ASCII by Jason Scott

Hardcoded

35 might not seem like a very old age to some, but in many ways, it's a good time for me to really decide what projects of mine are going to "happen", which will not, and what, if any, new projects I should be taking on while I still have the energy and age of the 30s. As a result of this, I started work on about 3 movies and a bunch of other things (GET LAMP is the absolute forefront, of course) and I've been dumping off a lot of other stuff that was in the planning or consideration stages.

One of these was a TV show I've pushed around my plate like a bit of unwanted vegetables for about 3 years. It's time to get rid of that one. So what better way to get rid of it than throwing it out on a public website?

For all my ranting about television in previous entries, it might be surprising to know I was considering doing a television show. But part of that was that when I say "television show", I mean "videotaped show", which means it could have been distributed online, sold as a DVD, or what have you. Maybe even on a cable channel or one of the other many channels out there for new works. I wasn't going crazy on that side of things.

So here we go; here's the "pitch", as it were, and why I am dropping the whole idea.

First, you need that kind of short-form pitch that either makes people interested or makes them cut bait. So the short form: "Junkyard Wars.... for programmers. Have people hack computers and make programs, for money, in a marathon coding session. Prizes, tie-ins... hey, you gonna do that whole line?"

Now, a little more meat. The title/name was "Hardcoded", and the basic premise is this: set up in a warehouse with a two level structure, you have four teams of programmers, perhaps an artist or other unusual creative person thrown in, and each gets a corner of this structure on the first floor. On the second floor, two hosts (I wanted two chatty but engaging males, kind of the smart nerd type) talk to their on-the-floor person (an engaging female) about what the teams are up to.

The game goes on for two days (enabling weekend shoots). The teams can be assembled from software companies or other firms, or maybe are all from around the country and thrown together. The teams assemble on the first day to be given the task they've got to have finished at around 2pm on Sunday. For my example/pilot, the game would be "Pac-Man", and we'd have a Pac-Man machine in the center of the place. It'd be plugged on, under a sheet, and lifted up for people to see. Obviously, it'd be playable throughout the event.

The four teams would be given the art of Pac-Man and the sounds, but that would be it, and they'd have to hack something together after that. A point-scale would be there based on creativity, skills... And every 4 hours or so, the teams would be given other "code challenges" they could take on at the same time, and the question would be, do we go for that code challenge and risk failing to "ship", or do they just jam through?

Like a software project, there would be stages for "alpha", "beta" and "final". In the Pac-Man example, having the ability to move around would be a "alpha", having the game playable would be a "beta", and then the final bits would need to be there, like fruit and the like, for "final". If this sounds rough, it is. I wasn't exactly staying up late at night concerned about how the scoring scale would work.

The question that might come to mind is "how could this at all be compelling"? Well, several answers to that. First of all, you'd have quite a bit of post-production in place, doing things like explaining (in high-level form) how the programmers were coding, how they were working together, and so on. The hosts would be engaging in their own way, but we'd also have sequences about, say, Pac-Man and the videogame industry that could be used if segments were missing some level of interest, until we got to the "beta" stage or so on.

Obviously, all the screens of all the programmers would be recorded, as well as webcams showing their expressions and other cameras showing events within the space. Most shows/events of this sort have what's best called a "safe room" where the contestants are allowed to go outside of cameras (specifically, to sleep and use bathrooms) but there's a contractual obligation they sign where they don't discuss strategy or have conversations except with producers if there's an issue.

Now, either you buy into this idea or you don't. And that's fine if you don't, I liked the challenge of making programming interesting and doing cool post-production and assigning teams of different people to interact, and so on. That's part of what made the idea fun and worth mulling over.

There are two main problems with this whole idea, in terms of stopping me from going forward. I don't mean cash or equipment issues, either, which are a different level; certainly tie-ins for prizes (win stuff from Thinkgeek! win stuff from sony or panasonic or apple!) and branded computer systems (Alienware!) would go a ways towards helping the cost. That's just money.

The first problem is the fact that most of these shows are fake.

Now, I don't mean fake in terms of actually pre-determining who will win and then crippling the other team until they can't win, ever (like the quiz show scandals of the 1950s). I mean more along the lines that the most important thing, the driving force in putting together each show, is to make it compelling. And the fastest way to create compelling footage is to ensure, hell or high water, that there is as much conflict and neck-and-neck competition every step of the way.

This sounds logical, but to me if you've designed the show right, the compelling aspects will come out of it. If you're of the state of mind that says that unless someone is yelling nothing is happening, that's a different type of show. And with the type of shows that Hardcoded takes its cue from (Monster House, Monster Garage, Panic Mechanics, Junkyard Wars and so on), any multi-episode observation of how they flow show off several "tricks" being engaged.

A number of the shows sabotage. They fail to deliver what was asked for, they undo work the team has completed, and they modify the rules (occasionally drastically) to suit keeping everyone neck and neck. While nobody likes to see an absolute pulverisation of the losing team or the deadline, it's mildly creepy to see weights piled on a team like Harrison Bergeron just to keep them from overly succeeding. And that's the stuff we can see through the edits; that's not even the stuff we never get to see.

