Jason Scott's Weblog
People, it’s time. Actually, it was time probably 5 years ago, but better late than never. If you believe Clay Shirky, we can just keep burning energy nearly forever in terms of collaboration energy, but let us not waste too much more than we have, can we? It’s like how bananas used to taste different […]
Stuff happens for a reason; that’s what I was again reminded of after a 40 minute conversation with Gary Troy, director of Computer Beach Party. When we last left this story, I’d seen a terrible film at the Found Footage Festival. Since I’m the Computer History Guy, I wanted to get the story behind it. In […]
I like to think that when people funded my sabbatical, this was the sort of thing they wanted. During ROFLcon, there was a showing at the local movie theater of a rather rare, rather bizarre little computer film. I’d have thought I’d seen most films with computers in them. Or, at least, heard of them. […]
It’s my own unfair bias, but my preferential talks for ROFLcon center around history. Usually, it’s me up on stage with those guys. Sometimes, though, it’s not, and in one other case during the event, there was a pretty amazing panel that took place that I wanted to highlight. There were plenty of other great […]
When the organizers of ROFLcon decided to go another round with a multi-day presentation of internet-related memes, celebrities and issues, I had an opportunity to assemble a panel on a subject I thought worth covering. I chose USENET. Months later, my panel plans came to fruition, and I think came out pretty well. Naturally, when […]
It’s nice to be reminded of how many people are looking out for me and my interests. A few weeks ago, while travelling, I got mails, instant messages, and pages that there was some sort of “BBS Game” out there, and that it thanked me, and that it was based on calling into BBSes. I […]
If you used home computers at various times from the 1970s through to the 1990s, you have a problem. The problem may be irrelevant, or not a huge problem, but it’s a problem nonetheless. The problem is that the vast majority of home computers used 5.25″ floppy disks, (also called 5 1/4″, but I’ll stick […]
A while ago, I wrote an entry decrying the lack of ability to read 5.25″ floppies, a mainstay of computer data transfer for about 20 years. It seemed that the combination of it dying when it did and the proliferation of 3.5″ AND who knows what else meant there hadn’t been a commercial way to […]
OK, so if your printer is attached to your computer and you want to move your printer, detach the printer from the computer. Otherwise, this happens: As it turned out, the computer didn’t even disconnect from anything as it flew down and bounced off the scanner, but the anti-piracy technology of XP noticed the voltage […]
Here’s one of those weird coincidence things dealing with my early history with computers. It was a huge deal when I was 13 and my dad took us to California. I’d never been to California, and when I went there, this land of Atari and Apple, I was just amazed by it. I still am. […]