Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

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 Emer...

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 sup...

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,...

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 r...

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_Speci...

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 a...

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...

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 in...

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...

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 ho...

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, ple...

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 you...

  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...

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...

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 the...