Showing posts with label i. Show all posts
Showing posts with label i. Show all posts
Friday, May 5, 2017
NY Fashion Week SS09 Wrap Up I
NY Fashion Week SS09 Wrap Up I
Who knew Victoria Beckham had a dress collection showing at Fashion Week? Where does the women get the time between her reality TV show, pedicures, designing jeans and sunglasses, whipping up a perfume and being a wife and a mom? But anyway, back to the collection. Despite her having graced Blackwells Worst Dressed List many times and indeed having a questionable sense of style on occasions, I am still very much want to like her collection. At the back of my mind, I guess my love for the Spice Girl era still lingers, making me want to love everything about them. And Posh has always been my favourite Spice.
However, despite my best efforts to want to be wow-ed, I was not blown away. It was a small and simple collection, to put it nicely. The entire collection could be summed up by a few looks. It was basically a collection that contained a few versions of the same dresses. They were all slimming pencil skirts of the same slightly longer length (which I think is great for more sophistication and class). It was definitely cohesive!
There was the simple round neck dress in blue. The clean cut strapless dress in black (perhaps a reminiscent of the little black Gucci dress? Turns out it wasnt even by Gucci!). I believe they also showed this dress in white on the runway.
There was the crochet (I think?) topped dress. They also have this in white. Then the dress shirt dress, which weve been seeing in the stores a lot lately. She has this in black with chiffon and silk, and of course, in white and black. 
Finally there was this silhouette, which is my favourite. I think this silhouette is very clever and very flattering to the female body. It curves at all the right places. I can totally see Victoria in it. This was possibly the most inspiring thing about the whole collection and of course she has this silhouette in many different styles. In black, in white, a casual less emphatic version and a more dressed up version. Although personally Im not sure itll look very good on me, since Im shorter (and definitely not as lithe as the models!), so the skirt will probably cut my legs exactly where it shouldnt! All in all, it was not a very inspiring (besides that shape of course) nor wow-ing collection. To give Victoria her credit though, it was indeed a very simple and classic collection. They are definitely not dated, which was her aim. And Im sure they are very well made and tailored given the $1500-$3600 price range. Plus, at 15 looks, she did not try to overdo the collection with more unnecessary looks. It is always quality over quantity after all. Though I think 4 looks wouldve suffice to get the creative message across. But then, that wouldnt be a very good show, would it?
Image Source: Style.com
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Wednesday, May 3, 2017
OH SNAP! PICS I dont mean to start anything but is this the new style with Akungba Chicks LOOL
OH SNAP! PICS I dont mean to start anything but is this the new style with Akungba Chicks LOOL
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Sunday, March 19, 2017
Saturday, March 18, 2017
One thing I wonder about the Illuminati
One thing I wonder about the Illuminati
Not the secret group that runs the world, mind you, but the one that runs the Marvel Universe. How is Black Bolt a member? He cant talk! What does he do at the meetings? Just hang out? Is he their secretary? Does he take down their minutes? How much of a bitch must it be to travel from the moon to their meetings? I mean, I quit the English Honors Society at my college because meetings were an hour out of my way. That commute must be a real bitch.
That said, I can understand Black Bolts position in that group, because I spent most my time at those meetings not saying anything. And wearing a tuning fork on my forehead. No one talked like any of Bendiss characters, mind you. And it was all women. And the most important thing we did was plan fundraisers. We didnt start a civil war between members of the honors society. Thats one of my big regrets in life. But otherwise, I can totally relate to Black Bolts position in the Illuminati. That kind of character identification was the hallmark of the old school Marvel Comics, and its nice to see Bendis keeping it alive to this day, even in the midst of a 492 part crossover which will rock the Marvel Universe to its core and surely crack in half this time, I bet.
Really, Im just impressed that theres one character in a Bendis comic that cant yack your head off. Well, he can, but you get what Im saying. Hey! Maybe thats why Bendis chose him! So he can have someone who can destroy the world with one monologue! What a clever bastard that Bendis is! I never knew how much fun typing the word Bendis can be. Bendis Bendis Bendis! Im still not buying any of Civil War, mind you. Unless one of those 492 issues involved is Black Bolts Destructive Exposition Hulabaloo. That I would by three copies of, including the Mike Turner variant which is an anorexic Madusa in a bikini.
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Thursday, March 9, 2017
Oh yeah I am the editor of a magazine!
Oh yeah I am the editor of a magazine!
