ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

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Why We Correct —

In Sandman #20, “A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream”, a performance of the Shakespeare play of that name is performed in front of the characters it was based on. Afterwards, the King of Fairie comments “..this diversion, although pleasant, is not true. Things never happened thus.” The Sandman, who has comissioned the creation of the play, responds “Oh, […]

Game Over (A Moment of Silence) —

A moment of silence, please, for an arcade you didn’t play at. There are, as I’m sure you might guess, lots of private arcades out there, ranging from just a few games in the basement up to full-blown professional-level places that could rival anything anybody has played in. Some of them open for friends, or […]

A Very Successful DENCON —

As mentioned previously, the plan was set into motion many months ago to bring a little retrocomputing spirit to DEFCON. That plan was successful. Load-in was intense and a little late in the day on Thursday. I think my favorite moment of that was when we realized we needed a few more people to handle […]

In Which You Make Good With the Cash —

Well, holy moly, people. I put out a call to help with the bandwidth bill to keep textfiles.com going while I do some life transitionary work, and didn’t you all come in droves. Donations ranged wildly, from a few bucks (thanks) to hundreds of bucks (thanks). And because of that, I am paid up for […]

In Which I Straight Up Hit You For Cash —

I can’t remember ever doing this, but current times require it. Basically, my bandwidth bill for TEXTFILES.COM has come up, and it will be a struggle for me this quarter to pay it. (I pay quarterly instead of monthly.) I am shifting around money coming up with the ability to charge it, but I’ve been […]

Disruptive History —

I figured I’d bring this out in the open, because it’s an interesting facet of being a place where history is being told. And not just history, of course, but very specific history that a small number of people care about. It’s one thing to want “the truth” in history, and to want to know […]

A Sketch of Defcon Attendance —

This will be my 10th year attending DEFCON. I came in pretty late into actually attending hacker conferences, but I’ve tried to make up for lost time – I’ve attended something like 50 or thereabouts in the ensuing time. DEFCON continues to be the largest in most terms, with HOPE being a very close second. […]

Kansasfest 2009 —

I attended KansasFest 2009, the 20th anniversary. KansasFest is, basically, a 5-day Apple II-centric conference held in a dormitory/university in Kansas City, MO (hence the name). The history is that it had a previous name, but was informally called KansasFest, and when the original sponsor disappeared, the conference kept going and they kept the “new” […]

4Chan: Sage Not Bump (For Now) —

OK, so the upshot is that the 4chan archives I’ve acquired will not be going up to archive.org, or anywhere public, anytime soon. After a good amount of discussion with various mentors and friends, I’ve determined the negative results would outweigh the positive.  Don’t worry, nobody “got to” me. People don’t generally “get to” me […]

DENCON —

Yes, this is my week for dropping all sorts of announcements and news.  Here’s another one. Last year, after DEFCON came to a close, I was hanging out with a couple people from the staff and organization, including Dark Tangent, and I proposed the possibility of a retro room, something with older technology for the […]