Another trick is to force conflict; in cases where teams are assembled, say, Monster House, you will see a team assembled where you have 4 or 5 relatively together individuals, and then one absolutely insane fuck-up of a person. Someone who may or may not have skills, but are certainly not used to working with a team, or who don't normally work under a short short deadline, and are brought in essentially to grit the wheels and get some nice sparks flying. Conflict arises in all things, to me; and you have compelling footage from that, but just intentionally hothousing a situation panders to the worst aspects of television and I couldn't see myself being a party to that, to achieve the level of success these shows had.

In fact, that's where the second part came in; I remembered what it's like to work on a production like this, having been involved in such stuff in my past; the crew fights, the gossip, the little lies, the big ones, and all the pieces of you that this sort of project rips away from a person, until they're only a small bit of what they used to be (although, hopefully at least, richer).

That's kind of the reason I've grown to enjoy shooting leisurely (or at least lacking insane deadline pressure), generally alone, generally one-on-one. I like talking with people, getting to know them, not depending on their crying or breaking down or screaming to know compelling footage exists in them. I like the burden being on me to bring out the interesting part of a person, not just piling on bullshit over a person's head until they squeak out protests and I film it 3 inches away from their face. I can live with it.

So into the shitcan goes Hardcoded. It would have been fun to watch. It probably wouldn't have been as much fun to make.

Loose Film Ends

None of the following concepts/ideas/paragraphs grew in my mind enough to warrant a decent weblog entry, so I'm grouping them together, like a lost hiking party, clinging to each other for warmth and hoping you'll read them before the ice weasels come.

There were a number of planned ideas at the beginning of BBS: The Documentary that I had on deck but which, for various reasons, did not ultimately happen or were morphed into other aspects of the work. A few that come to mind are:

• An episode that was going to focus on just one "bbs scene", start to finish, to show how the BBS could influence a community across decades, and to get a deeper feeling for what it was in the context of a location. I chose Worcester, Massachusetts because it was geographically close and because I thought it was just big enough to be interesting but not so big that the anonymity/population would be overwhelming. Too many people had left Worcester or were uninterested in being interviewed to make it realistic; one was semi-violent about the prospect.
• An episode was going to focus on just those tiny/fringe voices that found a place on BBSes: UFOs, alternate science, sexuality, religion, based around small businesses, and even neo-nazi. The idea was to give some insight into how the BBS gave people a voice they didn't otherwise have. This got absorbed into SYSOPS AND USERS, because it felt like I was just trying to do a freakshow, which I was personally against being a party to.
• An episode that was going to talk about everything from Amiga MODs to Demo groups to ATASCII creators, you name it, to show the massive spectrum of art and artists that were able to express themselves over BBSes. I ended up just doing ANSI art, and American ANSI art at that (this became ARTSCENE) because just getting a grip on that story filled an hour.
• An episode about computer and communications hardware, to show the history related to the equipment, modems, and other stuff associated with a BBS. It didn't take me long to figure out that it was much more interesting and relevant to talk about the people themselves instead of their hardware.
• An introductory short film with me (on camera) welcoming you to the world of the BBS Documentary and describing what they were. This got as far as narration and music before I shot it in the head, because while I want to think otherwise, I ain't camera talent.

This is the nature of a project, especially a documentary, which I described recently as "a film where you shoot the footage and then find out what the plot is". If there's one thing I'd want people to know who were taking an interest in the process, it's this: you have to be flexible. Just because in your mind the most important shot is a crying baby, if you don't get your crying baby, suck it up and keep shooting and you'll probably find something even more compelling than the crying baby. You can't just go ripping stuff apart because the reality you're filming doesn't conform to your vague mental shooting script. You keep going and make the best of it; this happened to me all the time. It's a shame some of these ideas never saw the light, but many more ideas saw the light that I never even fathomed would show up during filming.

Let's switch gears. Far and away, the most complaints I get about the BBS Documentary series, in terms of content, is ARTSCENE. I get some nice accolades for it too, but I have gotten nearly a year of rips and insults for that specific episode.

The reason for this is because it is so highly focused, and so intensely US-centric in content. I get a lot of petulant "I guess [my thing] wasn't good enough for you" and "too bad you didn't tell the real story", and a bunch of stuff along those lines. It brings up an interesting perception, which both interests and confounds me: a lot of folks are pretty convinced I'm it, in terms of documentary exploration of this subject. That is, if the BBS Documentary didn't cover it, we're screwed, it's over, it won't be covered, dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind. I appreciate the unwarranted belief that I'm the canonical arbiter of history and permanence, but in point of fact that's pretty much crap. I'm just the most recent attempt to tell online history and the story of computers from a specific position. In my case, I'm going to flood the market with dozens of hours of interviews about the subject, but that's not the final word either. There is nothing stopping anyone from doing another film with a different core country in the center of the story; and in fact, there are documentaries that I have seen myself that take place in other countries and tell stories of "scenes" and computer-based social groups. Some are really good. Some are not really good. But they exist and are being made. No need to park the waaah-mbulance in front of my door.

