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Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

381 episodes — Page 7 of 8

S5 Ep 80The Raytracing Episode

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.

Nov 13, 201917 min

S4 Ep 79The NAID Episode

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

Oct 26, 201918 min

S4 Ep 78The Electric Stories Episode

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

Oct 10, 201920 min

S4 Ep 77The Music Tracker Episode

The Music Tracker Episode: Carousel, Cards and Belts, Piano Rolls, Notches and Points, My Magical Amiga, Music Disks, Tiny Sizes, Spreadsheets and Waveforms, Making My Own, Tracker Battles, CDROM.COM, Making My Fastrackers, Sketch the Cow, Saving the MODs, The Time I Got Flattened. In this episode, I talk about music tracking, which has such a deep part of my life for years on end. The beautiful sub-300k song I mention is called Klisje paa Klisje (English: Cliche' after Cliche') by Walkman. Here's a youtube video of it being played in a tracker, showing all the different ways the music changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9S0MC8nKRc Recordings of my musical creations playable right now are here: http://www.cow.net/jason/music/ And if you want to browse hundreds of music disks for the C64 and the Commodore Amiga, they're playable here at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_c64_musicdisks https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_amiga_musicdisks

Sep 29, 201919 min

S4 Ep 76Mr. Hernandez

Mr. Hernandez: Kit Computers, Plastic Cases, Malls, Computer Stores. Brewster's dim days, Mr. Hernandez' Store, Plastic Bags, The Rules of Talking, Preppie! Avalon Hill, Scott Adams Adventures. The Bright Line. Flaking Out, Fading Away. Preppie! is playable at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/Preppie_1982_Adventure_International_US Preppie's Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preppie!_(video_game) The original book that started the preppie craze was "The Official Preppy Handbook" by Lisa Birnbach. (1980). The illustrator for the Preppie! game was Scott Ross, who's still around and still in business: http://www.scottross.com/index.html The Avalon Hill Game I bought was Dnieper River Line. A playable version is here, although playable is relative without all the cardboard pieces: https://archive.org/details/a8b_Dnieper_River_Line_1982_Avalon_Hill_US_BASIC Further information on Dnieper River Line is here: https://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-8-bit/dnieper-river-line I am reasonably sure the Scott Adams adventure game I played was Adventure #4: Voodoo Castle. It's playable here: https://archive.org/details/a8b_Adventure_No._04_Voodoo_Castle_v3.9_119_1981_Adventure_International_US_k_file.a (I didn't have the graphics version, though.)

Sep 22, 201922 min

S4 Ep 75All Debt, All the Time

All Debt, All The Time: The Current Debt Status, The Black Shadow, I Blame Myself, The First Credit Card, A $1100/$2000 Flight, No Shame in an Accountant, Your Two Important Homework Assignments. 75 episodes in! Time to talk about that whole debt issue the podcast was created for, and my current thoughts on debt in general.

Sep 21, 201914 min

S4 Ep 74The Hardcoded Episode

The Hardcoded Episode: Blowing Glass. A Cancelled Project. Reality Shows. The Elevator Pitch. The Best Laid Plans. Why I Gave Up. Fake. Prototype This. Take It Away. An episode about one of my favorite projects that I gave up in the face of logic and discovery. Everyone's got a few of these if they work creatively. This one got pretty far along before it ended. I checked, and I don't know where the written notes are - sorry about that. But I'll answer questions if people have any.

Aug 27, 201918 min

S4 Ep 73The Project Everything Episode

The Project Everything Episode: Starting Projects, KansasFest 2019, Pulling Back But Then Pulled Back In, Garage Giveaway, Floppy Disk Images, Applesauce, The Start of Everything, Software Preservation, Apple II's Special Situation, A Silver Chalice, Respect for Volunteers.

Aug 6, 201921 min

S4 Ep 72Three Stories

Three Stories: Kickstand. Fax Machine. Playtester. An experiment in telling three anonymized stories.

