Plutonic Rainbows

Christian Dior - Vanilla Diorama

This fragrance has been out for some time now but I recently managed to get a small sample for testing purposes. Vanilla Diorama is a unisex offering from the house that contains a mixture of ambery and gourmand notes.

Vanilla Diorama, the new creation of Dior perfumer-creator François Demachy, is a warm and joyful ode to vanilla. For this noble beauty, he composed a fragrance that is instantly pleasing, round and seductive, both rich, and shot through with freshness, revealing a joyful portrait of true vanilla perfection.

I first tried this a few weeks ago and wasn't totally sold on its qualities. However, it has sort of grown on me a bit and I will try to find a bottle at a decent price.

I am also waiting for a sample of Roja Parfums 'Lost in Paris' to arrive. I will update on that when it finally gets here.

Alan Moore - The Great When

New novel from this British author that sees him delve into the occult world of London. You can pick up a copy of The Great When by Alan Moore published by Bloomsbury on October 2nd.

The year is 1949, the city London. Amidst the smog of the capital is Dennis Knuckleyard, a hapless eighteen-year-old employed by a second-hand bookshop. One day, on an errand to acquire books for sale, Dennis discovers a novel that simply does not exist. It is a fictitious book, a figment from another novel. Yet it is physically there in his hands. How?

Dennis has stumbled on a book from the Great When, a magical version of London beyond time and space, where reality blurs with fiction and concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous, terrible beings. But this other, magical London must remain a secret: if Dennis cannot find a way to return this book to where it belongs, he risks bizarre and disastrous repercussions, such as his body being turned inside out (or worse).

So begins a journey delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers – some from legend, some all too real, and all with plans of their own. Soon Dennis finds himself at the centre of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons forever.

Advanced Voice Available

OpenAI rolled out the service across parts of the world during the week and the service is now available in the UK since yesterday.

The ChatGPT Advanced Voice feature was first announced in May during the launch of GPT-4o. The feature can respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, similar to human response time in a typical conversation.

Python Rebuild

You're still visiting this blog? Wow. Thanks.

As I haven't posted to this site in almost four years, I thought it would be good to rebuild it with Python and Jinja2. Originally, it was all generated with Ruby On Rails. The Python upgrade is done now. There are some new subtle design changes too.

Due to the complexity, quite a bit of the work was carried out with OpenAI ChatGPT o1-preview.

I hope to get back to more regular entries now that all backend work has been completed.

Roja Parfums Lost In Paris

A new gourmand that hopes to become a best-seller for the brand. A larger-than-life olfactive event that will sweep you up in spectacular rush of sensations, ROJA invites you to lose yourself in Paris. Over-indulgence after the sun goes down, this perfume is a glimpse into the glitterati of Parisian high society.

Within an exquisite interior, a Michelin Star chef creates a transcendent dining experience - their mastery of ingredients turning a daily necessity into a sensory art form. A pan of delicious, juicy Oranges caramelize inside a warm pool of Butter and Brown Sugar, with Grand Marnier creating a sugary glaze over a rich base of Vanilla Bourbon and Ambergris.

Becoming a love letter to the spirit of over-indulgence, LOST IN PARIS blends an overdose of sumptuous raw materials to create the crème-de-la-crème of gourmand accords. This is what it means to live life to the fullest.

For most, fragrance is a guilty pleasure – something we dream about and if we allow ourselves to, indulge in. For me, there is a moment that epitomises this feeling that I wanted to capture as a fragrance. As a young man coming up in my career, I was living and training in Paris. Swept up in this new world of French finery, I had the opportunity to visit Le Meurice - a place I had always dreamed of being.

An extraordinary experience had suddenly become my reality and I left the party on cloud nine. Stumbling through the icy streets of Paris, I caught the most delicious smell in the air which took me to a stand selling Crépes. Gleefully shovelling one into my mouth, a self-awareness washed over me: I had come from the smartest hotel and here I was having the time of my life devouring street food in the freezing cold.

That is exactly what this scent is: something so irresistible it acts as a reminder than even when you’re on top of the world, there’s always room for a little more indulgence – a little more luxury in life!