ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

Digital: A Love Story —

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 thought that all sounded neat, but my game-playing time is limited, so only recently did I sit down and play it through.

The game is called “Digital: A Love Story”, and is available for free for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  And as a few people pointed out, it’s quite an intersection of the subjects of my two documentaries: BBSes and Interactive Fiction.

Through a clicking interface, you find yourself at the desktop of your brand new Amie machine, and the kindly sales guy (and I do remember these sorts of guys) provides you with a dialing program and a phone number of a local BBS. Naturally, you try it out, and you set out on quite a fun little adventure. By the time you’re done, and it took me about two hours to be done, you’ve done an awful lot of stuff, met a wide variety of people, and probably done quite the good deed or two. I’m not a big fan of spoilers or giving away too much, so to the question “is it worth playing”, I’ll just answer “yes, even if you get frustrated at various points, because it all wraps up nicely”. For most folks, that’s probably all they really need to know about the game, but I’ll add one other bit; in the game, like Gordan Freeman in Half Life 2, your character is silent, so when you hit “reply”, that’s it – you simply “reply” and they respond as if you wrote a letter or e-mail to them, usually providing the context of your reply in their responses. That may seem weird to people, and it took me a little while to catch on, but I completely understand why the author did it.

So, here’s the thing. The author, Christine Love, was born in 1989. This takes a while to sink in.

This means she was 8 years old when I decided that BBSes were in danger of not having a place on the web and I created textfiles.com. This means she was 11 when I thought, “gee, someone should make a documentary about BBSes”. By the time she’s in her teens, BBSes are a laughable joke or a fond warm memory for the vast, vast majority of people who used them – and a meaningless term, one to skip over in writing, by many others.

This means Christine isn’t writing a simulator or a documentary or a report on BBSes – she is using them as a source of historical fiction. Within a very short time in the game, stuff happens which does not generally happen on BBSes, and the interface is a ton more easier to use, and a whole other bucket of niceties and shortcuts are in effect in the program, because she wasn’t alive to experience these things. In the credits for the game, Christine thanks “textfiles.com for much valuable research” . In other words, this means she accessed textfiles.com purely as a reference library – one to gain some understanding of writing and styles and possible characters for her game. By any standard, this would mean that the black monolith of textfiles.com just sent a signal from Jupiter. The amount this makes me happy is almost beyond measure.

I’ve read occasional reviews with folks poking at this point or that point (one young scamp said the game was inaccurate because some of the messages seem “slapdash” and that “we always worked to write thoughtful messages”.. an excellent way to show their ignorance to history) and to be sure, this is not a simulator of the BBS era.  It is, as I said, historical fiction, and no historical fiction tends to be a perfect re-telling of the time it’s from, especially when it has characters in it that didn’t exist at the time being referenced. She glosses over some things and focuses a lot on others, and shows her age with “Hacking the Gibson” in a 1988-era work – but what the fuck, people. Look at me, I’m historical and archiving reality boy, and I’m telling you it’s all going to be OK, and if you’re playing the game and getting pissed at how compiling is portrayed, you are boring and I hate you.  Go be boring about something else – Christine did something great here.

I can certainly cite earlier historical fiction with BBS lore and materials – one set that springs to mind are some zine files from the 1990s in which many slavish references to 1980s BBS comings and goings are portrayed as both actual events and as the seed for fictional narratives. However, there’s only been a few games out there that have tried to capture the zeitgeist of being online, and this one took my library for research.

Could this all have been done better? Oh, sure. Everything can be done better in this world.  But the author decided to tell this story using a very fun computer interface, with you doing all sorts of computer activities to find the story, and there is one part in this game that found me dialing up a range of BBSes looking for messages, seeing if anyone had called and left something since I was last there. For a few seconds there, in other words, I was really and actually 15 again. And how much is that worth to me?

Enjoy the game.

13 Comments

A Double Demoparty Year —

It’s a special year in the US, with two demoparties happening, one of which is entirely new.

