Plutonic Rainbows

Strangely, I’ve found myself quietly drawn back to Vanilla Diorama from Dior — a scent I hadn’t expected to revisit so soon. It’s frustrating to think that just a few months ago, they quietly reduced the bottle size from 250ml to 200ml. I really should have purchased a bottle back then. With these luxury fragrance houses, you never quite know what changes they’ll make until it’s too late. Now there’s a rumour circulating that it might be discontinued altogether, which only adds to my need to get a bottle.

I will probably order it tomorrow.

Ordered a sample of this. It will be here in a few days. With a fragrance this expensive, even 1ml is costly. Supposedly one of the best oud fragrances on the market. We will see.

Reconfigured Shellfish with SSH to run over OpenVPN. Had to use ChatGPT to get it set up correctly.

Yesterday wore MFK Oud Extrait. Today is Fall Into Stars.

Sample arrived today. I'm not sure. I don't get the cold, church incense feel. I will check it out again in a few days.

I found Absolue Pour Le Soir 2024 to be a bold and challenging fragrance, but not entirely in a good way. The opening hits hard with a sharp cumin note that borders on harsh and medicinal, which lingers longer than I'd like. While the honeyed rose and amber drydown eventually bring some warmth and depth, the initial phase feels jarring and overly retro, almost like something an older relative might have worn decades ago. It lacks the raw, animalic edge of the original, but instead of refining it, the reformulation seems to have dulled its character. I appreciate the attempt to modernize a polarizing classic, but for me, the new version feels disjointed and ultimately disappointing.

I've developed a neuro-inspired language acquisition system that:

• Mimics child language learning
• Uses a tiny transformer architecture (4-layer, 256-dim)
• Trained on child-directed speech from the CHILDES corpus
• Features a web application with:
• Safari auto-launch functionality
• Real-time training monitoring
• Interactive model evaluation
• Cognitive tests like Wug Test and word segmentation
• API-driven interface for researchers

Next Engineering Steps

• Implement biological enhancement phase
• Add sparsity constraints via L1 regularization
• Integrate spiking neural dynamics
• Develop hierarchical attention mechanisms
• Expand evaluation framework
• Introduce curiosity-driven learning
• Establish production deployment pipeline

Future Vision

• Add multi-modal inputs (audio/visual)
• Develop real-time dialogue interface to demonstrate interactive language learning capabilities

Dawn by Frédéric Malle, composed by master perfumer Carlos Benaïm, is a powerful meditation on oud, illuminated by the sacred stillness of early morning. Part of the brand's Desert Gems collection, Dawn evokes the quiet majesty of a new day breaking over the Middle East, where the air is laced with incense, heat, and centuries of tradition. The opening is a radiant burst of pink pepper and Turkish rose, immediately introducing a sense of regal intensity. But it’s the heart — an impossibly rich, resinous oud—that defines the fragrance’s character: smoky, deep, and reverent, like ancient wood left smoldering on a temple altar.

What distinguishes Dawn is its emotional weight and balance. Benaïm tempers the wildness of oud with a warm, golden amber and the sticky, animalic depth of labdanum. The result is less confrontational than The Night (Dominique Ropion’s sibling scent in the same series), yet no less commanding. It wears like a ceremonial garment — formal, imposing, yet unexpectedly comforting in its drydown. Sillage is elegant but assured, and longevity is exceptional. Dawn is not an everyday fragrance; it’s a moment of stillness rendered in scent—timeless, spiritual, and resolutely grand.

I finished refining my general use prompt, optimised specifically for Claude when run with claude --dangerously-skip-permissions as the terminal command. It has taken me about three months to get this just right. I am confident that it will not need any more work now — at least for Opus and Sonnet 4.

Of course, when the next major model arrives, I will need to look at it again.

I ordered two Maison Francis Kurkdjian samples — Reflets d’Ambre and Absolue Pour le Soir. These are essentially re-releases from last year, with Reflets d’Ambre replacing the long-discontinued Ciel de Gum, while Absolue Pour le Soir retains its original name.

Ciel de Gum is the name of a high-end department store in Moscow. Maybe the original name, with its Russian associations was deemed not suitable in the current climate.

Reflets d’Ambre arrived a few days ago, and it does smell quite similar to Ciel de Gum. I’ll need to compare them more closely before deciding whether it’s worth purchasing as a replacement. I haven’t used Ciel de Gum since it was discontinued—thankfully, my bottle is still nearly full.