Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

The Robert Hoquim Extra Episode: A Small Homework Assignment, A Fascinating Story, The Man in the FBI Hat, What Stories Change in Us, The Story I Won't Tell, A Book Yet Unwritten I Want to Read. This episode is a little different in that it has a homework assignment: I ask folks to go listen to Episode 30 of Reply All, which I appear in and which is based on a story I brought to them. A link to the episode is here: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/30-the-man-in-the-fbi-hat Here is a link to the archive of information I built up over years about John Aleshe: http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/PERSONALITIES/ALESHE/ And here's the illustrated speech on Hoquim/Aleshe (and charlatans in general): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTzQmhmgLC0

The EsnesnoN Episode: High School Reboot, Humor Magazines, Nonsense, A Fun and Saturated Publication Landscape, John, 30 Mile Commute, Humor Column, Ripoff Photo, EsnesnoN, Janitor, Ed Barlow, Printing With a 3 Day Delay, 3 Issues, Beyond Highschool, 10th Anniversary, Collaboration's Shadow. The first issue of EsnesnoN is here: https://archive.org/details/1987-esnesnon You'd think I'd have all the issues up, but I never got around to it! When I get my hands on them, they'll all go up.

The Kickstarter Episode: Successful Sabbatical, Starting a Three-Pack, What Happened, A Job To Be Me, The Sacrifice, The End, The Loot, The Beginning. After a lot of thought and a number of sleepless nights, I ended the kickstarter campaign that I've had running for seven years. I thought I would talk about what inspired me to go about it in the first place, what went wrong, and what I've learned.

The 50th Episode: A Short Review of How We Got Here, What the Podcast Has Done For Me, Another Kind of 50, 50 More, Thank You. 50 podcast episodes have been released for this series. It's a milestone, and something I'm happy to have been part of for the last year and a half. Thank you for supporting this and helping me dig out of the mess and get straight in a financial way. As I say in the episode, I'm continuing this podcast until it doesn't make sense to, or when I run out of what to talk about. Taking bets on which of those happen first. Thank you again.

The Don Joyce and Negativland Episode: A Cut-Up Record, Big 10-8, Negativland, Over the Edge, A Private Song in a Jamaican Club, Mark Hosler, Negativland Sleepover, Don's New Hangout, Goodbye Don, Moving the Archives, A Little More. An episode about my favorite band and one of its members, Don Joyce, who spent over 30 years making a radio masterpiece. When I do my livestreams, I tend to put selections from this archive as the soundtrack, and there's always a few new fans born of it. The Over the Edge archives are at https://archive.org/details/ote - over 1,500 hours are up there.

The Leisure Suit Larry Episode: Al Lowe's Auction, Leisure Suit Larry History, SCUMMVM/AGI, How Scripting Works, Deciding to Read The Source, Twitch.tv/textfilesdotcom, More Than Six, ASMR, Jason Makes It, Preservation's Open Questions. That was a heck of a way to spend a Tuesday.

The Technical Interview Episode: Answering your requests, the nature of an interview, the ultimate meaning of your interviews, quality check, pre-interview, the 10 questions, like two musicians, post-interview, the final destination, Apple II crack screens forever. Folks asked me to talk a little more about the lessons I've learned doing about 400 interviews over the years. Here it is in a brain dump the density of a salt lick. Any other questions?

The Speedrunning Episode: A Very-Ill-Advised Car Ride, World Record Progression, Speedrunning, The Rules, The Glory, The Glitches, The Thrills, Summoning Salt, Quake Done Quick, Grenade Speedups and Bunny Hops, History Lost, Games Done Quick, Time. Summoning Salt's Youtube Channel is here. The most recent Quake Done Quick (Quake Done Quickest) is here; you might need to watch it twice to even process what's going on. The Internet Archive's collection of over 4,000 speed run movies is here. And Games Done Quick has a website here, which has links to the many, many speedruns done at the event over the years.

The Failed ISP Episode: That Time I Ran an ISP, ISPs Versus BBSes, The Idea of COW.NET and COW-TOWN, Ancient Equipment, Computers In Cow Fields, Unexpected Additional Users, Dee, The Distillery, Sun 3/280, The Debt, The Downfall, The Crazy Leap. Also: The Two-Story Internet.

An episode about two of my more unusual interviews for the BBS Documentary.

The Radio Radio Episode: WECB and WERS, Emerson College, 1980 Radio Visit, WECB and the 18 Hour Shift, Fired, WERS, Alternative Parameters and Kelly Rafuse, Live Music Week, A Little Over the Top With The Sorting. An episode about my radio days, thoughts on radio, and the most radical sort I think I've ever done.