I’ve been radio silent about it, but Blockparty #4 is about to happen in Cleveland, Ohio, starting on the 15th of April. I would really suggest going. I’ve written a ton about demoparties and why they’re so much fun to go to, but really, you have to see it to believe it. If you’re anywhere within driving distance of Cleveland, I can’t think of a better way to spend the weekend.

An additional exciting situation is that there’s another demoparty that’s starting up this year, @party. If you live anywhere in New England, and pretend to have the slightest interest in Demos, then you have absolutely no excuse. The staff is putting together a hell of an event, with lodging included and the unique situation that harkens back to early demoparties in Europe – you know, the ones people really miss. I’m going, and you should too. It’s in June, right when the weather gets awesome, and it’s also just outside of Boston, so it’s very convenient.

Demoparties continue to be rare over here, and with this year, Blockparty becomes the longest-running US or North American demoparty, practically an institution. With @party starting up, the opportunities just multiply. See you there.

1 Comment

In the Blackout —

I don’t like advice given by people in the form of “I have discovered something, and woe be unto you for not following my hard-won knowledge”, especially if that form comes wrapped up by a price tag or implied sale requirement.  I won’t name entities I see who do this online and hate, because part of their whole existence has to come from people liking or disliking them, enabling them with powers, like gods.  But some of that advice these ur-gods want to sell or self-aggrandize with has at the core of it, truth, and so I will acknowledge that not posting for months on end can be murder for an audience, even ones with RSS technology for knowing I did something the near-instant I posted.

I am not a disco ball, firing weak but noticable light in many directions and making you feel I am everywhere, but leaving you with scant real light. I am a bright fucking laser that aims its shit down at something and melts that fucker under intensity.  And unfortunately, a lot of stuff I’ve been doing has just not been followed by the time available to sit down and write about it properly. And then I convince myself that improperly is not better than nothing at all, and the world gets silence. This doesn’t work either, especially when an awful lot of people donated money to hear more from me, not less.

So let me do a quick set of sketches of scenes from the past few months, many of which I’ll probably extend and expand upon in coming months.

  • Somewhere in the middle of the “coin thing”, I discovered that coin companies are, generally, pretty weird. First of all, they seem to get the vast majority of business from military, specifically military units, who commemorate their times and fraternity by having custom coins made, which every member of a given group or sub-group carries to be able to flash in response to a challenge, hence the term “challenge coin”.  All the companies stress they have a veteran running the place or somewhere high up, and if you look at the sample coins, they always separate out the various branches of service so you don’t go to look at examples of Army coins, say, and gaze upon some Navy fuckers’ coins. But beyond that, what blew me away was how absolutely unprepared people are to design coins if they’re not working for a coin company. Sending in my coin design to Hollis, the awesome saleslady at the coin company that weren’t bastards, she sent it off to the art department and they totally remade the coin, making it so much better it was outside the realm of reality, that this coin might somehow be something I am capable of being in the company of, or the prime motivator of.  It looks like this, by the way:

