ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

Archive for February, 2009

The Thick of It: Computer Shopper —

The article that informed me was very upbeat about it, but the fact remains: Computer Shopper is going out of print.  In the contemporary era, “going out of print” doesn’t always mean “died”; with the website now as valid a location for publication as anything else, the lack of a print component merely means dead […]

Interlude —

This happened in the middle of one of those dreams where you’re running around a lot, from place to place, probably built up from a couple day’s events. In my dream, we’re trying to find someone. He’s supposed to be in a play. This takes us to where we think he’s hanging out, some area […]

Goodbye to the Bandwidth Dragon —

In 2003, having recently bought a house, I achieved a weird little dream of sorts: I had a T-1 line installed into my basement. With it came shelves of servers, a hub that blinked menacingly, and a lordship/dominion over 32 of my very own static IP addresses. This was a good time. Previously, I’d only […]

The Moot I Know —

As time goes on I do more and more interactions with the press, and by press I mean “people who interview me or engage me on subjects for later recounting”. Some are professionals, some are children, and some are people who just like to get a little background on things. Many of my interactions go […]

The Millbrook Round Table —

My oldest friend, Chris Orcutt, went into his local hangout, the diner of his town of Millbrook, NY, and discovered that the local paper was closing its doors. Chris had worked on that paper over a decade before, as a true newspaper man, for a period of time, so it had a particular and personal […]

A Valentine’s Day Memory —

Based on my memory of the arrangement of the classroom, I believe this happened around the 4th grade. That would be 1980. We were given a writing assignment, our nascent class of future citizens, where we were asked to write about Valentine’s Day. Specifically, the teacher wanted origin stories. “I want you to write about […]

Bring On The Pain #5: CREATESPACE —

When we last left my adventure into digitial distribution, I said that I was going to report things as they hit crossroads or conclusions, just to not cause too much noise in the process. Well, all the people (well, all dozen of you) wondering how that is going can now hear about Createspace. Createspace is […]

What Is BBS? —

From: King Jables To: Jason Scott Subject: BBS I know that you’ll probably think think that I am a complete imbeceil for asking this, but I keep seeing the abbreviation “BBS” on your website. What exactly was a “BBS”, and why should the advent of the internet have signalled it’s demise? I mean, if people […]

A Stack of Paper —

In the mail, from Ross Kerr (who has been sending me similar packages), came a small stack of Computerworld, a newspaper-style trade publication covering all aspects of computer technology. This particular stack is from 1987. Some are in not so great shape and some are pristine. They’re obviously ones that were sent to a business, […]