event on adding roughly 1,800 new arcade machines to the Internet Archive, and the process that goes behind it. I mention that only about 10 people probably understand how it all happens, and while this episode doesn't increase that number, it at least lets everyone know it is happening.
The Anime Fansub Episode: Wondering How I Got Here, VHS, Mechanisms, A Sudden Offer, 700 Tapes, The Source of the Source of the Source, Asking the Experts, What is Anime Fansubs, Where We Are, My Strange Little Corner.A tale of how https://archive.org/details/fansubmarine has come to be.
The Starting Memory Episode: Messing Around With Yet Another Phone Conference, A Flash of Memory, Supermarket, Rented and Unusual Machines, A Tester, Finding A Place to Stand, The Realization and the Starting Moment. Plus: Thanks for 150 Episodes.150 episodes are a lot. I wouldn't have imagined I'd be spending years recording these memories, so I thought I'd share one of my very first.
The Patrick O'Malley Episode: A Wind-Down of Focus, NE.JOBS, RAID Interview, 30 Days of Consultancy, Debt Repayment, Life Under Patrick O'Malley, The Key Jab, The Sardonic Hit, A Later Consultancy.
More Testimonies, Less Obituaries.
Pat O'Malley's Website is at http://patrickomalley.com/.
The Cancellation Episode: Psygnosis Dreams, A Ship's Tunnel, Nintendo's Limits, Lost Between the Cracks, Infocom's Game Ideas, The Other Destiny, A Lifetime of Cancellations, Our Sine Wave. Also: A Plea for a File Folder.
An episode about games, ideas, and other works that never made it off the drawing board, and some level of solace that this was the case.
The Toorcamp 2009 Episode: Everyone Tried, A Dream of CCCamp and Burning Man, Quaint Toorcon, I Was In, Silica, Missile Silos, Emmanuel, Two Kinds of People, Not Allowed, My Scariest Tour, The Police, Goodbye, I Can't Attend.
My memories, hazed over 10 years, of Toorcamp 2009. Dedicated to Dan Kaminsky, who attended the camp and who I enjoyed all the time I ever got with him.
The Clothes Horse Episode: A Terrible Teacher, The Boot, A Plain Chain Childhood, Cow Suits and Public Trots, The Inflection Hat, The Clothes I seek, An Outfit As Half the Introduction, The Substance, A Bad Teacher's Lesson.An overview of the fact I dress exotically, some of where that comes from, and a life lesson.
The Vintage Font: A Festival of Windows, Working Through Boxes, The Emotions and Feelings of Fonts, 3279-BIOS-Tandy, The Lineage of Vintage Fonts, Settling a Question By Asking the Source, Our Closing Window.Some musings on fonts on the occasion of downloading and using a variety of vintage fonts I've picked up online.
The Shadow GET LAMP Episode: Talking Head Criticism, The Intention of BBS Documentary, Two Terrible GET LAMP Choices, The Choice Made, The Choice Avoided, A Delight for A Couple Dozen People, The Boundaries of Infinite Creation. Also: No More Plastic Disc Salesman.GET LAMP can be had for free at this URL: https://archive.org/details/GET_LAMP_The_Text_Adventure_Documentary
The Audio Lot Episode: A Craigslist Find, Everyone Comes Together, Eight Thousand Dollars, The Haul, The Cataloging, The Life of Mark Pines, A Future to Live Forever.An episode about a haul out of Connecticut that I got to play a minor part in, and which represents one of the reasons we all like to do this work. It'll be months before this bears fruit, but the results will be truly enjoyable.
The Morning Scans Episode: A Delight When I Wake Up, DPI and Depth, The Bad Old Days, The Best of Now, 2 millimeters, The Improvements, A Truly Infinite Task, A Mostly Wonderful Time, A Job Perk You Can Share.
An appreciation for what we have, and yet another invitation to visit.
The Whimsical Episode: A Never-Found GET LAMP Feature, The Importance of Whimsy and Extra Effort, ANSI Art, A Very Loud Flap, 100 Years Ago, 100 Years from Now, Tossing Embers from a Moving Train.
The 100-Year Traveler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Soames
The 100-Year Easter Egg: Trials Fusion: https://www.polygon.com/2015/6/12/8771657/report-trials-evolution-riddle-solved
The Tascam Portastudio Episode: All the Access in the World, A High School Band, Music and Sound, The Portastudio, Multitrack Recording, Control of Time, 2 Albums and Singles, A Quiet Drifting Away. Also: An Actor to Remember a Friend.