  • Just yesterday, I was looking at Foucault’s pendulum; not some idea of the pendulum but the actual pendulum, machined and polished and in a box, while another pendulum does the stunt work in front of it, slowly moving according to the rotation of the earth. I’m at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, in Paris, a place where you can find displays with Commodore 64s, Cellphones and then original printing presses from the 17th and 18th century, looking like they need merely a few operators to start shooting out pamphlets by the stack. I do history, but these people do history. I had been there specifically at 5pm for an automaton show, automatons having interest for me for a possible future documentary. I wasn’t disappointed – the operator would take specific items out of their case and place them before us, original machines to emulate birds, provide music, and move pictures, and turn them on. Sure, the entire presentation was in French, but I got it.
  • Sockington is pissed beyond pissed. He wants to be anywhere but in this room, with this muslin sheet and the two strange guys and the occasional random flashes. At one point he actually bites my hand, something that hasn’t happened more than a half-dozen times in the years I’ve known him, so we all call a break. Somewhere in there, the photographers from People magazine got the best shots they could, but the photos I take of Socks are at his own leisure, taking advantage of pre- and post-meal times, when he couldn’t care less what’s up, giving him the air of regal disinterest that I think works best. Tweetie, aka Sockelganger, is more than happy to pose, however, walking straight into the middle of the muslin, flopping down, and striking a perfect profile. “Can we just use this cat?” the photographer asks.
  • I have learned the hard way that a lot of the plastic boxes sold at Home Depot and Lowe’s are crap. The crush weight, that is, the number of these things that can be stacked on one another before the start to bulge or break, is about 3-4, depending on how many magazines they’re full of. After a while, I find the right box, but now I have a few dozen others that are going to be emptied or filled with very light items indeed. The Information Cube, a 40′ shipping container I now have sitting in a distant place, has a mailing label, metal shelves inside, and will become one of my central projects as I classify and make accessible the thousands of items inside. But the crush weight! Come on. I finally find the boxes I need, able to be stacked 8 high with no problem – but I may need to order them in, and nothing makes you feel stupider in this world than paying to ship boxes.
  • Dozens of floppy disks arrive. Dozens of books arrive. Dozens of computers arrive. Hundreds of CD-ROMs arrive. The part of me that really enjoys sorting things is very happy.
  • Walking around in the back of the auditorium, I’m wearing a Victorian outfit and studying the crowd. GET LAMP is now, among other things, a 1-hour cut of interactive fiction, and the audience is responding well. A shot comes up, one I hoped would get a reaction, and the audience breaks into applause. The year of preparation, thousands of dollars, and unnecessary drama and conflict that brought that shot to the screen was worth it.  To my great surprise, another scene later in the film gets even stronger reaction, with people talking about it for a week afterwards; I had no idea. Afterwards, I pace back and forth on stage as heroes meet their fans.
  • Pundit after pundit after pundit comments on the iPad, and people turn it into a debate about functionality and freedom versus convenience and the inevitable future. I desperately want to join in, even though my contribution will be mostly profane and a minor twist on other essays (after all, nearly every position has been taken). I feel like that one kid with the broken leg who can’t follow the pied piper. However, I know I can break a few legs with my crutch, should things come to it, so I have a few kids to play with.

There’s so much to talk about, isn’t there?

6 Comments

BBS Documentaries Running Out —

Hey, I made a movie a while ago:

When I first started putting together this project, I had hubris indeed, and ordered 5000 copies, which is what showed up. That was in May of 2005.

Pre-orders were great – nearly 900. This paid for the duplication. After it came out, additional sales paid off the entirety of the production.

Since that May, I’ve been selling copies of this movie, along with a DVD-ROM called Dark Domain and a book called Commodork. All of this has been selling pretty well, considering it’s an independent project, it’s a documentary, it’s not about someone killing other people, and so on.

So here it is about 4.75 years later, give or take.

I’m down, by my estimate, to about 200-300 copies of the movie in my possession. The boxes are currently in two locations, so I am not 100% sure, but that seems about right.

At the trickling rate of the sales, I expected this would last me through the year.

However, I have a booth at PAX East, and I will be selling copies of BBS Documentary, along with a bunch of other stuff, as well as showing off GET LAMP and taking orders for that.

Therefore, I am bringing almost all the copies to sell. And with over 60,000 attendees, many of whom might not have known the GET LAMP guy did a previous documentary, or who never heard of this production until now, it may be an instant sell for them. I can’t tell. Maybe a handful will sell and that’ll be it. Who knows.

But I can tell you, without trying to be a sales sleazeball, that if you were thinking of buying a copy of the BBS Documentary, this would probably be a good time to do it. I will likely re-order, but we’re talking about masters that are very old, about a project that’s been in the vaults since 2005, and which I may have to save up money to be able to afford another run. A lot of factors, basically. Combined with the need to focus on GET LAMP, and so on, there could be a dry spell. That’s all. Thought I’d warn you.

Over the years, BBS Documentary grossed into the low six figures. There were a lot of costs involved and there are still a lot of things that eat into the apple, but I wanted my audience to know how much I appreciated this show of faith, and the many good words that have accompanied orders, not to mention conversations, showings, and all the rest of the fun. It’s been wonderful. I regret not a second I spent on BBS: The Documentary. Five of the interviewees have died, and we’re better for hearing what they had to say. And I’m a better person for having gotten out of the house to meet people, and falling in love with making film again.

