sometimes it's good to boast Tweet

I've been on Twitter for three years and three days now. Take that, Internet!

P.S. Noticed a lot of people boasting lately about back in the days (one year ago!) when they joined Twitter and their friends thought them bonkers. What's in a year? What's in three?

tate liverpool, here I come! Tweet

my love will go on, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

The tiny email below, pertaining to the gorgeous photo above MADE MY DAY. I'm jumping around the house with joy, though contained enough not to scare this silent neighborhood (boring, but then I can sleep undisturbed at any hour, should I afford that luxury one day). Anyway.

You've been sent a Flickr Mail from Tate Gallery :: Colour Chart Congratulations!

Dear gorgeoux,

We’re delighted to let you know that your image - my love will go on http://www.flickr.com/photos/gorgeoux/2897006516/ has been selected from the Colour Chart group pool to appear in the Colour Chart poster.

Would you like us to display your real name alongside your Flickr name in the gallery? If so please let us know the name you’d like to appear. And please let us know your postal address so we can send you a copy of the poster.

Congratulations again,
Tate

So how is this after that hilarious kerfuffle with San Pellegrino? Let me try it: I'LL BE ON AT TATE. No, better yet: I'LL BE ALL OVER LIVERPOOL. And a bit of London, methinks. Woohoo! When the poster arrives, in a couple of weeks, I'll pop a bubbly. And another one, perhaps, when I make it to Liverpool next year, for the first time yet, to see the Colour Chart exhibition. Who would have thought, Liverpool and bubbly!

To family, friends, and companies who encouraged me over the years and gave me films, attention, and cameras (to play with or for good), a big big THANK YOU followed by a chain of loud shrieks of excitement. And then? I'm hours away from receiving my first SLR ever, from my first eBay bid ever, and paying back a generous supporter.

Internet, I'm oozing happiness :D

A very belated update: the poster! Ta-daaa!

the color of rain Tweet

the color of rain, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

I lifted my eyes off the screen and there it was: magnificent rain clouds in the sunset. My eyes still on it, I grabbed the camera. Then I grabbed the phone and called a late worker to hurry to the back window of his office, across the square, and breath in the surreal atmosphere, the random seagull shining over chimneys. Only then I sat down, in awe, and lit a cigarette, waiting for him to come home. The sky had won over coding, managing, administrating. The rainy sky of London had sweetened the medicine down.

in all my green silky paisley splendor Tweet

green paisley dress, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

I inherited from mom and my aunt three amazing dresses from the 70s, made by the same tailor in three different models and a silk so smooth and light that I believed I could fly, wearing them. Sadly, at my current good life size, I have to keep them in a box rather than about my body.

Enter Martha's Closet, once more, the online vintage store that has already provided me with several stunning pieces at affordable prices. Not only it is this dress sewn in that old school, perfect silk, but it's paisley pattern won my heart in a blink. What followed is known as impulsive shopping.

The belt is a Jigsaw snatched off Bang Bang, my other destination for vintage (and not only). I've hardly ever been an adept of uniforms (communist heritage to blame), but I can't get enough of wearing this dress, generally with this belt, rarely with the new yellow one.

Luckily, it got washed today and it will be another week before the cleaner irons it, so I'll have to look into other options. And, what do you know, the first that comes to mind is another Martha's Closet find! I'm a fan, does it show? If not, guess what, I've just spotted another dress on that website.

And before I turn this into an even bigger ode, let me go back to Bang Bang for a bit. The most marvelous thing about it (other than gawking at too small, too expensive, painfully gorgeous Vivienne Westwood hats) is that it practices clothes exchange in both its shops.

Simply put, about a month ago, I went down there with all the bits and pieces I didn't want anymore, and God, they were many! The shop assistant applied her trained eye to various piles of clothes, bags, shoes and accessories, picked what would sell well this season, and bang!

I was offered 60 pounds in cash or 100 in credit. And to this day that credit burns my wallet with seemingly unlimited possibilities, making me feel rich just because I could enter the shop on a whim and leave with something yummy. Even on a day when I'd be broke (God forbid!).

