The Hipstamatic and the Diary that changed my life

This post will be a double shot of fun! Maybe you will ask yourself what happened to the crystal clear, cozy and sweet book pictures that I showed here in my previous book reviews. Last weekend I got my hands on this crazy cool iPhone app which I have to tell you about and so I thought I’d make a beautiful double post.

I’ll start with the book review. The diary that changed my life last year is so much fun and every week I was excited about my challenge for the coming week.

What’s the book about? It’s actually an ordinary calendar but the pages are filled with weekly challenges such as Hand out a calling card to a stranger this week (4th picture) – They have 6 calling cards on a page to copy and hand it to a random person. “I don’t know you but I wish you well” was my favorite and caused 3 happy faces.

No small talk week was refreshing. There was a list of forbiden expressions: How’s life? See the match? What’s new? Lovely weather we’re having! How’s your wife/husband? That’s life I suppose – which you weren’t allowed to use for a whole week to save “hours of your life”. Ok, I actually use none of these phrases frequently so I thought of my own list and gave it a try. Did you ever realized how great it is not to talk in the elevator just for the sake of it?!

One week that I really liked but where I didn’t follow the instruction was Godfather Week. You were supposed to offer protection to a local business, reassuring that they’re under your wing. Haha. My south italian side screamed “Let’s do this!”. The girl in me didn’t have the balls.

Overall the book offered a big list of fun ideas and games. I had to force myself not to peek next weeks challenge and I must admit I didn’t do everything they suggested. Some things were just a little bit too much for my understanding (e.g. Doublecheck your partner isn’t cheating….) But it was highly entertaining.

To learn more about the authors Benrik visit their website here. The published some more books that are worth a read (Lose Weight! Get Laid! Find God!). This year’s diary version is called This Book Will Change Your Life: The Very Best of ‘This Diary Will Change Your Life‘ and is a summary of the past years.

As you could see the images I made of the book seem to be a little retro and that’s exactly the effect that this iPhone app is doing to your pictures. Hipstamatic makes your pictures look as they’re from the 70′s.  It comes with 3 different lenses (you can see the results in the book shots) and 2 different rolls of films (I don’t really get the difference). Your iPhone screen looks like the back of the old old original Hipstamatic camera and makes the original noises of it as well. When you took your picture it takes some seconds to “develop” and then the images are directly saved into your image file.

They offer to buy additional lenses as well but the ones that come with the 0,99 $ are just fine to add a vintage feeling to your 2010 photos. Try it out! It’s of course available in the app store.