The music Jeremy and I did continues to have a page with links to many of the songs we made on the Tascam: http://www.cow.net/bis/
**The Summer Romance Episode: Visitation, Summer, Neighborhood, Patio, Atari, A Unicorn, Artwork, Dreams, Every Day, Dinner, A Handshake.**
A tale of a summer romance long ago.
The absolute best book on the artwork of Atari and both the people behind it and capturing the loveliness of it all is "The Art of Atari" by Tim Lapetino.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Atari-Tim-Lapetino/dp/1524101036
The Monk and the Sherpa: 40 Years with Chris Orcutt, Our Divergent Paths, The Focus, My Carnival, The Bedrock, Tales of Long-Term Friendship, Console Games, New Eyes, A Journey.Chris has a blog at https://orcutt.net/weblog/blog/ where he posts something like 3-4 times a year. If you want to get hit with a novelette every season, this is the blog for you.
Naturally, his books are all for sale: https://orcutt.net/weblog/buy-books/
The Buried Source Treasure Episode: An Ocean of Material. The Hidden Treasures. The Infocom Source Code. The As-Yet Undiscovered Dragon Hoard. The Wonder of These Offers. Drop Them Off, Run Away. Spells in a Cabinet.My historical source collection on Github: https://github.com/historicalsource?tab=repositories
The collection of game source at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/gamesourcecode
The Left Arm Episode: Medical Malady, Shakespeare in the Park, Saxophone Guy, Weird Inflatable Couch, A Minor But Not Minor Injury, Another Arm Injury, My Limits, How I Will Be Found.
A rumination on my medical limits and physical changes with age.
The Bad Review Episode: Grateful and Happy, A Cascade of Good Reviews, That Single Arrow from the Crowd, Motivations for Criticism, The BBS Documentary Not Made, GET LAMP and a Thousand Choices, Empathy. Plus: Bring it On.
The Myst Episode: Rent Control, Harvard Square, An Educational Store, A Clickable Image, Lost Hours, Never at Home, An Impossible Depth, A Fake Impossible Depth, A Special Moment, Another Game I Like, Cyan's Headquarters, Craft of the Millers.Thoughts on how hard Myst hit me at the time, along with what made it so special.
I mention an AI for playing text adventures made up on the spot. It's located here:
https://play.aidungeon.io/main/landing
It's... something to experience. Definitely try it out.
The Non-Programmer Episode: A Clear Declaration, No Programming Training, How Programmers Think, What I Think, What Filmmaking Makes You Think, Thrust Into a Programming Environment, WAFFLEIRON, We Each Have Something.
Some thoughts on what a terrible programmer I am. Absolutely the worst. Hire me for nothing. Don't let me near your code, and certainly don't let me name it.
The Photon Episode: An Invitation and A Drive, A Strip Mall, A Building. Space Depot, Recruitment, Initiation, The Wonder. Black Carpet and Smoke Machines. Overbuilding For Thousands, A Short Photon Existence, No Adult Perspective, A Shadow of Photon, An Inspiring Documentary, Real Fake Guns.
There's a lot of information about Photon when you know to look for it. Some good sites:
http://www.lasertagmuseum.com/collections/the-curators-of-photon-photon-collection
http://www.lasertagmuseum.com/indoor-laser-tag/indoor-company/n-u/photon
http://futurewarstories.blogspot.com/2017/06/fws-military-sci-fi-toys-great-laser.html
Vince's website for his Laser Tag/Photon documentary is here:
http://www.lasertagvideo.com/
The Unending Projects Episode: Perspective On Many Projects, Believing There's No End Where There Are, Ends I've Witnessed, Ends I've Been, Lessons Learned and Projects Beyond.
A rumination on the nature of large scale projects and projects without end, and how I've managed with them. Special Information Cube appearance, as well as thoughts on my other long-term messes.
The Great Cacophony of Scanning Episode: An Influx Valve, Mucking The Stables, Infinite Discords, The Cover Problem, NASA Launch and Photos On A Carpet, A Trickle Versus a Flood, The Inevitable Future, A Moment of Joy.Some thoughts on the incoming mass of material coming into the Archive right now.
I mention the Pulp Magazine Archive, which is here:
https://archive.org/details/pulpmagazinearchive
The Oculus Episode: An Unexpected Gift, A Long Life with VR, A Dingy Hotel Room, Features, Magic, Favorite Apps, An Unlikely Constant Place.
I was handed an Oculus Quest 2. Nobody asked me to do a review, but I figured it'd be fun to do one anyway. There's actually all sorts of rules towards people saying they "just happen to have" something and then doing a review of it, so I'll just say that I wasn't going to buy one and I got one for free, and I've enjoyed it.