The rest of the paraphernalia that took my hands and his to carry across went to Oxfam, on the same Goodge Street, in batches, as soon as they got rejected. Even those labeled 'bring them back in the fall'. And my favourite Oxfam? Closed a bit later that day, in the face of such windfall.

when I wake up, yeah I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the bird watcher who wakes up next to you Tweet

sharing the feeder, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

Some mornings I can't wake up when the alarm goes. I stopped hearing it, selectively, a few months ago, and that has never been a good sign in my life. So I made my share of allowances to change the course, and my sweet professional helper has topped my efforts with a generous pampering package. I wake up (still, against my better judgment) in cooing and caresses, fresh coffee awaits me, and if I respond well to the treatment I even get breakfast. What does he get, other than my eternal love? He gets hushed down and pushed away and pushed around the second my fuzzy consciousness is at 1%: Did you HEAR that? The cracking of seeds. The chirping of arriving at the table. The flutter of tiny wings. The green finches don't wake me up (like the suicidal pigeons do), but I do wake up with them. And some rare mornings, there are great tits instead, golden yellow creatures quicker than my camera. The best of mornings, however, are when he lies back on the bed, quietly, next to me, and we take turns in spying through the curtains and sharing breaking news: There are three now! No, four!

The moral? We need a bigger bird feeder. So big that our eyes can feast on ALL them birds simultaneously.

a vague effort towards restitution Tweet

I spotted this cool project over Twitter tonight. I only wish the authors of the original photos were named WITH links back to their images. That way I could have posted all three originals here, and gain a better view on the outcome. Oh, well, next time perhaps.

a vague effort towards restitution , originally uploaded by Billy Prophet.

(via gorgeoux, stadtkatze, WolfgangPichler)

friendly bee, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

my day sandwiched between two snapshots Tweet

quick spottings, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

The resident suicidal pigeon of some mornings, missing the bird feeder in a frantic flight. The sun going to sleep on the lulling branches of a solid tree.

secret garden Tweet

secret garden, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

The waiting is over. I have a lot of tiny pots sporting the excessive English ivy right above my desk. I've been reminded that I don't believe in 'one day'. It simply doesn't exist. I believe in 'now or never'. So there. A tiny, secret indoor garden of the tiniest pots yet and much English ivy, with its own cats, flowers, stones, kokeshi doll and shells. We're home, and it's marvelous! I'm so excited that I could start my own Apartment Therapy site. Or, for starters, take Apartment Therapy: The Eight-Step Home Cure to bed.

bringing up amplus Tweet

About a week ago, amplus.tv finally started gaining weight, like babies do, and its family sighed with relief. Gone are the newborn wrinkles, here to stay are defining features. Rather than boring you, like parents do, with every little detail that miraculously improved or stabilized (and you have never even noticed), we give you the highlights of the highlights:

1. Login with twitter is smoother, and amplus.tv will remember you forever—as long as you add moving images to your channel at least once every 60 days (and you don't log out :)
2. The bookmarklet resides now in the website header, and has become much smoother itself (make sure to delete the old one and grab the new version)
3. Every user has an associated user number that is now published in his/ her channel page, to express our excitement with and gratitude for the early explorers of amplus.tv
4. Every bit of moving image, from any channel, was originally spotted by a first user, and now first spotters are visibly credited for their discovery anywhere the video is displayed
5. RSS feed items now include video descriptions, and link back to their amplus.tv channel, crediting the channel maker wherever the feed items travel

Lots of niceness and shininess, no? Hurry up, give it a go, and let us know how we may help you get more out of it. And check out the community channel in the sidebar of this blog :)

amplus.tv is the simplest, cutest tool for building a channel of moving images online. It now recognizes 7 major sources: blip.tv, Daily Motion, Flickr, Hulu, TED, Vimeo and YouTube. To make a channel, login with Twitter and use the shiny, tiny bookmarklet in Firefox. Then take the RSS feed of any channel into readers or miro (lovely FREE player of video feeds), embed any channel on a website (think blog), and send a twitter message about... any channel :)

Cross-posted on the blog of MetaBroadcast and my professional blog.

