ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

Archive for May, 2006

Goodbye, Dan —

A friend of mine drowned on Sunday. His name was always “Dankaye” to me, but in fact it is Dan Kivel. He was in his mid-30’s. I am mentioning this because my weblog has a good page ranking, and mentioning anything here adds things to the search engines quickly. There is a site for him […]

Around the Trashcan Fire —

I often go on pickup runs around websites, looking for the new textfiles or radio shows of the day, to add to either web.textfiles.com or its very loud buddy audio.textfiles.com. Like somebody browsing a flea market, I have some preferred items in mind, but I never shrink away from other cool stuff I happen upon […]

Coin, Operated Book, Sitting on the Shelf —

As part of the research into the Arcade documentary, I paid a hell of a lot of money (three figures, let’s just say) for a rare book called “Drop Coin Here” by Ken and Fran Rubin, published in 1979. I got it because it has vital information on the real deep history of coin-operated machines […]

Spinning Plates —

Back from a weekend of work and documentary shooting. I spent Saturday at the Vintage Computer Festival East 3.0, held in Wall, NJ. A good time had by all. I got to see some old friends, make some new ones, and meet some heroes, including David Ahl, who is truly one of the greats. He […]

The Best and the Interesting —

Two small ideas that didn’t warrant separate entries. Best A few years back, I found myself in downtown Boston in need of a belt. Part of the belt I was wearing had broken, leaving a rather important aspect of the buckle in my hand, and now I was in danger of making a scene. I […]

Arcade: The Documentary —

This is probably going to confuse things horribly, but the word’s getting out and I might as well put up an explanation of what it’s all about before I start reading “explanations” by people who don’t know me. I’ve started another documentary. It’s called ARCADE. I have a website up: arcadedocumentary.com. It will be about […]

Selling the Scene, Selling the Box —

For the first time since I started selling the documentary, I’ve actually added products to the order page. I’m interested to see how that goes. The first product is not mine, REALLY not mine. It’s a DVD-ROM of ANSI and regular Artscene material, compiled and put into one place by RaD Man of ACiD, who […]

So Long, Spaz —

When I was younger, there were a number of things which seemed just beyond cool when my friends or the promotional material would describe them. Around 10th grade in high school, I heard that there were these things called “Bio-Spheres” that would be little closed-off ecosystems that would maintain themselves and you could watch all […]

Another One Missed —

Among the people I was reaching out to for an interview for GET LAMP was Gregory Yob, the original creator of the game “Hunt the Wumpus”, which could be argued was one of the first adventure-like games on a computer. It was a long shot, but I take a lot of long shots and life […]