My Oculus "Name" is BoVRine; feel free to link up if you have one of these things.
The Election Episode: Being an Election Inspector, Training for the Unusual, Poll Pads, 300 Feet, 5am, 6am, Shivering Hands, Solid Day, Meeting 675 People, Suit and Gloves, Giving an Oath, 90 Minutes of Silence, A Customer Service Job, An Unforunate Coda.The wonders of being an Election Inspector! I highly encourage people to look into working elections, in both General and Local years. It's been some of my favorite work in general.
The Flash Episode: Saving a Medium, A History of Flash, The Death Blow and the Death, Ruffle The Flash, Flashpoint, An Audio/Video Conversation.
The Internet Archive now supports emulating .SWF files (Flash) that were a critical part of the web whether it should have been, or not. Dozens of new, playable animations are flying in all the time.
The top level of the collection is https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash
The excellent emulator of Flash is Ruffle, at http://ruffle.rs
The most important Flash is Badgers. https://archive.org/details/flash_badger
The Software Forgery Episode: Let's Do This, The First Software Forgeries, Altair 8800, Pre-Order or Vaporware, The Richard Garriott Scam, Stickers and Wiped Disks, Falling Apart, Grading and Quality, Tokens of Capital, Heading Forward, Fake Historical Promotion, Keep Going.
I don't mention the name of the software, but it's Akalabeth: World of Doom. First sold in 1979 as a limited baggie software before being sold by California Pacific Computer Company, before being remixed from scratch and turned into what became Ultima.
For the story of an amazing fraud, look up World Power Systems: https://medium.com/@madmedic11671/forgotten-fraud-world-power-systems-e11320aa681d
The Generosity Episode: Jason Asks About Being Generous. A Guy And His Kickstarter. The Motivations. Early Survival Pizza. Making the Leap. A Documentary As Mission. The Background Conversation. Another Thank You.A somewhat strange episode, talking about what being generous means to me. I don't know if I'm the best life coach, but another Jason asked and Jasons have to stick together, for a while at least.
The Amish Shareware Episode: The Big Leagues, The Top Shelf, Pop-Up Magazine, My Story Pitch, The Spy, Fact-Check Failure, The Missed Opportunity, Software Forgery, Never Stop Trying.A story that I thought was the best, and which had to be thought too good to be true in the fact check. (I still believe it is true).
Majere's Legacy: http://www.librum.us/ - Majere (1959-2008).
The Tea Party Episode: 10,000 Year Clock, The Long Now, Disclosure, Fine Drinks and a Speech, The Low Bar, Inspiring or Cynical, Why Drive Ahead, The Knowledge We Keep, A Closing Music Shop and a Lot of Manuals.
Thanks to Andre G for the idea.
The Past Future Episode: A Hospital Visit, Audio Formats, Speaking Without Knowing, Wozniak and Jobs, Exercised, Technology Designs, The Best Isn't What Wins, Factories and Factors, Cheap and Expensive.
Thanks to Scotty Deepgeek Fitzgerald for the idea. (And the visit.)
The File Format Wiki Episode: An Awful Failure, A Tremendous Success, An Acknowledgement of a Poor Idea, Just Solve One Problem, Easy Not Hard, Field vs. Forest, What is a File Format Anyway, 2012 Turned Into 2013, The Forever Problem, A Format Mirror, The Great Success of Failure.
Thanks to Dan Tobias for the idea of this episode.
The File Formats Wiki is at https://fileformats.archiveteam.org.
The Green Room Episode: Public Speaking, Green Rooms, Quiet Before 15, School Announcer, DEFCON, Jeff Moss' Room, Webstock, XOXO, SXSW, Confrontations, A Long Overdue Hug.
This episode comes from an idea by Chris Erlanson.
Curt Vendel.
