ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

Escalation —

So, here’s how this goes.

By my very, very rough estimation, I probably engage in about three thousand transactions related to my projects in a given year. This consists of people who need information, people who want me to send them something, people who want to send me something, and so on – the normal back and forth of doing what it is I do. (I’m not counting mailing out the DVDs of the documentaries – that’s pretty basic.) Some of these transactions are as simple as responding with a number, and some of them are taking possession of materials and doing stuff with them. The latter take longer.

Most of these, I get done somewhat quickly, enough that I get complimented for it. But that’s definitely not the guaranteed situation – I’ve had cases of months getting back to people. I apologize, I try to make up for it somehow, but it does happen. I owe probably a half-dozen e-mail interviews, a couple pieces of hardware need mailing, I promised I’d get back with ideas about someone’s new business or to answer a tough question about the proliferation of various types of media in backup processes…. a bunch of stuff.

Some of this is just me wanting to get stuff right, and some of it is just some minor aspect, my saying “well, I can’t just leave it at that“, and then weeks go by.

Somewhere a ways back, I had a bunch of people involved in the Geocities Torrent, where Archive Team had generated this 647gb collection that uncompresses to about 900gb, and which basically requires a hard drive of its own to really keep a copy of. Some people started torrenting it, and we also ran into some hilarious case sensitivity issue.. and, well.. anyway, so all of it is now up on archive.org if you want a copy. (Hint, it’s huge.)

A number of people mailed me hard drives, about 10. I put a copy on their hard drives, and then mailed them back. Except one.

He was supposed to mail it in February, according to my records.

Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 13:55:46 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

sounds good... give me a mailing address, I'm headed to the post office
shortly anyway...  I'll drop in a label and money for return postage, much
appreciated.  I'd be mailing a 1gig external usb... I'll delete any data,
but the only data is from your torrent download anyway... :)

But things being what they are, he ended up not mailing it until a month later.  These things happen.

Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 15:58:00 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

Jason:

Hi.. I completely forgot to ship this, put it in my trunk, then forgot it.
Anyway, shipped now (see attached).  However in my haste I forgot to put in
a return label/postage/and something for your time.

Have you got a paypal addy?  If so I'll send some cash there.  If not, I'll
send out a money order, let me know.  Have a good weekend.

Best, Tim

The drive arrived on March 7th.

This drive was in a slightly different form factor than the others, and at the time I didn’t have a dock to put it into, so no way to really read it. I did eventually buy a dock, but only recently. Money was pretty tight for a while (I was unemployed) so I couldn’t really put anything towards a dock and the rest, so the project kind of laid dormant.

The hard drive owner, Tim, mailed me about it, a couple times. I’m sure if I looked at that whole mail spool at the time, I was doing literally dozens of other things.

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:24:45 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

so what's the status of things?

 

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:35:49 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

no word?  This is surprising, thought all was cool... Am I going to get the
stuff or not?  Offered to send you some paypal... what's up?

Long time now since the HD arrived.  I'd appreciate letting me know what the
status is.

Tim

“Long time” in this case was 11 days. Not long for me, and as I guess I indicate next, I was also travelling at this time – I had just spent a week at GDC 2011, and was about to go spend another week down in Austin, TX for SXSW, and had spent no time at home between them. So things were now out of sync.

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:50:51 -0400
From: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>
To: Tim

Traveling, back Sunday.

Here was my first mistake, because even if I was back Sunday, I was then stuck not only catching up with a pile of things needing my attention, but I was now going to start employment, and dealing with more travel and projects coming up. I’ve gone from being able to get things working on something like a hard drive, and doing the transfer of material, to heading down a path of more and more complicated projects. I am, in other words, fantastically busy.

Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 18:00:30 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

Assume you're back and have been back.  What appreciate the status please?
Tim

 

Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2011 23:31:28 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

this going to happen, or I shall chalk it up to life experience?

 

Here is, looking back, where it goes off the rails. Something about the tone, combined with the work I’m doing, and the whole situation, means that the priority this whole thing has, to go out and get the dock and find the hard drive with my copy of the torrent on it, and then to do the copy, and all the rest, drops noticeably. I’m focused on a lot of things, and something about “chalk it up to life experience” just makes my face scrunch. My mistake was then not just sending the drive back, saying “ah, look, it’s just taking forever”, and then knowing it would be up on archive.org soon anyway.

