Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

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 VCR Mechanism Episode: A Tangential Query, New Old Stock, The Mechanism, The Next Level of Reading, A Bit More Consideration of the Applesauce, An HD Read of a VHS Tape, The Fuzzy Future, One-Off Equipment, VHS-Decode, A Dream In the Days of Reality. Until the day comes.... my dreams continue. Applesauce: https://applesaucefdc.com/ Acronova Nimbie: https://disc.acronova.com/product/auto-blu-ray-duplicator-publisher-ripper-nimbie-usb-nb21/9/review.html VHS Decode: https://github.com/oyvindln/vhs-decode

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 Letters An 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