Oh, and I blog.

I’m restarting this blog. I’m restarting my passion for photography. I’m restarting my creative side.

the reason is simple: my laptop died a few days ago.
after an initial sigh of relief when my files had been recovered, I plunged back into despair as I was told that the recovered files are, in fact, empty.

my past 2 and a half years of writing, photographing, editing, etc. are more or less gone. and only because I never actually backed up my files anywhere. it’s my mistake, no question about it.

starting now I’m backing up all my files with mediafire. and I’m back doing things. mainly to fill the void left by the missing files.

well, I’m not being exactly honest. a few files were recovered. of those, this is the only photo:

(it was taken a long time ago, in the summer, in the south of france)

fictionally true, the beginings restart

When I was younger (i know, I’m not even 25, whatever, just run with it) and had to do language or literature work for school, my classmates always thought that I had the upperhand. My dad used to be a teacher of Romanian and French and was part of the literary world. They believed that it was a walk in the park, that I would basically ask him for answers, or even worse, sometimes they would suspect that he did my homework. But it wasn’t like that at all. I would go to him to ask for help, but his answer always made me mad. He would always say, “here are these 5 books, look it up here and then come to me and we’ll talk if you still have any questions”. For a long time I would complain that instead of helping this would add hours of trying to find answers which he could’ve told me from the begining. As a result, my homework would always be a bit more complex, and this, obviously led my classmates to their beliefs that my dad was doing my work.

The reason I shared this story is that today’s generation of students (pre-college students) have the idea of “look it up” embedded in their culture. The mass appeal and dissemination of consumer technology coupled with nearly ubiquitous internet access, and the growing interest in social networking led to this paradigm shift. When they hear a word, a name, or anything that they don’t know, they look it up. While some can claim that it’s shallow and inconclusive (they don’t open the books, they go online click on the first link of the search, most of the times this being wikipedia), one has to see that the glass is actually more than half full. The reign of ignorance has passed, no longer do young students remain untouched by new information, they “look it up”. There still are enough people that think Rome is the same thing as Romania, but the downward trend in their numbers is picking up speed.

In short, there’s still hope for the future.

fictionally true, the beginings future, GenY, GenZ, ignorance, look it up, students

(I use my Tumblr for something else, so I’m posting my first and probably only GPOYW here)

fictionally true GPOYW

When I started this blog I knew (obviously) my reasons, but never could quite describe it coherently enough. Time passed, I started to write in it (less often than not) and this matter slowly vanished from the front of my mind.

Flash forward to last night, as I was reading through the books I bought this weekend. I read the minuscule preface of Jerome K. Jerome’s (I’m not linking any of his internet biographies, he deserves a little google-love) The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. It writes:

One or two friends to whom I showed these papers in manuscript having observed that they were not half bad, and some of my relations having promised to buy the book if it ever came out, I feel I have no right to longer delay its issue. But for this, as one may say, public demand, I perhaps should not have ventured to offer these mere ‘idle thoughts’ of mine as mental food for the English-speaking peoples of the earth. What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn’t elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading “the best hundred books”, you may take this up for half an hour. It will be a change.

Jerome K. Jerome

Brilliant. Not just the preface, which is, undoubtedly, one of the best I’ve ever read, but the way it fits with my philosophy about this blog. Here’s my adaptation for the blog:

Now that I explained my philosophy for this here web log, all I have to do is get back to writing it.

interwebs, the beginings Jerome K. Jerome, Preface, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

interwebs internet, web site story, west side story

My Romanian readers know what this title is a pun on. During the 1996 presidential election debates, one of the candidates, Emil Constantinescu, turned to the other one, Ion Iliescu, and asked:

Mr. Iliescu, do you believe in God?