amplus refreshed, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

heaven, he's in heaven Tweet

He went to the market every Sunday. That is, every Sunday that he spent in the city and woke up earlier than he liked, not spotting what to do with himself that wasn't hard work. He expected, no, anticipated every Sunday to be thrilled at the market. It wasn't the case. But he loved the wander, and, if anything, his hopes grew even higher walking in the sun and dreaming about all those magnificent dishes he would put together with the market finds. Every Sunday he imagined a nibble or a feast that would enrich his life and take his mind away from the daily grind. This time, he inspected the stools with a raised brow and a sinking smile. The same pitiful slicing tomatoes that would make Ohio or some such state proud, the same tasteless meat cuts that silly people would later overcook, the same ten useless types of lettuce for the untrained palate and the same twenty elaborate types of bread that go stale within a day. A fragrance insinuated itself about him, a pleasant fragrance of delicious dishes still to be born, but he couldn't nail it, so he waived it away as coming from the overpriced cake stool, and carried on. The fruit people insisted to sell piles of cooking apples that refused to become an even bigger pile of apple pies, and the wild mushroom rough guy took his charge to peaks that meant rare shoppers bought a single mushroom here and a slice of a bigger specimen there. What a load of bollocks! His nose rose high, and the fragrance caught him again. It had the sunny notes of his mother's front garden on a perfect August afternoon, and he inhaled deeply, consciously, carefully, thinking of no dish for the first time in the last hour. Surely it couldn't have been the cake stool, now way behind him with the other invasive smells of the garlic farm and the fish monger. He looked around, excited and dizzy, not knowing what to look for. A hint, he wanted a hint, and soon enough a fat dumbledore flew in front of him, lazily making its way to unseen promises. The herbs stool next to him was probably the target, and as he sniffed the grapefruit mint in bloom, the bumblebee got lost, with his memory of it altogether. He felt a bit chilly, a bit undecided, wondering whether the supermarket could reignite his gourmet dreams or whether he should stop for a coffee and a ponder. Sneaking out of the market through the merchants' entrance, he stumbled into a small lady, nearly crushing the wild bunches of lavender at her feet. Blinking quickly and making rushed apologies, he kept going only to turn back, out of politeness, and this time fully kicked the largest bunch in his absentmindedness. Worse turned to worse in his head, though the tiny woman smiled kindly, and he spontaneously acquired the bruised lavender sheaf, as if an expense could have brought back his calm. He lifted the flowers in his arms, seeing that he has to hug them dearly, and there and then was transported to his mother's front garden. A demented smile bloomed on his cheeks, a loud thank you made the lavender lady jump, and man and bunch started their hurried journey home, closely followed by a dumbledore. Forgetting market, supermarket, and coffee, he walked on vivid images of lavender honey, lavender sugar, lavender ice cream and, by all gods, waking up his small woman back home with a huge lavender hug. Who knew they sold happiness at the market, every Sunday, and it was only ten pounds!

lavender sheaf, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

fallin' in love with mishka adams Tweet

Half-Filipina, half-English, terribly young, gifted, and gorgeous, jazz artist Mishka Adams had me at hello last night in 606 (long time no seen). She kicked off the evening with her own arrangement of Air's All I Need (Moon Safari, 1998), even more striking live than recorded (Space, 2007). Later in the evening, Bjork's It's Not Up To You (Vespertine, 2001) received equal attention from the barely 25 y.o. singer-songwriter who majored in saxophone to then take a postgraduate course in harmony, composition, arranging and improvisation.

Listen to some of her arrangements and original songs, and keep your eyes on Mishka Adams. She's going for the world. And when I get a spare moment, I'll build her a first Wikipedia page to help on the road.

a spot of foraging: mint from regent's park Tweet

A lazy afternoon in Regent's Park with a spot of jazz, until the moments after when we got off our wine heavy arses and started picking up this amazing crawling peppermint spotted last week. No wonder every one loves having a picnic by the lake, jazz or no jazz, when this amazing aroma surrounds them! The main challenge while collecting the very mint of the Queen has been all the feathers and fluff of the nearby moulding birds, which can carry shit I don't want to consider. So, yes, finding mint that wasn't already white took some skill. Then washing up all that took some time. And now the long wait begins where we dry it before storing it and, hopefully, turning it into Christmas gifts. Especially if we go again next week and get even more ;) It's such a generous lawn!

Update July 31st, 2010: I have no idea how the gift recipients felt when opening this unusual (of late) Christmas gift, but only weeks ago we had the most amazing ice tea on the terrace, so we're definitely going back for more mint (and jazz) one sunny Sunday.

new friend. or is it old? Tweet

the robin from gorgeoux on Vimeo.