No, instead of that, I end up doing a non-committal “mmmmm”, e-mail style, which means “Look, yeah, I’m going to get to it, but I’m in the middle of a lot of stuff and I can’t set aside the day to set this all up, OK, just relax.” but probably comes off as “yeah, yeah”.

Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 00:40:48 -0400
From: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>
To: Tim

It'll happen.

Now in the low priority bin, Tim is left to flail. Again, my fault. And here, well, here you can watch what happens.

Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 16:04:12 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

my 30 day check in... any updates? T

 

Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 20:19:40 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

so now I don't even get a reply?  If it's not going to happen, then
please return the HD so I can put it to use.  I'm not certain at this
point if you're simply too busy, have forgotten me, or it's something
else.  You are the one that suggested your doing this, I have not
asked otherwise.

I need the files, my HD or pay me a fair price for the HD and keep it.
 Any of the three, but c'mon man, no word is just not right.

T

 

Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 17:41:50 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

Jason:

I won't bother you again then... IF (and I doubt it) you want to do the
right thing, get in touch.  I've lost faith in you and this, so keep the HD
and the files, I'll find a Unix guy and get the torrent myself.  I really
thought you were honorable (doing the torrent and all) but WAY too much time
has past, this is a very sour deal.

Enjoy the HD (life lesson for me).

Tim

 

Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:29:01 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

Happy July 4th... As the fireworks explode... think of all the honest, good,
hard working Americans who lived and died for this country.

Then think of those who NEVER follow through, who make promises they never
keep or intended to keep, who take merchandise under false pretense, who
ruin the integrity and spirit of the net...

Have a good weekend.

Tim

 

Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:48:02 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

just thought I say hi and let you know I haven't forgotten you.  One day...
in some way... you will be repaid.  Dishonesty is too nice a word for
you...  Have a happy holiday season... NOT.

 

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:03:47 -0600
From: Tim 
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

Happy holidays thief.  Hope Santa chokes on your cookies. :)

 

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:10:43 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

see you on kickstarter, I'll be sure to follow you  CLOSELY.. and help
out with comments whenever I see your name online.  $100k... yet you
rip me off, hard to believe.  .

 

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:14:44 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

ah ha... I see Kickstarter has a link for "reporting projects"..
wonder what I can stir up by pasting our long thread... we'll see if
you respond or not. Sweet dreams. Tim

 

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:16:46 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

even better.... think I'll donate $10 so I can comment about the
project... social media... love it.

 

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:39:13 -0600
Subject: kickstarter project
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott <jason@textfiles.com>

Jason:

This is Tim, the guy whom you do not answer at my main email (
XXXXXX).  Here are two options.

*1.* Return my money via paypal (it seems you have PLENTY of money now).
The money I speak of is the cost of the hard drive I purchased and mailed
to you (at your request).  The cost of my postage to send it.  The
frustration you have caused over a LONG period of time.  We'll call it $200

or

*2.*  I will do my utmost to share our complete and long thread with
(including many quotes from you saying you would fulfill your promises)
with the Kickstarter administration as well as becoming a small partner and
sharing my comments (and links to the full thread) in your section.

Your choice, all I want is to resolve this

To be clear... at this point I am ONLY interested in the return of cash,
the hard should remain in your possession.

You may use XXXXXXX as the Paypal email and IF the funds are
received promptly, this will bring this matter and our communications to an
end.  If not, then (see #2 above).

Best,

Tim

 

It’s an interesting study, to say the least. I’m hardly blameless, and the whole thing going off the rails as far as it did is definitely my fault. But the gentle traipsing into blackmail and sinister threats are also prime demotivators to following through, so I decided to split the difference. Post it all here, let you see how not every person who deals with me is 100% satisfied, and then, when I get back to my home office later this week after Thanksgiving, find the drive, mail it back, and never think about it again. Perhaps not the best solution, but about what I’m into doing, all things considered.

And to my other friends who I owe a few things for, I’m sorry for the delay. It happens.

I’ll do my best to improve.

28 Comments

Kickstarting The Details —

It’s five days left in the Kickstarter funding drive I started 55 days ago. It has been, by any measure, an enormous success. I set the whole thing at 60 days because that was the maximum that Kickstarter allows these days, and because I was asking for people to pledge $100,000 toward my project idea, which is not exactly something that leads to immediate clicking of the “drop tons of cash” button.  I was very binary towards the whole thing – either it would not happen at all, or it would absolutely happen. And it absolutely happened: 45 days in, the threshold was crossed. Fully funded!