Switching gears again, I am asked by people if I will be doing a documentary on X, where X is some relatively recent concept or social group. Here's some of the suggestions I can remember off the top of my head:

• Viruses/Virus Writers/Virus Companies
• IRC
• Warez Groups (Modern Version)
• Wardriving
• Hacker Conventions
• Hacking/"The Underground"
• "The Internet" (Modern Version)

I don't mind dropping all those ideas on you, because I have no plans to do anything with them. The fundamental reasons are pretty much the same: modern "scenes" don't trust guys like me. I am asked why the BBS documentary doesn't go too much into "the current scene" in the context of the present. And besides my focus being on what was because of the danger of it disappearing, another trivia fact was that with very few exceptions (thank you Rob Swindell, thank you Leif Bloomquist), most people doing anything relatively in the "present" treated me like a litterbox.

People don't trust someone who says "I'm going to come in an quantify your life on video". They trust it even less if we're talking about their current life, and not something 10-20 years ago that they can reflect upon or consider with some distance. Trust me, I got the message: stay out of the present, stick with what happened. I don't need the pain.

Additionally, and I don't know why this shouldn't be obvious, the number of people willing to speak on camera about ongoing quasi-legal acts are few and far between, and mostly consist of you (the filmmaker/journalist) being the latest con or challenge. This is part of why HPAC is not HPVAC in the series: people who wrote or who did anything with viruses assume (and it's a good assumption) that going on camera saying "Yeah, I write/wrote viruses" is a one-way ticket to sucksville. So there you go.

(Like I said, these are all half-developed ideas, huddled together for warmth. I'm sure if people need greater context, they can catch me at notacon in a few months. Bring Pocky.)

Finally, some commentary on length/breadth. I get two main complaints about the current size of the BBS Documentary DVD set:

• It is way too long and burdensome.
• It is way too short and fluffy.

The second one is easy to answer: imagine me holding the box in front of my face and me yelling "IT'S FIVE AND A HALF FUCKIN' HOURS!!!!!"

I found, ultimately, that lengthening the work (and make no mistake, I would have made it 10 hours long if it made sense) just found me kind of telling the same story in slightly different ground. For example, FIDONET, which covers that network pretty well, does not discuss Alternet and about a thousand other networks that used Fidonet or Fidonet-like technology to communicate in groups and lines that might never intersect with the larger Fidonet. I got ribbing about this from some of the groups or people who motivated the networks, but cinematically, how do you say "And also, there was something almost entirely like Fidonet but not quite like Fidonet but with many of the same issues and situations we've just discussed" and not be clunky? I couldn't find a way in the editing room. Same for a lot of stuff which people have criticized me for not including. Like I said, for a lot of people, I didn't go into the subject enough. While I understand this in a vague sense, the harsh reality of the concept stuns me. "You mean it should have been longer!!?"

As for "It's too damn long" or "it goes into crap I couldn't care less about", this I can understand more. I certainly didn't create the film in a way that really lets you watch 15 minutes and "get the point" while you go out to the bathroom until minute 30 and catch up immediately again. This stuff is deep, wide, and all over the place. It's like one of those 1,200 page books the author spent years on, and you're just staring at it, stunned, going 'Well, I'll bet it covers the story of Robert Moses pretty damn well." But that's not what you specifically wanted.

And on that note, I'll say: I'd rather have people who loved the subject/film so much they wanted it twice as long, or people who so completely didn't relate to the film that they couldn't hack 10 minutes of it, than a million people who could watch my film for the purpose of having something on the TV while they fix the numbers in their cell phone memory. I didn't make it to be a background, or a screen saver, or another piece of crap flying down the pipe. I made it what it was to the best extent I could. This cuts down the potential audience greatly, but the audience it's cut down to tends to be very happy indeed.

Oh, crap! Ice weasels! See you!

Pud

Philip J. Kaplan, "Pud" of Fuckedcompany.com (and a bunch of other sites) was interviewed for the BBS Documentary in 2002. I've now finally put his total interview up, and it's definitely one of the more entertaining and hilarious ones, all the way through:

http://www.archive.org/details/20020302-bbs-kaplan

It's about 43 minutes, and you can tell in the first 15 seconds how it's all going to go.

Here's the description from the notes for that interview:

Pud was a complete drop out of the dark for me. As a reader of fuckedcompany.com throughout the late 1990's, I'd always enjoyed his wry sense of humor and quick jabs at some of the foolish companies that took so much money from everyone in the name of pies in the skies. So it was very surprising when he contacted me, directly, out of the blue and said that he was interested in being interviewed.

It turned out that Philip Kaplan ("Pud" on his site) had run a pirate BBS in earlier times, before he'd joined the world wide web. And not only that, he really wanted to talk about it. This was big news, because in the amount of talking I'd done with anyone who'd touched pirated software or BBSes, the general reaction was a complete disinterest in talking about those days. A few mentioned the Statute of Limitations and their current positions in society as reasons; obviously Kaplan did not really care what other people thought. And really, it came out in his interview that he was no insane big player in the pirating of software; just another kid with a BBS who offered a few games for download that weren't his.

The interview was to be done at his offices in New York City, and when I arrived a half-hour before the appointed time, I decided to stick it out in the lobby of the thin, strange building in downtown until the right moment. I got into the clanky elevator about five minutes before the appointment, not wanting to show up too early but not cruise in late, either. Imagine my surprise when I got to the floor, went into the hallway, and found all the doors locked and all the lights off.

I waited around for an hour and a half, figuring I'd messed up in some way, double checking the time, calling Pud's phone number from the interview sheet, and trying to determine what to do next. It was apparent at that time that for whatever reason, Pud was not going to be available for an interview.