On my way to work this morning I bent two hungry ears towards the Fitzroy Square garden, now with more singing birds than ever, partly due to the feeding efforts of yours truly, no doubt. It used to be full of pigeons (yuck! they're silly in the city, losing instincts, eating pizza slices), and visited by the occasional blackbird. Lately, I heard more blackbirds, the green finches I see on my bird feeder every day, and a rare thrush (Wikipedia). Today, however, belonged to this tiny, agile, and loud robin (wish my microphone was better) and I'm happy as Larry to have spotted one of them around here for the first time. I normally get my robin fix in Regent's Park. Not anymore ;)

If there are some birds/ In your neighborhood/ Who ya gonna call?/ BIRDFEEDERS!

1097 Tweet

1097, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

The circle is complete. London, UK

Three years ago (though you will soon see how debatable that aspect is) I have started largess, a photo blog inspired by an image similar to the one above, sunset at Madi's place. It became the place where cats strolled on tree branches in the sun, all varieties of flowers bloomed, shadows were pregnant with tales and all my trips abroad were documented (not to mention my trips around Romania, too).

Within one year of its inception, the photo blog moved to cheezy cheeky as the category daily dose, and went on to show the wonders and horrors that populated my world, as part of my main blog (it was only fair). In these three years I have worked with at least six cameras, from basic phone exemplars to semi-professional gear. Though you wouldn't be able to differentiate (I'm not): the focus has always been the story of a brief moment rather than the high quality of the images.

Time has come to put largess and daily dose behind me and, since nothing dies and everything transforms, there will be a follow-up, though I can't promise to stick to the daily rule; it has been a pain for me, though no doubt a pleasure for viewers. I will, thus, continue to publish quirky and endearing photos yet, for change, they will be accompanied by stories. My love affair with photography shadowed the writing on the way, and that's what I plan to recover from now on, the joy of storytelling.

As for the debatable three years, mmm, here's the thing: 365 x 3 = 1095, and adding 1 extra photo for the leap year brings me to 1096 images. How that managed to start on July 17th, three years ago, and end on August 3rd yesterday, beats me. I could have gotten some numbers wrong, but it's more likely that I simply couldn't deal with that daily rule as well as I thought. Thank you for enjoying the ride and spicing it up for me with comments, and here's to endings that turn into beginnings!

here today, gone tomorrow: san pellegrino *almost* made me famous Tweet

there for a while, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

Via their agency, Besanopoli, San Pellegrino asked to display my photo next to a lifestyle article on the San Pellegrino website. I was not told what the story would be or that there would be a collection of photos to illustrate it. I was asked how they should the credit the photo, and used the opportunity to correct the wrong spelling of my surname.

Today the article got published, and it's about saffron. There's no saffron in the dish I photographed, the photo's tags and description, but it is a dessert made by London restaurant Zafferano (which means... saffron). And my surname is still spelled the wrong way (as some brides-to-be also managed last year, because it doesn't matter, does it, accuracy?) even though I suggested they use 'gorgeoux' for simplicity. Oh, well, what now?

I wrote to suggest they remove this photo from their collection, perhaps replacing it with more appropriate photos in my stream, like all those crocuses tagged with saffron, but I'm not sure I'll be hearing back soon. Their last email said something about being back from holiday on August 31st, but question is, when did they leave? Lost in translation, I guess :)

Beyond the sadness of seeing online PR do a rushed, if not poor job, right after it excited me with the right approach and seeming smartness, I can't stop smiling at the many ironies and missed understandings involved in this tiny storm. Above all, how vain was I to think my photo will be THE photo in some article! My photo is precisely the WRONG photo in an article, of many that are not central, and I had to spot and tout that myself. Ha!

P.S. Their website uses some old school Flash, so sorry, I can't link to the story itself. You'll find it on the front page today (August 3rd 2009) and for at least one month longer, I guess, but probably not with my photo in, so hurry, have a laugh at my #lameclaimtofame :)

1096 Tweet

1096, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

Gone fishing. Ninh Van bay, Viet Nam

perfect sunday Tweet

perfect sunday, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

Chris came back this afternoon from a round trip that took him to Lowerstock, Norwich, Ipswich and back home. The best bit for me was... trifold: I got a lot of time to myself, which, as usual, I spent catching up with blogging. I heard about a brilliant 10 y.o. short movie about the final show of a radio station, and can't wait to see it. And I've received a cute little bouquet from the Ipswich garden (my would-be-mother-in-law? do suggest a shorter job description), in so many ways the best thing today: sweet peas are delicate and a very English garden plant, and that rose, fragrant as a crisp summer morning, comes from a plant we sent Chris's mom a few months ago. I honestly don't have such a sweet rose plant myself, but, as follows naturally, I'm considering getting one, what with this gorgeous flower smiling from my table!