There are two jumps there: The first couple days, when a bunch of people flooded in with lots of pledges, including a couple massive ones, and that hoist-up around September 25th where I did what nice people call an “e-mail blast” to everyone who ever bought a copy of my previous documentaries. I made it something that was informative and not just pleading and mercenary and it resulted in what looks like a pretty sizable jump for a tad, before going to the slow per-day rise you’ve been seeing. That last jump was someone being very generous.

One really nice thing about the whole process, the facet and fact that has really been the most heartwarming and the most touching, is that I’ve not dropped much in the way of details. In some ways, I’ve dropped almost no details. The Kickstarter pitch video is straightforward (if a tad weird) and the general message is: I am making three documentaries, and it is best to make them all at once, and I need this funding because I am now a low-paid archivist and not a well-paid sysadmin. That’s about all I’ve dropped, and all this happened. That is amazing.

So, here’s the interesting thing.

I’ve been working on some amazing things, talking to some really unique folks about aspects of the three projects, that might pay off really well – but I can’t guarantee them, so I haven’t been discussing them. I still really can’t – I rejected professional film-making not just as a career but as an outlook – and I much prefer underpromising and overdelivery to the alternative. So while I’m sure discussing these things I’m working on with much detail would skyrocket interest, having some of them inevitably not work out would make people feel misled. So there’s my quandry.

So let’s focus on some specifics in terms of goals, and maybe that’ll inspire people to get in on it.

Faced with the engineering/scheduling/arrangement of three documentaries, and having learned from the previous two projects, what I will be doing is travelling to a geographic area, and setting up for 1-3 weeks, doing a combination of location filming, interviews, appearances at events or being my own event, and general historical work. These massively hybrid trips will save me bundles in airfare, which was always the utter killer for costs. With my current employment endeavors being almost entirely online and not subject to specific geographic locations, this dovetails perfectly.

And it means that like the previous works, I can go after folks that some standard production would consider marginal and not worth the effort – people who are “just folks”, and as I hope both BBS and GET LAMP would show, some of the most amazing interviews that got in were “just folks”. (Jeff Keegan and Rob Griffiths come to mind). I can drive that extra few hours and get a place way off the beaten path. I can connect with stuff going on that a 2-3 day weekend trip would not allow. This is going to make interviews very good indeed. In a very rare few cases, I’ve had technical issues blow up an interview (I lost 3 out of 300 interviews I’ve done, roughly), and it’s good to be able to ask to come back, just a few days later. (Actually, this happened with a couple interviews and the subjects were both delighted to get a second chance to get their thoughts together.)

We are years from release, but even I can read the writing on the wall – as weird as it is right now to buy vinyl records (but deeply meaningful to a minority) it will be weird to order some media project in a couple years and not have a digital download option, or to be able to get the primary “stuff” at a less expensive and quickly convenient cost. That said, the other trend is that the physical form, the package and media, should be particularly high-quality, particularly amazing.  Because with these new physical packages, I will not be held to these two groups equally. You want the fast digital version, you get it – you want the deep version with many gigabytes of content in an exquisite package, you can get that too.

So at $107,000 – things are going well, well indeed. I decided, though, to throw in a big challenge to the folks out there that there’d be an immediate reward for hitting a higher mark. So I have this thing where if the funding hits $150,000, the $100+ funders get a backer-only coin. We’ll see how that goes – I guarantee the additional funding will end up making everything another layer of great. Really. As you can see, at current rates, that is not entirely likely to happen – but the whole point of challenges is to be challenging.

In terms of the documentaries themselves, that is, the actual content, I am going for very wide subject scatter like the previous films. GET LAMP covered not just text adventures and interactive fiction, but the nature of writing, the creating of reality through text, the meaning of story. BBS covered not just bulletin board systems and technology, but the nature of community, friendship and understanding, as well as the viciousness of politics and organization.  Even though a LOT of people really love 6502 (believe me, I have heard a lot about it), I am sure folks will find the resulting works of Tape and Arcade, and 6502 to be more than just the name on the box (or the download file).

All these ideas are swimming in my head now, recreating those moments of five and ten years ago when I started the previous two projects – new filming technology, new places to explore, weird ideas becoming reality, and the knowledge there will be a lot of pain, a lot of sleeplessness, a lot of stress here and there… but, eventually, watching boxes go out the door, letters coming in, and sitting at the back of a lot of theaters and auditorium hearing the laughs.

