Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

Latest Episodes:

The Infocom Source Code Episode Apr 29, 2019

Show notes

The Infocom Source Code Episode: The Specialness of Infocom, The Craft, The Z-Machine, Z-Machine Glories, Full Sentences and Every Platform, GET LAMP, The Infocom .ZIP File, A Release, Stu Galley, Github, The Clones and Branches, Steve and Kevin have a chat. An episode about the release of the Infocom Source Code on Github. It's currently available on the HistoricalSource collection there: https://github.com/historicalsource

The ZIL Language is now having a little renaissance and I hope to see some actual games come out of it. Until then, I'm not kidding - type in the name of any Infocom game and you can probably be playing it within seconds.

I recommend a walk through the document Steve Meretzky wrote at Infocom to explain the ZIL source code here: https://archive.org/details/Learning_ZIL_Steven_Eric_Meretzky_1995

Here's the video of the chat with Steve and Kevin: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/416801231

The Fortress of Solitude Episode Apr 05, 2019

Show notes

The Fortress of Solitude Episode: A Machine That Is Not a Machine in Richmond, A Riot of a Data Depot, Scripts and Miscellany, 11 Terabytes, The Ultimate Tape Archive, The Metadata Machine, The Fortress of No Solitude. Also: Taxes. A romp through the machine I spend the most time with these days, the Fortress of Solitude, and the steps I'm taking to keep it simple and empty.

The Podcasting Episode Apr 01, 2019

Show notes

The Podcasting Episode: What Podcasting Was, What Podcasting Was Again, The Downfall, The Rebirth, The Future of Podcasting, Money Matters, Why Do I Podcast. Just felt like putting down my thoughts and perspective on Podcasting, in advance of the Great Podcast Boom/Bust of 2019-2020. I podcast for a reason, and I re-iterate it in this episode: Because when looking to pay off debts, I wanted to also produce something beyond selling a shirt or doing a fundraiser with nothing else to come of it besides stasis. At 60 episodes, this is quite a body of work, and you've been inspirational in helping me create it.

Joe's Offer Mar 28, 2019

Show notes

Joe's Offer. An episode about a single gesture that blossomed into a life-changing moment.

For Joe Sherman (1917-2010).

The Acting Episode Mar 20, 2019

Show notes

The Acting Episode: Johannes and a Restaurant, Electricity and Christmas Lights, Acting, Pages, Out of Order, Tourist Trap, Editing.

The Wikipedia entry for the film is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je_Suis_Auto

While editing up the episode, I'm not 100% sure I make clear that the primary director of the "Je Suis Auto" film is Juliana Neuhuber (https://www.juliananeuhuber.com/) and Johannes is co-director but mostly in the role of main actor and writer. Johannes (and I and others) had ideas but Juliana was the final word on set.

The casino/tourist trap I mentioned is called Excalibur City and the home page for it is here: http://www.excaliburcity.com/en/

The Christopher March and Heimdall Episode Mar 03, 2019

Show notes

The Christopher March and Heimdall Episode: Losing Chris March, Getting Hired For Doing The Wrong Thing, Scripting and Scripting Languages, The Boundaries of Scripting, DUMPTRUCK, Heimdall, Heimdall's Secret, A Memorial Moment with Pat. An episode about Chris March, who I worked with at the beginning of my UNIX Career, and whose masterpiece, Heimdall, I'm worried may be gone forever. I hope not! But if it is, I'll honor its memory in this episode.

The Cowicature Episode Mar 01, 2019

Show notes

The Cowicature Episode: I Needed the Money, Two Pens and Paper, Sketch the Cow, Harvard Square, Territories, No Woman No Cry, What Caricatures Are, Very Little Udder Assault, The Clown, Street Vendor Shutdown. I spent a couple summers doing caricatures for money out as a street performer. Here's my thoughts on that. Before anybody asks, this sort of skill atrophies incredibly quickly, so I can't do it any more (people have tried to get me to do it). I took the time that would have been spent on my artist game and moved into movie making and computers, and while it's sad I let that talent go, I did some other good stuff with it! I idly looked up how street performing did after we got flushed out, and it turns out that this year, this year, they just changed the rules and policies regarding performing and fees and technically, I could start up again! (But I'm not going to: Kind of busy.)

The Time Episode Feb 02, 2019

Show notes

The Time Episode.

Was it all worth it?

The Postal Zine Episode Feb 01, 2019

Show notes

The Postal Zine Episode: National Lampoon, Adult Comics, Fooled Them, Forbidden Mail, Forbidden Subjects, Catalogs, Books, Power and Revenge, Factsheet Five, Gunderloy, Anarchy, Factsheet Five's Big Party, Internet, Zines, PDFs. Also: The Tax Treadmill.

An episode about my relationship (and others) to postal-based forbidden things, including access to the Factsheet Five magazine, one of the best printed things on earth at the time.

The Internet Archive Zine collection is massive and growing: https://archive.org/details/zines

Factsheet Five has a few issues up on the archive, but we need a large and high-quality scanning of this thing. https://archive.org/search.php?query=factsheet%20five

We even have a pretty zesty Loompanics catalog: https://archive.org/details/Loompanics_Catalog_2003

The Robert Hoquim Extra Episode Jan 31, 2019

Show notes

The Robert Hoquim Extra Episode: A Small Homework Assignment, A Fascinating Story, The Man in the FBI Hat, What Stories Change in Us, The Story I Won't Tell, A Book Yet Unwritten I Want to Read.

This episode is a little different in that it has a homework assignment: I ask folks to go listen to Episode 30 of Reply All, which I appear in and which is based on a story I brought to them.

A link to the episode is here:

https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/30-the-man-in-the-fbi-hat

Here is a link to the archive of information I built up over years about John Aleshe:

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/PERSONALITIES/ALESHE/

And here's the illustrated speech on Hoquim/Aleshe (and charlatans in general): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTzQmhmgLC0