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A History of Violence is relatively recent work of director David Cronenberg, known for crazy, mind-bending kind of movies. However, this work is very different from, say, Videodrome or eXistenZ. There’s no morbid images generated by broken mind, but mature and rather amazingly well done look into consequences of violence.

Thomas, a restaurant owner, is living a happy life in calm little town with his family. One evening some thugs try to commit armed robbery in his cafe, but Thomas manages to grab the gun and shoot both of them to death. The aftermath of this event, however, starts to raise doubts about Toms past life.

In most mainstream movies, violence is depicted as something you do to bad people. This is not the case here – bloodshed is shown to be destructive, hard-to-escape force that negatively affects both of the sides involved.

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Movie Reviews by admin

This black-and-white Japanese underground work is probably the weirdest movie I ever seen. I’ll try to summarize its nearly completely incomprehensible plot.

A guy and his girlfriend drives down the street and hits some other guy with front of the car. Thereafter, they take the injured guy someplace to hide him. And have sex in front of the victim, probably thinking he is dead. However, the guy who was hit turns out to be some kind of cyborg/mutant/monster and somehow, as a punishment, bizzare things start happenning to the driver guy that involves his body assimilating things made of metal and some of his body parts getting, well, mechanical.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man is a massive, tidal wave of madness. There’s not even a second of sanity here. Makes me wonder what substances were involved in the corresponding creative process. This is the movie I doubt could possibly be understood entirely, for it being non-stop assault of the senses. Very little is explained. Things are happening without anyone getting a chance to discuss anything. Maybe the viewer is expected to make their own explanation of ongoing carnage. Emotionless soundtrack fits bizzare imagery extremely well.

Tetsuo is considerably gory stuff and that’s one more reason why it’s not for everyone.

Some people consider Tetsuo: The Iron Man to be the extreme case of cyberpunk cinematography. I think it may go beyond cyberpunk, as there’s no apparent content that usually is considered cyberpunk. Cyberpunk or not, this movie rubs my mind in interesting way.

4.5/5, I’d say.

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Movie Reviews by admin

From now on, the scope of this blog is changing and expanding – phasor.org/blog is no longer just an online notebook of  polyphasic sleep(lessness), but an outlet for my other interests. I’m not expecting to be best communicator around, but the core aim of continuing this blog beyond its original goal is to try to get better at expressing myself in written form. Also, quite a lot of the things I do/watch/read deserve at least some attention and will be discussed here.

Let the phasors rotate…

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Uncategorized by admin

More than a couple of months had passed since the end of my attempt to drastically decrease time I spend asleep. Looking back, I want to discuss some of my thoughts regarding said project.

• First of all, it is now clear that there was a considerable shortage of both equipment and cognitive testing software. EEG would have been extremely handy to determine the exact amount of sleep during the naps. Small programs I have coded provided only cursory measurement of my mental performance. I doubt the data I gathered is conclusive.
• Fighting the cravings of your own organism is fucking pain. Staying awake at hours I’d usually be deeply asleep was very hard and failure to do that was very common.
• Another thing that was against my goal was quite limited amount of things I could do when experiencing sleep deprivation. Most of the time, I been in small rented room and that had its limitations regarding both daytime and nighttime activities.
• If I ever try this stuff again, I’ll read more about biology of sleep/awake cycles.
• There was some experiments involving individuals gradually working themselves from monophasic to Uberman sleep schedule. That seems to be worth trying.

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Uberman Sleep Case Study by admin

Today I have decided to quit this polyphasic sleep project. It is almost end of summer and there was little progress beyond morning-sleepiness stage.  It’s unclear if it is possible for me to fully adapt to Uberman – during the day, I felt quite well, but some morning and night hours required considerable effort to stay awake. At the end of this case study, most naps were very deep. Thus I’d say there was partial adaptation to Uberman Sleep Schedule.

