Browsing Tag

technology

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Office looks – totally inappropriate looks for the office

October 21, 2013

Fashion and technology are two different fields that have something in common – it’s all very fast paced and changes occur all too quickly. You buy a pair of trendy shoes and next thing you know, they’re sooooo last season. You buy a new mobile phone and the following day, they come up with a newer one with improved features. It’s a losing game trying to keep up but it’s this change that allows for improvement, particularly with technology.

It is fascinating, the amazing things you have available nowadays. Who would say, 10 years ago that we’d be blogging from our mobile phones and that the tiny camera on them would be a lot better than the expensive (and very crappy) digital cameras we had back then? I know I didn’t see this coming when I had my silly little blog over at Livejournal. I am nonetheless extremely happy about this, it makes my life so much easier. I mean, I love my nice (and bulky, ufff) digital camera but it’s good to be able to ditch it every now and then and still know I will have decent photos with enough quality to post on the blog to document my outfits. It’s amazing what you can do with a mobile phone these days and if you look for it, you can find an app for doing most anything you want. Maybe except the dishes or walking the dog.

One of my favourite daily activities is documenting my outfits, mainly because it is very rare that I repeat any combination, and I do it mostly with my phone. I usually have to pester one of my friends at lunch time to take these photos but it’s for a good cause! Here are a few outfits from the last few months that I haven’t had the chance to share before:

Details: Shoes and T-shirt – Forever 21, Skirt – Rodier (it was my mum’s), socks and ring – Primark, Bag – TK Maxx, Headscarf – Zara

Details: Headband and Skirt – H&M, tights – Calzedonia, Boots – Rocket Dog, T-shirt – David and Goliath, (both via TK Maxx), Cardigan – Zara

Details – Tshirt – Band tee from Los Campesinos, Dress – H&M, Headband – Delia’s, Sandals – Irregular Choice, Bag -Target.

Which one is your favourite? I’m sharing this with Patti’s Visible Monday!

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Tech disasters… or how to avoid them.

May 10, 2013

I was thinking about what I would do if my computer died… Panic! You see, lately it’s been heating up and it crashes as a consequence – it would appear that the fan might need a little cleaning. This of course worries me as I do not want it to suffer irreparable damage. I use it for everything: talking to my husband and family on Skype, keeping connected to my friends on Facebook, it’s a life line. I use it to write the blog posts you normally read, edit the photos that go along with them and read everyone else’s – a connection to the world. On top of that it’s what I use to listen to music and watch the films or series that rock me to sleep every night. An inseparable companion isn’t it?

That got me thinking about what I could do to keep my best friend working well and steps to salvage data, in case it fails. First of all the basic protection would be to have a firewall and anti virus protection (like Norton, for example). Then the most important thing is backing up data.  I have a couple of external hard drives where I store my music, films and photos – I have too many gigabytes of information that I don’t want to lose on a computer meltdown! You can also use a cloud service to backup the most important things, like your photos (external hard drives can fail too). There is a decent article about that from PC World here. As far as backup goes, I would also recommend you get a backup service for your blog – remember my nightmare back in March? It as lucky that my friend Sandrine had  all the subscription emails in her inbox, but we can’t rely on luck if we are doing things properly. In my case, Jorge, who designed the blog and put it all together, used a backup plugin for WordPress, that sends my info to my Google Drive.

So that’s it, this is what I do to keep my computer and data safe. Do you have any other suggestions?

In case you got bored with all the tech talk, here’s something I wore a while ago:

Details: Coat – TK Maxx, Beret – Present from Oh La Lali, Bag – Maison Margiella for H&M, Tights – Retail, Shoes – H&M, via Ebay

Bow Dress– Blanco (swap with my friend Lili),  Cowboy Boots Shirt – Luella for Target, thrifted in Florida.

I put my right foot in, I put my right foot out, In out, in out. shake it all about.

 

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Things that creep me out.

April 13, 2013

I love technology as much as any other person. I am one of those people who cannot live without her smart phone and spends most of her waking life looking at a computer screen. After all, it’s because of this technology that I can keep in touch with my husband in America and my friends back in Portugal every day, not to mention writing this blog and reading all the other fab blogs out there. Saying this, I discovered I can be equally be creeped out by some technology.

A few months ago my friend Sebastian and I visited a Post War bunker in Scotland, which has now been deactivated and turned into a museum – Scotland’s Secret Bunker. I’ve been trying to put my finger on what was it that bothered us so much about it but spending time in a tunnel under 10 feet of tungsten reinforced concrete with no sunlight may have been one of the reasons.

Apparently there was a Russian incursion in British airspace in the 80’s (in the heat of the Cold War, if that’s possible) and it was detected with this equipment.

The mismatched mannequins in ill fitting uniforms also helped create that creepy atmosphere. Nothing more disturbing than walking around a tunnel, being stared at by empty plastic eyes.

In the several rooms you can see the War Rooms, throughout the decades – the rooms where the enemy was monitored and decisions were made. As this place would be hermetically closed to avoid fallout contamination in case of a nuclear war, there were also sleeping quarters, canteens and offices. No windows, obviously.

As we progressed through the museum and the eras, the whole idea of why that bunker was built really sank in and it really bothered me. The rooms, the objects, everything was ugly and disturbing. This was a place where function is everything and there is no beauty to be seen. That also made me uneasy.

They had some giant Bic pens there as well.

Mostly what felt particularly creepy was the obsolete technology present in this place, that seemed somewhat crude to my modern sensibilities, even though some of it wasn’t that old. It is something I had never felt before regarding old stuff – I love old clothes, old decorative objects… but this place? Brrrrr.

That was old technology and the Cold War and all that paranoia… The future can be equally disconcerting, if you’ve been watching some post apocalyptic, revolt of the machine Sci Fi in the last few years. In the advent of Artificial Intelligence (apparently the Singularity will happen sooner than expected) there is nothing that creeps me out more than seeing videos like this, starring Big Dog, Cheetah Robot and PetMan. It does makes me wonder about the future.

What about you? What gives you the creeps?