Thanks!

23 Comments

Vector Tanks Extreme Trailer —

Oh how many times have I told you about how great Peter Hirschberg is? Many times indeed, come to think of it.

I’ve mentioned this before; I really like when someone takes the qualities that made an older technology enjoyable, and updates it so a contemporary audience can enjoy it as well, even with the gulf of decades of experience between them.  Peter does this all the time and he’s really good at it. Go ahead and browse the links above if you want to read the mass of words I’ve written about his projects, many of which you can enjoy online for free.

Well, Peter’s got a little side company going, Bliptime Studios, and he’s making iPhone apps, and man, are they sweet looking. Check out this trailer for Vector Tanks Extreme:

I don’t get a dime if you buy anything by Peter, but you get a kickass updated vector videogame. It’s the real deal. Check it out.

Oh, and if that voice sounds familiar? That’s Jon St. John, voice of Duke Nukem.

4 Comments

Review of the FC5025 5.25″ Floppy to USB Adapter —

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 with 5.25″). Somewhat sturdy (although the disk was quite obviously exposed, a problem solved in later media) and most definitely easy to understand once you knew which way to shove them in, floppies became the dominant way to store and retrieve data for anyone who wasn’t some crazy-ass company looking to store a whole mess of stuff. A lot of businesses even depended on these floppies, storing stacks and stacks of them under all sorts of conditions until they were needed. They showed up in synthesizers, in some point-of-sale systems, and other situations… but for home computers, they were The Way It Was Done.

As I am a computer historian, here’s the required scan from over 20 years ago of 5.25 floppy disks in nice plastic cases and sleeves:

The 3.5″ floppy, which was smaller, sturdier, and easier to use, eventually overtook the 5.25″ floppy, and this was well and good – it was a superior product. But 5.25″ was the province of many thousands of schoolchildren, businesses, pirates, artists, and plain old users – the pioneers, in other words, of what became the home computer revolution.  And with the ascent of the 3.5″, the 5.25″ ended up relegated to boxes, plastic cases, and an awful lot of basements, garages and attics. Forgotten, in other words. And with them, a treasure trove of life going online for people, just people, for the first time.

This leads to the current day. 3.5″ floppy drives (which only “old people” call “floppy drives”) are still in use but declining rapidly, and with good reason – USB flash drives (also called key drives or thumb drives) are vastly superior and can hold, honestly, millions of times more data than even the densest floppy disks that ever existed. But 3.5″ holds on, at least long enough to have been turned into a USB version that will allow you to transfer your 3.5″ disks into your modern systems:

Sure, they can be a little costly (prices range from $50 to $200 and hint hint buy the $50 version) but most importantly, they’re very ubiquitous and you can use them to transfer your old data from the 3.5″ disks to thumb drives or hard drives or maybe even the cloud, where it will never be seen again. Quick tip: If you go through the trouble to save old stuff, then save it in a few places.

So lost in this transition are the old 5.25″ floppies, whether they be for Atari, Apple, TRS-80, Heathkit, MS-DOS, or any of a number of platforms. Compounding this is that in some cases, the computer systems and even the companies that made them are gone, and you’re probably left with this aforementioned pile of floppies, unsure what to do next. Since they’re quiet and don’t explode if you store them near gas, they have usually ended up just sitting, and sitting, and sitting.

Until recently.

A number of entities have begun making 5.25″ to USB bridging technology, and they’re trying to make up for lost time. One, which is in the planning stages, is the Kryoflux.  A project by the Software Preservation Society, it promises great things, and encourages people to take their designs and market/build upon them. It’s very exciting and I wish them well.

But what I’m looking for is something where I give someone money and something arrives in the mail and lets me transfer 5.25″ floppies through USB to my compatible computer. And for that specific set of needs, we have the FC5025 from Device Side Data. Prototypes of this technology have been shown since 2007, but as of this moment, you can purchase one from Device Side for $55.25 (ha ha) plus shipping. I did this on a Friday afternoon.

The package arrived Monday morning, a mere two days from ordering, over the weekend, shipped priority mail. That is fast service. I realize things can slow down in the future but kudos to Device Side for such an impressive turnaround.

