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A going away surprise. More…

So Auscillate has been down for the past two weeks. Spaceship.com, my excellent host, moved their computers while I was away in Europe and I didn’t get the chance to start setting up my domain service again until a week after I returned. And then it turned out that my registrar had been bought or something by another company, so I had to wait for them to get back to me with the info I needed to be able to access my account. And then this and then that and then, well, here we are. Tada. Jack Miller over at Spaceship has been incredibly helpful through this, so I must send his way a huge public thanks. Thanks!

So.

I’m back from Europe (obviously). That’s really the only Josh-related news of note. Some photos will come online shortly, including some fabulous monkey shots. At this point, everyone I see on a regular basis who cares has heard the highlights, so I won’t go over them again right now. AMODA had a Digital Showcase the Tuesday after I returned, including an awesome set by Richard Divine. And I utterly ignored SXSW, out of exhaustion and just a bit of boredom about the whole affair. To be honest, Austin doesn’t have any dearth of live music during the other 51 weeks of the year, and I’d just as much prefer to avoid all of the hassles that come along with SXSW. If I didn’t live here, I’m sure I’d love it, but, well. You know. Anyway, I got my music fest bug out at the CMJ Music Marathon last October. Their line-up was much more to my tastes. And then exactly a week ago, Saturday night, I played a set at Trey Smith’s place, a.k.a. Rancho Relaxo. I was pretty sick that night, unfortunately, so my punk-rock ass laptop-rocked out with a hot chocolate and a cookie. Instead of the usual the usual beer and fig newton filled with concentrated loathing. A couple people who listened closely to the set said some really good things, though, which made me happy.

Anyway. The title makes reference to how I spent my Saturday evening: Curiousity finally got the better of me so I checked out The Passion of the Christ. Not being especially religious, I don’t know the full story of the Passion very well. In fact, most of what I did know before this film I learned at the Easter service at my grandparents’ church in Pennsylvania last spring. So. I did enjoy learning a little more about the story of the Christ. Which leads me to my main criticism: With all of the flaying and cross-bearing and extended scenes of rather uncomfortable brutality, not much of his story could actually be told. It’s one very tight snapshot that contains a great deal of sensory detail, but very little actual story.

On the other hand, I felt it tried to give to the audience the experience of the death of the Christ as if to say, You think you know the horrors of what happened to this man because of some lines of text in a book, but here’s what it really means to punish someone in this way. And to try to deliver such an experience takes time and money — and filmmakers do not have an unlimited supply of either. In this way, the film reminded my of Irreversible (which, coincidentally enough, also starred Monica Bellucci). Irreversible tried to unpack the horrifying reality of the word “rape” that most of us only know so casually. Both of these films also included scenes of such realistic and brutal violence that I had a hard time keeping my eyes on the screen.

Yeah. My two cents. I’d recommend it.

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So I’m in Berlin, now, and have been for about twenty-four hours. I arrived at Tegel airport yesterday afternoon.

I haven’t done much so far. Yesterday I fell asleep a couple of hours after getting in, waking up this morning at about 5AM. It’s been snowing intermittenly since my arrival, and I got myself cleaned up early this morning and wandered around it, finding a park with a lake to photograph and some cafe’s to order a breakfast of rolls and tea from in stammering, butchered German.

I’ve been puttering around for the past couple of hours while Brenna waits for her turn in the shower. Then we’re off to a museum she wants to visit to check out the Gates of Babylon. And probably get some food.

About her place: She lives in an old Soviet apartment building in the former East Berlin. It’s been remodeled and is actually quite comfortable. She normally has three flatmates, but she’s moving out this week so the new residents, a couple of French guys who speak no English, are staying in the living room.

East Berlin doesn’t look that bad, though there are plenty of stark and blocky apartment complexes littering the area.

No photos as my computer won’t yet connect to the internet.

That is all.

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Christian con Snowman.

Friday evening, February 13th, I spent working on my computer until about midnight. When I opened the door to go down to KVRX, holy crap… Snow everywhere.

Campus was full of kids freaking out at the sight, throwing snowballs, streaking near the Tower, etc.

Below is a picture of the street in front of my apartment and above is Christian at KVRX, holding a small snowman.

Enfield Road.

Nimoy reviews past works at Dorkbot-NYC, Columbia University, New York, NY

Nimoy reviews past works at Dorkbot-NYC, Columbia University, New York, NY

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Flashtastic.

I’ve been writing simple Macromedia Flash MX programs exploring some cellular automata from Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science.

Anyway, these are three of the more interesting results.

To see my inspiration, check out page 157 of NKS online — Wolfram has the whole tome up for free, now.