Jul 31, 201916 min

S4 Ep 71The Hackers Play Episode

The Hackers Play Episode: Never in NYC, Broadway, Merlin, Hackers, Aunt Susan the Modern Girl, A Tiny Theater, Stage, Summary, Delight, 13 to 30, Let's Do This, Impossible Logistics, Easy to Do Nothing, A Magical Night I kept the program from Hackers and scanned it in years ago because of course I did: https://archive.org/details/hackers_playbill The NY Times did a review of the play here: https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/23/theater/stage-hackers-computer-comedy.html The Google Books excerpt of the Hackers script: https://books.google.com/books?id=lxTsTiD91CEC If you wish to put on the play, here's the logistics information: https://www.samuelfrench.com/p/5318/hackers

Jul 14, 201916 min

S4 Ep 70The Helping Episode

The Helping Episode: A Tired Mom, The Urge to Help, Not Just Collecting, TIM Help Files, Heat Strick, Users Versus SysOps, Early Website Writing, Google's Eldritch Horror, Sendmail, HTML, Reaching Out, A Better Place, Strick's Language The Internet Archive Unofficial Wiki, my most recent attempt to "Help", is at https://internetarchive.archiveteam.org. My other attempts to "help" are scattered across the wasteland.

Jul 10, 201921 min

S4 Ep 69The PUBG and Life Strats Episode

The PUBG And Life Strats Episode They go together better than expected.

Jul 5, 201920 min

S4 Ep 68The Long Drive Episode

The Long Drive Episode: A Phone Call in Denver, The Meaning of PC-Board, Overnight, Desolation, An AM Radio Companion, Mountains For a Change, The Simple Interview, The Drive Back, Solitary, Not Alone Ever Again. The raw interview with David W. Terry and Steve Catmull is available here: https://archive.org/details/bbs-20030221-terry Photos I took pictures of on my trip to Wyoming and Utah are here: http://bbsdocumentary.com/photos/jason/WYOMING/ http://bbsdocumentary.com/photos/jason/UTAH/

Jul 1, 201919 min

S4 Ep 67The Blorb Episode

The Blorb Episode: Ingestion of the Archive, The Library Goal, Some Odd Books and Items, The Blorb. Some links of items I mentioned: https://archive.org/details/retro_future_Pepsi http://unifiedpoptheory.com/visualization-of-19th-century-ship-routes-from-publicly-available-noaa-data-set/ https://archive.org/details/TNM_Hitachi_505_Analog_Computer_Brochure https://archive.org/details/TNM_Hitachi_505_analog_computer_-_Hitachi_Ltd_196_20180302_0149 https://igl.ethz.ch/projects/make-it-stand/ https://arcadeblogger.com/2016/02/13/atari-arcade-concept-art-a-glimpe-of-the-future/ https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_IdUuPX8s84IC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeo_Scappi https://archive.org/details/journeyroundmyro00maisrich

Jun 2, 201919 min

S3 Ep 66The Energy Drink Episode

The Energy Drink Episode: All the Caffeine and Twice the Sugar, Teenage Beverages, Wipeout, Red Bull, Diet, Zero, Taurine, Saving Red Bull Music Academy, What Caffeine Brings, A Lost Collection, A Wide-Eyed Doctor, Stress Test. An episode about me and the classification of beverages called Energy Drinks. And a little unexpected event. The Internet Archive mirror of Red Bull Music Academy is here: https://archive.org/details/redbullacademy A picture of the original Jolt can as I saw it in 1985: https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/48xndr/jolt_cola_all_the_sugar_and_twice_the_caffeine/

May 31, 201917 min

S3 Ep 65The Conference Episode

The Conference Episode: A Question by Jim Richardson, Gatherings, The Idea of a Conference, Why It Took Forever For Me To Attend a Conference, Why Conferences are Hard, Oh Yes The Question, Virtual Conferences, ConfCon, Why We Go, 1.2 Million of 2 Billion, Thanks MuseumNEXT and ACMI. An episode that's answering a question Jim Richardson of Museum NEXT posited, which I thought everyone should listen to, and also my bigger thoughts on what conferences are about as well as personal history behind a few of them. I mentioned ConfCon was online. What I should say is that ConfCon WAS online, then the sites went down, and I thought I had them on textfiles.com but I don't easily see them, so then Famicoman to the rescue and they're both on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/confcon2009audio https://archive.org/details/confcon2010audio That was a close one!