The Personal Philosophy Episode: Fan Mail, Philosophy, Life Changes, Sharing Information, Vulnerability, The Commodore Pet, Narratives, The Hidden and Unhidden, A Lost Month, 50, This Life.

The Podsucker Episode: The Need to Save Textfiles, The Story of Podcasts, Why Save Them, Building the Podsucker, 3 years of Podcasts, Finding the Drives, Thoughts on a Money Sense.

The Commodore 64 Emulator Episode: I missed the C64, a Commodore Announcement, VICE and a Difficult Birth, Sgeo to the Rescue, An Hour at the Scollans, Demoscene, A Depth of History, What Happens Upon Announcement. Thanks to everyone, Sgeo especially, for all the work they've put into the project behind this episode's announcement. It wouldn't have happened without you! I'm in San Francisco on October 3rd for the Internet Archive's Annual Bash, and it'll be me and a top hat and lots of other fun announcements and the rest. If you visit and you're a podcast supporter, say hi.

The HarvardNet Episode (Part 2): Quitting HarvardNet, A Most Saucy Letter, Two Paychecks No Job, HarvardNetSucks.com, SLAPP Lawsuit, Vinny Bono the Furious Angel, "Winning", Brian. I can stop thinking about HarvardNet now! Thanks for that gift. Onward to positive things.

The HarvardNet Episode (Part 1): The Next Thing, A Game Engine-Worthy Datacenter, Life at HarvardNet, The Real Internet, Food Locker, Basement, DVD Bonus, The Big Fraud, Eyeing the Door, Brian's Bravery. A two-part episode about HarvardNet, the ISP I worked at for one year. Either nothing shocks you or it probably all shocks you. Either way: The Internet was a different thing 18 years ago.

The Game Worlds Episode: Getting Ready to Explore, The Games I Love, Adventure, Ten Years of Destiny, Halo Forever, Car Without an Engine, Player Unknown: Introspections, The Dangerous Mechanism, No Man's Sky, Exploring Forever. Plus: The Sound of Taxes. Why have such a simple podcast if you can't try new things? I thought I'd go into a very ethereal and strange way of looking at technology and games. I'm not sure if I caught the feeling I wanted to give, but I gave it my best shot.

The Longest Friend Episode: Childhood friends, Teenage Friends, College Friends, Adult Friends, Our Separate Paths, Our Continued Future. A very personal episode on a very long-time and very close friend, Chris Orcutt. Chris has a website here: http://orcutt.net/weblog/

The Woz-A-Day Episode: Woz-a-Day Project, .WOZ Files, What is History to Us, How do we Show History, The Doubled Narrative of MYST, What Hard Hat Mack can teach us, an Evergreen Education, our Woz Filled Future. Also: The Crop Share, Fishkill Farms. I mention an excellent article about two conflicting narratives in MYST History. That article is here: https://medium.com/picking-up-the-pieces/two-histories-of-myst-8b37e1504f9e My beloved Fishkill Farms has a webpage here: http://www.fishkillfarms.com/ The Woz-a-Day Project is growing here: https://archive.org/details/wozaday

The Kansasfest Episode: Why I Love Kansasfest, The Apple II, Living There, The Events and the Magic, The Friendship, The Purpose of a Vacation, The Best Things, Race You. Plus: Emergency Room. I have two episodes about Apple II subjects and then I think it's best to lay off the Apple II for a while. I do so many other things and have so much more to talk about! I also mention a visit to the Emergency Room, and this Patreon made it a cakewalk. Thanks again.

The User Group Episode: Mark's Childhood Flight Simulator, 48 hours, User Groups, RIAG, CACHE, Finding Cohorts, Emulation Casualties, The Darkest Outlook. Some thoughts on user groups and software, all based on a pretty good success story trying to find a flight simulator for a co-worker. All ending in a natural place: the inherent existential threat of technology. Thanks everyone who has been supporting me this whole time, by the way. It's taken such a load off.

The Amateur Episode: Question Not Question, Stumbling into Librarian, Emerson College, Zero Sum Games, The Early Web, TEXTFILES.COM as Library, Your Amateur Moment. I've tried to take a (minor) sour moment and turn it into something positive. I also got to give some thoughts on some generalized criticisms that are usually subtweeted in my direction, although how much this episode moves the needle, I'll likely never know. The presentation, by the way, was a lot of fun and I got to meet some really great folks who I'd never had the chance to meet. I found out about some long-memory examples held up in in the professional spheres, and I hope to research those to have what other lessons could have learned. Also, lunch was amazing and someone handed me a stack of hard drives. Also, now you know why "Rank Amateur" is in my twitter bio!

