Jason Bakker

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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About Jason Bakker

  • Rank
    Thumb Territorialist
  • Birthday 10/12/1986

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  • Website URL
    http://www.jason-bakker.com

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Melbourne
  1. I had a very similar experience to Nick while playing a VR game called Rec Room, in its paintball mode. I was chatting to my wife while playing, talking about what the experience was like, and I could hear some general chatter from other players when they in my proximity. One of the players was speaking another language, and I said "I think there's someone here speaking... Arabic?" and then before she replied, I heard a dude's voice right behind me: "uh I think it's Hindi." It was incredibly jarring (as well as a bit embarrassing) and I sheepishly kept quiet for the rest of the match. But it stands out as one of the few moments where has VR really surprised me and made me feel like I'm somewhere other than in my living room playing a video game.
  2. The Idle Book Club 24: The Handmaid's Tale

    That is a great read - Atwood is seriously classy. I finished reading it today, here're my quick thoughts:
  3. The Idle Book Club 24: The Handmaid's Tale

    Ah this is great! I've had The Handmaid's Tale sitting on my shelf ready to read for a while now - will get a start this weekend. I've previously read Atwood's The Blind Assassin and it was really good. It has a construction that's playful in a similar way to Wuthering Heights (stories told inside stories), and it's had a strange effect on me.. where I've really enjoyed some books in the past but then forgotten key elements or what went on, The Blind Assassin has managed to stick firmly in my mind, even though at the time it didn't exactly hit me head on. I think it was the melancholy of it; at the time it had an almost oppressive effect, but remembering back to it I'm entranced by that feeling, and am drawn to reading more of her.
  4. Yeah - this book was definitely interesting. Like others, I was very into the fact that the novel wasn't just about the what-if scenario, but about relating it back to our world and history. I'm usually a bit wary of the escapist tendencies of what-if stories, but I felt that Dick purposely keeps pointing to the what-if nature of the book (through the references to The Grasshopper Lies Heavy) to keep the reader from escaping into this alternate world and forgetting what it says about our own. One thing that nagged at me while reading was the portrayal of the Japanese as the less murderous, more enlightened (as to racism and human rights) member of the Axis, and the lack of any mention of the genocidal and inhumane treatment of Chinese people by the Japanese during the second World War. I'd guess it's related to the fact that, at the time the novel was written, awareness of what went on in China during WWII would not have been as high among Western people (and thus authors); the only real mention of any Chinese people in the novel are the pedicab drivers. I'm pretty confused by the ending of the novel (does Abensen live in the same reality as Juliana, or in our reality, or a reality partway in between?) but in looking up something I was on the Gestapo wiki page and this sequence of names jumped out at me: Kinda weird.
  5. It is a great cover. And, good to know that I'm not the only one getting distracted by other great books - for me it was Against the Day, which took most of 2016 for me to read, but was well worth it.
  6. So I'm finally getting around to reading this and joining in on the new incarnation of the Idle Book club, only half a year or so late. (Will listen to the podcast and read all your thoughts after I finish.) I've been thinking a lot about World Wars recently (because of uh, current events), and the fragility of the period of "long peace" that we live in, and just today am about a third of the way through the latest Hardcore History that's (so far) very much about people's mindsets just after the end of WWII. So from reading the back cover, I'm either in the best head-space for this book, or the worst? Speaking of the back cover, there's an unfortunate typo in the blurb ("neutal buffer zone") - does anyone else have the Penguin Essentials edition and have the same typo?
  7. The Idle Book Club 2: Cloud Atlas

    The example is particularly enjoyable in that it's about "versions" of the truth. Wow. This also gets to some interesting stuff to me about what an artistic work is - how different would these two editions have to be for them to be separate artistic works? Could they be the same thing, yet have no crossover in terms of duplicate sentences or passages? It sounds strange, but translations by different authors to the same language can be markedly different throughout. In any case, there's something very cool about the indefinitivity* of a creative work. (*That's definitely not a word.)
  8. Game Jams

    I was on the recent train jam and, along with my friend and a cool Argentinian audio guy, made a strange IF game called Cerebellar. It's on itch.io here, and we wrote up a short post about it on our website. Just a note that it's a 2-player local multiplayer experience, so it's best to find someone to play it along with you. It should take about ten minutes to play.
  9. GDC '16 / SF thumbs hang out

    Yes it was good fun. Thanks for organizing! Also good call on setting it at the time you did - we left a bit after ten I think and there was a pretty long line out front.
  10. Post Your Game for Playtesting and Feedback!

    Hey getinthedamnbox, I downloaded the windows version but get the following error when I attempt to run it: The full text in the box is: I did a bit of googling and tried the solution at this url, but as I've got a more recent version of the redistributable installed, I wasn't able to install the version linked. Let me know if you need any help tracking it down!
  11. I'm very excited about this coming out, and feel a bit silly now that just before Christmas I went on a book-buying spree. I've already started Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter, but if anyone else is interested I also got The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Shulz. I heard one of the chapters read on the New Yorker short fiction podcast and it was great, so I'm finally getting around to reading it. I'd also be up for reading any Virginia Woolf. I found it a bit hard to get in to initially, but ended up loving To the Lighthouse, and am very interested in getting into her other work.
  12. Plug your shit

    Cheers Gav! Yeah I saw that on Twitter, am excited to give it a listen.
  13. Plug your shit

    Ben and I made another one of our future simulations that also happens to accompany an album: http://benweatherall.itch.io/futurevoximaginariumdotexedogeloveredition We were having a phone conversation about how doge coins are going to become the de facto currency of the 22nd century, and here we are. Ben is friends with this guy in Norway called Martin, so he made some tracks that helped us quantize the simulation and increase the relative accuracy. You're welcome, humanity.
  14. Plug your shit

    Ooer looks cool Gav!
  15. Hey! So I've been listening along all the way through (and enjoying it a lot, thanks guys!), and just wanted to jump in and say how legitimately freaky I find the 25 years later thing on an existential level. It doesn't really matter to me what Lynch was thinking at the time, or even if he's had it in mind over the past 20 years and he's been trying to orchestrate the comeback to occur in 2016. Even if you just look at it from the perspective of: now is a great time for Twin Peaks to come back because there's a growing interest in it because of deeper cultural interest in weird things, and tumblr gifs, and communities being able to be built around cult media through the internet, and Netflix, and... I mean. It's crazy, right?