*Review: Mr Nutcase customised phone cases

I was so pleased to receive an email from the team at Mr Nutcase asking me to review their customised phone cases just days after I had decided to replace my current one. I previously had a customised photo case from Photobox, which I loved, but after having it for a very long time I felt the pictures were no longer in date. I wanted new faces, sharper pictures and less scratches over my new phone case and this was a perfect opportunity to replace it. Everyone has always loved my personalised cases because they are just so unique and my friends just love that their faces are all over my phone!

I was pretty impressed by the simplicity of the website, which allows you to create a customised phone case where you can upload your own images from your computer to make a phone case personal to you. I have found other websites that are a lot more complicated when trying to customise items, but this let you pick out your favourite pictures with ease. Photos of special people and places, words that mean something important to you, or even your beloved pet can be among the images you select – the world is your oyster! There are only four easy steps between you and your custom phone cases – choosing a layout, designing your case and adding photos, paying and having it delivered to your door. Easy right?

I was so impressed with the speed of service and the quality of the design, which you really notice when comparing it to my previous Photobox case is far clearer with much sharper images. The colour was far better and there were a great range of options available to add words, change the layout of the photos or even add cartoon elements. It was brilliant and there were so many options available to make it a truly unique design to you – in a world full of the same rubbish and cheap-looking designs, isn’t that what we all want? The cases are available for a whole range of brands and not just for phones, but a whole range of tablets as well and in a particularly lightweight plastic. At £14.95, they are a touch more expensive than any old case, but for the quality, I would be happy to pay that and am considering getting myself a new case for my iPad Mini as well.

Like the look of these cases and in the market for a new one? Why not take advantage of a special 10% off your order by entering the code ‘Thanku10’

Watching the world through a screen

My first festival of 2014 gave me a good opportunity to ease myself in to a summer of raving in the sunshine. A non-camping festival, We Are FSTVL gave a perfect chance to have a couple of days in the sun (and a bit of rain) dancing with good friends to amazing music. While I was there I was lucky enough to see the likes of Annie Mac, Knife Party and Fatboy Slim giving massive sets on the main stages. It was incredible to finally see three of the top acts I have been dying to see live on a main stage in just one festival and with a huge line-up We Are FSTVL was a surprisingly intimate affair. Despite this, I noticed a continuing theme across the stages and tents, which made me slightly sad. Forget those who are hepped up on pills and the rest, forget those who are too drunk to stand up, forget those who decide to light up flares in the middle of a crowd. At least these guys are living in the moment and are really making the most of the experience. These ones aren’t the ones who bother me.

The ones who really upset me are the ones who are living it through a screen. I might be overreacting slightly, but it actually really offends me to see a crowd full of people who are watching a once-in-a-lifetime set as a DJ they have been wanting to see all their lives closes the main stage, but that they would prefer to watch it through their camera lens. After seeing Fatboy Slim play XOYO in London on the opening night of his Eat Sleep Rave Repeat tour, my mind was blown. I had never expected I would actually get a chance to see him live in my lifetime, let alone playing brand new material. But from then on, the dream grew and I was just desperate to see his set transform from the basement of a tiny, dark club to the main stage at a festival and how lucky I was to find he would be headlining the first festival of my summer! I, and all my friends, were beyond excited to see him play live and we made sure we got up on one of the platforms facing the main stage nice and early so we could get a good spot for Annie Mac as well. We had a perfect view of the whole crowd, the main stage and the sky above it which was filled with fireworks, flames and confetti throughout.So imagine my dismay at seeing the people around us pulling out their camera phones and holding them up for the entire set. Not just up on the platform, but even down in the crowd, there was a sea of phones raised to the sky. What is the point? Can anyone tell me? In the days of Woodstock and early Glasto – when some would argue festivals were at their finest – no-one had camera phones or insisted on Instagramming every moment. Instead they lived every second, they dances to the music, felt it in their bones and spent the time meeting people, making friends and singing along. THIS is what festivals are all about. I know the convenience of camera phones means people want to capture every moment, and I have no problem with that as I too love to take photos of my friends smiling and happy, to keep those memories for long after the hangover had faded.

My problem is that people are choosing to do this rather than live the festival and the music. They would rather watch the whole explosive and incredible set through the phone screen and be sure that it is perfectly framed and looks like you are having an amazing time rather than actually experiencing it themselves. These are the people who don’t end up dancing at the festival, the ones who arrive home looking as perfect as when they set out and care more about the way the festival looks than feels. To me, the most important thing has always been they way I felt in that moment. When you see an incredible headliner take over the main stage after waiting months to see them live, when the stage explodes with confetti and flames, when you are singing along so hard you lose your voice, when you’re dancing so hard you nearly knock out the person next to you, and when you and a complete stranger throw your arms round each other and bellow out the words because you’re both just so excited. THAT is what festivals are about, losing yourself in the moment. They are about getting home and trying to tell people about it, but knowing that words just cannot do that moment justice. That no matter how you try to describe it, that those who weren’t there just won’t understand.My concern is that our technology is so convenient that so many are missing out on this experience. They don’t know the beauty of having a single picture that transports you back to that moment and how you felt, rather than an hour-long video of the set with terrible sound and a jiggly camera focus. Who really wants to sit there watching it back later on? Do you really think your friends will be jealous when they see you spent that hours-long set videoing it rather than enjoying it? I certainly wouldn’t be jealous of that, I would just consider it a wasted ticket. I have lots more festivals in the pipeline for this summer and I just hope I will be seeing a lot less of this and a lot more people living in the moment. Ironically, one of my favourite festivals from last summer was BoomTown fair which was all about the experience and I barely have any pictures from it because I was so caught up in the moment and thoroughly enjoyed myself. (See my preview for BoomTown here.)