Outside, with my equipment, I decided that I really needed to make up for the 200 miles I'd driven in some fashion, so I called an old friend of mine from the BBS days whose number I had on my cell phone. He used to call my BBS in the 1980's and ran a rival BBS for a while before his family moved away, and we'd connected again in the 1990's after he came to work in NYC. I figured I could spend the day with him, and maybe even interview him, so I'd have some footage to show for the day.

As it turned out, my friend was not available for a visit or interview, as he had a bunch of other things to do that day. But in a level of synchronicity I still cannot believe, he said "Wait... pud? He hosts with the company I work for. Let me get his cell phone."

Let's just focus on that again. I was in New York City, home of millions, and I was unable to reach someone, and I called one number of one friend who lived there, and he knew how to reach that person.

Pud called me 10 minutes later and apologized profusely. It turned out he was rehearsing with his band late the previous night and had just fallen asleep at the rehearsal studio. He gave me directions to where the studio was and told me to call upstairs to be let in.

I decided to just bite the bullet and take a (expensive) cab ride the many blocks to the studio. It was a nondescript building, certainly nothing that looked like you'd go there to do music or anything else. I always have a slight amount of nervousness walking around in a city laden with an obvious pile of expensive audiovisual equipment, and the look of the place didn't help all that much, but after some effort, I got inside and Pud came down to get me.

The building was basically all rehearsal studios, lots of rooms with black walls and tons of flyers and info sheets on hopeful bands trying to get a break. In Pud's space, he had a massive drum set, a bunch of keyboards and drum machines, a few guitars and lots of other similar stuff you'd expect to see. He also had some intense stage lights set up, I guess so he could get used to doing his work while distracting lights blazed all around in his face.

Pud had a bandmate who was somewhat disinterested in the whole endeavor as I set up. Pud didn't seem to have an interest in sitting anywhere besides his drum set, so I simply aimed the camera that way. I had a back light to shine at him from one side, but the weird lights on the ceiling provided more than enough brightness, although of course they killed anything resembling color balance.

Pud told me that this was the same rehearsal building where Madonna used to practice in her early Like a Virgin days. In the meantime, of course, hundreds of bands had been through this place, and many of them were playing that very moment.

In fact, they were playing around the room we were in, to the point that it was difficult to hear Pud from across the room. This was a sound nightmare. I couldn't very well tell the other bands they had to stop playing, and so was resigned to the idea that none of this interview would be usable.

Since the interview was being conducted with a massive drum kit in the shot, I had a weird idea; maybe if I took the boom microphone I used and put it right in front of Pud's face, inches from his mouth, I could get enough of his voice in there to drown out some of the background sound. I figured that with so much obvious music equipment in the shot, nobody would really think a boom mike out of place, especially if I aimed it as if it was always supposed to be there.

This worked; when I got the tape at my friend Delchi's apartment later that day, I found that the sound on Pud was really, really good and everything he said came out clearly. You could hear the bands if you listened, but it was fuzzy background, not the in-your-face din that it was at the interview. In fact, it was so loud at the interview that I had to shout the questions at him for him to hear me some of the time. So really, all things considered, between the random call that got me in contact with Pud to the luck-out with the sound, the whole interview is a miracle.

The interview lasted about an hour before Pud got bored. While I was setting up, he played a bunch of drum solos and flipped his drumsticks around a bunch of times, so that's on tape too. His cowboy hat and willingness to answer every question candidly adds a real spice to the whole interview, so it's one of my favorites for that reason. We talked about running his pirate BBS, how he used his skills with BBSes to make fuckedcompany.com's web boards move smoothly, and we talked a lot about how the internet changed the face of BBSes forever.

After the interview, I got a cab ride down to where I'd parked the car, and headed over to Queens, where Delchi (another interviewee) had an apartment, and where I hung out before driving home. It was a great time.

By the way, as I said before... since I go through these interviews one more time, then I have to upload a 2 gigabyte MPEG file (and some additional other files) and then edit in all the relevant information into archive.org, the whole process is taking a significant amount of time to do. But it is being done.

The Best BBS Movie Ever Made

The best dramatic movie about BBSes was created not in the 1980s, but last year, 2005. And it wasn't a movie, it was a TV series. And it wasn't made in the United States - it was made in Japan.

It's called Densha Otoko (Train Man), and in my opinion it is the best dramatization of using a BBS, ever, in a visual medium.

The story itself is pretty simple: an otaku (fan boy), who lives an OK life with his figurines, movies, idol worship, and anime, sees a girl being accosted by a drunk on the subway, and stands up to protest. This gets the attention of others in the subway car and the drunk is wrestled away, saving the girl from an assault. The girl is not wearing her contacts, and doesn't notice what an intense nerd the otaku is, and asks for his address to send him a thank-you. From this, a friendship/romance blooms, and with the expected ups and downs that come across the next 11 episodes.

Since he has absolutely no experience with women who aren't untouchable idols or figurines, the otaku turns to the only place he has to get advice: a web-based forum, where dozens of posters get together to help him learn on his feet about life, love, and where to get a haircut.

The genre is called J-Drama (Japanese Drama), and has its own conventions that might seem weird or annoying to american viewers used to the raising-eyebrow-smirking school of american dramatic films, but one thing can't be misunderstood: this thing was a hit.

