the "ColorGuide" story

Several months I was going back home from work, really tied, out of mood and stuff and on my way home I thought I might do a little shopping for home to get a bit distracted from the daily routine. 

Back then, still considered as newly married, living in a new beautifully tiny apartment with fresh renovation and furniture, lots of home decorations were still missing. So that evening was just perfect for me to get some little nice things for home. 

Going from one shop to another I came across some beautiful and colorful cushions that I thought would fit our apartment perfectly. And they were on sale, so the luck was on my side :)

I love cushions, I could live a cushion house, if I liked the shopping thing in general, I would go for cushion shopping every day. But luckily or unfortunately I'm not a huge fan of the shopping thing & I go out for shopping every once in a long while, so what I'm saying is that the evening was perfect for me buy several beautiful cushions for the coziest place in the world/our place;) and put a BIG CHECK on the cushion part of the home decoration. But if only the case was that easy.

I went to select some cushions, they were beautiful, colorful, diverse and I somehow got lost in them. I couldn't make up my mind which ones I'd want to take. I'm in general for minimalism and our entire apartment is designed so and I really didn't want to spoil the style by bringing in random color cushion diversity. I mean I love colors, but still.. When I eventually decided on the cushions I came to realize that I couldn't remember the color of our sofa. Terrible, I know, but I really couldn't... was it purple? red? 

Whatever it was, I was really upset that I couldn't remember the color of our sofa exactly right and I got so upset that I decided not to buy any cushions at all. 

Then, going out of the shop an idea just came up to me that if I had a application on my home that could detect color and find its matches that would be perfect, I could detect the color of the sofa exactly right and have the matching colors of the detected color right on :)) I actually LOVED the idea!!! I thought it will be so useful for so many people just in daily routine: clothes shopping, home decorations shopping... & pretty much anything! So I called my almighty "Brad Pitt" to share the idea and he seemed to love it as well:)

And I was sooo happy when I found out that he  actually started programming process of the application :) ...researching on the color  theories, studying the color algorithms and so on.

So this is how the application actually works: 

• You go into the application and get a real time detection of the color
• You fix the color by clicking on the camera inside of the application
• You go the to page with the detected color and its matches & with a little (I call it) bonus feature :) it gives the the colors RGB codes as well
• You save is as a pictures with the detected and matched colors in the "ColorGuide" folder in the gallery.

That it is :) But still not to go any further in this, just check the application out in the Google Play Application Store.

And here, let me just say how absolutely happy I am for my husbandEST HUSBAND ever for actually making it happen!!! 

aaaaa~ shat kayfa!!

p.s. I've not bought any cushions yet, so excited to actually to go and get some with the ColorGuide :))  

QUIRVA

Couple of weeks ago, my friends visited me... you know, sitting around, having snacks, talking about everything and nothing when we reached the general topics of families and friendships. My mom was there too, nursing me (I guess, I didn't mention I was a bit ill) so she told a wonderful story of real friendship that passed generations, a friendship that seems quite unreal to me at the moment.

"Back in early 1920-s there were a lot of Azeri villages in the Eastern part of Armenia, I will be mainly talking about Alaverdi (Lori) and its surroundings  where my mother comes from. Armenian and Azeri people lived in neighborhood quite in peace together, as I figure (I assume, it looked something like Armenians and Yazidis for e.g. living next to each other) 

Anyways, one day Armenian and Azeri villages located in Lori started to fight.  An Azeri guys took a knife to stab my great grandfather also involved in the fight when all of the sudden another Azeri guy jumped out, grabbed the hand of the guy with the knife and didn't let him hit my great grandfather, in other words saved his life. From then on, Ghazar, my great grandfather and Yolchi, the Azeri guy, who'd saved his life, swore to each other to be brothers (QUIVA (Քիրվա) - the traditional word for it) and take care of each other no matter what (back then probably there was a tradition of brotherhood). Their Quivahood was perfect, the 2 families were very close, until my great grandfather Ghazar died in the World War the 2nd and Yolchi pass away too.