So there you go. Please spread the word about the Kickstarter in its last days – the short URL is http://kck.st/jasonscott and takes people right to the page. I have found people coming to me telling me they had no idea this was happening, so getting out to places that might not occur to me to visit would really help.

Thanks again. This is going to be amazing.

 

1 Comment

Javascript Hero: Change Computer History Forever —

Besides adding thousands of items to archive.org and uploading terabytes of data (I’m at 28 terabytes of data uploaded since May of this year), I’ve also been working among a bunch of fronts to bring a whole raft of knowledge and history into the browseable, usable world. Trust me, a lot is getting in there.  Allow me to both reveal the next step in this grand arch plan, and put a call out for people to help.

To review, the Grand Arch Plan that has been going on for 30 years.

Step One: Begin collecting computer history. I started this step when I was 9, pulling together printouts, cassettes, later floppy disks, and hardware.

Step Two: Put it all up on the Web. I started this step when I was 28, creating textfiles.com and consistently adding to both that collection and related collections.

Step Three: Absorb the human stories. This is what BBS Documentary, GET LAMP and the next three documentaries are for. This has resulted in hundreds of hours of footage of people talking about computer history, almost all of which I am putting online into the collections begun in step two.

And now the next step:

Step Four: Ubiquity. Make it possible to get to all of computer history from everywhere, as wherever feasible. Do what it takes to make it feasible.

I’m well into this step, having affiliated myself with one of the largest public data collections in the world and giving them massive piles of materials from the first three steps. Everything is open, everything is on fast pipes, everything is easy to pull down and do what you want with it. It’s going very, very well.

But on the whole I am primarily dealing with artifacts and not experience.  A number of people have done some good work to bring in experience of computer history, most notably the Emulator People. In fact, if you don’t go too crazy on the rococo specifics of the accuracy of emulators, they do really really well to take you from “I wonder what it was like to play Choplifter” to “Wow, I am playing Choplifter“. And as someone sitting in the channels of several emulation projects, I will tell you they are all getting better, every single day – improvements in speed, accuracy, flexibility and expandability.

So here is what I’d like to do.

I want to help port the MESS and MAME emulators to Javascript.

Without sounding too superlative, I think this will change computer history forever. The ability to bring software up and running into any browser window will enable instant, clear recall and reference of the computing experience to millions. Setting up images that provide walkthroughs of specific computer history/reference, that will allow playing and and recall of all manner of things online for the last 50 years (the MESS emulator has support for the 1960 PDP-1). I am more than willing to engage in debate over this – but my hope is that you’re past this and going “but how is that even possible?”

It’s possible. Javascript has become unbelievably powerful. Here’s some stuff you may not know Javascript has been able to do so far:

  • Linux. Specifically, a javascript emulation of PC hardware, with an entire Linux OS running on top of it.
  • H.264 – They’ve now implemented a H.264 codec in Javascript.
  • PDF Reading. The pdf.js reader will allow you to read PDFs in anything with Javascript support.
  • Apple II – Gil Megidish has implemented an Apple II emulator in Javascript, which you can play games in.

My strong belief is the emulator people should focus on emulation, and the javascript people on javascript – that javascript should just be one of the ports of MESS and MAME to accompany all the other ports. I feel like there are emulation people who are really focused on the proper accuracy and reliability issues, and Javascript people who are really good at taking accurate, reliable code and making it work in Javascript. In fact, I suspect it’s very easy – we just need someone focused on it.

I’m focused on it. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve been doing for 30 years.

I am right here. I can be reached at jscott@archive.org or jason@textfiles.com and we can get started making an ad-hoc group to work on it. I can answer questions and talk to anyone. This is priority one for me.

Hope to hear from you.

23 Comments

Joe’s Offer —

The last two times I saw Joe were not the best: once at my Uncle Danny’s funeral, and then on the hospital bed that would be his last. Not really able to speak, my last visit with him was with my father and his son, who shouted questions checking on Joe and Joe doing his best to respond, usually with a halting thumbs-up. He was surrounded by people who made their love for him plain and constant, which in general is not a bad way to go.

