ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

Archive for the ‘computer history’ Category

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 […]

Bump Not Sage: Saving 4Chan —

Probably the best part of following a logical-conclusion path is when people supporting you with pumping fists, hoots, and hollers start to pump their fists a bit less and do a lot less hooting. So let me inform you all and the world that, after many months of work and negotiation, I have acquired 10 […]

The TEXTFILES.COM Intern —

…is named Rob. Rob and I are doing a trial set of days this week (I’m away during the middle of the week to keynote an Apple II festival) and we’ll see how a life of being given free food and drink but forced to log various bits of computer history fares for him. His […]

Further Collection Additions —

Ben Sherman had mentioned a few times he had a bunch of old magazines for me.  This past week, he dropped them off. Ben has been on the staff of 2600 magazine for some time, and of course has collected his own stuff over the years. So I didn’t entirely know what I was getting, […]

Goodbye, Paul Panks —

I considered putting this on the GET LAMP weblog, but I decided it just didn’t fit, because this isn’t really about the documentary, but about a person, and his relation to something he loved. It echoed around inside interactive fiction circles that Paul Panks had died, and while people were positive this was a prank, […]

TEXTFILES.COM Call for Interns —

Well, here we go. I’m trying to clear out a bunch of backburnered projects this year. Some of them involve scanning, some involve sorting, and others involve cataloging. They’re all in that “getting this time-consuming process finished” realm, which doesn’t necessarily need me, in the personal sense, doing all the tasks. Here’s an example: I […]

In Which The Collection Is Assessed —

So I mentioned a couple days ago how I took in all these magazines and artifacts. I figured I’d talk a little about my thinking behind how I deal with this collection. It’s not how everyone does it and I wouldn’t pretend to be a learned expert, but I wanted to share some of my […]

The Collection —

Here is how it is done. After a couple days of delightful reunions and questionable criticism flare-ups at the Open Video Conference, I am walking what is supposed to be a few blocks to a post-event dinner. In fact, it is a many-block walk, and I am walking with Kevin Driscoll, who I know through […]

Geocities Saved! (Sort of) —

It’s an old trick: the radical faction, devoid of boundaries of politeness and decorum, blasts forward into the darkness, doing what needs to be done for a cause. In this case, the impending shutdown of Geocities, a site of much derision but also one of great historical value, relatively speaking. Meanwhile, a second faction, related […]