Five for Friday

Neil Gaiman on entitlement issues; namely fans expecting George R. R. Martin to produce his next book immediately.

Some of the world's amazing places.

Charming artwork and obscure words.

Frank Warren, 'the most trusted strange in the world' is the keeper of post secret. Started out as a spontaneous project, people from all over the world tell him their secrets. He now posts them anonymously, of course, on his website Post Secret. The secrets we can never tell can be told to him. Read more on Mamma Mia.

Phoodie: my latest food blog discovery!

Image courtesy of Phoodie.com.au

Five for Friday

I'm sure you've all heard of this instagram feed, but you must take a look. A Russian guy who loves to travel has met his perfect travel companion / girlfriend and snapped photos of her around the globe, pulling him by the hand to new and wonderful places. You do not need an instagram account to look at this. Murad Osmann's instagram feed.

 Images courtesy of Murad Osmann. 

Everyday People Cartoons; Cartoons about women, and the people who love and annoy them.  

One high-flying woman's perspective on work/life balance.  

50 best photos from fashion month.

One of my good friends (who blogs here) is putting together a team for the Gold Coast Colour Run 'The Happiest Run in the World'. It's a fun day out in support of being fit, healthy and happy and also supporting The Ponting Foundation. 

Five for Friday no. 56

It was Valentine's Day earlier this week but not everyone gets the love they deserve. In the UK, there is controversy surrounding reports that staff at a home for disabled people procured sex workers for the residents at their request. I don't know how you may feel about this, but I think every person has the right to sexual experiences and there is nothing unnatural in those desires. If these people cannot find partners, then to engage professional sex workers, who will be understanding of their needs, to help them seems the obvious and correct solution. Read the story in The Guardian.

Trust the Swedes to have an idea like this. 

Nine illustrious houses in English fiction. This is just real estate envy.

20 mostly cute, some odd, ways to announce your pregnancy. This is how my friend Rachael did it.

Restaurants clamping down on people photographing their food. It was inevitable. Has this ever happened to you? It happen to me the one and only time I ate at Esquire.

Five for Friday no. 53

The best engagement photos you'll ever see! I promise!

I want to stay here.

Styling You blog. It's local and it's accessible. For women, not girls. 

America's first bookless library will be landing in Texas.

The School of Life bookshop in Melbourne.

And for no reason other than it's the cutest photo I've seen all week:

Five for Friday no. 48

Great re-interpretation of '50 Shades of Grey' into '10 sex tips'. Very funny.

Because I know you've always wanted a foldable version of yourself. 

The worst boyfriends of TV and film.

 When you really think about it ... he doesn't normally hang around for a second date.

Year in Review time! YAY!

The Atlantic's The Year in Photos. 

and...

What I call as my favourite year-in-review- for 2012: the 40 most influential corgis of 2012. You're welcome.

Five for Friday no. 34

The 2012 London Paralympics have begun!  Full coverage is on the ABC. See the program online. I watched some of the basketball this morning and it is incredible!

Starting next Wednesday is the annual Brisbane Writers Festival. Check out the full program.

The Campus Satorialist. The style and fashion of over 40 different universities world wide. I suspect none of our Qld unis are going to appear very much. 

Image courtesy of The Campus Satorialist. 

An amazing trick for separating eggs.

Rich Kids of Instagram. Voyeuristic and annoying. Much like reality TV. 

 Image courtesy of Rich Kids of Instagram.

Five for Friday no.31

Vanity Fair's 2012 international best dressed list.

Fan Bingbing and Eddie Redmayne making the Vanity Fair 2012 I'ntl Best Dressed List. 

Nico Underwear: a Brisbane designer making sustainable underwear.

People in marketing and related fields should find this tumblr hilarious!

Interesting article of the invention of fashion photography.

This is the cutest thing you'll see all day.

Five for Friday no. 22

First off, a few Queen-themed links.

Jimmy Choo have released a Jubilee capsule collection. Your can see it all on the Jimmy Choo website. Not everything is covered in Union Jacks.

A couple of Vogue style files on Queen Elizabeth. I know a few people mock her hats but she is from a different era and I think the lady has style.

 The Queen in May at the Royal Academy of Arts in Vivienne Westwood.

High speed liquid flowers. These are just incredible.

The first Google image for every word in the dictionary. A Googletionary.

The difference between 29 and 31.

Five for Friday no.18

As we all know the Federal Budget was released on Wednesday. This interactive budget shows you how it has been divided up. And a great little article by Annabel Crabb on how the surplus was achieved.

The Scale of the Universe. Everyone will enjoy this one, it is a bit mind-blowing.

Animal photographers. Very beautiful.

By Sharon Montrose.

 

Yeah, chickens can be arty too. Photographs by Tamara Staples. 

Tumblr from an LA based magazine editor, full of hilarious gifs.

Zen Pencils : Cartoon quotes from inspirational folks. I rather like this one by Audrey Hepburn:

 And I need to remember this one from time to time.