What you get in the package is this, plus a Floppy cable I left out of the shot:

FC5025 Shots

Essentially, the FC5025 circuit board, a CD-ROM, a USB cable, a receipt, and a floppy cable. In case you didn’t get it, you do not get a 5.25 floppy drive, and you do not get a way to hook said drive up to any sort of power.

Here’s a closer look at the FC5025 that arrived:

FC5025 Shots

From the arrangement of screws and the form factor, along with stuff written on the Device Side data site, it is obvious the engineer wants you to connect this inside your machine, and put a 5.25″ drive into a drive bay, and then run the USB cable to an internal port. (He also sells a USB card with internal port, for example). Of course, I was impatient, and since my basement is a treasure trove of old crap, I ended up doing this configuration:

FC5025 ShotsFC5025 ShotsFC5025 Shots

So what we have there is a 5.25″ TEAC floppy drive, inside a USB case (allowing me to have power) and then a cable running out from the floppy directly into the FC5025, and then a USB cable from there into the back of the machine. The internal floppy solution is more elegant, but this was easier for me to immediately throw together. Total time so far – about 10 minutes, including finding a good 5.25″ floppy drive.

Plugging in the USB connection and turning on the drive, the system immediately saw the FC5025 and identified it as such. Of course, I couldn’t DO anything with it, but nothing exploded or smoked, and the drive was plugged in completely, which was a good sign. The FC5025 has, as far as I can find, absolutely no status lights or LEDs of any kind. It just sits there, being. Obviously, if you had this thing inside your machine you wouldn’t care, but it did make me worried until I could test things. Luckily, testing occurred 120 seconds after plugging it in.

The CD-ROM has a manual, the source code for various drivers, and installation media for a program to transfer disks. In other words, everything you need to get started. I installed the Windows program and started it with no problems. It looks like this (taken from the Device Side site, but it really did look this way):

I put in a random Apple II disk I’d taken up from the basement, put it in, and ran the program.

It failed. Read errors galore.

Then I took the disk out and noticed that the owner (not me) had creased it beyond repair. I put in a different one.

It worked great.

Absolutely worked great! 14 minutes after I’d walked into the house with the package, I was able to read Apple disks, via USB, through this machine.

The FC5025 claims it can currently read the following formats:

  • Apple DOS 3.2 (13-sector)
  • Apple DOS 3.3 (16-sector)
  • Apple ProDOS
  • Atari 810
  • Commodore 1541
  • MS-DOS
  • North Star MDS-A-D
  • TI-99/4A

That is an enormous amount of time saved – you can put in most anything most people would have saved on home computers (with some exceptions) and pull in the data. That is wonderful.

I found the software very easy to use. Tell it where you want disk images to go, and it will save sequential disk images into that directory. disk0001.dsk and then disk0002.dsk for Apple II disks, for example. These will work with emulators, programs that read disk images like Ciderpress, and so on. I was suddenly looking at 25 year old programs that ran GBBS on the Apple II, in no time at all.

I was alerted to the release of this hardware by Rob O’Hara, who would rightfully consider me amiss if I didn’t stress that this is a read-only technology – it is to be used to extract data from these disks, and not put data on them.  If you’re looking to write out new data so you can play found disk images on your original hardware, you’re going to have to look elsewhere (and there’s a bunch of ways to do this, involving software on the original hardware that you install, and so on). And yes, there’s other solutions, but this is the first involving USB where you can take a stack of disks, without any other part of the given hardware or environment, and get the data saved. That’s worth trumpeting about.

Pros

Does what it says – takes a variety of 5.25″ floppy disk formats and turns them into files on a Windows, Linux or OSX box via a USB connection. Software is intuitive and easy to use. Contains source code if you want to tidy things up or experiment. Ships fast. Easily mountable inside a machine, if preferred.

Cons

Can only read images, not write them. Arriving in 2010, it is nearly too late for a lot of magnetic media, but last-minute arrival of the cavalry is always exciting. Needs a 5.25″ drive, which not everyone can easily buy except through auction sites.

