Episodes
384
Latest episode
Oct 2026
Language
EN
Historian and loudmouth Jason Scott shares stories of technology, retrocomputing, documentary filmmaking, and general schennanigans from his decades of travels and research. From experiences on the road while shooting documentaries to often-obscure points of order, Jason keeps a fast-moving pace and even he doesn't know where we're ending up at the end.
The Processing Processing Processing Episode: A New Acquisition, Box of Heads, The Flickr Gallery, The Technique and Effort, As Simple as Breathing, The Eventual End, The Unknown Future. As I find myself having to handle a few hundred more CD-ROM discs, I thought I'd meditate on what got me in this mess in the first place. My 7,500 CD-ROM scans are at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/72157663634874672/
The INIT HELLO 2 Episode: Livestreaming INIT HELLO, The Second One, Apple II Meetings, Holiday Table, The Technical Setup, The Reason Behind Saving, The Intentionally Lost. I went to INIT HELLO, an Apple II themed conference in Baltimore that has enjoyed a pleasant, quiet success within a properly confined set of parameters. I enjoyed every moment. https://init-hello.org/
The Many Twisty Passages Episode: Can You Cite a Podcast, Driving at 27, An Eternal Passenger, Incurring a Debt, Life at Walking Speed, Changing The Mode, Infinite Variations, Complexity Instead of Simplicity, A Hearty Review of the Chosen Path. A heady contemplation on the fact I didn't learn to drive until I was 27, and how different my life turned out as a result.
The Ingestion Wonderment Episode: Sitting At The Incoming Pile, PDF and CBZ, Text and Sound, Newsletters, Layouts, Projecting The Excitement, Not Just Money, The World The Newsletters Were Made In, Love Across Decades, The Bravest Position. Just a moment to appreciate the thousands of truly off the rails and amazing PDF files that are coming in to the Archive these days, hundreds of user newsletters and mailed brochures, easy to read and fun to find. We can always have nice things, if we stop to notice them.
The PAL Video Toolchain Episode: A Final Part, The Nature of PAL, PAL Videotapes, VHS, DVD-Recorder Time-Base Corrector, Finding The Process, Testing The Process, The FIrst of the Tapes, The Future, The Nature of Learning. A contemplation on how I finally got PAL Video digitizing, after so long of wanting to do so. The first of the tapes are done, and I've got only a hundred to so to put that all into the done column.
The Homestar Runner Expert Episode: A Letter From a Teacher, A Student Researcher, Homestar Runner, Expertise For a Future Researcher, The Brothers Chaps, All I Know, A Virtuoso Voice, The Maintained Lack of Maintenance, Ruffle, The Future Doctor of Homestar. Getting a letter from a teacher where a student wanted to know about Homestar Runner and I was tapped as the expert to be consulted, I took it seriously and now maybe I made a kid's day. I could think of worse outcomes. The Homestar Runner Continues at https://homestarrunner.com/
The Misremembered Mall Episode: The Hudson Valley Explorer, The Running Commentary, An Amnesiac Tour Guide, The Story of IBM and Dutchess County, Tracts of Land, The Lifespan of a Mall, Dutchess Mall, Service Merchandise, The Atari Bug, Why Save Memories, Wrong Memories, A Single Hope. The fact a TikTok account called The Hudson Valley Explorer went to the dead husk of a remaining portion of the Dutchess Valley Mall and tried to explain it away shouldn't have bothered me, but he was also 5 miles from my childhood home, so let's do this.
The Background Noise of Community Episode: Healing Music, Avoiding the Noise, Learning Audio With Jeremy, Making Works and Creations, Never Alone, Understanding Part of the Tapestry, Appreciating the Noise, Being a Good Neighbor. Unexpected directions abound as I realize my neighbor is playing music loud enough to leak on the recording, and then realizing that being part of a community comes with a little noise. The lack of noise reduction in a couple places is intentional.
The Quick Summary of Archiving Episode: Getting Through E-Mail, A Phone Call or Nothing, The Role of Digitizing, Some Basic Metrics, The Continuum, The Approach, Metadata's Role, Getting It Wrong, Getting It Right, An Obsidian Obelisk, Space Station, Back to Work. Getting an e-mail that I know of as one of my long-to-take-to-get-back-to e-mails, I switched to making the e-mail into a phone call, and gave a quick phone call about what archiving standards I approach are. It was a helpful exercise, so here we go again with the ideas.
The Reel to Reel Episode: Moving to a New Medium, Learning a New Old Medium, The Process More Than the Products, College Education, Razor Blades, Small Collections and Large Collections, Individual Recordings, TC-650, Testing and Refinement, The Harder Decisions, The Time Ahead. I got my hands on a reel to reel recorder (which worked good enough for tests) and I just had to re-learn the whole aspects of reel to reel tape. It's going to be quite a joy to deal with all of them!
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