Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

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 Bill Death 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 Absence of Light Episode. Upon an anniversary.

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/