Curt's 2003 BBS Documentary appearance:
https://archive.org/details/bbs-20030323-vendel
Curt at the 2019 VCF Festival:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlqxDgnYHWU
Curt and Marty's book:
https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Business-Curt-Vendel/dp/0985597402
The Typewriter Episode: It Was Supposed To Be Magazines, Elaine and the Boxes, Floor to Ceiling, Tytell Typewriter, Sorting and Divisions, Books and Ephemera and Golden Pallets, The Typewriter Business, Peter's Last Wishes, A Project Ahead. Also: Battery Danger and Write Me 20 Times.An episode about how a simple picking up of magazines led to two truckloads of typewriter history. Some URLs worth reading:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/11/typewriter-man/376988/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Tytell
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/no-carriage-return-for-the-jurassic-typewriter-1.304472
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/nyregion/new-yorkers-co-mr-typewriter-new-york.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12tytell.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/19/nyregion/one-fewer-place-to-unstick-a-inicky-f-key.html
http://algerhiss.com/history/the-hiss-case-the-1940s/the-typewriter/forgery-by-typewriter/forging-a-typewriter/
http://afflictor.com/2012/06/11/he-could-make-an-american-typewriter-speak-145-different-tongues-from-russian-to-homeric-greek/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/obituaries/mary-adelman-89-fixer-of-broken-typewriters-is-dead.html
https://oztypewriter.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-tribute-to-peter-tytell-son-of.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/us/peter-v-tytell-dead.html
The Action Park Documentary Episode: A Late Thursday Night, Action Park, 10 Years Ago, 2 Years of Research, A Coffee, Interview, Pile Driver, The Bones of the Plan, The Release, My Review, Nothing in the World.The website for the Class Action Park documentary: https://www.classactionpark.com/
The Medical and Life Checkup Episode: An Accident With Repercussions, Bounce Back, Two Weeks, Open Inboxes That Never Close, What It's All Been, What Goes On, 100 Hours of Podcast, A Day Grabbed With Two Hands.rJust a little reflection on a post-accident depression and concern which I am now definitively out of.
The Mysterious 4am: Big Plans for Kansasfest, The Wrong Bar at the Wrong Time, The Mysterious History of 4am, I'm Fine.No car accident is going to stop me from recording an episode! Also, you get to hear my voice modulate differently for slides and video that don't exist.
The description for "The Mysterious History of 4am" from the Kansasfest program:|
International Cracker of Mystery 4AM is not just a hero, a teacher, an inspiration; they're also an indication of the heights the art of software engineering can achieve. Let's walk it all through. Jason Scott, recently voted “Least Likely to Be 4AM” but also voted “Most Likely to Work at the Internet Archive” presents historical work of 4AM, introduces the audience unaware of the scope of 4AM's work to what has gone on over the past few years, and hopes to bring the hundreds of new visitors to Virtual Kansasfest just what they have been missing.
The Inbox Cornucopia Episode: Appreciating What You Have, Two Arcades Gone, The Moment of Wonder of Incoming Archive, Spam and Vandalism, The Worlds We'll Learn Of, My Favorite Stripes, Stop by the Inbox Today.An episode about my favorite current situation, the mass of incoming materials to the Internet Archive and just enjoying the stream as it goes by.
This episode also invites listeners to send me questions and ideas, which I might use for future episode subjects. It's time for the feedback loop to begin!
The Novel Episode: A Book Never Written, The Plot, A Cleaning to Make Room For The Next Things.Time to make good on my promise of "move ahead or move on", and so here's the plot of a novel I concocted when I was in my 20s that I haven't done anything with in 25 years. It's lacking a lot of details, but it feels good to share and move on. I'll have many other projects in my future to finish.
Three Extraordinary Stories Told Ordinarily: Russian Mechanic, Quake Logo Massacre, Nobody Lives Here, Tetris.Three stories about usual outcomes, presented simply.
I found the photos we took of the Quake Logo, they're now here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157714912854851
The Tetris: http://cs.brown.edu/news/2000/04/17/tetris/ - strangely, it's been done a couple times since 2000 and the articles always insist on saying it's the "first" time. MIT has also done this sort of project as well.
The Ultimate BBS List Episode: 20 Years of The BBS List, What Got Me Started, The Story Everyone Knows, The Story Less People Know, The Contraption Inside, 1982 not 1983, Philosophy of Complication, Where to Go From Here, The BBS List Forever.An episode about the BBS List collection at BBSLIST.TEXTFILES.COM and what got me going on it.
I mentioned a couple other nice information sites.
GOT PAPERS? Is the demoscene letter collection. It's at:
https://gotpapers.scene.org/
The Sixteen Colors collection of ANSI art is here:
https://16colo.rs/
The Winding Conversation Episode: Watchmaking, My Pal Chris Orcutt, Our 40 Years of Talking, A Marathon of Words, Intertwined Lives, Podcast Jason, Chris' Typewriter, 15-50-80, Advice To Turn a Final Chapter Into The Middle Of The Story.Another podcast about my friend Chris Orcutt (https://orcutt.net) and our very long, near-legendary conversations we've had forever, and what that represents and inspires.
Three Stories: Wooden Signs and Paper Plates, Naked Man, Whipped Cream and Brotherly Love.Three short tales from my life, gathered together in a val-u-pak for the joy of others.