The Doomed Infocom Dinner Episode: The Eye-Opening E-mail, An Infocom Life, After Infocom Infocom, Phoning in a Text Adventure, Thaumistry, Spellcasting 101, Uncreated Games, The Miracle of Game Engines. Plus: Emergency Room. There are three podcasts being posted today. I'm keeping to 4 a month and I just got hit with a lot of commitments and project work that took me away from recording. I also recorded an episode while I was in California that had sound so terrible I just had to try again. This one's about one of my favorite letters I ever got, as well as thoughts on creating games then and now, and the benefits of each. I love creative tools so much!

An episode of the life of and my experiences knowing Sven Wallin / Wynn Wagner III. Fidonet, OPUS, Fossil, YOOHOO, The Interview and Dinner, Archbishop, Goodbye, The Journey. Note: A Mention of Suicide.

The Undone Episode - Things I've Not Done. This is an episode about various things people think I've done in my life and in fact I've never done them. We're going deep, folks. I rush to say that none of this serves as a template for what I think people "should" be doing - it's just how it wound up being for me.

The Floppy Format Episode: .WOZ Format, What .WOZ Means, The Work of 4AM, What Next, Why Do This, Cross-Correlation, The Future End-User, Undoing My Damage. A philosophical episode about the meaning of a new Apple II Floppy format and its place on the Archive, plus what it all means to dump this software online. .WOZ Format Spec (There's now a 1.1): https://archive.org/details/Woz_Reference_Specification_2018_01 4AM Collection: https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am

The Firing Episode: That Time I Got Fired, A Sysadmin's Life, If You Lose Jason You Lose Us, A Steaming Cup of Coffee, The Unnamed Worst Customer Ever, Goodbye, Hello Internet Archive. An episode about the only time I've been fired so far! Not bad for roughly 20 years of working life. I am pretty sure I got most of the details right, but you never know. I say this compared to most of the talking about history I do because it seems to be that when a person describes an emotionally traumatic event, they tend to get details real weird - it must be how the brain copes. Subscribe and support this podcast at http://podcast.textfiles.com

The Living Computers Episode: Talking of the Present, The Living Computers Museum, A Basement Returns, Archives in a Fishbowl, Emulation, World Champion, Presentations, The Future of Disk Packs, I Can't Do Everything, Thanks Again. This episode covers my visit to the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, WA, where I was last week. I've been there before and it's only gotten better, and I'd recommend it to everyone (and emphatically do in this episode). I also mention one of the podcast's "rules", which is I don't do by-the-moment commentary on current events; I considered this subject different because being at the Museum brings up so many great memories and inspires so much in bringing history back, I thought it was worth sharing. Living Computer Museum is at https://livingcomputers.org

The Psygnosis Episode: The First Support Call, Life as a Support Tech, The Dream, The Inside View, Playstation Gossip, Psygnosis Gossip, Mail Call, A:, Blotter, Shrinkwrap, Rest in Peace. Thanks to everyone who contributes through the Patreon and other sources! It makes an enormous difference in my life. I run the Psygnosis fan-site at http://www.psygnosis.org.

The Indexing Episode: The Most Critical Emotional Story, Our Digital History, Any Label Will Do, The Works Before The Works, The Indexes We Build, David W. Niven, Crap From The Past, Who Is This For, A Straighter Spine. The David W. Niven Collection: https://archive.org/details/davidwnivenjazz Crap From The Past: https://archive.org/details/crapfromthepast Thanks for all your feedback and insight. I will continue to refine the subject matter!

The Handheld Electronics Episode: A Little Under the Weather, Handheld History Collection, The Flood of Players, Holding the Memories in Your Hand, Playing "Football" With My Dad, The Nature of Electronic Handheld Emulation, Destroying to Live Forever, The Musical Future. To check out the handheld history collection at the Internet Archive, simply visit https://archive.org/details/handheldhistory

The BBS Tapes Episode: Release the Tapes, The Four Kinds of Remaining Storage, Mini-DV Tapes: Our Flaky Little Friends, A Generous Tape Deck, Interviewing Jack Rickard, Make Them Pay For Your Mistakes, Oh Jack, So Many Interviews, Thom Henderson is Doing Fine, Goodbye Robert Fowkes, A Better Person, Get Out There. Thanks, everyone, for your patience.