It was based off of a book with the same name, which simply printed all the web forum messages in order, so you would read it and over time you'd get the same story, without it being played out visually. So all the different personality types and interactions of a BBS came out in this book, as you read along. And the book was supposedly based on a true story (not that I have any way to check on that), and sold many, many copies. A project to translate this book into English is here.

That was in 2004. In 2005, the television adaptation came, and it's incredible.

First of all, the creators did a very smart thing; they cast dozens of people to play the web forum posters. They recorded hours of each of them, surrounded with their various environments and props, just reacting. No words, no saying things out loud, just reacting. Then, when editing these scenes into the show, you could get a montage of reactions, one after another, flooding the screen. It's overpowering; people all reacting one after another, all staring into screens, adding their bit to the conversation; it's what I was shooting for in my film and they do it so much better (since, obviously, it's a dramatic piece).

Second of all, the BBS is not just a cheap device like someone being able to fly or grant wishes; over time, Densha's story causes other people in the BBS to change their own lives, inspired to take that extra step, pick up the phone, or look at life differently. And as an extra cute step, some of the people's lives intersect directly into Densha's life (as others find out about the BBS and his postings on it).

I was first told about this series from RaD Man, who himself first heard about the series because one of the characters is an ASCII artist and posts text-based artwork on the site throughout the series (and even has his own sub-plot). He kept wanting me to see the "ASCII movie" but of course it's actually a BBS movie, a fantastic one.

At this point, you either want to see this thing or you want to run far, far away. I can say that it's pretty easy to find this thing to download, and get subtitles for, and all the rest. And I can also say that the television series is absolutely rife, overrun, with fan references and commentary, nailing a lot of what I like about the Otaku ideal. It is a very well-done series, and, again, the best BBS movie ever made.

By the way: From the success of the TV series, there was an actual movie made, but it's not that good. It was shot, edited, and released in about 60 days, and it completely shows. Also, the main character starts out shy instead of ugly and shy, along with a host of other flaws. Ignore it. The TV show, with its dozen hours of opportunity for exposition, is the way to go.

Hacking the Scantron

I have a page of webstats for all my sites. I occasionally check it to see if anything's funky. Since the textfiles.com sites are all hosted in various places, I don't necessarily notice if something gets hit until the fun is over.

Such is the case when I found out that in 6 hours, over 24,000 people read a file about Hacking Scantrons.

Again, that's TWENTY-FOUR THOUSAND.

In a web statistics generator, it looks like this:

The orange is how many unique sites visited within that day, and obviously a lot of unique sites visited that day.

For this, we can lay the blame on this file, decontextualized, being made a "digg" on digg.com which is basically a more level-playing-field version of slashdot. People can say "I digg this" and it gets moderated up or off the front page, as well as allowing others to comment, and so on. The link for this one is here. 1,215 people said they "dugg" this file, as of this writing. You can't "undigg" as far as I can tell, so it's either "positive" or "abstain" in the voting process. Oops!

There are apparently several ways to take on a "digg" that you don't like, and the methods were attempted against this "dugg" link: Someone came along and created a fake scantron article link in a desperate attempt to get the original off the front page. And of course someone tried to submit another similar file to get themselves some diggs and that failed as well.

A much more informative aspect is the running commentary from the people linking over to this file, and it brings up a pressing situation that I've been studying in a roundabout way: information pollution. Since the web.textfiles.com file is being linked to directly, I think a lot of people might get the impression this is a living, vetted, working article. It just shows up on the main page of digg.com, presented with no useful context, with this description: "Sick of filling in those stupid bubbles? Want to artificially boost your academics? Scantron hacks... Note: the chapstick was just a BS rumor:"

No commentary of any usefulness about the article, and an implication that it is, in some way, useful and truthful. It's not. It was written over 10 years ago, and even if it worked in some way (and the article doesn't even imply it's more than a little bit successful at best), it sure as heck isn't going to work these days anywhere like it once did. But since the digg user presented it with little fanfare and hot-linked it, people who "just browse" find themselves lapping up information that is problematic indeed.

So why do I even have it up? Well, I'm a historian. Even a few years later, this file contains some interesting information outside of a questionable methodology for messing with scantrons: it shows how people were affected by these devices, gives ideas of the teenage desire to beat the system, shows the use of "how we did" verification via encrypted signature back then, and a host of other tangental signposts.

I would consider the happiness in which people will pick up this file, not even trying to determine its context, and go off on its usefulness or relevancy, to be equivalent to running into an antiques stores and trying the rusted dental tools in the back, right now, in your mouth, and then complaining that the experience was not hygenic or pleasureable.

Over time, this problem is going to get worse, as all manner of material is a single click away. I'm not saying something needs to be done, but it's something I'm aware of and watching, and maybe as time goes on, I'll comment on it more and think out more of what "information pollution" could mean.

I say this, of course, with the apparent equivalent of 500 smokestacks blasting out from the textfiles.com factory.

Whoop de Shmoo

Just finished my talk, which I gave to a dozen people. 12! Now, the main reason for this is because I was up against two high-visibility speakers (no seriously). You kind of can't go to these things and not see Dan Kaminsky talk. Unless, of course, you're in another room giving a speech.