SO.... one might say I have been pretty busy this year. I decided it was time and with the blessing of Dawn, my business partner over at D & P Celebrations, I started an online and in print magazine. UM yeah... a magazine! I have been wanting to do this for some time and this fall it became a reality. Introducing Polka Dot Balloon Magazine.... tadda....*insert* party horns blowing...confetti flying!
We actually have two issues out now, our Halloween Mini and our Fall/ Winter Premiere Issue: www.polkadotballoonmag.com . A special Valentine Party inspiration issue is currently in the works....*insert giddy laughter here*
You may have also noticed I changed up the looks of things here on the ol blog. What can I say... I like change, I like things to stay fresh, I was inspired, made some cute little images for a new blog banner and voila!! YES... I am a dork! LOL
Anyway, I am really getting into the looks of it here and hope to be posting much more often, cause to tell you the truth... I have missed being here and just playing! Oh and instead of signing off "Hugs, Pam"... I think I will change that up too! How about a bunch of letters... can you guess what it means?
DFTBA,
PS
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Tuesday, March 7, 2017
One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand Amoretti LXXV Edmund Spenser
One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand Amoretti LXXV Edmund Spenser
(Poem #1820) One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand (Amoretti LXXV) One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away; Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his prey. "Vain man," said she "thou dost in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalize, For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise." "Not so," quoth I "let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name; Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew." |
Note: The Amoretti are a series of eighty nine sonnets Spenser wrote to commemorate his courtship of his second wife, Elizabeth Boyle. A companion piece, 'Epithalamion', honours their wedding. It's hard to believe I've never come across Spenser's Amoretti before, but the fact remains that they are simply not very well represented in anthologies, recommendations, etc. . I have to wonder if their closeness in theme, form, feel and publication date to Shakespeare's more famous sonnets has to some extent led to their being overshadowed and relatively ignored - Palgrave declines to include one, for instance - but for whatever reason, I have managed to live in blissful ignorance of them. Anyway, I've made up for that now, having spent a happy evening reading through the sonnets - not really the recommended way to read them, of course, but I was pleasantly surprised by their variety, all the more impressive considering the short period in which they were written, and by the reasonably consistent quality of the poems. I chose to run today's sonnet because I was drawn by its resemblance to one of my favourites from Shakespeare, "Nor Marble, nor the Gilded Monuments" [Poem #1575], but this is in reality a very different sort of poem, more playful and less self-absorbed than Shakespeare's despite its superficial thematic similarity. (It is also not as good a poem, but then, few could compare to Shakespeare on what was practically his home ground.) The theme, as I have remarked before, is one beloved of poets through the ages, but the anecdotal tone of Spenser's poem lends it a certain extra charm and intimacy. martin [Links] Biography of Spenser: http://www.bartleby.com/65/sp/Spenser.html On the Amoretti: http://www.bartleby.com/213/1207.html An essay on Spenser: http://www.themediadrome.com/content/articles/words_articles/poems_spenser.htm The complete Amoretti: http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/spenser1.html
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Friday, February 24, 2017
Other Sessions I liked at XP2010
Other Sessions I liked at XP2010
Apart from the sessions Ive written exclusively about, here a quick synopsis of the other sessions I really liked. Im going to be quick about it, so let me just jot down the high level notes from each session.
Mary Poppendieck - The Five Habits of Successful Lean Development
Mary distilled down five characteristics of typically lean organisations with the mnemonic of 5Ps - Purpose, Passion, Professionalism, Pride and Profit. Here are some of the subcharacteristics of the 5Ps.Purpose
- The reason why we work.
- Solving real problems.
- Connecting developers to customers to solve their state of pain.
Passion
- An undying fanaticism for results.
- Clean code comes from someone who cares about results.
- Altruistic motivation for great quality products.
Professionalism
- The drive to build the right thing
- "Theres nothing as useless as to do something efficiently, that which should not have been done at all."
- Building the thing right.
- Test automation.
- A state of correctness at any given time.
- Simplicity of design - decoupled architecture, set-based design.
- Feedback
- Diversity of perspectives and heuristics.
- The right vision coupled with the right leadership and focus.
- Eliminating waste of all kinds:
- unevenness;
- non value adding tasks;
- overburdened teams
Pride
- Doing things gains respect.
- Being fast and sloppy
- Its ok to fail - "If you havent failed ever, it means you havent tried hard enough."
- Little documentation aids communication - find the balance.
