Jason Scott's Weblog
My buddy Aaron Swartz hung himself on Friday. Try to imagine a ball of energy, whipping around, looking for somewhere to strike, somewhere to hit, somewhere to find a stopping point or grand finale. Ultimately, just coming to a standstill because there’s just no real place to end up – a miserable standstill. That’s […]
Everybody needs a new year’s resolution. Most of them also need to follow through. I am going to try both. It’s a simple one, too: “By the end of 2013, change online computer history forever.” I’ve been working at the Internet Archive for nearly two years now, every day better than the last, with memories […]
UPDATE: Please read this later entry for update on this documentary. I’m putting this here to get some attention. There’s a documentary in production, or which was in production, which was a mini series about all things 8-bit consoles and computers. It’s called “8 Bit Generation”. It has trailers up. The trailers are […]
The short form of this post is that I and Archive Team would like to ask you to donate money to the Internet Archive. During the month of December, they’ve got a 3-1 matching partner, which means that every dollar you donate results in $4 going to the Internet Archive’s funds. That is unbeatable and […]
While doing some preliminary interview footage for the Arcade Documentary project, I asked a bunch of teenagers what most surprised them at the MAGFest pop-up arcade, where dozens of games of all stripe were right there ready to be played. To a person, it was one thing: The vector monitor on Asteroids. If you see […]
A weblog post that does little else but tell you to follow another weblog? Well, yeah, deal with it. This is a very special weblog I’m talking about. Here’s Jimmy Maher. I’ve never met this guy, but I love him. For the past year and a half or so (since March of 2011) Jimmy has […]
So, in the summer I suggested the idea of a “Just Solve the Problem” month, the idea of putting together a way for people to assemble and attack an extant, “unsolvable” problem and improve the state of the universe before it burns out. I suggested November, which is a nice, generally dull month. And I […]
We’ve been nibbling away at the Javascript MESS project for a long while, and the current lead guy has had a breakthrough in the last couple of days. We’ve been partially inspired by a number of Javascript projects out there that have shown the whole thing is possible, and not just possible, but probable. Most […]
This will be somewhat long and somewhat involved. It’s a posting meant to give my personal positions and assessments on the Just Solve the Problem 2012 Project, which is “Solve the File Formats Problem”. Ideally, it answers everything but specific choices down the line. If not, the Wiki will have answers. Here we go. General […]
As Just Solve The File Format Problem Month bears down on us, I thought I’d get this show on the road with more high-level discussion of the idea. It makes sense to read the first posting on this, as well as having you be aware a posting after this one will be much more detail-oriented. Because, after […]