Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

The Ever-Present To-Do List: The Giving of Advice, Piles, To-Do, Addressing the Options, Understanding the Trudge, The Pile Behind Instead of the Pile Before, The Moments of Confusion, The Dedication, 90 Percent, The Final Tally. Advice and thoughts on dealing with what can feel like an infinite, ever-present to-do list. Since moving to the new office, things have been very productive, but even at...

That time I met Dan Ackroyd. Maybe.

A Large Collection, Stories in a Collection, Capturing Infocom, Financialization, Families and Friends and Grief, Using The Skills You Have, Settling With Your Choices. Someone tried to sell an awful lot of Infocom and Infocom-Related items on auction and is trying again, and I had some related thoughts about collecting, selling, and using opportunities.

No Tragedy Ahead, A Quick Exit, Expectations of Childhood, Stability and Home Base, Approaching the World, Valets and Storage Units, Where The Thinking Takes You, Fainting Spell, Possibilities and Paranoia, Talk Changes, Finding the Stability Regardless. A rumination on my constant contingency planning, ever-present, in everything.

Setting Up Tapes, The Bob Cooper Collection, Bob Cooper Biography, Imaging 3/4 Tape, Fuzziness and History, A Lost Era of Television, Everything Falling Apart, Aiming for the Best, Fixing Without Perfection. I was sent a massive amount of boxes of Bob Cooper, who did Satellite Television related material for years, and who recorded many neat videos in doing so. Bob's site, still working: https://b...

Officially at the New Office, The Advantages, The Size, The Dimensions, Multiple Projects, Facing Your Own History, Trash and Treasure, Walking Down My Own World, Physical, Deep Storage, The Hope. A few thoughts about the new office, which is nearly 8 times larger, has every project and piece of myself in it, and will hopefully, although not guaranteed, help me finally kill my backlog.

Hearing of the Living Computer Museum, Illegally Parking, Artifacts and Items, The Paul Allen Story (Short Version), A Conversation with Stephen Jones, The Grand Plan, Delchi's Consoles, The MADE, Cryosleep, Highest Bidders, The Billions, A Part of History, The Lessons Learned The Living Computer Museum is not returning and its contents will be auctioned. At least, the big ticket items. I'm not ha...

The Second Part, HOPE's Second New Year, Attendance, Location, Improvements, A Striking Walk Through Classrooms, The Legacy Speech, Friends, Lore, Legacy, Ed Piskor, Cheshire Catalyst, Kevin Mitnick, Sinitar, What We Leave Behind, The Extra Effort, A Summary. I had a wonderful time at HOPE 15 (2024) and consider it my home hacker conference now. I wore three suits and made many new friends, and I'...

Finding A New Space, Failure to Communicate, New Home, Aspects I Like, Enclosed Spaces, The Grand Plan, The Far-Reaching Intentions, One At A Time, Potential Helpers, The Finances, The Future. With the addition of a new office space, I intend to jettison into a new layer of what I do. Let's hope for the best.

Hitting 300 of Anything, Humble Towel Beginnings, Possible Audience Rotation, What Drives The Tales, Finding Subjects, Broken Strings, Eagerness and Dread, An Invisible Audience, The Future. An episode celebrating 300 episodes of this podcast, with a specific bent to telling people how the audience is what matters - while I have what is now dozens and dozens of hours of talking about myself and th...

Procrastination By Sorting, Memories of Magazines, Computer Awareness, Obscurity and General Interest, Compute!, Creative Computing, Reader Service, The Gained Bricks of Foundation, The Waterfall of Text, A Prayer of Appreciation. Whenever I sow seeds of doubt something good has happened with the work I do, I just look at the magazine rack at the Internet Archive and love walking its stacks and co...

Giving a Speech at HOPE, The Concept of Legacy, The Approach to Subjects, Ed Piskor, Cheshire Catalyst, Best and Worst Speech, Short Deadlines, Light Work, Where I Intend to Go, The Awaiting Deadlines, The Truest Legacy. I'm giving a speech at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) this year, and I figured it might be fun to describe this situation before and after I do it. Here's the before.