The Phone Phreak Episode: The Woods, To All Who Dare, Phreak Philes, The Office, My Ship In The Darkness, The Next Generation, Exploding the Phone. I really push the book "Exploding the Phone" by Phil Lapsley in this episode. If you've not heard of it or you've always been on the fence about it... if the history of Phreaking interests you, this is the book.

The John Romero Episode: Meeting John Romero Twice, Doom, Deathmatch, Interviewing John, History and Historian, Apple II Reunion II, Taco Truck, A Most Difficult Debt. I mention a great architecture walkthrough John Romero gave it can be watched here: https://vimeo.com/156288044

The CD-ROM Episode: Open-armed Historian, CD-ROMs, Quartz and Early CDs, Analog, Reader Service CD-ROMs, CD-ROM Industry, Shareware, The Depths of Shareware, Patent Troll Vanquished, Robots Playing Pac-Man, Forever, Taxes. After a discussion with a book author about a subject tangentially related to some of the interviews I did in the BBS Documentary, I hauled my collection of Mini-DV tapes out of storage and I've begun uploading their contents to the Internet Archive. The collection is here: https://archive.org/details/bbs_documentary?sort=-publicdate If you want to browse around the CD-ROM collection I mention in this episode, it's here: https://archive.org/details/cdbbsarchive

The Celebrity: Perks, Michael Jackson Birthday, The Star of Yourself, The Real Celebrities, Sockington the Cat, Medical Freedom. This episode is about the idea of celebrity and fame and how I've treated it over the year, whether for me or about my cat. I also shout out a bunch of names of people I admire, and I also have good news about my medical bills.

The Games Episode: My First Arcade, Fun With Machines, Home Computers, Wumpus, Kat and Mouse, Commodores and Apples and IBM PCs, Connectivity, Joy, A Road Rash Moment, My Favorite Type of Game, Games Forever.

Public Speaking: The Iron Sheik, No Stage Fright, A Rat for Office, Presentations, Tips for Talks, TED is Fake, In Your Head Lover, A Five Minute Offer Heavily going into my thoughts on public speaking so this episode is longer than usual. I've talked about presentations and why I think they're important here and there, but I try to lay it all down here, give you some pointers and thoughts, and hopefully inspire you to make your own. And I give an offer at the end. I'm always experimenting, so the podcast is not nailed down into a specific processed style that would come from a team working on it - so this episode is very dynamic and energetic. Learning my limits and what works and doesn't is always important, as well as your feedback.

A New Year and a New Season. The Process. Bamiga Sector 1. Apple II Tables. Provenance. Notation. A 14-Year-Old's Classification. An Unborn Collaborator. The Bamiga Sector 1 Project I mention has a homepage here: http://www.amigaclub.be/bs1/

Andy. With the close of the year comes the exciting prospect of how next year's taxes will be handled. Naturally, I'll be having an accountant help me. I bring this up as I have multiple times in the past because I've run into a number of people who have tax issues who are some sort of ashamed that they're experiencing problems or bumps, and feel in some way this makes them look bad. If I may, please let me be the first to say that taxes are not intuitive and you can't just wing them or think it's something you might get perfectly right going it alone. This is doubly the case now that the tax laws are changing. Don't avoid dealing with them, like I did. Next up for me regarding this podcast will be refining delivery and process. It's fun to learn on the way.

The Internet Archive Grab Bag: Another Week Online, The Archive Building, The Verifications, The Ups and Downs, The Narrative, Patreon Fail, PODCAST.TEXTFILES.COM, Building Pride and Love, Teeth, Thanks. Recorded on the office floor of the Internet Archive, I went for a grab bag of random thoughts, so this episode is very, very loose. I also didn't have my pop shield out here, so apologies to your speakers. I mention the Patreon stupid and also offer PODCAST.TEXTFILES.COM as the secure central information and donation vector for this podcast going forward. It has been quite the ride watching support drop and return for this Patreon, and I don't need more uncertainty in my life, thanks. Opinion seems to float that people would like an interview show or similar, but I'd probably make it a bonus, because it would be different than this format, and notably longer. We'll see when that happens, but it's on my mind. Next episodes will be much less miscellaneous, but it felt great to talk about it all. Thanks for riding along.