Diary of a travel-a-holic

We've had quite the run of long weekends recently, sadly now come to an end...sniff sniff. Anyway, one of the many benefits of this run of extra relax time is that I have been able to finally finish off my Vietnam holiday diaries. This is a personal project I was definitely going to finish by the end of 2011, then definitely by Easter. So 2 weeks after Easter isn't that bad.

I'm a bit of a diarist. I try to keep one – a proper, written, what I did and how I felt diary – every day but it is a lot more work than you might think. On holidays though, I'm much better at it. There is that gap in time pretty much every day when you've got back to your apartment / room after a long day out and you're having a rest before heading out again for food or drink of whatever it is you're getting up to, that is just perfect for writing about the day. So much happens on the typical holiday day and I find that you forget almost all of it within a few months. If you have a diary though, written on the day to record all those conversations and sights and meals and anecdotes, you have a physical memory repository you can pull off the shelf at any time and remind yourself of an amazing day.

 

This is actually a habit I picked up from my Dad who keeps an amazing record of every holiday he takes, and one of my favourite things to do used to be to pick a family diary off the shelves and read al about what we did when I was 5 in Spain or the Christmas in Germany when I was 12. It helps me to recall even the vaguest of memories.

So, I finally finished my Vietnam diary. Held up by the fact that 2 days into our three week trip my little iPaq died and I had to take notes or hand-write the whole thing, then translate to computer doc etc. I printed all my photos, I bought a couple of scrap books and voila! Here is the final result:

The two finished diaries. Not for public consumption.

I would be fibbing if I didn't say I wasn't a little proud of myself. It costs a lot of time and a bit of money to make even just these two (big) books. But then in 20 years time they will still be sitting on my bookshelves, where ever I happen to be, and I can pull them down and flick through them and remember our walk through the valley near Sa Pa and the amazing street food in Ha Noi as if it was yesterday. That makes it worth every moment and every cent.

12 diaries and a lot of memories.

Does anyone else keep a diary? Even just for holidays?

The idiots guide to self-photography.

I simply cannot take a good photo of myself. I barely manage to 'take' a good photo anyway but when I am wielding the camera I usually end up looking disastrous.

This isn't much of a problem as I don't feel a need to photograph myself that often. It has only recently become a wish after I developed a mild addiction to sartorialist websites.

I love a good sartorialist website. I also love the word sartorial. I find them inspiring. Sometimes they inspire me to want to buy new clothing but more often they inspire me to experiment more with the clothing I have and maybe be a bit more adventurous with my next purchase.

So the self-photographing issue arises because sometimes I think of an outfit related blog idea or maybe I just want to take a photo of my adorable outfit and find a reason to blog. But I then chicken out and my outfit is never recorded because I'm not good at taking photos of myself. I also have a pet peeve that most personal fashion blogs contain waaay too many photos of the same outfit. Show me three, not ten!

Attempt #1 to take self-portrait. Showing a friend how much I appreciated my christmas present of a necklace made of a tie.

Anyways, for those people who like to or want to take self-portraits, here is a simple little guide on how to take nice ones from Shrimp Salad Circus. For that bit of confidence we all need. It's short, it's comprehensible and it's persuasive. So persuasive in fact that after reading it I went out and bought myself a camera remote and stole my boy's enormous tripod (haha) and took some photos of myself.

Attempt #2. Still not good but working on it ...

You can also check out this guide on how to take good outdoor photographs from A Beautiful Mess, all of which is very good advice that I did not follow because I felt silly enough taking photos of myself without doing it in public view.

Better photos to follow soon.

Five for Friday no.8

TopShop has released a series of limited edition British designer t-shirts and I kind of love them.

Limited edition TopShop tshirt by Erdem.

For Valentine's Day - portraits of couples who have been together for 50 years.

The Spring Fashion Shows are in full swing, couture has just ended. Couture is an area of fashion that many claim is out-dated, only relevent to a miniscule percentage of women, but it is where you see the fantasy dresses; beautiful creations you will never own but you would give anything to spend a night in See Vogue Australia's wrap up of the Haute Couture collections.

Elie Saab spring/summer 12/13

The winners of the 55th annual World Press Photography Competition have been announced.

This is the sort of underwear I want to own. Apparently it's Ann Summers but I couldn't find it online!

February Photo a Day Challenge: 15/16

Day 15: Phone. Yeah, not that exciting. I have a hamburger phone somewhere that would have made a much better picture.


Day 16: Something new. Fresh baked bread

February Photo a Day Challenge: week 2 ish

Ok, so I've been pretty terrible at putting up photos for my February Photo a Day challenge but here are some from this week:

Day 7: Button (s). Taken with 'Retro Camera' for no real reason.


Day 9: Front door. My front door is so incredibly boring, I was on the lookout for a more intersting one. But then posting a photo of someone else's front door is a little creepy so I went for this fun front gate in West End.


Day 11: Makes you happy. Books and good bookstores make me happy, so my subject for today is Avid Reader Bookshop in West End. A great little bookstore that sucks all your money out of you because it's so good!


Day 12: Inside my closet. Self explanatory.