Jason Scott's Weblog
Back in the 1980s, there’s an event that occurred that is worthwhile to study, mostly because of the parallels to issues that are hitting us now. It’s relatively obscure (except of course to those who lived directly in it) and that’s a shame, because it has lessons to teach. One of the inevitable things that […]
I am not exaggerating when I say that I could not imagine Blockparty going better than it did. Oh, sure, I could make things up and say that it didn’t have a air castle or funhouse in the parking lot, or I could complain there was no free sushi cart in the hallway with a […]
I wrote this letter earlier this year regarding a debate whether to put up a collection of talks up as one large file directory on bittorrent, or have separate “torrents” for each individual talk. I favored one large file directory, and went entirely overboard explaining why. I figured it might have some relevance for others […]
At a demoparty, there is often what’s called a “Wildcard” or “Wild” competition, where entrants can basically throw in anything they want to and compete for prizes. It sounds free-form, because it is. The entry can be a movie, a performance, a program, you name it, the sky’s the limit. They can get pretty out […]
There is nothing sordid here. When I was a lot younger, probably in my single digits, I befriended a local neighbor, name of Alex. Actually, his name was Alexas. That’s an odd name for a guy to have, but that’s what he had. He had red hair, freckles, and a slightly off-kilter outlook at life. […]
To ensure that things would run smoothly at the demoparty that I was hosting, I worked for no short time on a Partymeister server. Partymeister is basically demoparty maintenance software which allows for ease of voting, tabulation, messaging between attendees and a dozen other functions. It’s really cool, but required a lot of careful, quiet […]
There was an article that came out recently, describing in some level of depth and accuracy the story of the l0pht, a “hacker collective” that thrived from the early 1990s through to a purchase/merger by a rebranded security company called @stake, which for all intents and purposes killed it. This is a somewhat jarring article […]
As I’m preparing to head out to the Blockparty @ Notacon event, I try to clear out my e-mail, because I’ll be away from my home office and working on stuff on a stunted pace. It’s always a kind of grab-bag situation, finally giving an e-mail that’s been tenaciously sitting around waiting for me to […]
Yesterday’s mention of Super Paper Mario reminds me of a little low-rumbling theme I’ve encountered in the past decade or so, with regards to people hearing I do things like buy the Nintendo Wii or dump cash into an iPod or fuck around with Twitter and the like. Apparently it can be jarring to think […]
I’ve been playing Super Paper Mario for the Wii since it came out, and I finally “Solved” it, that is, I got to the part where it shows you the credits after telling you how everything ended. I choose games I’m going to get really involved in carefully these days; lack of time and all […]