I recorded it, and my talks have most of their life come from being available online, so expect it on archive.org and audio.textfiles.com soon.

However (and this is the main reason I'm writing this, not to bemoan low attendance) I announced a new website, one I have spent weeks of work on (and many more to come):

http://hacker.textfiles.com

Enjoy, browse, and let me know what you think.

The Adventurers' Club (A Followup)

Back in the beginning of December I offered membership in a little experiment I was trying out, what I called an "Adventurers' Club". Basically, the idea was that if someone sent me $100 towards my next documentary (which is likely years away), then they would get a copy of my current documentary, three copies of the next one when it came out, and a mention in the credits.

I figured, hey, what the heck, it was worth a shot.

I'm pleased to announce that as of this morning the club raised four thousand dollars.

Now, I really need to stress what this is. This is forty people! Forty people who, based on either the previous documentary or the other work I do or my hanging out with celebrities that I was worth this sort of investment. While I recognized some of the names (friends, web-friends, and so on), a lot I simply do not. I don't know them and they don't know me except through my stuff online. And they threw $100 at me.

That is an enormous amount of trust and I don't take it lightly.

This site gets read by a number of budding filmmaker types who want to know where they can get funding or help or whatever (I know this because they write me) and here, I think, was the formula I used to raise this money:

Stack of previous film DVDs + explanation of project to come + paypal + truth + honesty = $$$$success$$$$

Some of the people who joined didn't want me to send them a DVD box. Some didn't want their names on the credits. One was a group of about a dozen people putting bucks together and then sending them to me. I can't thank all these people enough.

I ordered my new camera on Friday. It's an AG-HVX-200, a very nice camera, that shoots in a variety of formats and is part of a family of cameras that produce very nice-looking footage. It is backordered because it is very new, and because a lot of people want it. I know that with this camera I can shoot GET LAMP and the other documentary ideas I have in my head, and the footage will be stunning.

And yes, that is a high definition camera. I am shooting a documentary on text adventures in high definition.

Because of the Adventurers' Club, this camera went from a face-pressed-against-the-storefront-glass dream to a shopping list item. I can't stress that enough, how much everyone helped.

So thank you.

Public Speaking

I am speaking at Shmoocon next week, on Friday, in Washington, DC. The subject of the talk is "A History of Hacker Conferences". I'm spending 5-10 hours a day working on it right now, and will get it in under the wire for the show.

I've spoken what probably counts as "frequently", over a dozen times, at various events, shows and conventions. I've addressed audiences as small as 10 and as large as a thousand.

The thing is, I have this weird talent: I don't get nervous about public speaking. Just not at all. I will address a room full of people as if I'm having a conversation with a couple buddies in a diner booth. It just doesn't affect me. I have seen the often-quoted statistic that more people are afraid of public speaking than death. I am not one of those people.

I discovered this when my high school, Horace Greeley High, had student elections. Anyone running for student elections had to give a speech before their class (about 300 people). This was a dreaded portion of the process, one nobody wanted to do. I, however, saw it as a chance to force 300 people to listen to me for 5 minutes, and signed up simply for that.

My speech was a litany of humor and parody, with a series of bizzare platforms calling for destruction of the language lab, digital clocks in classrooms so people wouln't have to strain with the big hand and the little hand, and as a big finale, I called for our school mascot to no longer be "The Quaker", and instead be "The Greeley Ferrets". To demonstrate, I brought out my pet ferret and said "This is a small foul-smelling rat, nothing would capture our school spirit more". It was a big hit.

I of course lost. Kids aren't dumb.

The next year, I decided to go for the gusto and run for School president. Instead of bring president of the class, I would be the lord high poobah of all the students of Horace Greeley High. But more importantly, I would be able to address THE ENTIRE SCHOOL, all 1200 students, at once. Just me. And the school. You couldn't bottle perfection like that.

On the day that we had the speeches, 4 or 5 of us ran for president. There were speeches for treasurer, vice-president, and so on, and the presidential candidates were all lined up. It helps to understand how this was all laid out.

The school had the speeches in the gym, which is a huge affair (Greeley is a well-funded school) which could knock all the walls down and turn into a massive, massive space. All the kids were on bleachers along one side of the gym. The candidates sat on a few folded chairs in the middle of this acreage of clear, flat wood floor facing 1200 people. And this line of bleachers facing you across the gym was packed to the gills (attendance was mandatory, which made it even better). You couldn't fit the entire audience in your field of vision. That's a lot.

I was all prepared to do my act again, this time sans ferret. A few jokes, a little dig here and there, and once again I'd have had my time in the sun.

However, there was one thing I didn't count on.

David Mechner.

David was a student in my class who was in my same social group, the somewhat whacky "Quad Kids" who hung out in the plaza in the middle of campus, being weird, smart, and otherwise entertaining ourselves. His running wasn't a threat any more than both of us going to the same McDonald's would be a threat. It was just something we both were having fun with.

A lot of people know of David's older brother, Jordan. Jordan Mechner programmed Karateka, Prince of Persia, and a host of other games. (I've never met him.) David, in fact, was the model for the character in Prince of Persia; Jordan videotaped David running around and jumping and then traced them into bitmap graphics. In this way, a lot of people reading this have likely come into contact with David, if only to make him fall onto spikes.