During the course of this endeavor, there was constant trial-and-error styled development of tricks to keep myself on schedule. If I ever try this again, I’ll be using already developed hacks to help myself adapt.

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Uberman Sleep Case Study by admin

My brain needed to relax badly, and today, not wanting to push myself, I followed the schedule rather loosely. Been somewhat asleep from 4 to 10. Also, there was some amount of unscheduled sleep during the day, which impaired napping to some degree. Can’t say I feel much better after all this sleeping – it feels like I slept more than I needed, altough before that I was somewhat sleepy.

Today I didn’t done anything in particular, just had a pizza and watched some episodes of Ghost Hound.

I am thinking about cancelling this project in few days – summer is ending. Also, I miss drinking coffee and green tea.

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Uberman Sleep Case Study by admin

I managed to stay awake during nighttime quite easily, but after getting up at 08:10 I was very sleepy and slept for approximately 1 hour. There was very strong drive to be in bed, as a result of which I turned off my speakers and cellphone. Probably due to this accident, there was no sleep during next two naps. Simply couldn’t fall asleep.

Also, I have been mentally tired and unproductive today. Can’t learn/code – my mind is tired. I must have been doing stuff a little too intensely. There is a need to rest.

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Uberman Sleep Case Study by admin

Now things went pretty well. Symptoms of sleep deprivation were much lighter. Last night was spent without any serious drowsiness. I was able to work (programming, etc.) until early morning (5-6 o’clock), then started to get sleepy. Watched some anime to pass time until 07:40. Next wake period was with some considerable sleepiness, as a result of which I took a little longer nap. I think it would have helped to force myself to get outdoors as soon as I got up at 08:10. However, since getting up at 12:10, I’ve been very energetic and felt great. There wasn’t even a trace of tiredness left within me. Done a little something with technology in university.

As a result of urgent coming home at 15:42, one nap wasn’t deep (possibly, I didn’t slept at all), but generally, I am getting good deep sleep almost everytime I nap. Also, it feels great to fall asleep. Minute or so before consciousness switches itself off, it feels like I’m not thinking about anything at all. That sensation of inner void is pretty weird, yet pleasant. It’s like Pure Being state protagonists experienced in the movie I Heart Huckabees. That’s right, pure being right before falling asleep…

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Uberman Sleep Case Study by admin

Due to little technical glitch, I was asleep for a little bit during wake period between 04:10 and 07:40. Asterisk had troubles connecting to VoIP service provider and, on top of that, I had switched my speakers off. Thus for some time stayawake.c was unable to, well, force me awake. Felt less tired after that. I don’t think it lasted more than 1 hour because it didn’t distort my naps at all. Now I sleep pretty deeply every time I take a nap.

Productivity and general condition were very similar to that of yesterdays. As always, been tired and drowsy during hours 3-12. Other time, I was okay, but somewhat worse than during days with 2-3 hours of oversleeping. Hopefully, I’ll see some change until the end of August.

Regarding my educational tasks, there is some progress, but it’s not as rapid as I want it to be. Right now, productivity is as good as during better (but not best) days of monophasic schedule.

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Uberman Sleep Case Study by admin

This time, I made it. Both night and morning been spent without any oversleeping. Been learning until about 5 in the morning, then, feeling tired, watched Neon Genesis Evangelion until 07:40. Next wake period was spent laying around and having to stop the music/hangup cellphone multiple times. Been pretty sleepy and had no mood to do anything. Problem of updated stayawake.c not reaching my cellphone was solved yesterday. There was small bug in the code.

After midday nap, I went out to have some doughnuts. Spent the rest of that wake period relaxing.

Next nap was pretty deep, but I managed to wake up right before scheduled time (16:07 instead of 16:10). Been somewhat dizzy and inclined to sleep, but not really drowsy since then. Under such condition, mental work is possible (done some stuff), but efficiency isn’t top notch.

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Uberman Sleep Case Study by admin