May 24, 201921 min

S3 Ep 64Jerome Johnson

Jerome Johnson. For more information on Jerome, here's some links: https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/its-his-home-and-an-energy-lab-and-he-might-lose-it/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DlSY_ppxJ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hED7I6zp1hI https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/10/a-dream-that-grew-in-brooklyn-faces-foreclosure/

May 3, 201920 min

S3 Ep 63The Sorting Episode

The Sorting Episode: A Life of Sorting, File Classifications, My Subdirectories, The Storage Unit, Photos and Movies and Boxes and Personal, The Actual Question, What the Actual Answer Might Be, An Empty Container. Plus: An Offer to Help Me Sort. A lot of people asked me to speak about my sorting method - I hope it's simple and straightforward how I approach things. I use this everywhere, and if I wanted to be a very bearded Marie Kondo, this is how I'd start to explain myself. Like all the other times I invite people into projects, the project mentioned at the end is going to be continual and the offer won't expire. Thanks for considering some help.

May 1, 201916 min

S3 Ep 62The Infocom Source Code Episode

The Infocom Source Code Episode: The Specialness of Infocom, The Craft, The Z-Machine, Z-Machine Glories, Full Sentences and Every Platform, GET LAMP, The Infocom .ZIP File, A Release, Stu Galley, Github, The Clones and Branches, Steve and Kevin have a chat. An episode about the release of the Infocom Source Code on Github. It's currently available on the HistoricalSource collection there: https://github.com/historicalsource The ZIL Language is now having a little renaissance and I hope to see some actual games come out of it. Until then, I'm not kidding - type in the name of any Infocom game and you can probably be playing it within seconds. I recommend a walk through the document Steve Meretzky wrote at Infocom to explain the ZIL source code here: https://archive.org/details/Learning_ZIL_Steven_Eric_Meretzky_1995 Here's the video of the chat with Steve and Kevin: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/416801231

Apr 29, 201919 min

S3 Ep 61The Fortress of Solitude Episode

The Fortress of Solitude Episode: A Machine That Is Not a Machine in Richmond, A Riot of a Data Depot, Scripts and Miscellany, 11 Terabytes, The Ultimate Tape Archive, The Metadata Machine, The Fortress of No Solitude. Also: Taxes. A romp through the machine I spend the most time with these days, the Fortress of Solitude, and the steps I'm taking to keep it simple and empty.

Apr 5, 201920 min

S3 Ep 60The Podcasting Episode

The Podcasting Episode: What Podcasting Was, What Podcasting Was Again, The Downfall, The Rebirth, The Future of Podcasting, Money Matters, Why Do I Podcast. Just felt like putting down my thoughts and perspective on Podcasting, in advance of the Great Podcast Boom/Bust of 2019-2020. I podcast for a reason, and I re-iterate it in this episode: Because when looking to pay off debts, I wanted to also produce something beyond selling a shirt or doing a fundraiser with nothing else to come of it besides stasis. At 60 episodes, this is quite a body of work, and you've been inspirational in helping me create it.

Apr 1, 201917 min

S3 Ep 59Joe's Offer

Joe's Offer. An episode about a single gesture that blossomed into a life-changing moment. For Joe Sherman (1917-2010).

Mar 28, 201912 min

S3 Ep 58The Acting Episode

The Acting Episode: Johannes and a Restaurant, Electricity and Christmas Lights, Acting, Pages, Out of Order, Tourist Trap, Editing. The Wikipedia entry for the film is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je_Suis_Auto While editing up the episode, I'm not 100% sure I make clear that the primary director of the "Je Suis Auto" film is Juliana Neuhuber (https://www.juliananeuhuber.com/) and Johannes is co-director but mostly in the role of main actor and writer. Johannes (and I and others) had ideas but Juliana was the final word on set. The casino/tourist trap I mentioned is called Excalibur City and the home page for it is here: http://www.excaliburcity.com/en/

Mar 20, 201920 min

S3 Ep 57The Christopher March and Heimdall Episode

The Christopher March and Heimdall Episode: Losing Chris March, Getting Hired For Doing The Wrong Thing, Scripting and Scripting Languages, The Boundaries of Scripting, DUMPTRUCK, Heimdall, Heimdall's Secret, A Memorial Moment with Pat. An episode about Chris March, who I worked with at the beginning of my UNIX Career, and whose masterpiece, Heimdall, I'm worried may be gone forever. I hope not! But if it is, I'll honor its memory in this episode.

