As Fresh as a Daisy!

Sooooooo…I hope you can tell what this post is about. 20SomethingFreak (2SF) has a new look! I’d been looking at the old theme for a while and thinking it just looked a bit tired and dated and then today was the day I just HAD to change it 🙂

I won’t lie, this freshen up is also part of a much larger 2SF project that is ticking away in the background and hopefully I’ll be able to tell you about some exciting changes soon. In the meantime, I hope you appreciate this little facelift and I’ve also added links to a 2SF FB page which is part of the upcoming changes and my YouTube channel. Both of these will be seeing a lot more action in the near future.

Have yourselves a lovely Thursday, I can’t believe how quickly this week has been flying by! x

Why Smartphones Get My Goat

 

Smartphones are everywhere these days and I’d like to start off by saying that perhaps I have titled this post somewhat misleadingly as I don’t have a problem with smartphones per se, more with the people reviewing them.

For most of my life, mobile phones have been a hot topic of discussion, right from when changing the cover on your Nokia was the coolest thing ever until now when the ability to make your phone do things without even touching it seems to be the thing to have. But what exactly are we discussing? Back in the day it was all about making the phone look good and whether you flipped it open, swivelled it open or had Snake 2 on it…not exactly crucial things when making a phone call or sending a text message.

Then we became obsessed with cameras and colour screens, it was all about how many megapixels we had and whether there was a flash. Mainly the cameras were so rubbish we continued to use actual cameras though and again, not so key to the process of making and receiving phone calls!

Nowadays phones really are portable computers and there are so many acronyms banded around that a normal human being can’t possibly know what on earth they are buying so we still often circle back to our original criteria of how it looks. So what have the manufacturers done… made them all look the same and all come in the same 2 boring colours. It’s like they want to force us to look beyond the casing and into the chip inside, except most of us don’t know how.

Even when people explain what the phones can do, most of us still have no idea how to actually do it. Some features sound plain annoying; do I really want my YouTube video to pause if I look away from the screen? Hell no! I look away because I’m bored of watching and only want to listen, the last thing I want is for it to wait for my gnat-like attention span to circle back to it! Do I want a pedometer or a sleep monitor or a screen that is so good it’s beyond what my eyes can see? No I bloody don’t! If I wanted those things then I’d shop for them in the form of a pedometer or a sleep monitor or a TV!!!

What I want is a phone that works and is easy to use and shows me what I want, when I want it, how I want it and makes my life easy. A phone that recognises that I use the word “awesome” all the time so it throws it up on the screen when I start typing “aw”. Yeah, some showy –offy gadgets are cool, like being able to fix my photos so my eyes are open instead of blinking in every shot but mainly, I just want something that I understand and that understands me.

You might think I’m mad but BB10, I’m looking at you kid! The Z10 is a good-looking phone and if you do understand all the acronyms and browsing speeds, etc. you’ll know that it outperforms many of its rivals (yes I mean the iPhone) in lots of ways. If however, you’re like me and just want a phone that’s easy to use and works then it’s ideal. It hides all the techy jargon and just makes life simple – everything you need in one place, with a swipe of the thumb. Perfect for lazy old me with the zero attention span! Oh, and I can have my blog as an app on my BB. And I can message, voice chat or video chat with my friends around the world for FREE. These are the things I want to know about when buying a phone!

In case you think this is written with bias, I will ‘fess up that I did work for BB briefly, not even for a year and I was in HR, nothing product related. Does that make me automatically love their products? No. Did they give me my first BB, a Bold 9900 on my first day which was the best phone I’d ever had, yes. So I love the Z10 because it’s a great phone, not because I used to work for them. I am in no way affiliated with the company, my previous role there just opened my eyes to a brand I’d never considered before.

Let me know what you think about the phones out there at the moment; I’m due an upgrade and I want to get it right! x

Family Fun in the Sun (Caversham Festival)

I’d been having some puppy love withdrawal symptoms so I decided to tag along with my dad on today’s epic dog walk and then as the weather was quite nice for once, we decided to check out a local festival. Local festivals can sometimes be a bit lame with just a couple of gazebos with people selling cakes and a bouncy castle, so that’s just what I was expecting today…luckily for us I couldn’t have been more wrong!

We trotted down to the Caversham Festival (in Reading) and were greeted by loads of stalls, loads of people (and dogs), bouncy castles and a heck of a lot of good music! There were several stages, including a floating stage on a barge and a great variety of acts from rock bands to bohemian buskers. Oh, and I haven’t mentioned the best part yet; this was FREE! Accessible to everyone, good old-fashioned free!

These guys started playing as we were waiting for an act to start up on the floating stage – loved it!

The obligatory bouncy castle!

Highlights for me were some scrummy ice cream, (thanks daddy!) and 2 bands. One was a band which was my dad’s fave, Subverts and I have to admit that they were pretty good. (Catch them on YouTube here but they are way better live.) My personal favourite however was a band called Private Jet – the lead singer had a proper rock voice and I was just loving everything about their performance. Their website is here, again much better live though so get yourself to a gig!

All in all, it was a brilliant afternoon and I will defo be heading down there next year, I’m really happy that I’ve found myself some new bands to follow – most of the stuff in the charts sounds crap to me! lol! So, the moral of this story is that if there is a local festival in your area get down there, it could be a pleasant surprise 🙂 x

OMG, I am like totes famous…

I did have an entirely different post planned for tonight but based on a conversation I’ve been having with someone about vlogging, (YouTube mainly, for those who don’t know what that is…video blogging) I decided to check out my YouTube channel. I’ve only got a couple of videos up there as it’s not really something I do at the moment. However, you may remember my brief post when I tried to ombre my own hair (here) a couple of months ago. At the time I thought it was going to work really well so I started to video it; it was actually a disaster but I posted the video anyway.

Now I know in the grand scale of things this number of views isn’t great but I was shocked how many people have watched this film, I was expecting maybe 50 if I was lucky. Guess how many I’ve had…gone on…guess…oh, ok, I’ll tell you: 1,168! That many people have seen my face and heard my stupidly young sounding voice in the last couple of months! Woohoo!

So that’s it for this blog post, it’s really just me bragging because I got a bit over-excited by my own very moderate success! lol! Happy Tuesday friends 🙂 x

PS. If you’ve missed the action, you can check out the vid. right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g6eRhyyous&feature=plcp

Beach Babe or Hedgerow Disaster?

One look I have loved for years is the beach wave, messy, just got out of bed hair style. However, whilst some may say I am blessed, I of course think I am cursed, with poker straight hair. Oh, and it’s really fine and bleached which makes it extra fine so it completely lacks bounce – not ideal for this look!

As my hair is so fine, I tend not to use heat based styling tools to much as it just dries out the ends too much, not to mention the fact that curler produced curls are totally different to beach waves! For ages I pondered how I could get something resembling beach waves and then one day my brain kicked in and I Googled it. What I found was a whole array of helpful videos on YouTube telling me how to style my wet hair so it would dry “beachy”.

This is the result:

Beach Hair???

I’ve put a huge picture in so you can properly see what I’m working with here. Now, I must confess I’ve worn this look quite a few times now but each time I wonder if it looks at all beachy or if I just look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.

What do you guys think and anyone got any ideas how I can make my waves a bit bigger and bouncier without getting hair extensions which I can’t afford???  Seriously, hit me up with your honest opinions 🙂 x