Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

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 loca...

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.lasert...

The Unending Projects Episode: Perspective On Many Projects, Believing There's No End Where There Are, Ends I've Witnessed, Ends I've Been, Lessons Learned and Projects Beyond. A rumination on the nature of large scale projects and projects without end, and how I've managed with them. Special Information Cube appearance, as well as thoughts on my other long-term messes.

The Great Cacophony of Scanning Episode: An Influx Valve, Mucking The Stables, Infinite Discords, The Cover Problem, NASA Launch and Photos On A Carpet, A Trickle Versus a Flood, The Inevitable Future, A Moment of Joy. Some thoughts on the incoming mass of material coming into the Archive right now. I mention the Pulp Magazine Archive, which is here: https://archive.org/details/pulpmagazinearchive

The Oculus Episode: An Unexpected Gift, A Long Life with VR,  A Dingy Hotel Room, Features, Magic, Favorite Apps, An Unlikely Constant Place. I was handed an Oculus Quest 2. Nobody asked me to do a review, but I figured it'd be fun to do one anyway. There's actually all sorts of rules towards people saying they "just happen to have" something and then doing a review of it, so I'll just say that I...

The Election Episode: Being an Election Inspector, Training for the Unusual, Poll Pads, 300 Feet, 5am, 6am, Shivering Hands, Solid Day, Meeting 675 People, Suit and Gloves, Giving an Oath, 90 Minutes of Silence, A Customer Service Job, An Unforunate Coda. The wonders of being an Election Inspector! I highly encourage people to look into working elections, in both General and Local years. It's been...

The Flash Episode: Saving a Medium, A History of Flash, The Death Blow and the Death, Ruffle The Flash, Flashpoint, An Audio/Video Conversation. The Internet Archive now supports emulating .SWF files (Flash) that were a critical part of the web whether it should have been, or not. Dozens of new, playable animations are flying in all the time. The top level of the collection is https://archive.org/...

The Silence Episode.

The Software Forgery Episode: Let's Do This, The First Software Forgeries, Altair 8800, Pre-Order or Vaporware, The Richard Garriott Scam, Stickers and Wiped Disks, Falling Apart, Grading and Quality, Tokens of Capital, Heading Forward, Fake Historical Promotion, Keep Going. I don't mention the name of the software, but it's Akalabeth: World of Doom. First sold in 1979 as a limited baggie software...

The Generosity Episode: Jason Asks About Being Generous. A Guy And His Kickstarter. The Motivations. Early Survival Pizza. Making the Leap. A Documentary As Mission. The Background Conversation. Another Thank You. A somewhat strange episode, talking about what being generous means to me.  I don't know if I'm the best life coach, but another Jason asked and Jasons have to stick together, for a whil...

The Amish Shareware Episode: The Big Leagues, The Top Shelf, Pop-Up Magazine, My Story Pitch, The Spy, Fact-Check Failure, The Missed Opportunity, Software Forgery, Never Stop Trying. A story that I thought was the best, and which had to be thought too good to be true in the fact check. (I still believe it is true). Majere's Legacy: http://www.librum.us/ - Majere (1959-2008).

The Tea Party Episode: 10,000 Year Clock, The Long Now, Disclosure, Fine Drinks and a Speech, The Low Bar, Inspiring or Cynical, Why Drive Ahead, The Knowledge We Keep, A Closing Music Shop and a Lot of Manuals. Thanks to Andre G for the idea.

The Past Future Episode: A Hospital Visit, Audio Formats, Speaking Without Knowing, Wozniak and Jobs, Exercised, Technology Designs, The Best Isn't What Wins, Factories and Factors, Cheap and Expensive. Thanks to Scotty Deepgeek Fitzgerald for the idea. (And the visit.)              

The File Format Wiki Episode: An Awful Failure, A Tremendous Success, An Acknowledgement of a Poor Idea, Just Solve One Problem, Easy Not Hard, Field vs. Forest, What is a File Format Anyway, 2012 Turned Into 2013, The Forever Problem, A Format Mirror, The Great Success of Failure. Thanks to Dan Tobias for the idea of this episode. The File Formats Wiki is at https://fileformats.archiveteam.org.

The Green Room Episode: Public Speaking, Green Rooms, Quiet Before 15, School Announcer, DEFCON, Jeff Moss' Room, Webstock, XOXO, SXSW, Confrontations, A Long Overdue Hug. This episode comes from an idea by Chris Erlanson.

Curt Vendel. Curt's 2003 BBS Documentary appearance: https://archive.org/details/bbs-20030323-vendel Curt at the 2019 VCF Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlqxDgnYHWU Curt and Marty's book: https://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Business-Curt-Vendel/dp/0985597402

The Typewriter Episode: It Was Supposed To Be Magazines, Elaine and the Boxes, Floor to Ceiling, Tytell Typewriter, Sorting and Divisions, Books and Ephemera and Golden Pallets,  The Typewriter Business, Peter's Last Wishes, A Project Ahead. Also: Battery Danger and Write Me 20 Times. An episode about how a simple picking up of magazines led to two truckloads of typewriter history. Some URLs worth...

The Action Park Documentary Episode: A Late Thursday Night, Action Park, 10 Years Ago, 2 Years of Research, A Coffee, Interview, Pile Driver, The Bones of the Plan, The Release, My Review, Nothing in the World. The website for the Class Action Park documentary:   https://www.classactionpark.com/

The Medical and Life Checkup Episode: An Accident With Repercussions, Bounce Back, Two Weeks, Open Inboxes That Never Close, What It's All Been, What Goes On, 100 Hours of Podcast, A Day Grabbed With Two Hands.r Just a little reflection on a post-accident depression and concern which I am now definitively out of.

The Mysterious 4am: Big Plans for Kansasfest, The Wrong Bar at the Wrong Time, The Mysterious History of 4am, I'm Fine. No car accident is going to stop me from recording an episode! Also, you get to hear my voice modulate differently for slides and video that don't exist. The description for "The Mysterious History of 4am" from the Kansasfest program:| International Cracker of Mystery 4AM is not...

The Inbox Cornucopia Episode:  Appreciating What You Have, Two Arcades Gone, The Moment of Wonder of Incoming Archive, Spam and Vandalism, The Worlds We'll Learn Of, My Favorite Stripes, Stop by the Inbox Today. An episode about my favorite current situation, the mass of incoming materials to the Internet Archive and just enjoying the stream as it goes by. This episode also invites listeners to se...

The Novel Episode: A Book Never Written, The Plot, A Cleaning to Make Room For The Next Things. Time to make good on my promise of "move ahead or move on", and so here's the plot of a novel I concocted when I was in my 20s that I haven't done anything with in 25 years. It's lacking a lot of details, but it feels good to share and move on. I'll have many other projects in my future to finish.

Three Extraordinary Stories Told Ordinarily: Russian Mechanic, Quake Logo Massacre, Nobody Lives Here, Tetris. Three stories about usual outcomes, presented simply. I found the photos we took of the Quake Logo, they're now here:   https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157714912854851 The Tetris:   http://cs.brown.edu/news/2000/04/17/tetris/  - strangely, it's been done a couple times si...