I probably saw Joe a half-dozen times in my life, many of them too young to remember at all.  And perhaps I should hasten to talk about the inherent blessing in the fact that it was many years before it was really explained to me how many relatives in Joe’s generation were murdered in faraway lands, making him rarer than I would have understood. So Joe was simply Joe, one of a number of family through various convoluted connections that I’d be introduced and re-introduced to over time.

At one point in the early 1980s, when I was just barely in my teens (and likely not even there yet), there was a situation where Joe and his wife Sylvia lived just a couple of exits down from where I lived, although the natural difference in our lives meant we didn’t really hang out. To add to this theme of forgotten details and hazy aspects, I have entirely misplaced what put me at their place one day, although it probably had to do with some finagling of scheduled events and responsibilities amongst my parents, or maybe an effort to have me connect with one of the previous generations. But there I was in one of those condos that older people keep, full of items with stories I don’t necessarily want to hear and an utter lack of entertainment by the standards of someone used to his Atari 2600 and no-profanity-barred cable television.

As I just hinted, my parents were divorced and had been for multiple years, with my mother and my siblings living in a condo this side of crowded and my father living in a house that he’d built for a family now gone, leaving it with the feeling of a forgotten cabin.  Anybody who tells you that divorce is anything but a direct shotgun to the face for the kids is lying to you or just doesn’t want to deal with that fact; it has a whole range of effects but a child who watches his house burn down can hug his parents to deal with it – a child whose parents split up can do no such thing. So, let’s assume that somewhere in my countenance or self-regard was an obvious-to-anyone-looking sense of wreckage.

So, Joe looked, even back in 1981-1982 days, like an older guy, the kind who might be sitting on the chairs at the barber shop or on one end of the bar, laughing and slapping a lot of backs and generally being one of the gang; a real down to earth guy. My father at some point mentioned to me that Joe was an olympic-level partier, which I assume means he was a close-it-down dude, in his younger years. I detected awe on the part of my dad. Joe also was wearing a very loud shirt the day I was visiting, and I am sure this had an effect on me in terms of what shirt I could be wearing wherever I wanted to.

So, it was a pretty a-ok day, with some conversation and me hanging out, and at some point it was time for me to leave, for whichever parent it was to pick me up.

And as I was getting ready to go, Joe got very serious for a moment.

And realize that Joe did not have one of those faces that was built to go serious. It did not look like a face that needed things to be serious, especially these days. And he put his hand on my shoulder, a huge hand, all things considered. It’s nearly 30 years later. I still remember the face. I still remember the hand.

And he said Jason, I know things can get rough, and if you ever, ever feel you need to get away, you come here. No questions asked. You always got a place here.

I probably nodded and maybe thanked him, as any gift you didn’t know you were getting 10 milliseconds before gets thanks.

When parents get divorced, besides the stupid infighting that often happens and the arguments over nothing and the haggling and the idiot phone calls, there’s this gap of responsibility that happens. The kids know this and spot it a mile away. There’s just no way to coordinate oversight. It’s there, and you generally have awareness, but there’s so many ways for a kid to get lost in the shuffle and get away with anything they want, for some period of time. Combine that with a resentment for the shotgun in the face, the disconnection of what family is, and you’ve got all the ingredients for something truly awful.

Maybe drugs, smoking, drinking, where you can express yourself as doing something nobody approves of, feel like a hero and rebel, and have this piece of things be yours. Until they own you, of course, but before then, there’s a lot of you and little of them. Or it might be a propensity to be creative, to act out, to get involved in something that takes you away. Or it’s a withdrawal, a collapsing. Something happens. It rarely doesn’t. Not really.

And in that gap, you can make some incredibly stupid choices, especially if you’re old enough to be ambulatory and prone to rage or panic and a whole other spectrum of feelings. Incredibly stupid choices. And I made a bunch, to be sure, but one thing that never happened was me loading myself into some conveyance and disappearing.

I didn’t need to, you see. I had Joe’s Offer. At any time, during those years, I could have walked down the highway or along one of the side roads to his Condo and taken a time-out and gotten myself together. I knew this. I knew it inherently, like someone jumping from high point to high point knows that in the darkness somewhere, there’s that safety net.

And I made it through – by the time I was 15, I was living in a much better place with a social network of friends who were really smart and engaging and I was involved in a bunch of projects that got better and better. I didn’t need the safety net anymore – I was completely out of the woods.