Legend has it that it was that this question alone, and its flip-flopping answer, made Iliescu, the incumbent, lose the elections.
Many years have passed since that event, and jokes on the issue have been made thousands of times. But this one is hilarious.
After Microsoft launched its own search engine decision engine, Google sped up the process for the R&D of its own twist on internet search, Google Squared, a Labs-endorsed process which takes information from all over the internet and puts it in a nice spreadsheet for you.
Well, as soon as it launched, I googlesquare’d (because saying that I googled would be wrong) a good deal of sets of information, like “cities in Romania”, “Penn State campuses”, “burgers”, but none of them were very interesting. So i decided to search for, you guessed it, “Romanian presidents”. While it did have some hickups, like in showing wrong people, it had the possibility of adding collumns with different information, so I went for religion. And this is what it had:

P.S.: Former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu got caught with a whole different religion altogether:

UPDATE: between then and now, the program gave a lot of different results, so don’t blame me if it’s not te same.

interwebs Ceausescu, Constantinescu, FAIL, Google Square, Iliescu, Romania

X: 3,950
Y: That’s what she said

FAaH Comedy, FAaH, FAIL, humor

First rule of the event business is, strangely enough, to make sure you, the person that is organizing the event, can be there. If you fail at that, it doesn’t matter that P. Diddy is coming, or that you have free food and drinks, the whole event is a bust!

This same thing happened to me. I tried to organize a FlickrMeet @ PSU. I even had Onward State put it in their events calendar. And I failed. How? Because I failed to realize that other things that I have no power over might happen that same day. I forgot, I wasn’t thinking about, it never crossed my mind. These are all excuses. But they don’t make your event happen, they just find a way for you to justify that your event did not happen.

In the end, the event will probably get rescheduled. But this a great piece of advice for any other “noob” out there. Make sure YOU can attend your own event.

fictionally true, the beginings cancel, flickr, FlickrMeet

I have been fortunate enough to visit a myriad of interesting locales around the world. At the same time, photography is one of my passions, i like to capture candid moments, special places, one-of-a-kind experiences. So I’m left with a dilemma, a dilemma I feel most people face. Do I enjoy the beauty of what I travelled for, or do I try to take photos, try angles, work the sunlight, in order to preserve the beauty, work on my skills, but also lose the beauty of living that moment. You’re left with either experiencing it yourself in that moment in time, or objectifying it and making it possible for virtually anybody to enjoy it.

I do have a concrete example. As my flickr page can testify, most of the places I’ve been have been pretty heavily photographed and documented in numerous pictures. I have always tried to balance my own enjoyment with the taking of the actual pictures, but I always felt like I might’ve missed out on a lot of things. So I decided that my spring-break will be spent away from my camera. I wanted to keep it down to a minimum and enjoy myself. It was fun and relaxing, but I can’t help feeling bad about missing all those great shots of sunsets, sunrises, palm-trees, horses galloping on the beach, etc. I also refrained from taking photos during the short lay-overs in New York, and I felt I missed great shadows on buildings, great poetic constructions, the daily goings-on, etc. But I had fun.

I don’t claim to be a professional photographer, but having an accessible flickr page can lead to great things. One of my pictures was chosen as an illustration for an article on nj.com, and, had it not been for a slight time difference, would’ve been featured in a slideshow on New York Magazine’s website. Another one is now part of a bunch of pictures depincting NYC landmarks on the new edition of Schmap, featuring Radio City Music Hall. So there’s a great benefit that might outweight the enjoyment of simply taking it all in for yourself.

Which do you think is better, photos or no photos?

fictionally true photography

Usually, when you’ll be away from your “online presence” you claim it beforehand, link your twitter feed as your replacement for that period, and ask your readers to not panic and/or play nice.

Well I didn’t do that for a lot of reasons, most importantly, i totally forgot. I spent a week with my folks, a night in NYC, 7 nights in the Dominican, and another night in NYC. In the process, i visited three Hotels, the Affinia Dumont, the Paradisus Palma Real and Morgan’s. All three were great destinations in themselves, but they offered a gateway to urban and natural paradise alike. My spring break experience was not as flashy as other’s and it wasn’t as regretful either. Great food, great entertainment, random conversations with great people, and most of all active relaxation marked my vacation. With ups and downs, as all vacations are, the most springbreak-y experience was a short and funny encounter with two slightly drunk college girls.

All in all it was a great time. Now I can go from forgetting about my blog because of vacation to forgetting about my blog because of school.

P.S.: Interesting fact: i refrained from taking any pictures with my camera and took less than half a dozen pictures with other cameras.

R'n'R