When the Door Rolls Up, The Last Cache of Commodore, One More Time About the Manuals, Rusted Amigas, Money Money Money, The Meaning of it All. A pleasant enough essay about the nature of piles of "stuff" I get offered or that fall into my lap. Why does this happen? What are my thoughts on it? Here's a good starting overview of this aspect of history. I will say that the Great Patreon Stumble of 2017 has encouraged me to decentralize this podcast and contributions, which I bet will be good for me in the long run - so there's a silver lining. More than a few people are asking me to consider adding interview episodes to this podcast. I'd honestly like to ask you all what you think of that. I assume it'd be me and someone interesting talking for an hour, and then turning that into something smooth. It sure wouldn't be 20 minutes, and I am of the opinion it's basically another whole type of show. Maybe a bonus scattered here and there? I just don't see how it fits in the format and folks who like the sub-30-minutes running time will find themselves really behind. Well, let me know.

User Meets, Online Versus Offline, OSUNY, Without a Location, 2600 Meetings, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, The Works, Trials, What Are You Doing I loosened up my speaking style a tad to see how that flows. A lot of fun thoughts and stories about user meets, BBS meets and life offline versus online. This episode mentions the new funding goal, where I'll add link dumps to each episode's description. Thanks again!

The Song of the Information Cube: The Piles, The Shelves, The Ark, The Visitors, The Moment of Realization, The Burden, The Exodus, The Freedom. Also: The Bill. The Legend of the Information Cube! And with it, ten episodes of the podcast recorded. As someone who has done a lot of archiving of podcasts over the years, I know this is the critical jump - it's when a lot of these either strengthen their resolve and last a long time, or when they just fade away. I'm intending to stick around.

Summer Camp and Computer Camp: Advertisements, Surprise Lake, Devil's Bargain, I'm Gonna Kill You, Food Heist, Computer Tutor, Meal Plan, Williamstown, What Pirates, Learning. I recorded this episode a little looser with more emotional modulation to see how it comes off. It's about two different camps I went to as a kid, as well as how it all wrapped in with computers and my desires to at once escape and be part of something. I've been really enjoying these sessions at Beacon Soundworks, who have been dealing with my flexible schedule and near-random recording sessions with a truly professional air. Mike, the owner, is a gem; I'm delighted to work with him to book these times. I'm getting good feedback from folks, and the notes are always appreciated. Thanks for listening, spread the word.

Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It: A weekly podcast series about stories, technology, nostalgia, wonder, and more stores. Hosted by Jason Scott of TEXTFILES.COM. The Dark Episode: Applejack, Rage, A Full Mailbox, Getting Better, The Best Life, Debt Unchained. Like, I bet, most everyone out there, not every part of my life has been 100% great. I decided to just pack all that negativity (especially teenage years) into one episode so we can move on to more fun stories. This was definitely a hard episode to record and a harder one to shape into a cohesive whole. I'm glad I did it, but I look forward to more about beeps, boops and laughter. This podcast is supported by a Patreon at http://patreon.com/textfiles. Jason can be followed at https://twitter.com/textfiles and you are perennially invited to visit his website, TEXTFILES.COM.

Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It: A weekly podcast series about stories, technology, nostalgia, wonder, and more stores. Hosted by Jason Scott of TEXTFILES.COM. What Do You See, Anarchy, Boom, The Wrong Hands, Two FBI Visits, Freedom, Textfile Groups. This podcast is supported by a Patreon at http://patreon.com/textfiles. Jason can be followed at https://twitter.com/textfiles and you are perennially invited to visit his website, TEXTFILES.COM.

Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It: A weekly podcast series about stories, technology, nostalgia, wonder, and more stores. Hosted by Jason Scott of TEXTFILES.COM. Emulation is Magic, Saving my Pennies, Control and Collection, The Javascript Mess, The Next Generation, Pimp My Spectrum. This podcast is supported by a Patreon at http://patreon.com/textfiles. Jason can be followed at https://twitter.com/textfiles and you are perennially invited to visit his website, TEXTFILES.COM.

Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It: A weekly podcast series about stories, technology, nostalgia, wonder, and more stores. Hosted by Jason Scott of TEXTFILES.COM. Episode 5: California, California, Not California, Dot Boom California, Dot Bust California, Internet Archive California. My many experiences of California: As dream, as reality, as a broken dream, a bust, and as a dream again.

Jason Scott Talks His Way Out Of It: A weekly podcast series about stories, technology, nostalgia, wonder, and more stores. Hosted by Jason Scott of TEXTFILES.COM. How Can I Possibly Interview, Listen at Parties, BBS Documentary, The Punishing Road, Favorite Interviews, Sleep Interview, Saddest Interviews, Florida Sink. This podcast is supported by a Patreon at http://patreon.com/textfiles. Jason can be followed at https://twitter.com/textfiles and you are perennially invited to visit his website, TEXTFILES.COM.