I believe the order of speeches was random or based on last name, but regardless, David spoke before I did. Like me, he had no qualms, no fears of addressing over a thousand of his contemporaries. (Some of the candidates could barely function in this situation.)

But more than that, he did something even more memorable. He absolutely destroyed me.

Whereas I was planning a basic standup routine, David stood up and addressed the crowd in the most fantastic sweeping voice and gesture, and his "joke" speech, also cooked up for fun, was in fact a completely different tack.

He went for satire.

Much as one is not getting the full impact of the Gettysburg Address by describing it as "I hereby dedicate this memorial", I am unable to properly translate how devastatingly perfect David's speech was, but I'll try my best.

He asked the crowd to consider their time at Greeley, how important and formative these years were, and how many fine and beautiful memories they had gotten in just a short time. He asked of them, "when you come back to visit this school, this place where you met your friends and had so much fun, do you want to find it all changed and different and unrecognizable? NO!"

What you really want, he intimated, was a school where everything was just as you left it, pristine, untouched, unchanged. And he, David, would be the candidate to fulfill this promise. As School President of Horace Greeley, he would do nothing. He would accomplish nothing, he would change nothing, ensuring that the school he took possession of as president would be untouched upon his departure.

He called upon them to vote for him, the candidate of inaction, the candidate of no change, the candidate of dependable absenteeism.

It was a resounding hit. I specifically recall being unable to hold my sides in from how hard he made me laugh. And the echo of the classes laughing in that great huge hall as he triumphantly sat down on his chair was grandiose and well-deserved.

The problem was, here I was following him, the last speaker.

Forget competing. I couldn't get out of the gate.

How could I even begin to come up with something that even begin to top his speech? It was a finely honed, finely crafted amazing piece of satirical work. I had some jotted down jokes and references. It was like comparing a swiss watch and a joy buzzer.

I remember my right leg shaking for a couple seconds, and then the steady, bright-eyed calm of I'm fucked.

I couldn't top that. I started to do some of my material, saw it fall flat, and stopped. It was quiet. I made them do the "wave" back and forth a couple times, tried to get everyone to make popping sounds with their cheeks (which worked) and then sat down, totally wrecked.

That was the last time I ever got slammed like that. I was totally unprepared for the situation and completely unable to save it.

Now, of course, the choice is clear; I should have either immediately acceeded to David by lying on the floor in front of him like a lap dog, or tried to drop some sort of one-line bomb, like "What he said!" or "I disagree." and then sit down again. There was no comparison.

What I'm saying is, I got my little trial of fire at 16. I'm well-tempered steel now. But you need that, that sense of realizing you have to go back to the factory, have to do a bit more training. It made me a better speaker, made me rethink the relationship with the audience. I never thought of them as my toy again, and I never walked up for an hour with 10 minutes of material at any convention.

Oh, and we both lost.

Kids aren't dumb.

Midphase Blows Goats

Back in 2004, I knew that if my BBS Documentary got a lot of attention or press, it would quickly overwhelm my net connection (a T-1) and that there were a large amount of hosting companies out there, who could give me simple hosting for a cheap price. I arbitrarily chose Midphase, and created a subsite, media.bbsdocumentary.com, that hosted the trailers, photographs, and other such get-it-to-the-people stuff related to the project. Anyone can tell you that nothing says "this isn't worth purchasing" than clicking on a site and it makes you wait 10 minutes to see what the heck it is.

Everything was fine. They hosted that portion, I hosted my portion, and things were good.

I was Slashdotted in October of 2004. I got many, many visitors.

Within a short time, people on Slashdot started complaining about my site not actually providing images and photos. I got a lot of "it's hosted on a modem" jokes, just what I didn't want to see. I had specifically paid money for Midphase to prevent this.

I called Midphase, and submitted a ticket, desperately trying to get the site to return, to find out what the problem was. The website explained that I was out of bandwidth. I called and said I would like to buy more bandwidth, 50 gigabytes, to ensure my site came back. They told me this was $197, and I happily paid it, to get the site back.

The site did not come back.

I called and wrote again (it was now hours later, and the Slashdot effect was lost), and eventually, I had this explained to me:

Sorry, but bandwidth is not the reason why your account is blocked. Your
account overloaded the server by creating too many simultaneous HTTP requests
so the load jumped high and the web server crashed. We hads to suspend your
account to make the server working.

Attached file list.txt contains a list of simultaneous requests to your site.
There were almost 100 users downloading different fieles.
It's too much for a shared server. You need to order a dedicated to host this
account.

To make your account active now you have to disable the download section.

Please advise.
--
Alexander - Customer Service & Technical

Now, just so we're clear. They took $197 of my money, and then explained to me a few hours later that in fact they didn't need to take $197 of my money and that in fact I was so popular, that I couldn't be hosted on their site anymore.

I sent a very angry letter. Here is the text of that letter.

On Monday, October 14th, I was woken around noon by a friend on the phone
telling me I'd had my BBS Documentary site listed on Slashdot. I was
absolutely delighted. I'd spent 3 hard years travelling the country and
many months editing and refining my work to prepare it for sale.