The Extreme Pain Episode: An Argument In The Car, I Killed You, Truly Can't Get Out of Bed, Crutches, What The Pain Means, What The Pain Was, An Airport Waiting Room, The Worst Doctor Ever, The Cure, The Fallout, A Changed Person, The Results, Poverty Charges Interest, Health Insurance.An episode about the worst pain of my life. If that's a bit much for you, I understand if you wish to skip it. Spoiler: I'm much better now! And it was a long time ago!
Tay Zonday's tweet, which I think about all the time: https://twitter.com/tayzonday/status/1020003667921940480
The Automatic Document Feeder Episode: Acquiring an ADF, How Flatbed Scanners Work, The Lie of Scanning, How ADF Scanners Work, Asking For Help, 35 Minutes, 339 Pages, 3 Books, The Non-Intuitive Parts, The Results, A Prayer. Also: Debinding And Its Malcontents.An episode about high-speed scanning on the acquisition of a lovely Fujitsu 7160 scanner acquired thanks to donations.
The Storage Unit Episode: Down to Two Units, The Legend of the Information Cube, A Pile of Yes, A Tour of Screens and Magazines, Where It All Went, How the Last Two Units are Laid Out, A Pile of Props, MC Frontalot Shoot, Where It Will End, An Actual Attic, 100 Years.Here's 400 photos of my shoot in Queens with MC Frontalot: https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157705604332681
I mentioned several museums and archives as I always have: Strong Museum of Play, Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, and the Vintage Computer Federation. All of these organizations are excellent, and worth your donations and support.
The Conspiracy Episode: Conspiracy Love, 1985 and Annette Arky, Playboy, Comics, Underground, Deep Underground, Ninjas, Guns and G-Files, The Muffin File, The Comfort of Conspiracy, The Mechanism of the World, The Dark Byways, A Friend Forgotten.I mention Da Muffin Papers, you can browse them here: https://archive.org/details/DaMuffinPapers
The event I'm speaking of at the end is Heroku's Waza year 2013. My talk, "Time Travel from 2100: A Kit" is viewable at https://vimeo.com/61059533.
A 2003 Loompanics Catalog: https://archive.org/details/Loompanics_Catalog_2003
Loompanics and Paladin Press were the classic go-to for "Underground Publishing" although I had a number of others I got in the mail.
Both these organizations had FBI files, released in 2011: https://boingboing.net/2011/07/20/fbi-releases-files-o-1.html
The Lost Space Racing Game Demo Movie Episode: Focus Studios, Two Major Projects, The Racing Game, Mark's Dream, Car Logos, Design, 3D Studio, 2 Months, Gone Forever, Starting a Race You Don't Know How To Finish, Lessons For The Next Impossible Project. Also: No Regrets.An episode about TUNNEL VISION, an unreleased (and un-made) game by Focus Studios that I did some art design for, including making a very large and ambitious demo movie for.
I asked Mark if he has any copies of this stuff around - I give it a very low chance, but life is funny sometimes.
The 100th Episode: Start With Another Episode Please , A Little More About My Supporters, Unediting, Why This Was Started, Speech Therapy, Unintended Results, The Many Positives, Therapy In General, Where To Go Next, A Little More About My Other Supporters.
The 100th episode was recorded with no editing using the on-board microphone, which hopefully leaves only the real fans of this show and others scampering to the better, less meta episodes.
Thank you so much for having me get to this milestone. I would have never thought I'd have done it, and I will double down to give you the best stories and wonders for April and beyond.
The Games of the Mechners Episode: High School, David Mechner, Brother Jordan, Karateka, The Next Game, Assassin, The Rules, A Shining Moment, An Answered Doorbell, Reading Unlimited, Rotoscoping, The David in the Machine.While gathering links, I discovered the Mechners have a foundation and all the kids are on the advisory board! http://mechnerfoundation.org/
Jordan Mechner has an amazing archive of his own work here: https://www.jordanmechner.com/archive/
The Wikipedia entry for the Assassin Game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin_(game)
Horace Greeley High School has some lovely photos of the halls and campus at the site: https://www.ccsd.ws/horace-greeley-home
The Bear Mountain Episode: Hudson Valley, Rejecting Nature, Bear Mountain State Park, The Bridge, The Lodge, The Pool, The Trail, The Zoo, Daniel Carter Beard, Strange Places, Low-Slung Buildings, A Spectacular Spot, Telling The Story Beyond Yourself.