Going To A Show, Meeting Robert Harris, Film Restoration, The Brittle Nature of Film, Film Is Dead All Hail Film, Meeting Mister Harris, Inspirations and Permissions, The Prickliness, Living Your Version of the Dream. I was lucky enough to meet Robert A. Harris, who is a film restorer par excellence and who I'd looked up to for decades. What a gift!

Edging Into The Office, Stacks and Wires, Process and Teardown, A Version of a Version, Dreams of the Next Process. As I wind up the current office and move to another one, some contemplations on how messy it is right now.

Susan Lyn Sadofsky, 1948-2024

Emulation, James Gerrie, Weak Specifications, The User Interface Wall, Press SCRL LCK and F2, The Tiny Pipe to the Shot Glass, Inspiration, Kind of Finished, The Relentless and Inspiring Curation. Some appreciation for someone being so dedicated to a machine (the Tandy MC 10) that they got it working at the Archive and are adding hundreds of new software titles to it across the days. We need this...

Saying No to the Renewal, Moving Into The Office, A Blank Canvas, Choices Made, The Thousands and Hundreds, The Separation of Home and Work, FInding Limits, Future Unknowns. A small meditation on the office I work in, as I choose not to renew the lease. I'd like to thank Kay Savetz and FAXZERO.COM for being a major supporter of it so that the real estate costs didn't crater my bank account.

An Uninteresting Square Building By The Road, $25, Far as the Eye Can See, Walking the Games, The Usual Experience, Endless Rooms, Experiencing Videogames Again, Memories of Internet Arcade, Broken, Real Arcades, The Joy of the New to Old. A memory of visiting the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Illinois, billing itself as the largest arcade, but at the very least, an absolutely insane amount of hundred...

All-Sport, Megagym, Racquetball Camp, Benches, Numbers, Lines, Designs, Waves Not Blocks, Frog Design, Attachment, The Font. A rumination on a font and some lines that had an effect on me. I mention Frog Design, here's an example of the kind of pages out there: https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-early-apple-prototypes-2014-6

No Specific End, A Couple Boxes, Expeditions, Ham Radio, QSL Cards, The Tapes Arrive, Digitizing for a Week, Exotics, Blur, VHS Feel, Preservation. A pleasant surprise as a pile of "DX-Peditions" showed up in the inbox. The resulting collection, done by me and Kay Savetz, is here:   https://archive.org/details/dx-peditions

What is Selling Out, This Podcast, The Facts of Working for Money, The Forks and Compromises, Thoughts and Concerns For Others' Journeys, Crossroads, Consistency, Your Own Conclusions. Some thoughts on what "Selling Out" means.

Reminding Myself of a Lost Media Show, What is Lost Media, What is Lost, Turn-on, The Thrill of Finding, Endless Uploads, ZIPs inside ISOs, That Old Razzle-Dazzle, Campfire Stories. Never let it be said I won't talk about a show without telling you where to find it. The Lost Media videos I'm talking about are here on Youtube, scary music and all: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKM8YX6ZzGbl...

A Talk Accepted, Rare Appearances, The Gist of Software, The Accomplishments and the Achievements, What's Next, What's Coming, What Will We Do, The Challenges, The Possibilities, The Purpose of a Talk. About a talk I'll be giving this year, where it is rare that I'm doing any sort of talk that isn't just a (fun) advertisement for the Internet Archive. What's next with emulation and game preservati...

A Double-Tape UFO Conspiracy, A Life of Forbidden Knowledge, The Assumption of Presentation, The Ease of Misdirection, A Momentary Pause, Handing to Next Generations. Plus: An Hour with Wayne Green. Some thoughts that ran through my mind while I was digitizing a UFO Conspiracy tape.

Attending the Game Developers Conference, the Expo Floor, The Booths, The Floor, Pamphlet Game, Meeting Manifestos and Dreams, The Mag Chain. A discovery of a new way to approach a conference floor and make it into a game, which I enjoyed playing very much at the GDC Expo.