Later update: Picking up Maria at Heathrow, and cutting the way back home on the Tube in two so that we can have drinks in a pub by the Thames was good, as well. I loved being on the terrace in the sun (sun! in London! wicked!), guessing out airlines names on the planes flying so low over London lately, chatting about whatnot, and equally adored getting to stare at the windows of that sexy little antique shop by Hammersmith Bridge which reminds me of central Bucharest and was sporting, among others, THE cocktail bar to have. Tired now, after dinner on the terrace, and some wine, but I know that I'll wake up to this rose tomorrow, and that is swell.

1095 Tweet

1095, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

What else is there to add? London, UK

so long tumblr, and no thanks for no fish Tweet

It's been a few months spent on Tumblr, and a very bumpy ride at it. I dreamed and worked hard to use it as an aggregator of various feeds that I otherwise display at the bottom of this blog's sidebar. I hoped to provide interested readers with my picks of blogs, links (via Delicious), photos, music and videos displayed in a more friendly manner than here, while not generating collection posts on this blog. FAIL, and I had all Tumblr's support while at it. They only grab 2 new items per feed, and only in some cases, rendering my curating efforts useless. They got in touch twice, slightly disproportionate to my four emails. They were cheap with their words, I was generous with mine. Was considering sending a fifth email today when I realised it's simply not worth it. My Tumblr is closed, and my sidebar here returns to the previous complete feed, aggregated in Google Reader and republished as HTML with FeedBurner.

In the process, I styled a Tumblr template to my liking, introduced categories/ labels, and edited every goddamn post that made it through to add the category, manually. Tumblr doesn't have a proper dashboard, or anything like a content management system as provided by other blogging platforms. It neither has support, and that for me is the biggest possible flaw of a service today. So Tumblr, my dear, R.I.P. In the course of these months, I also spent half a day trying to generate a reasonable and reliable feed with Yahoo! Pipes. FAIL. Oversized effort for pitiful results, in both cases. I am very saddened by my Tumblr experience, and very sorry for the time invested. Thankfully, it stops here, with a brief account of my woes, as published on my Tumblr blog all along the very, very bumpy ride.

My feeds are working badly, showing too few items or none. Here's what I did to fix it.
May 23rd - 1st email to Tumblr support; only 2 of my 4 Google Reader feeds were showing on the page.
May 26th - 1st answer from Tumblr support.
May 28th - 2nd email to Tumblr support, and their 2nd answer; Marc said: "I've passed this along to our development team to investigate".
June 4th - 3rd email to Tumblr support. No reply.
June 19th - 4th email to Tumblr support, as I started seeing small improvements. No reply.
July 14th - Most Flickr photos stopped showing. Bad.
July 23rd - A Vimeo video appeared in the page. Good.
August 1st - Posts get through randomly if at all. THIS BLOG IS CLOSED.

Update, August 5th 2009: I now see that Tumblr was busy counting pageviews and releasing their large number to the world. That's fine with me, I'm happy for them, but I still don't see why someone in the Tumblr support team didn't come back to my request saying, for example, better feed integration is not a priority for us. It could have saved me, and them, a lot of trouble.

shiny start of the weekend, of the month Tweet

shiny shiny, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

I've bought the top pair of earrings yesterday for 15 pounds. As the seller's pitch went AFTER I had made my buying decision, they're SOLID SILVER with MURANO GLASS and ever so LIGHT. That is rich and unique, no? And no one would be able to spot the materials, no? And I didn't just buy them because I realised last week that I needed a pair of blue earrings, no, there must be another reason, and she could see right through me and my uninformed purchase. Funny woman! The bottom pair is, of course, more Murano glass. Not! Simple shiny plastic in a very girlie fashion that caught my sister's eye and is now a fun possession. Just thought I should post something very much unlike this miserable day, and very much alike my soul right now, enriched by the rainbow of posts I've finally read, soaked in a milky white champaca bath for over three hours. Thankyous go out to Monique [RO] and Suzi [RO] for curating blogs for the world, thus me. Tens and tens of blogs I don't subscribe to but I like reading in a collection of shared items that Google Reader makes possible. So if you don't like looking at these earrings, blame them and that looong bath :)

1094 Tweet

1094, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

The gardener. London, UK