The Bear Mountain Lodge/Inn has a very snazzy page: https://visitbearmountain.com/
More about the bird watching at Bear Mountain: https://parks.ny.gov/parks/13/bird-conservation-areas.aspx
An overview of the museums and zoo at Bear Mountain: https://parks.ny.gov/environment/nature-centers/20/details.aspx
What I (and locals) call the Bear Mountain Bridge is officially called the Purple Heart Veterans Memorial Bridge, and here's some information about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Mountain_Bridge
The Nightmare Space Episode: A Nightmare Repeats, The Lost Great Space, The Museumsquartier, A Booth, Spaces I Have Known: L0pht CT Hackerspace, and Hack42, The Space of the Webpage, 1990s Net, Dreams From the Nightmares, Never Stop Dreaming.The Museumsquatier website is at https://www.mqw.at/en/
It is a constantly changing and flowing location, and I don't know if the actual corridor I'm speaking of has a name, but you'll find plenty of inspiring aspects to it - definitely visit if you're ever in Vienna/Wein.
The CT Hackerspace is at http://www.cthackerspace.com/
Hack42 is over at https://hack42.nl/blog/
The results of the scanning at Hack42 so far is at https://archive.org/details/manuals_hack42
I wish I had a photo of that pyramid building off Route 9! But I can't find a single record of it.
The Game Ideas Episode: 25 Years Later, Two Game Ideas: Central Plumbing Unit, Ante Meridian: The Morning of The World. Focus Studios, Mark The Alien, The Real World, The Difficulty of Making Games Live, HK Project, Get In The Car Loser, Make Your Own Game.I mention a game called HK Project: https://hk-devblog.com/
Kowloon City is a rewarding research project in itself.
Get In The Car, Loser! has a Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/938860/Get_In_The_Car_Loser/
The Metal.Ball Episode: For the Love of a Ball, TinyMUD, MUD, Port 4201, CB Radio, Smokey and the Bandit, TinyTIM, Metal.Ball's Roll-Playing, Mystery of the World, The Metal Ball Inside My HeartThe story of a special online character, who never stopped rolling into my life and represents one of the most positive experiences I've had in the realm of a world I don't belong to anymore.
TinyTIM is at tim.org port 5440.
The Cybersmith Episode: The Shining Moment of the Cybersmith, Paperback Booksmith, Mall Chains, Harvard Square, The Last Mile, Rabbit Warrens, Cybersmith's Luxury, The Fade, The Memory of a Promise.
Here's everything I could find easily mentioning Cybersmith:
An article about visiting Cybersmith in 1995: http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1995/mar/jason.html
CS Monitor on Same: https://www.csmonitor.com/1995/0217/17032.html
NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/03/business/waiter-oh-waiter-excuuuse-me-but-there-s-a-mouse-in-my-coffee.html
The article from the Boston Globe announcing the end of Cybersmith: http://graphics.boston.com/globe/living/cyberlinks/cybersmith.shtml
Photos are a bit scant; a small amount from Getty Images: https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/cybersmith?phrase=cybersmith&sort=mostpopular#license
The Apple Cassette Episode: My Silly Reputation, A Witness To A Wonder, Two Cassettes and 3 Hours of Scrutiny, Ciderpress, A Car With No Gas, Apple Cassette Protection Schemes, 16k, Custom Cards, Vertical Monitor.
The author of Ciderpress gave a great overview of Apple Cassette schemes here: https://fadden.com/apple2/cassette-protect.html
Ciderpress' home page is at https://a2ciderpress.com/
I mention these awesome sites:
http://www.hackzapple.com/INDEX0.HTM
https://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/
The Hazy View Episode: A Single Moment and a Single Feeling, Realism and Unrealism, Graphics Efforts, The Forgotten Moment, The Melancholy Wish, An Older Person With an Older Memory, Childhood's Haze.
A simple fetch quest turns into a forgotten childhood memory. The single-best overview of the amount of technical effort and calculation behind every frame of Grand Theft Auto V is probably http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics-study/ - while others are out there, the use of a single frame of the game (that calculates 60 frames per second) lets you look at all the subsystems and choices made to make the system run. If that's not deep enough for you, may I suggest Miriam Bellard's explanation of baking story and meaning into architecture in GTA V: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025736/Environment-Design-as-Spatial-Cinematography
The Dad Question Episode: A Simple Question, Why Did The Internet Archive Even Happen, What Even Is All This, The Infinite Growth, What Data Really Is, The Handfuls Taken From The Ocean, Towards the Future. A simple question from my Dad forces me to explain how we got into this mess and how we're going to have to keep in it, even in the face of impossibility.
The URL https://archive.org/~tracey/mrtg is not the most perfect page and not set up for easy understanding of what it's talking about, but it is the most up to date indicator of how much data is floating into the Internet Archive and how it's handling it. With an understanding and a stress that not all of the used disk space is "stuff" you can browse or necessarily related directly to Internet Archive stored items, over 60 petabytes of unique disk space has been stored by all operations and that's at least 120 petabytes of real hard drives.
