ASCII by Jason Scott

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The End of the Good Times (Part 2) —

In the middle of an auction, when the numbers are flying that fast, there’s lots of potential to end up bidding a lot more than you were prepared to, or even worse, not bidding at all because your brain isn’t built to make decisions this fast. Someone used to it, who thinks in this fashion […]

The End of the Good Times (Part 1) —

If you lived in the Boston area in the last 10 or 15 years, you likely knew about a place called the Good Time Emporium. You probably called it “Good Times” instead, or “Good Time” if you had been there recently and the name stuck. A lot of people came but didn’t go by again […]

Bring on the Pain —

With three years of BBS Documentary release behind me, I now know the following things: It’s a pretty enjoyable little flick. While not a general audience sort of film, tens of thousands have seen it. I own all the rights. I got a shrinking stack of original copies here. So, I’ve decided I’m going to […]

TinyTIM Returns —

TinyTIM, the MUSH I co-founded over 18 years ago, has returned. In July, the machine that runs in my basement died. Died in one of those spectacular ways, that can be summarized as “I was running for 10 years and then I suddenly wasn’t.” It was accompanied by the most delicious of sounds, that of […]

Commodork Comes Home —

I have become a vendor of Commodork, the book by Rob “Flack” O’Hara. Here’s my inventory: I’ve gone on the record about how I liked this book, which has the occasional rough edges but is as honest and fun as the BBS days that it comes from. Flack covers his teenage years and the love […]

When the BBS Broke Free —

It’s nearly 20 years since a harbinger of the BBS’s future made itself known. Time for a recap. I think there’s two levels to discussing something historical: compiling a general overview of an event that may have slipped by and is in need of attention, which is easier in today’s info-soaked world, and then a […]

But It Is Obvious —

A basic concept worth mentioning, even if it means a text dump and some commentary. So, the anthrax letters of 2001, the investigative team of which pursued one man, until he was found innocent. Remember that? After he was found innocent, the FBI pursued another individual, who during the investigation committed suicide. There’s an article […]

CD.TEXTFILES.COM gets subdirectories —

So I turned around and realized that CD.TEXTFILES.COM has over 400 CD-ROMs on it. That’s pretty crazy. I remember a few days that felt like they’d never end where I was shoving CD-ROM after CD-ROM into drives, making ISOs, extracting information from them. But I had no idea that over the years I’d gotten it […]