next »

[phubans]

That place we jammed at was interesting and so full of character and charm. First of all, it was interesting to see such a dingy place tucked away between all the shops and stores on Mission street. The dinginess married with the heaps of various electro-junk made this place a scene straight out of Akira... And the characters there may as well have been straight out of an anime, too. I'm not sure why I seem to have this nerd-magnetism, but it would seem like I have "approachable" written all over my face (too bad it doesn't work that way with women!) because every time I go to one of these jams some random people will just start talking to me.

I talked to this old Asian dude with a CRAZY beard who was telling me about his "video game mutilator", which the schematics of were revealed to him in a dream. Then, he was telling me how he was once playing The Sims or Second Life and finally this "Apply This Game" button appeared and when he finally got the curiosity to click it he was instantly transported inside of a furniture store, sitting on a swiveling chair. Not in game, mind you. He said he went outside and saw other stores but he couldn't enter them, because they were just graphical representations of themselves. When he finally managed to enter them, they were trying to sell him stuff (imagine that!) I asked him if he ever got out, and he said yes... Heh heh... I wasn't sure if he was leading up to the punch that he was still in this simulation.

It turns out the self-proclaimed hacker types are quite an eccentric lot. I mean, we gamers and game makers seem like social masters by compare. That isn't to say I look down on these people; I was actually charmed and highly fascinated by their personalities. There were some Germans and a Czech guy there who were really friendly and sampling his homemade kombucha. This one guy had glasses so thick it was almost cartoonish and he had written a syntax highlighter. There was this crazy intense thunderstorm the like of which San Francisco rarely sees and we all ate a TON of delicious Indian food until we were ready to burst.

Altogether, a pretty cool life experience.

[Musenik]

Dude said everything I was planning to say. Sorry I missed the indian food. Great light show!

[dongle]

If this hadn't been organized on the same day of Klik of the Month Klub, I would have attended! Next time …

[Zaphos]

Sorry dongle!  I thought KotM was a web thing though -- they have wifi at Noisebridge, so you could definitely have done it there.

Yeah, it was cool... I think we should plan better for the next one, though. I mean, I had a great time and there was plenty of socializing, but I don't think I got any actual work done. I think the 1-hour-game-rush-compo would have been interesting... I also thought it would be cool if we all wrote a word on a slip of paper, dropped it into a hat, and pulled out two, using those two words to dictate the theme of our game. Maybe next time though, eh?

Yeah, definitely

[hryx]

Lessee if we can do one sometime in December, otherwise January. Who's planning on being out of town next month, and when?

I'm glad you guys liked Noisebridge. I think it's a good place for small crowds to work on projects together. Like Paul said, maybe we can find a way to be a little more structured for better productivity next time. If nothing else, just a bit more desk space would help.

As for the hacker types being generally more eccentric than indie game types, yes. I think it may have something to do with people who just see things very differently in the first place. Noisebridge is like a fascinating swamp of different nerd subcultures.

[Musenik]

I'm going to bump this, instead of posting a fresh thread. Are people recovered from their Steam induced game overloads yet?

Are we ready to meet up again? I might be able to host a small group in Emeryville, but for a larger get-together, Noisebridge was okay.

[Zaphos]

Yeah, I'm back in Berkeley again so I'd definitely be up for another get together

[KingSlizzard]

I hope there's another meet soon