- Communication fanaticsm - its at the heart of all we do.
- Principles trump processes and practices.
- Value people as professionals not resources.
- Hire exceptional people.
- Planning is everything, but plan to deliver not deliver to plan. So "planning is everything, but plans are nothing".
Profit
- Employees that are dedicated to success.
- Profitability is the underlying measure for success - without this, theres no business measure for what you do.
- Value people - valued people make decisions and are engaged to achieve real outcomes.
Padraig Brennan - What Agile teams can learn from Sports Coaching
Does Agile foster teamwork or require team work? Similar teams have varying results? How is that so? Why is that so? The secret is team work. Teamwork leads to good results. There are several characteristics to Agile:
- collaboration;
- feedback;
- shared workspaces or colocation;
- pairing/ helping each other;
- and heaps more
Padraig then went onto to introduce Woodens pyramid of success (above) and urged teams to start from scratch, by establishing the foundations first before moving to other steps. He proceeded to talk about his interpretation of the science of coaching:
- people self-organise, but within parameters;
- teams bond with leadership;
- theres an external stimulus to aid correction;
- servant leadership comes into place only after the blocks are all in place;
- the coach details the system of play;
- the coach helps people learn through exercises of show and tell;
- the coach directs and leads until the team gets to be a well oiled unit
- Character based: "Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
- Committed
- Competent
- Communicative
- Consistent
Marcus Ahnve - Done considered harmful
This was a lightning talk and Marcus basically challenged the notion of the fluffy Done state on Agile card walls because:- the definition varies;
- the context is unclear;
- it means different things to different people;
- it doesnt necessarily capture a true done state (done may not mean business value delivered or feature in deployment for eg.)
- encourages local optimization because people mark as done only what they control
- Instead of done, capture the real state of the card (eg: in production).
- Treat the fluffy done as inventory unless it reflects the real state.
- Capture the handoffs to visualise where work is piling up in the value stream.
- Discourage any local optimisations that create a false sense of effectiveness.
Kjetil Moløkken-Østvold - Who killed the digital nomad?
Not much to say about this, because Kjetil pretty much echoed my thoughts from one of my old posts - No Collaboration without Colocation? Maybe youre not Agile enough! Kjetils a hard nut and seemed very practical and was basically asking the question of our modern workforce, equipped with powerful laptops, hi speed wireless, etc -- why do we still have to travel, show up each day in designated workplaces, in designated time slots? This is an unnecessary waste, because we travel like stuffed sardines, often in hot humid weather (tell me about that).Kjetil dismissed the notion of colocation by challenging engineers who build communication platforms but are reluctant to use them. The culprits are:
- old managers;
- immature and oversold collaboration technology;
- and agile fanatics who wont budge from the stand of "colocation is the only way to collaborate".
Other stuff to be aware of
While that ends the list of talks I want to write home about, the conference itself was a great experience with the amount of networking that we were privileged to, the open spaces, the cultural experience (see here and here for the Jazz performance). I facilitated an open space on "How Agile teams learn" and Ive had some interesting insights about the topic which Ill share sometime in the future.Something I particularly want to draw your attention to, is the Diversity in Agile initiative, particularly aiming to introduce more women to the Agile world. Theres a nomination system thats open for everyone to nominate an awesome woman. Check out the nomination criteria and nominate an awesome woman here.
Ive thoroughly enjoyed this conference and been privileged to meet some great people - I hope to see you all again, next year!
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Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Oops I almost forgot
Oops I almost forgot
I graduated!!! I cant believe I didnt post this sooner but with the move to Sumter and birth of Kalea, Id completely forgotten about graduation. Anywhoo, after two long but wonderful years in the TTC photography program-Im done! I literally learned everything I know about photography from this program + tons about business, freelancing and assisting. I even made lifelong friends during my time here- Shannon, Melinda, Tamala + HeyMatthew are all from TTC. Trident really doesnt get the credit it deserves for their visual arts programs. Ive had so many people act like going from CofC to Trident is a downgrade (and I did love CofC) but I use skills that I learned at TTC daily & Ive made more money with my photography than I have with my political science. Just sayin. Graduation was such a fun event & I was sitting close to some of my friends which made it even better. These photos were taken with the G11 & Im a little disappointed with the quality of the images (I think the G11 just needs sunlight to really be beautiful) but overall, for a point and shoot, I guess theyre ok. Have a look!
Im going to miss TTC and all of my friends SOOO MUCH!!!!
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