When the two QUIRVAS died, Yolchi's son Ismail visited my grandfather John Ghararich to continue the Quirvahood their fathers had made. Grandfather was OK with continuing the Quirvahood... OK but not enthusiastic (he was a head of former trade unions of the regions also was the director of the Alaverdi beer company and the Ismail was a simple shepherd... I guess this could also be a reason of the lack of enthusiasm of keeping the Quirvahood... yeah, granny acted snobbish ;)) and Ismail could feel it, but it didn't matter to him. Ismail went on carrying out Quiva's responsibilities to the fullest in the memory of their fathers' perfect Quirvahood: you know, sending huge parcels of presents, baskets of almonds, pomegranates, sweets, etc-etc, every new year.

In early 1980-s my younger ancle came back from his military service and got into good relationships with Ismail, and Ismail, wisely enough, decided to shift his Quirvahood from my grandfather to my uncle and it all went all over again perfectly well.

1990-ies, Karabagh issue raised and actually war started between the two nations... Azeris were removed from the Armenian territory to Azerbaijan. Ismail had to leave his home in Armenia... My mom tells the goodbye scene was heartbreaking, they didn't want to leave, we didn't want them to leave, but the country was in war state so there was pretty much nothing we could do about it, besides probably it wouldn't be safe for them to stay. My uncle drove them to the Azerbaijan territory passing the border of Ghazakh to make sure they were safe in their territory and came back home...

Everyone was OK except for my grandmother Siranush (her real name is actually Tamara, I have no idea why everybody calls her Siranush:)) who couldn't find her place after they departed... she was very worried whether they were safe home, all settled or not. So 2 day later my grand mother together with my uncle decided to go to Azerbaijan to make sure that Ismail's family was safe... they crossed the border late at night, found a local Azeri policemen who helped them find Ismail's family...Their meeting, my mom tells, was very emotional,  tears and laughter... Ismail couldn't believe they actually made the whole way to see whether they were safe or not... Tables were all laid and a big party was organized that night for the guests... 

That was actually the last time the two families ever met..."

P.S. John Ghazarich, my grand father, is 88 now and my grand mother is 84 :)

P.P.S. does it really mean I theoretically might have an Azeri Quirva sister and/or brother now... ?!

i want to sleep

I was thinking about the general state of the world, about people, happiness and where it comes from, about life, satisfaction and making the most of every minute of it. I was thinking about love, arts, beauty, social security, food, welfare, clothes, fashion etc~etc when I came to realize that I really want to sleep first...  

Couple of months ago I came to realize that I have been dreaming of sleeping for almost my whole life... I went to school for 10 years and I liked it, but I hated getting up early in the morning, then I went to the university for 5 years and I liked my university but I still hated getting up early in the morning, then I was employed for 4 years already and I like my job but I hate getting up early in the morning even more enthusiastically... and the whole universal truth is that I would have loved my school, my university, my jobs so much more, I would be so super productive and mega motivated if only I had the opportunity to sleep couple of hours more... 


I pondered over this issue even more and got to not -the-happiest news about my whole life... The school is the time when you get the general knowledge and you come to realize what is of your interest and what is not, to get decided on future profession ... and here please explain to me how you are supposed to understand some chemical formulas, rules in physics early at 9 am when your brain wakes up only at 11 am... and what if this  automatically puts you off your right professional path and you end up doing something you are happen to be good at and not maybe something you were meant to do... (talents in arts probably excluded....)


I went to university and it started all over again... probably better not to specifically mention the fact that right after the first 2 months of my university studies, I still couldn't remember how come I made a decision to take up languages as my life-long specialization and why on earth should I spend 5 years on studying 2 language ;-))) ... but in any case the excitement of being an excellent student for 2 years faded away from 3rd year of studies when the schedules for classes changed for early in the morning... (might also be a coincidence, but you never know...)

So it turns out that one gets to sleep properly before going to kindergarten and after retiring... OK so what I die right after retiring, is that suppose to mean that I die with an unfulfilled dream to get a proper sleep?! 

Nooooooo~ 

p.s. The Working/Studying & Sleeping system is not somehow user friendly