Mar 3, 201918 min

S3 Ep 56The Cowicature Episode

The Cowicature Episode: I Needed the Money, Two Pens and Paper, Sketch the Cow, Harvard Square, Territories, No Woman No Cry, What Caricatures Are, Very Little Udder Assault, The Clown, Street Vendor Shutdown. I spent a couple summers doing caricatures for money out as a street performer. Here's my thoughts on that. Before anybody asks, this sort of skill atrophies incredibly quickly, so I can't do it any more (people have tried to get me to do it). I took the time that would have been spent on my artist game and moved into movie making and computers, and while it's sad I let that talent go, I did some other good stuff with it! I idly looked up how street performing did after we got flushed out, and it turns out that this year, this year, they just changed the rules and policies regarding performing and fees and technically, I could start up again! (But I'm not going to: Kind of busy.)

Mar 1, 201923 min

S3 Ep 55The Time Episode

The Time Episode. Was it all worth it?

Feb 2, 201914 min

S3 Ep 54The Postal Zine Episode

The Postal Zine Episode: National Lampoon, Adult Comics, Fooled Them, Forbidden Mail, Forbidden Subjects, Catalogs, Books, Power and Revenge, Factsheet Five, Gunderloy, Anarchy, Factsheet Five's Big Party, Internet, Zines, PDFs. Also: The Tax Treadmill. An episode about my relationship (and others) to postal-based forbidden things, including access to the Factsheet Five magazine, one of the best printed things on earth at the time. The Internet Archive Zine collection is massive and growing: https://archive.org/details/zines Factsheet Five has a few issues up on the archive, but we need a large and high-quality scanning of this thing. https://archive.org/search.php?query=factsheet%20five We even have a pretty zesty Loompanics catalog: https://archive.org/details/Loompanics_Catalog_2003

Feb 1, 201919 min

S3 Ep 53The Robert Hoquim Extra Episode

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

Jan 31, 201916 min

S3 Ep 53The EsnesnoN Episode

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.

Jan 30, 201920 min

S3 Ep 51The Kickstarter Episode

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.

Dec 31, 201821 min

S3 Ep 50The 50th Episode

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.

Dec 31, 201813 min

S3 Ep 49The Don Joyce and Negativland Episode

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.

Dec 30, 201820 min

S3 Ep 48The Leisure Suit Larry Episode

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.

Dec 28, 201826 min

S3 Ep 47The Technical Interview Episode

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?

Nov 30, 201821 min

S3 Ep 46The Speedrunning Episode

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.

Nov 30, 201820 min

S2 Ep 45The Failed ISP Episode

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.

Nov 27, 201824 min

S3 Ep 44Frank and Bootleg

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

Oct 26, 201823 min

S3 Ep 43The Radio Radio Episode

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.

Oct 19, 201825 min

S3 Ep 42The Personal Philosophy Episode

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.

Oct 12, 201822 min

S2 Ep 41The Podsucker Episode

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.

Sep 30, 201821 min

Ep 40The Commodore Episode

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.

Sep 26, 201827 min

S2 Ep 39The HarvardNet Episode (Part 2)

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.

Aug 31, 201821 min

S2 Ep 38The HarvardNet Episode (Part 1)

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.

Aug 31, 201823 min

S2 Ep 37The Game World Episode

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.

Aug 14, 201826 min

S2 Ep 36The Longest Friend Episode

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/

Aug 1, 201822 min

S2 Ep 35The Woz-A-Day Episode

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

Jul 31, 201819 min

S2 Ep 34The Kansasfest Episode

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.

Jul 31, 201817 min

S2 Ep 33The User Group Episode

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.

Jul 1, 201822 min

S2 Ep 32The Amateur Episode

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!

Jun 29, 201817 min

The Doomed Infocom Dinner Episode

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!

Jun 29, 201819 min