how to while away a weekend...

its a crying shame how weekends always go by in a flash. im sure all of us agree that time travels fastest between friday evening and sunday night, regardless of what physicists around the world may say.

nevertheless, if your day feels a little slow, nothing better than to get on pinterest, and before you know, several hours would have gone down the drain. but its the best addiction to have, and one that has no cure.

and this weekend i indulged myself with - my new " i ♥ ikea " board on pinterest - :) i hope to keep adding more ikea products that i like, as well as ikea hacks, and spaces with ikea decor. so keep peeping in every now and then or follow the board if you are on pinterest !

Follow sowpar's board i ♥ ikea on Pinterest.

my d-i-y version of alphabet photography

there are some people in this world who are able to tightrope walk at a height of 1500 ft above the colorado river.
and then there are people like me, for whom there comes a time when even the most routine tasks seem to require a great deal of effort.

of late, i have the feeling of gotten into a rut. my mind feels numb and dull, my brain feels like a clogged sink with nothing flowing whatsoever. day after day goes by in dreary succession, and i have not been able to do anything productive or creative. i hope this is a phase which i get out of soon.

meanwhile, at times like these, looking through old pics is something that i do to give myself a break. i have been going through last year's pics and dug something out. something i did and forgot and allowed to gather dust.

sometime last year, i came across this site where you can order your name or any word from the collection of images they have. just google alphabet photography to see more images.

i totally liked the idea, and decided to challenge myself to come up with my own version of it - without stepping out of the house. so i used stuff around my home (mostly kitchen) to come up with the letters of my name. i used the collage option of picasa to make the letters together into one image.  here is the result -

if you are a black and white lover -

the 's' was part of the design on a metal shelf i had (a hanging shower caddy actually). 'o' is the top of a cookie jar. 'w', ofcourse, is a fork. it was a regular 4-pronged fork, but i cropped one out later :). 'p' is the handle of my favourite mug. 'a' is a lemon squeezer. the 'r' is a kind of tongs, used for lifting hot vessels off the stove in indian kitchens. (called pakkad in hindi, idukki/kidukki in tamil.)

not bad eh, for a first attempt ?  hope you like it too !

a colourful start to the year !

so its nine days into the new year already. and i havent posted a single word so far, though there was a lot running in my mind. that is in fact one of the main reasons why i didnt write anything. there was a lot going on in my mind alright, but most of it wasnt good. for a lot of reasons, i was filled with a lot of anger, frustration and resentment. my moods were crabby at best and bordering depression at worst.

as far as i can remember, i have generally been a happy and cheerful person not affected by circumstances, but of late the conscious choice to stay happy is becoming more and more difficult. i think my tolerance towards people and their idiosyncrasies is becoming lesser with age. thankfully though, i've been feeling much better the past two days, and in a much better frame of mind to write something.

thats enough rambling i think. now on to other things. i wasn't able to post this week's mundane monday because of internet connectivity issues (which, incidentally, has been driving me crazy, on and off, for the past couple of months). it got fixed (for now, at least !) and i spent quite some time yesterday and today catching up on some of the usual blogs and websites i frequent.

which led me to one of the coolest things i've seen in recent times, and i wanted to share it here.

have you ever thought of, or tried searching images by colour ? what if you could extract all images of a particular colour you want, from among millions of images ? somebody just found a great way to do just that.

just drop whatever you are doing, and try out the awesome multicolour search engine created by tineye labs. you can thank me later :)

you can choose any colour, or a combination of upto 5 colours, and see the images uploaded in flickr in that colour. you can even adjust the amout of each colour that you want. these are from among the creative commons images on flickr, and just page after page of colour unfolds before you !

heres a sample of what i tried - see what catches your fancy !

are you the kind who always thinks green ?

or like me, do you like teal and blue ?

or maybe you have a thing, for purple and pink ?

or do you need more than just fifty shades of grey ? :)

 and if nothing else works, how about a burst of sunny orange ?

try it out, and if you have an interesting colour combo, let me know !
have a colourful year ahead !

p.s : i first stumbled upon the multicolour search from here. 

online SLR camera simulator

this is a fun way to waste time, if  like me, you have a lot of time, you don't have an SLR, but still could use some practice meddling with the settings and see how the results turn out...

http://camerasim.com/camera-simulator/

choose the manual option and have fun ! - i only wish they add more pictures in different settings - like landscapes, indoor pics, low light pics etc... that would add a lot more value...