The Other Arcade Episode: The Dream Machine, Bad Real Estate, What Happened to Arcades, The Places I'd Seek, Lake George, Childhood Gone, Quassy Park, My Short-Lived Vending Machine Idea, Organized Crime, Barcadians, No Documentary, Except a Documentary, Dream Machine. Another episode covering arcades, but I wanted to approach this important-to-me subject through an alternate thread. I wanted people to know that http://arcadedocumentary.com now points to a project called ARCADIA, which I'm supporting as a replacement for what I'd been intending to do with my own film. Carly Kocurek, who was interviewed for my film, came out with a book you might have missed called COIN OPERATED AMERICANS, the page for which is here: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/coin-operated-americans
In the episode, I don't mention Lyons Pinball, which of all the public arcades (there were a few private ones I also liked), I found the most charming, and the most lovely. Here's their website (they're in Lyons, Colorado), and they are still the only place in the world you can consistently play one of the ultra-rare JOUST two-headed pinballs machines (less than 500 were ever made). http://www.lyonspinball.com/intro.htm Besides my URL, here's the official URL for Arcadia: https://arcadiathemovie.com/
Do you need to know about Quassy Amusement park? https://www.quassy.com/
The Wikipedia article of Quassy is currently more useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quassy_Amusement_Park
It's the internet, so there's pages about the Dream Machine in Poughkeepsie (the other one in my area, besides the one I went to at Dutchess Mall), and it even has photos of what I'm talking about: https://thearcadearchives.com/2011/09/21/raygunn-dreams-of-dream-machine/
All hail arcades!
The Ingestion and Loss Episode: Winter Floppy Boxes, Kansasfest 2019 Flux Party, The Levels of Floppies, Screen Shotgun has Menu Awareness, Why Even, The Death of the Artist, Randy Suess, Laughing Squid's Photo Policy. A few thoughts on imaging floppies, and never knowing who will take care of your stuff after you. I couldn't begin to list everyone who helped with the Kansasfest flux efforts, and we had multiple people who spent hours, days even, making it go down. It's still my favorite place to be, an inspiration, a warm hearth, a special thing. I hope everyone gets to have a place like that.
Laughing Squid runs a great news and interest blog at https://laughingsquid.com/. Randy Suess' obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/technology/randy-suess-dead.html
On the Occasion of Chest Pains: Stent Number Three, Poor Notes in the Symphany, Arguing For Myself, Feelings, Operation, The Talking Car, In and Out, Different the Third Time Around, A Message About Support. A short side-path into getting a procedure done and what it's like when it's not a new thing anymore. Been resting and doing nicely, don't worry, and things look very good. (And not as expensive as previous procedures were.)
The patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/textfiles
The Halo Outpost Discovery Episode: My Pal Kyle, Halo Doubles, A Halo Outpost, Chicago, The Idea of a Halo Convention, Mortal Kombat Side Quest, How It Was Done in Chicago, An Empty Hall, Corners and Booths and Stages, Vendors and Library, VIP Access, AR Halo, Caddyshack and the Murray Family, Goth Caddyshack, Halo Fun, Final Thoughts, You Ruined Doubles 343. This year I attended a Halo-themed convention being held at various times around the country, and now you know how it was like. I call it Halo Waypoint the whole episode because that's what the App you used to walk around was like, but Halo Output Discovery is the true and actual name. You'll get it. Halo Outpost Discovery site: https://halooutpostdiscovery.com/ Halo Outpost Twitter: https://twitter.com/halooutpost Kyle in the Quiet Place: https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1157703244514091009 Halo VIP Lounge: https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1157704146138599425
The RTTY Art Episode: A Word About Loss. Meeting John Sheetz. RTTYs. RTTY Artwork. The Magic of RTTY Art. Sunday Nights. Interviewing John Sheetz. Gone Before the End. Typewriter Art. A Living Room of Artwork. Overstrike and Multi-Column. Epson MX-80. A Fading Work. After John is Gone. Timeless RTTY. A Printer As Easel. I may have mentioned John Sheetz in an episode before, but I certainly didn't go into all the elements of the RTTY artwork and world he was a part of. It was nice to finally get all of that out in one place. Photos from my interview with John Sheetz.
The Full Video Interview with John Sheetz. RTTY Art Made Easy by Don Royer, WA6PIR The Story of the Typewriter, 1873-1923.
Marcin Winchary's incredible collection of typewriter artwork books (as well as many other type and typewriting works).