In anticipation of sale, I listed my trailers, photographs and other works
with a third-party hosting company, so that people weren't reliant on my
T-1 that comes into my home. I chose midphase.com for this work, and was
pleased with both the quick registration and the controls at my disposal.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that my account had been
"suspended for billing". I assumed, naturally, that my site had been
popular enough that I'd outrun the 50 gigabyte limit I have per month.
This would be great news, because as I am selling a product, it means
there was a lot of interest in my product.

I called your support department, said that I apparently overran my
bandwidth and, with your support person's help, paid for 50 more gigabytes
of bandwidth, a nearly $200 charge. I was told my system would have more
bandwidth in "15 minutes".

An hour later, I became concerned there were other issues. This became a
major concern because, as I was selling a product that helps with my
livelihood as a documentary filmmaker, people being unable to reach this
data represents monetary damages at the rate of $50 a product. I called
back, but was unable to get a person on the phone. I left a voice mail,
and then checked the online support system. I explained my concern that I
was unable to get the bandwidth back.

Eventually, at least a couple hours after my shutoff occurred, a support
person explained in the ticket that I had too many hits; that because my
site experienced actual traffic in the form of attention from the world,
that my account had been shut off and I would be required to purchase a
"dedicated server". They also said that I would have to delete my
trailers, my demonstrative examples of my saleable product, to continue to
be hosted.

Meanwhile, I watched as message boards filled with derisive comments from
folks, indicating that my bandwidth shutoff told them I was not reputable,
and that my product would be potentially shoddy. My reputation has been
distinctly damaged by your actions.

I am no longer interested in doing business with your company. Please
refund the ~$197 charge that was obtained from me fraudulently by your
support team, and please issue me a pro-rated refund, from the end of
October onward, for the cost of the hosting I purchased with you.

Please reply today. I will hold any other further actions until I hear
back from your team.

- Jason Scott

This got me a phone call from someone at Midphase. He cancelled the $197 from the company, and he told me he hoped they could do something to make things better. I told him that I hoped he and his entire staff would die of suffocation within a horse. I made it clear I would never do business with them again, and that I was done with them, as anyone would be to be treated so poorly.

I switched to another company, Dreamhost. Dreamhost got a very annoyed guy (that would be me) calling them, demanding to know what they would do in the event of a slashdotting, and the response, I am pleased to say, was quick and attentive. Not only did they say they would do their best, they knew about my film and talked about the details and how much they liked it. I immediately signed up.

They have survived multiple slashdottings, boingboings, and waxys over the years hence.

Why do I bring this all up?

Because Midphase just contacted me, to tell me that they were having trouble re-billing me for my account.

Bear in mind I not only wrote them and said "cancel my account", but was on the phone with someone using multple variations of the phrase "cancel my account" and "please jump in front of a hummer with MIDPHASE SUCKS painted all over your body".

I wrote back three simple words: "Go to Hell"

And got this:

Dear Jason,

Is there anything at all that I can help you with? If you're having technical problems, I will be happy to have someone give you a call or email to walk you through them. But before we can help we need to know what problem(s) you are having. So please let us know, that's what we're here for!

If you have to cancel, the only place to do that is through our cancellation form, so please make sure to get that in so we can properly cancel your account. The cancellation form is located at cancel.midphase.com. If this form is not filled out, your account will stay open and we'll continue to bill you.

Thanks, and again, let me know what we can do to help you.

--
Sincerely,
Brian Harmatuk
midPhase Services, Inc.
Billing Representative
billing@midphase.com

The fact is, I hope a billion search engines pick this up, and the phrase "Midphase" returns "Blows Goats" when people "feel lucky". I was quite prepared to walk away from this sort of net-wankery, but something tells me that somewhere, someone's hand is wavering between Midphase and another choice (like Dreamhost, and I just wanted to say "Don't go with Midphase". That's midphase at 223 W. Jackson Blvd. #600, Chicago, IL 60606 USA.

Thanks.

Exhibits and Phantom Access

With the new year, I'm always trying to clean up a bunch of projects and promises I made myself, as well as removing stuff I'm not going to finish. Well, removing isn't the word. I think the words are encapsulate and label. Let someone else have the fun of going through my stuff.

Along that line, I have a lot of little sites and collections of files that don't fall under any real easy label. Because the site is called textfiles.com, there's some belief that I don't allow non-ascii files or otherwise believe only in the power of text and nothing else. This is, of course, crap, if you browse the site.

But some of the stuff I have falls under "this should be up somewhere, but there's not really enough to warrant an entire sub-site or domain to it". So I finally took one of my lying around domains, BBSHISTORY.ORG, and I'm going to start linking to stuff from there. People send me stuff all the time along the line of "you should have this", and I happily take it, but I had no way to say to the world "hey, look". Now I do.

This also means computist.textfiles.com has gone under this heading, with a link to bbshistory.org from the front textfiles.com page. A minor but important change.

So, among the things I had which were languishing in "this should really have something done with it", was a copy of Phantom Access, the code-hacking program written by Lord Digital of LOD. It has a lot of historical value, a lot of work was obviously put into it, and there's a dozen other reasons it should be somewhere. So I happily present the first textfiles.com "exhibit":

Phantom Access

The attempt is to present a program, concept or other artifact I have in a way that people can read about it, use it, and/or just browse quickly and get the idea before moving on. And, of course, you can download the whole thing in a zip file.

I hope to increase the number of these over the year. And this is your hint to send me stuff to exhibit. Happy new year!