So, somewhere in my 20s, when I was actually making fat sacks of mad cash in administrating boxes and had an awesome house I was renting and generally being one with the world, I reached out to two fellows, both brothers of ex-girlfriends, who seemed to be going through things – nothing rough like I probably was, but just feeling a little out of sorts. Same deal: I know things can get rough, and if you ever, ever feel you need to get away, you come here. No questions asked. You always got a place here.

Both gave thanks, both never took me up on it, both probably forgot about it at some point. But maybe it was always there for a while, that knowledge, that little piece saying there was a third option instead of one or two rotten ones. The safety net is not there to feel smug or be part of the show – the safety net is there to provide safety.

Joe, likely, forgot about his offer at some point in the decades since. He’s been gone a year now, and while he probably never really knew the effect his simple offer had, I’m telling you now.

You know exactly who I’m talking about. It’s not your business. Either parent would scream at you for meddling. The kid seems mostly fine. But not completely.

Make Joe’s Offer to them.

If you’re lucky, they’ll never thank you.

10 Comments

I Can Convert Your Betacam SP Tapes —

As part of my work for the Game Developers Conference as historian and archivist, I have been given their entire backlog of recorded conference tapes. Many of them have not seen the light of day since they were recorded – others were converted to RealMedia format, and then guess what happened next. We’ve been holding off on me doing more weblog entries while I slam through the backlog and they switch hosting servers, but I’ve been busy in the meantime. Here’s the tapes I’ve completed in the last month:

There’s lots of great material in there – presentations, panels, contests, performances – and they’ll all hit the light of day. I promise. But as I go through the next phase of tapes, the remainder of the piles, it occurred to me there would be great advantage to offering to the world a chance to convert some BetacamSP tapes, if you have them.

If you’re not sure what those look like, here’s the two form factors of BetacamSP that fit in this machine:

Just to complete the show and tell, the BetacamSP machine, the Sony UVW-1800, and the whole setup looks like this:

So, what exactly am I offering here?

Well, my theory is that there are a lot of folks out there with a few of these tapes – either a one-off handed to them from someone dumping materials, or which a company or companies paid a creator to make a bunch of years ago. You don’t want to go through all this effort to get this setup together just to do a few tapes – well, here I am. I want to see history saved, and these tapes are not getting younger. Most of the GDC tapes I have, in fact the straight majority, are 100% fine, but a few aren’t as hot as they could be. I want to make sure other folks don’t have one-off tapes that they can’t get to.

Digitizing the way I do produces a .ts file, which almost everything can deal with – it’s basically MPEG-2 format. I’m finding files between 1-4 gigabytes, very manageable, and from which all sorts of other formats can be derived.

Additionally, I can see about having your .ts file go right to archive.org, where you can point everyone to it, upload a copy to Youtube, describe what it is, the whole deal.

So, if you are finding this via a web search or another method, hi. Contact me at betatapes@textfiles.com and we’ll see about saving your magnetic memories.

1 Comment

Jason Scott: Shareware Calvacade —

There’s fast, there’s ultra-fast, and then there’s the speed at which Adrian “IronGeek” Crenshaw has rendered out and uploaded the full talks from his first annual Derbycon hacker and security conference. As it was, and due to an extremely silly scheduling conflict, I could only attend the first day of the conference, and because of a series of late flights and missed connections, I got in so late on Thursday that during Friday I had to take a 2 hour nap just to be functioning for my 7pm talk.

But regardless, I got my chance to present a new speech, Jason Scott’s Shareware Calvacade, and he has it up on youtube.  Here you go:

Here’s a direct link.

This really is just a fun little speech, mostly providing an overview of the history of Shareware, some wild tangents, and some weird images of the computing past. It’s not infused with the weight of responsibility or an overarching theme – it was meant to be a pleasant post-dinner (or pre-dinner) collection of Neat Crap, meant to inspire people to my big works coming down the pike from my Internet Archive work. I hope it does that, as well as allow me to scream at an Acer Laptop and tell the Worst X-Box Live Joke Ever.

One thing I do want everyone to bring out of it is how I’m looking for more material for CD-ROMs and software in general! Don’t hesitate to contact me if you think you have some lying around and want it to live again as an exhibit or archive.

I’d like to thank the Derbycon folks for an amazing time, even if I truncated it, and to congratulate them on their wild success (the convention was sold out, and filled to the brim with awesome folks).  Next year, I’m there the whole way through!