The RTTY.COM collections of RTTY Art and Related History. (The Gold Standard)
The TEXTFILES.COM collection of RTTY Art
The CPC Episode: Amstrad CPC Joins the Fray, A Platform Unknown to Me, The Problems CPC Had, Getting it Going, Auto-Boot, An Ugly Thing, Graphics and Sound, Isometric, Multiple Markets, Thousands of Programs, A Helpful Discord, A New Platform, Nearly the Last.
Upon the event of the Amstrad CPC joining the emulation family at the Internet Archive and what that might mean.
To journey among the newly added titles at the Archive, just browse from this URL: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_cpc?and%5B%5D=mediatype%3Acollection&sin=
The Server Cage Episode: An ISP Ends, But Hosting Never Stops, Don't Forget the Fiber, The Other Half, I Know How The Caged Server Beeps, The Arrangement, Dual 486, Stickers, Too Much Bandwidth, The Worst Way to Page Me, Goodbye, What We Have Lost. I'm happy to say that there are photos of the arrangement described in this episode. They're browsable here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157653792998936
The Rubi-Con Episode: Smokey the Police Dog, Rubi-Con, Detroit Not Detroit, Off-Kilter, Duct Tape, Drunkeness, The Adult in the Room, Fire, The Raid, Another Year and Another Name, $100 Towels, What Is Destruction For, Hacker Cons, The Real Jewel.
I captured the Rubi-Con site from way back then: http://cow.net/rubicon/decaffeinated/navigation.html
To listen to audio from Rubi-Con 5: http://audio.textfiles.com/cons/rubicon/rubicon5/
The Internet Archive October Event Episode: Once Again Back at the Archive, Onsite, The Things We're Working On, Wikipedia Linkage, Better World Books, A Lesson On Japanese Internment, Company Culture, Six Weeks or Six Years, Unlike Anything Else, An Elephant Costume and a Hospital Visit.
The 2019 October Event's livestream is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az4BpuVrOhI (Things start happening around the ten minute mark)Wendy Hanamura's collected library of Japanese Incarceration is here: https://archive.org/details/digital-library-of-japanese-american-incarceration 2,500 MS-DOS games added: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games?and%5B%5D=emulator_start%3A%2Aiafix%2A&sin=&sort=-downloads
The Raytracing Episode: A Confession, What Raytracing Is, DKBTrace, The Overnight Render, DKB and POVRay, The Pac-Man, Anything for a UNIX Prompt, Gandalf, Supermarket Gang, Pixar's Tools, A Missed Boat With No Regrets.
DKBTrace/POVRay has a website here: http://www.povray.org/
The original creator of the POVRay Pac-Man Render: http://vs.iki.fi/raytrace/
Here's the Pixar Presto demonstration I'm talking about (I was in the back of the room): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnFSVx7NhmM
The POVRay Wikipedia page is (as of this writing) a good overview of the lineage and aspects of the program.
The NAID Episode: Jim Says It's Happening, North American International Demo Party, A Very Ill-Advised Travel, Border, Exchange Rate, The Actual NAID, Classrooms, Jacket for Blanket, Cow Suit, Walking the Halls, Font Throwing, The Competitions, A New Idea about Conferences, A Wild Success, Synchrony, Thanks. A mirror of NAIDorabilia: http://cd.textfiles.com/naidorabilia/
Memories of NAID: https://trixter.oldskool.org/2012/06/06/memories-of-naid/
Who Killed the American Demoscene? (Stupid headline, great article): https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5wgp7/who-killed-the-american-demoscene-synchrony-demoparty
NAID party artifacts at POUET: http://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=159
Vintage News Broadcast in Montreal about NAID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVj_EXJt0mY
Keyboard Throwing Competition (1996, I'm the last Keyboard Tosser): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieHC9ZrCpJM
Me in a Cow Suit: http://www.slengpung.com/v3/show_photo.php?id=10253&ref=people&uid=1428
The Electric Stories Episode: A VAX in Need of a Home, The Lady of the VAX, A Very Heavy 3/280, MFM Drives, 20 Amps, Electrical Cyberpunk Nightmares, Don't Do It Again, Mainframes, Pavl, The Underside of Conferences, 220 Drop, A May December Romance. Three stories of me and electricity.
This presentation by Joe Grand includes pictures (in the PDF) of the vax: http://www.grandideastudio.com/perspectives-from-the-l0pht/
Images of a Sun 3/280: http://www.obsolyte.com/sunPICS/3_280/
I can't find any images of the MFM drives so use your imagination.
I wrote a long article about the DEFCON Vaxes, so there's lots of details: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2114