it's been a minute since i've posted here, mainly because i've been either very busy, sick, or both. september–october is the busiest season for the commercial AV work i do as a freelancer, which also requires me to spend a lot of time in nyc and sometimes stay over at friends' houses and/or keep strange hours of waking and sleep. i also got asked last minute to do live visuals at a somewhat large scale concert, which of course came right in the midst of the aforementioned busy season (it was honestly surprising i was not already booked that day).
between doing all of this, i seemed to have overextended myself which resulted in me catching a cold. i am very rarely sick at all, let alone have to stay in bed for days. thankfully, i had a somewhat more relaxed week that week anyway, because i was just watching a dog for a couple days and not doing any commuting, so i was able to rest and recover in time to get back to work and also make a trip to providence to drop off some artwork for a show.
a lot of things happened in the meantime, but i can't recount them all or this post would become too long. here are some miscellaneous updates:
- i published what ended up being a rather long article for av club, about different ways of controlling electronic instruments. it was interesting to write, but took me a super long time to finish because of everything that's been going on. i've changed the rules of av club to allow me to skip publishing digital snippets during the same month that i make and send out a physical object, to give myself more flexibility for busy times like this.
- i also made a blog post about the concert i did visuals for recently.
- i finished reading book of the new sun (shadow of the torturer through urth of the new sun). it was quite epic and absorbing. it took me about a month to read and that was with me reading quite a bit each day.
- i started playing two video games: assassin's creed: shadows, which i am playing at home, and death stranding, which i have decided to save for playing only during metro north train rides. since purchasing a wireless game controller earlier this year, i'm no longer using a keyboard when gaming, and i think it has helped me improve at combat in games, even though i'm still not very good at it and mostly play them for the stories.
- i had a crazy experience when driving at 4am and accidentally ending up in a drag race (i was not actually racing, just to be clear, but other people were and it was really insane, just like the movie fast and furious, which i coincidentally watched for the first time recently. if you ever doubted that the culture portrayed in that movie exists, rest assured that it does and there are people gathering in large numbers to admire and race souped-up honda civics right here in connecticut.)
- andrei successfully obtained a new mini van in wisconsin and drove it home, so my month of the bachelor lifestyle has (happily) come to an end. the camper van remains parked in my sibling's driveway in upstate new york, waiting for us to figure out what to do about it...
- i stayed with a friend i haven't seen in a while in brooklyn, and got to see his new studio space that he also runs art workshops and stuff out of. it was nice to catch up and we discussed potential collaboration on a future workshop.
- i have been doing more jobs as a video operator, which means that i'm actually operating video equipment during events, not just setting it up and tearing down. it's interesting to see what actually happens at some of these events (though many do require quite a bit of sitting and waiting). recently i worked an extremely extravagant bar mitzvah and a donors' dinner for a greek orthodox christian foundation with live greek music and dancing.
- i started reading a new book that is a memoir by a woman who worked in silicon valley during the startup boom. it is sociologically interesting if a bit annoyingly written. i have been avoiding the news and current events.