 

 

4 Comments

A Cloud of Opinion —

As is often the case with Reddit, some random user randomly linked to one of my weblog entries. In this case, the Fuck the Cloud entry. And as is often the case with Reddit these days, it smeared any previous record of hits I ever got on the weblog, ever, since I started doing this, and I had my top reading day ever: 41,000 users in a 24 hour period (and another 6,000 the next day).

And as is typical, people found ways to discuss every possible interpretation of the entry and every possible interpretation of everything not the story: the color scheme, my sex life, my age, my resume, my own use of “cloud-like” services, you name it. Opinion Spectrum Collapse Disorder – I coined it!

Much more interesting was a little rumble of second-wave folks finding me and addressing me, ones who missed the whole thing the first time and maybe missed me all this time, and who came to me for more. And of that, there was WebProNews.

WebProNews would not normally be the type of entity I would either browse, or even think about – caked with ads, resembling a horse-racing call-sheet more than a website, this place creates tons of news stories with a perky host, and posts almost every day, giving you ads and sponsor links galore while providing content.  But for some reason, when they asked about talking Cloud with me, I said yes.

I did it over Skype, which was damned convenient, although maybe with my hair such a mess I should have worn a hat.  On the other end was a lady with a notepad and a green screen, whose name was Abby Johnson (No, not that Abby Johnson), and damn if she wasn’t one of the best interviewers I’ve ever had, save for Kevin Poulsen.  She asked all sorts of good questions, gave good followup responses, and took the conversation all over the place.

So here, in a rare show, I link you to two versions of the same video on WebProNews:

Instead of Ranty-Go-Bragh Jason which is what we usually get related to the Cloud, this is thoughtful, measured Jason, a rare sight indeed, like two unicorns chained together with goblin gold. I figure faithful readers deserve to see it. If you just want the video, you can click on the little chain at the bottom of the video window and grab the whole thing, like I did.

Great job, Abby. It’s rare indeed I link to such a site like that, but such respect deserves my respect.

P.S. Fuck the Cloud.

1 Comment

Trailer for the Two Hands Project Documentary —

In two entries (one and two),  I mentioned I was editing the Two Hands Project, which is a documentary on hackerspaces.  I also, I hoped, made it clear that there’s a ton of priorities before it, including finishing editing work on the Going Cardboard documentary, and, you know, all this stuff with terabytes of data going up on archive.org.

I was asked a while ago to give a presentation/talk at the CT Hackerspace in Watertown, CT.  Somewhere in there, it morphed into “Jason will talk about the two hands project documentary and show some work”, and I thought, you know, I really should at least cut together a trailer for the thing, since I have all the footage right there. So, two hours later, I did it, and showed it at the CT Hackerspace. And now you can see it too:

It was just a couple hours work, so no big deal, but it probably does a good job of showing just how much variation and footage that gang of guys shot in those 30 days.

Enjoy!

Comments Off on Trailer for the Two Hands Project Documentary

GET FAILURE —

A new review of GET LAMP has been posted, and it is not positive.  (Here’s a WebCitation link).

I won’t even pretend to claim much knowledge of Auntie Pixelante, because I don’t really have much beyond having followed the weblog for the site for about a year, and keeping track of a lot of the tools and assisting programs that are cited there, stuff that gets you out and running if you have some ideas for a game.  Lots and lots of embryonic game ideas come out of that place, so it’s pretty easy to just sit back and enjoy the feed. I didn’t notice the review until my RSS scanner that looks for mentions of the movie kicked it up, but then I saw it in my regular newsreader, so destiny was at hand.

I also won’t pretend to definitively summarize the review in a way that you shouldn’t read it completely; but I’ll take a shot at saying the review is primarily one of disappointment at my focus on Infocom, lack of coverage of the more experimental aspects of interactive fiction, and a monolithic point of view with Infocom constituting the majority of discussion or subject matter in the movie.

Why am I linking to/bringing attention to a negative review? Because the fact is, it’s a review. More than that, it’s a specific call-out to a perspective on the film, and yes, ultimately disappointment that that perspective feels unfulfilled, and there’s just not been that many for GET LAMP, even as we pass a year of release. I know tens of thousands of people have seen the work, and I have seen people write about text adventures and mention they saw GET LAMP, but there’s only a tiny handful of actual film criticism aimed at the work, and that’s always made me a bit sad.