Summary

Device Side Data have filled, for a good price, a sorely needed gap for preserving hundreds of thousands of floppy disks languishing in storage, potentially allowing a lot of computer history to live again, or at least die another day. At roughly $60, it’s a well-built piece of hardware that is intuitive and flexible, allowing you to read many different formats of floppies, making you the preservation hero of your block or social group in no time. Buy.

41 Comments

5.25″ May Be Alive —

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 buy parts that would allow you to read 5.25″ floppies. 5.25″ floppies, for the uninitiated, look like this:

And every once in a while, people would wander to that entry and ask if I’d heard differently, and what progress I made, and the answer was always “none”. Until recently.

So here’s an update on that situation. There are currently three “solutions” in various states of completion, two of which are commercially available and one of which is supposedly just on the cusp of it. So let’s get all that google juice going and say you might be able to read your 5 1/4″ or 5.25″ floppies via usb connection now or very soon. Here are the three solutions floating out there.

For some time, there’s been something called the Catweasel. The Catweasel comes out of Germany and is related to the Amiga scene more than anything else. It was designed for the Amiga with some slight leaking into the PC world. The website explaining this thing is here.  Here’s what a Catweasel looks like:

Now, here’s the thing about the Catweasels: they seem to be a bit of a white elephant. They were designed primarily for the Amiga set, with what can only be called a token appearance in other platforms. reading up on the “manual” for this thing fills the heart with concern. While it is theoretically possible this card will read a whole host of formats, it seems to be difficult to make it do so without a considerable amount of hacking. Witness, for example, this thread in which people hardly rain down ringing endorsements for this product. In this thread, you can see people somewhat happy with it but still finding it fiddly. It may be me being silly, but the whole thing seems kind of “off”, like you’re making this thing do something it isn’t quite ready to do. It lacks, in other words, that sense of drive and commitment. I’m sure someone worked hard somewhere, but it all just doesn’t do it for me. But maybe it’ll do something for you.

The second is the absolutely-horribly-named FC5025 Floppy Controller. I realize that you could decode “5.25 Floppy Controller” from FC5025 but you have to admit “Catweasel” is more likely to be remembered.

For all the horrible naming, the FC5025 is a real product, for sale, which I bought upon sight of it. It looks like this:

You connect it inside your computer, and hook it both to a USB port and to a 5.25″ drive.  After doing so, you use the included software to read between the various formats of various floppies. I should remark that all three of these solutions don’t just allow the reading of IBM/DOS 5.25 disks, but a wide variety. The FC5205, for example, claims you can read: Apple DOS 3.2 (13-sector), Apple DOS 3.3 (16-sector), Apple ProDOS, Atari 810, Commodore 1541, MS-DOS, North Star MDS-A-D, and TI-99/4A. Impressive if true! It’s convenient to shove any old floppy into the same drive and just yank the data off it.

I paid money, the product was announced as shipped to me. I will review it once I get it.

The third solution looks very promising, but is not official yet. It’s called the Kyroflux, and is part of a larger software preservation effort. It looks to be extremely flexible and open, with a spirit not unlike the Makerbot: a parallel commercial and open effort to ensure that you can acquire what you want in the way you want.

The Kyroflux looks like this:

The developers go to great pains to make clear this is a development board, and that they are still in the process of creating a slicker commercial version. This said, they’ve released everything that would allow you to make your own, and would encourage people to create additional drivers for machines and floppies they haven’t covered yet. They also are the best marketed of the three with a slick trailer announcing how awesome this device is:

The Software Preservation Society has written a lot about their project, so you can browse the site and read up if you want.  They promise a lot and they include everything from the software/drivers they’ve written to Eagle layouts for you to make circuit boards. So it’s encouraging, but I can’t actually buy anything and plug it in yet. If I had to guess (and it is a WILD-ASSED GUESS based on watching this sort of thing) you won’t see anything from them that you can just charge to paypal and wait for your box until summer. They may prove me wrong and I am all for being proved wrong if they come out with stuff sooner. If I get a version of it, I will also review it.

