Finally!
Ah! Life! The stale air of this abandoned haven of thoughts is stirred once again. I’ve returned to raise this long-forgotten blog from the briny depths of neglect and to give it a renewed sense of purpose, or maybe just a sense of purpose in the first place. Does the blog know the difference? I hope not.
First, a little back story for anyone who wants to read this from the new beginning (which is this). This blog has existed in one form or another since 2005 (that’s as far back as I can find, anyway), but it’s evolved at least visually a great deal since then. The name “Altered-Screens” is just an abstract title that doesn’t really have a whole lot of meaning to it, but I’ve grown to like it over the years so I’ll keep it. I tried a lot of themes for this site that I could never motivate myself to maintain: a web comic (by yourself this is a very daunting and miserable thing to do; props to xkcd), movie reviews, game reviews, guitar stuff, pointless stuff, pointful stuff, and so on. A year has passed since I last added anything to this site, during which time I let it sit here and sort of fester, letting the maggots dig in and nibble away at what was for all intents and purposes a dead blog. Lucky for me, the blog was biodegradable and so I’ve planted what amounts to a new one in the same place and called it the same thing.
So here it is, with a new banner I made tonight to boot. It may give you a hint as to what it’s going to be about. Hopefully it will give you more than a hint, and if it doesn’t, well, that’s not a good sign. Yes, I am going to Germany. Berlin, to be precise. I will be studying at the Technical University of Berlin, from August of 2009 to July of 2010, pursuing my physics major and my German language minor. The second of these two things is admittedly the easier one: when learning a language is essential to one’s survival, one tends to buck up and git ‘er done, as they say. Learning physics, however, in another language will be a test of many things, including patience, determination, and the tensile strength of my hair.
Of course, the question burning in your mind through all of this is why Germany? Good question. To date I haven’t come up with a good answer. Fact: I enjoy the German language. This throws most people for a loop right off the bat; it is not the most beautiful language, and I am aware of this. It appeals to me for whatever ungodly reason and I’m not sorry about it. I guess this fact, plus my having never been to Europe before, combined like two pieces of a two-piece jigsaw puzzle to spell out “GO TO GERMANY,” and having never doubted puzzles like these before, took the advice to heart.
I’m not leaving until the end of August - probably around August 28th or so - so for the time being this blog will detail events related to this upcoming expedition and whatever else I think is worthy of your time. Keep checking back for more updates.
-Sam