I did go to film school, after all, and part what got drummed into me was the idea that film criticism is part of the process of a film – after it’s finished, after the ballyhoo and the screenings and the promotion would come informed, thoughtful essays as to what the whole thing meant or what meanings and ideas could be teased from the work that the creators either intended or unconsciously added along the way. To that end, I’ve just had very little in that direction. The BBS documentary got some, but even then, nothing even approaching the gold standard of film criticism, which is this article.

And so for me the whole thing is incomplete until it gets reviews, essays and thoughts, good and bad, and any move in that direction pleases me, so thanks to Auntie Pixelante for this review.

And as for the review?

Well, on the charge of “seems way focused on Infocom”, totally guilty as charged. Infocom is so important to the story of interactive fiction that besides a healthy mention in the middle of the main GET LAMP movie, there’s a whole other 40 minute movie called EXAMINE INFOCOM on the disc that covers Infocom and Infocom, Infocom, Infocom. On the second disc, I have extended bonus features discussing nothing but Infocom’s Z-Machine, the unique aspects of Planetfall and a whole other host of Infocom-ish subjects. That’s a fact. Book me.

I’ll take issue with the portrayal of the film as monolithic in opinion – as mentioned Chris Crawford gets a few shots in, but even across other people like inky, Adam Thornton, Andrew Plotkin and Ron Martinez, the entire medium and its failings come in for some shots, and the question of “what’s next” comes up. But, and this is the important aspect that I think is missed, this documentary bootstraps you from nothing about text adventures to going into incredibly detailed discussions of the nature of puzzles and the issues of overflowing object tables with irrelevant descriptions in the name of “realism”, as well as a host of other ethereal subjects that come down to unique problems of the collision of writing with this whole game/experience thing. The movie, that is, is not for people long off the beaten path of game design seeking ever more whacky and up-ending paradigms in the demolishing of current expectations of the very nature of interactive writing – this movie is meant to be a ground-up bringing in of the idea of text adventures and what it all might have meant, from both the idea of an industry and what would draw people to the present day to keep creating in it long after the commercial interest has receded back into the ocean.

There’s a point of view that has occasionally come in, which I call the Mass Effect group, although it’s not directly tied to that specific game, but along the lines of “Why didn’t GET LAMP cover Mass Effect/Bioshock/Cryptozookeeper”. It’s considered a missed opportunity that I didn’t draw a direct, bold line from the text adventure medium into these modern works, but I didn’t think that was the job of this film. It wasn’t even the job of the film to cover point and click games like King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, or The Last Express. I thought that there was no video documentary covering text adventures, and I do believe I was right. In terms of the “coverage” the review mentions, that’s all generally written interviews (and usually just of Steve Meretzky), or essays and recounting of artifacts. If there is another film, television production or even audio production with Amy Briggs, Stu Galley and Marc Blank all discussing their work and the general aspects of the text adventure medium, I’ll be down at Cafe du Chapeau chowing down.

What I was worried about was that all these great folks would pass on without portraying the emotion of the work they were doing, and that this community of text adventure writers, which in some ways is always on edge to tearing itself apart, would fade into self-containment without their work reaching a wider audience. For that, I say mission accomplished. Expecting it to then go on past an hour and a half into realms still experimental, or even attempt to bring in the full parallel line of related game approaches, was just not in the cards, and I hope the next text adventure documentary someone makes covers that.

Thanks for the review!

5 Comments

FaceLift (A Single Image) —

I don’t normally post “up to the minute” entries, but what the heck. Today, Facebook announced it was changing up, completely, how you interact with Facebook, including a whole range of profile adjustments, retrieval of random items from the past, and a whole new range of “partners” who will be shoving items into Facebook (and, ostensibly, taking a lot more customer data out).  One such partner is the social media weblog Mashable, which wrote a jaw-to-floor lauding of the new Facebook  as changing the face of social media. It’s something when such craven, transparent logrolling is considered standard operating procedure.

I have no interest in writing more than I did in FaceFacts, except that I was browsing the Facebook weblog and saw this single, enlightening snapshot of conversation below it:

Kaitlin works the registers at a Legoland. Jonathan is director of business development at a spanish-language “hot deals” site that has an application on Facebook that gives you the latest bargains and fills your timeline with offers throughout the day.

Kaitlin is unhappy. Jonathan is delighted. Kaitlin feels unease and discontent at what is happening. Jonathan tells her to change or die.

I suppose I could go on, but it would be redundant.

Enjoy your future.

9 Comments