So it looks like 2010 was finally the year for 5.25″ floppies to rise from their graves. However, it may be too late for a good percentage of them. I’ll work like damn to ensure every single floppy of the thousands in my collections are transferred off this year, if this all works. It’ll be a start.

Updates as they come.

20 Comments

So I Made a Movie —

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:

IMG_4521

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 wavering and crashed. (Most people don’t remember that XP has this “feature” built in, because they either made the routines good enough that it doesn’t trip false positives that much, or they did it wrong and it never trips positive unless you’re the kind of pirate who throws his desktop computer off a desk). Since the machine was down anyway, I went and got a 2 terabyte drive and installed it internally, and now I’m putting 1 terabyte of GET LAMP data on this drive so everything’s internal. Note that I’m putting this data on the drive in the form of folders representing each USB drive, so I can continue to back up. This little misadventure means I can sit here and write some stuff to you while the drive’s syncing.

And it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I mean, really. Here I am full-time and you’re not getting the essays and information you normally get through this weblog. I have to blame the movie which is currently being transferred to this new drive.

The movie’s not quite done but it’s very close to done, now. There are parts of the 2-DVD set that are completely done, I’ve been fixing up sequences to give them a little more bounce, and I’m making all those hard choices that come from taking 120 hours of footage and making it less than 4. Even more than BBS, the raw interviews are really wonderful, and I will shortly be dedicating a machine to getting all the interviews on archive.org. For both of those films.

The weblog over at inventory.getlamp.com has been pretty active, letting you know about things like the artwork, the cover, the coin and other related information.  But let me speak to the production itself.

Post-mortem wise, this thing took way too long to finish. It didn’t take too long to film (2 years was about right) but it took another 2 years to complete, and that was way too long. A lot of it came down to my day job, which changed from a normal endeavor to a pretty terrible one for about a year. Combine a truly terrible customer with an overpromised support package, and the fact that the company had been maneuvering to get rid of me for some time (I believe I was one of the top-paid engineers at the company due to different salary structures and being acquired by said company) and the environment was basically toxic and doomed. Once I was out from under that rock and saw the sunshine again, my life has improved and finishing things up took a lot less time. The end result, though, was that people had hoped they’d see this in early 2009 and it’s coming out in 2010.

I think the movie is weird and unusual and people will generally like it and find some parts odd – I also think different people will find different parts odd. I also am now pretty much aware of my filming/editing “style”, and so if you liked most of BBS you’ll like GET LAMP because my unique mark and approach is quite obvious in this film too.  I do not mind having a limited audience, because that limited audience tends to really enjoy the work, as opposed to an audience that might be larger but will forget what they saw 2 days after they saw it. If I want general appeal, I’ll make more cat movies.

I did a nice interview with a game magazine about the movie and the interviewer wondered if the movie was for insiders or people familiar with the subject, or if it had a general appeal, and since I’m not owned by any particular entity I would have to say it’s primarily for insiders or people who were vaguely aware there were such a thing as text adventures. If you don’t like computers or don’t like technological self-consideration, you won’t like my film, but you won’t like a lot of others either. I assume you used a computer, and liked it. That cuts out a lot of people who might have unknowingly used computers (have cell phones, drive with a computer inside their car’s hood, played some games with the kids) but don’t think of themselves as computer users. It’s a nuance, but I think it’s important.

The movie is about our relationship to story, about how wonderful game-playing can be, how ingrained experiences can become when we regard them from a new position, and about how cool cave exploration is. But it’s all these things presented in a very strange way, with a lot of interesting distractions and side-paths. That’s how I see it, anyway. Others might have other opinions and I look forward to seeing them.

The next documentary, I promise, will take nowhere near as long. I registered the domain a little while ago and I already know where it’s going with stuff. It’s another huge one, and again, I have no fear that anyone else is going to be breathing down my neck while I do it and it will probably be the only documentary on the subject, even though everyone will know it.

But meanwhile, this one’s coming out and I expect there’ll be a lot more to say about it over time.

GET LAMP will premiere at PAX East, March 26, in Boston. An unbelievably large interactive fiction contingent will be in attendance, and there’s a panel I’m hosting right after the film.  See you there.

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