Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

Latest Episodes:

The Hazy View Episode Mar 15, 2020

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The Hazy View Episode: A Single Moment and a Single Feeling, Realism and Unrealism, Graphics Efforts, The Forgotten Moment, The Melancholy Wish, An Older Person With an Older Memory, Childhood's Haze.

A simple fetch quest turns into a forgotten childhood memory. The single-best overview of the amount of technical effort and calculation behind every frame of Grand Theft Auto V is probably http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics-study/ - while others are out there, the use of a single frame of the game (that calculates 60 frames per second) lets you look at all the subsystems and choices made to make the system run. If that's not deep enough for you, may I suggest Miriam Bellard's explanation of baking story and meaning into architecture in GTA V: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1025736/Environment-Design-as-Spatial-Cinematography

The Dad Question Episode Feb 27, 2020

Show notes

The Dad Question Episode: A Simple Question, Why Did The Internet Archive Even Happen, What Even Is All This, The Infinite Growth, What Data Really Is, The Handfuls Taken From The Ocean, Towards the Future. A simple question from my Dad forces me to explain how we got into this mess and how we're going to have to keep in it, even in the face of impossibility.

The URL https://archive.org/~tracey/mrtg is not the most perfect page and not set up for easy understanding of what it's talking about, but it is the most up to date indicator of how much data is floating into the Internet Archive and how it's handling it. With an understanding and a stress that not all of the used disk space is "stuff" you can browse or necessarily related directly to Internet Archive stored items, over 60 petabytes of unique disk space has been stored by all operations and that's at least 120 petabytes of real hard drives.

The Other Arcade Episode Feb 18, 2020

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The Other Arcade Episode: The Dream Machine, Bad Real Estate, What Happened to Arcades, The Places I'd Seek, Lake George, Childhood Gone, Quassy Park, My Short-Lived Vending Machine Idea, Organized Crime, Barcadians, No Documentary, Except a Documentary, Dream Machine. Another episode covering arcades, but I wanted to approach this important-to-me subject through an alternate thread. I wanted people to know that http://arcadedocumentary.com now points to a project called ARCADIA, which I'm supporting as a replacement for what I'd been intending to do with my own film. Carly Kocurek, who was interviewed for my film, came out with a book you might have missed called COIN OPERATED AMERICANS, the page for which is here: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/coin-operated-americans

In the episode, I don't mention Lyons Pinball, which of all the public arcades (there were a few private ones I also liked), I found the most charming, and the most lovely. Here's their website (they're in Lyons, Colorado), and they are still the only place in the world you can consistently play one of the ultra-rare JOUST two-headed pinballs machines (less than 500 were ever made). http://www.lyonspinball.com/intro.htm Besides my URL, here's the official URL for Arcadia: https://arcadiathemovie.com/

Do you need to know about Quassy Amusement park? https://www.quassy.com/

The Wikipedia article of Quassy is currently more useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quassy_Amusement_Park

It's the internet, so there's pages about the Dream Machine in Poughkeepsie (the other one in my area, besides the one I went to at Dutchess Mall), and it even has photos of what I'm talking about: https://thearcadearchives.com/2011/09/21/raygunn-dreams-of-dream-machine/

All hail arcades!

Forever. Feb 07, 2020

Show notes

Forever.

The Ingestion and Loss Episode Feb 02, 2020

Show notes

The Ingestion and Loss Episode: Winter Floppy Boxes, Kansasfest 2019 Flux Party, The Levels of Floppies, Screen Shotgun has Menu Awareness, Why Even, The Death of the Artist, Randy Suess, Laughing Squid's Photo Policy. A few thoughts on imaging floppies, and never knowing who will take care of your stuff after you. I couldn't begin to list everyone who helped with the Kansasfest flux efforts, and we had multiple people who spent hours, days even, making it go down. It's still my favorite place to be, an inspiration, a warm hearth, a special thing. I hope everyone gets to have a place like that.

Laughing Squid runs a great news and interest blog at https://laughingsquid.com/. Randy Suess' obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/technology/randy-suess-dead.html

On The Occasion of Chest Pains Jan 22, 2020

Show notes

On the Occasion of Chest Pains: Stent Number Three, Poor Notes in the Symphany, Arguing For Myself, Feelings, Operation, The Talking Car, In and Out, Different the Third Time Around, A Message About Support. A short side-path into getting a procedure done and what it's like when it's not a new thing anymore. Been resting and doing nicely, don't worry, and things look very good. (And not as expensive as previous procedures were.)

The patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/textfiles

The Halo Outpost Discovery Episode Jan 17, 2020

Show notes

The Halo Outpost Discovery Episode: My Pal Kyle, Halo Doubles, A Halo Outpost, Chicago, The Idea of a Halo Convention, Mortal Kombat Side Quest, How It Was Done in Chicago, An Empty Hall, Corners and Booths and Stages, Vendors and Library, VIP Access, AR Halo, Caddyshack and the Murray Family, Goth Caddyshack, Halo Fun, Final Thoughts, You Ruined Doubles 343. This year I attended a Halo-themed convention being held at various times around the country, and now you know how it was like. I call it Halo Waypoint the whole episode because that's what the App you used to walk around was like, but Halo Output Discovery is the true and actual name. You'll get it. Halo Outpost Discovery site: https://halooutpostdiscovery.com/ Halo Outpost Twitter: https://twitter.com/halooutpost Kyle in the Quiet Place: https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1157703244514091009 Halo VIP Lounge: https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1157704146138599425

The RTTY Art Episode Jan 11, 2020

Show notes

The RTTY Art Episode: A Word About Loss. Meeting John Sheetz. RTTYs. RTTY Artwork. The Magic of RTTY Art. Sunday Nights. Interviewing John Sheetz. Gone Before the End. Typewriter Art. A Living Room of Artwork. Overstrike and Multi-Column. Epson MX-80. A Fading Work. After John is Gone. Timeless RTTY. A Printer As Easel. I may have mentioned John Sheetz in an episode before, but I certainly didn't go into all the elements of the RTTY artwork and world he was a part of. It was nice to finally get all of that out in one place. Photos from my interview with John Sheetz.

The Full Video Interview with John Sheetz. RTTY Art Made Easy by Don Royer, WA6PIR The Story of the Typewriter, 1873-1923.

Marcin Winchary's incredible collection of typewriter artwork books (as well as many other type and typewriting works).

The RTTY.COM collections of RTTY Art and Related History. (The Gold Standard)

The TEXTFILES.COM collection of RTTY Art

The CPC Episode Dec 26, 2019

Show notes

The CPC Episode: Amstrad CPC Joins the Fray, A Platform Unknown to Me, The Problems CPC Had, Getting it Going, Auto-Boot, An Ugly Thing, Graphics and Sound, Isometric, Multiple Markets, Thousands of Programs, A Helpful Discord, A New Platform, Nearly the Last.

Upon the event of the Amstrad CPC joining the emulation family at the Internet Archive and what that might mean.

To journey among the newly added titles at the Archive, just browse from this URL: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_cpc?and%5B%5D=mediatype%3Acollection&sin=

The Server Cage Episode Dec 21, 2019

Show notes

The Server Cage Episode: An ISP Ends, But Hosting Never Stops, Don't Forget the Fiber, The Other Half, I Know How The Caged Server Beeps, The Arrangement, Dual 486, Stickers, Too Much Bandwidth, The Worst Way to Page Me, Goodbye, What We Have Lost. I'm happy to say that there are photos of the arrangement described in this episode. They're browsable here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157653792998936

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