What kind of festival-goer are you – guilty of living behind a lens or totally in the moment and forgetting you have a camera?

Gogglebox, government surveillance and 1984

I can’t believe it, but a year on and I’m still just as hooked on Channel 4’s Gogglebox as ever. Who would have thought that watching people watching TV could actually turn out to be more entertaining than all of your other reality TV shows, drama, talent shows and all the rest combined? Not me, that’s for sure. When it first aired, I was pretty sceptical and thought, like many others, that this must be the most desperate attempt to pull in audiences yet. I refused to watch it, thinking it would be a huge waste of my time, but when I caught an episode by accident, I couldn’t help but get addicted.

It’s hilarious. Why? Because it is so simple and it shows real people from all branches of society – the type of people we see walking down our streets and the ones we work with. They are people we come into contact with and this brush with reality is refreshing after seeing how programmes like Geordie Shore and Big Brother turned to extremes to shock their audiences. Now these programmes are just tasteless and painful to watch. I’ll admit I am a Made In Chelsea fan, but this too is a bit of escapism because their lives are just ridiculous. Their endless supply of money means their problems really are #firstworldproblems and I find it astonishing that I can even find this entertaining. I guess it is entertainment at seeing what frivolous lives they lead and how insignificant their problems are as opposed to those living outside this little bubble – the ones who are struggling to make ends meet.

But going back to Gogglebox, I just love the fact that it uses such a variety of characters and their reactions to the different programmes. The pairs pictured, and the old couple, are my favourites – they are just hilarious! It is so much more interesting than Big Brother or any of those programmes ever was because it uses the guy off the street, not these ridiculous characters to make things more dramatic. I don’t care if some newspapers have reported that some of those involved have TV experience or that some say it is fixed, it probably is to an extent because all of them must know they are being filmed. But the fact remains, they do a great job of reacting as real people do, which keeps it interesting and current.

It does make me wonder what is next for reality TV though. We’ve gone from forcing conflicting characters to live in extremely close quarters while completing humiliating tasks live on TV, to making ‘celebrities’ take on challenges with snakes and bugs in the Australian jungle and we’ve even started filming the posho’s in their daily lives as they bitch and fight over insignificant things. Now we are literally watching people watching television. I just don’t have the imagination to see where this could go next, but I hope it doesn’t get any more graphic, if Geordie Shore is anything to go by.

The former Literature student in me can’t help but wonder if George Orwell’s 1984 was even more relevant and incredible accurate than we ever could have imagined at the time. Such a fascinating book, and one of my favourites, I can’t help but think back to his references to ‘Big Brother is watching you’ and the technology that he imagines – the types of things we use now with webcams and voice recognition technology. When you start thinking about how our television interests have changed in the last 20 years I have been on this Earth, you can’t help but see a dramatic shift towards the idea of looking in on ourselves. We seem to be moving more and more towards the idea of looking down a microscope at society and picking on various parts. It is fascinating and I’m sure there is so much more psychology and sociology that could help explain it far better than I ever could.

This was more a thought process that started with how much I love Gogglebox and is ending with my curiosity with the way the world is changing around us and how we are constantly pumping out information about ourselves but wishing to remain anonymous. We all want our views to be heard, but we don’t always want to put a face to them, so I think the people on Gogglebox are very brave for going on the show. Someone who is never afraid to talk about his views, and whose ideas might be interesting to you, is Edward Snowden. I’m not sure how I really feel about his ideas, but I remember watching this Alternative Christmas Message a few months ago and feeling a slight chill even then. If you have read 1984, you will find it particularly haunting, if you haven’t – I strongly recommend you do!

Do you love reality TV? Which programmes and why? And what do you think of 1984 compared to today’s society?

Communicating with the big, wide world

I’m thrilled to announce that within just a few weeks of blogging on WordPress, I already have 40 followers and have had countless visitors to my site and likes on my posts. It’s really encouraging to see that my writing and opinions are being heard and appreciated by so many people from all over the world. And I really love that WordPress offers the stats pages to show you exactly where your readers are accessing your blog from, I appear to have a lot of UK and US readers, but have even had some from Bangladesh checking out my pieces.

This morning I also reached my 5,000th Tweet which went out to nearly 400 followers on my Twitter account who are spread across the country and the globe. It is great to know my opinions and comments are going out to people in my industry and to friends at the same time, and that I can instantly share my work with the world.

On my original blog, which I now use more are a photo-diary and a log of my work at the paper, I am sharing my writing with around 300 followers on Tumblr. Although Tumblr is good for the immediate sharing of pictures and thoughts, I find that WordPress offers more of a considered approach to blogging when one puts rather more time and effort into constructing a post and decorating it for readers.

Adding my Instagram to the mix, I am sharing my regular uploads with nearly 160 followers, documenting my movements whether journalism, music or blogging-related. I also find Instagram a perfect way to edit my photos and share them on my blogs. Finally, on Facebook I have 941 friends who get all my updates relating to blogging, writing for the newspaper, editing for This Festival Feeling and living life. This is a fantastic amount of people that I am reaching on a daily basis and who are accessing my posts and work. I considered making a page for myself as a writer, but didn’t want to limit my posts to people who have liked my page because I know how easy it is to lose followers that way. Plus it makes it more personal to be a ‘friend’.

Overall, I am reaching more than 1,800 people daily through my blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts – when writing for The Lynn News and This Festival Feeling, and displaying on the websites, I am reaching thousands more.

This is an amazing feeling and it astonishes me to have collated these figures and get a real picture of how many people I am in touch with. You should try it, technology really has brought the world closer together! Click on the links to follow each of my accounts and get a slightly different picture from each!

How Instagram took over the world in just three years – and how I am a total addict!

How Instagram took over the world in just three years

I’m Lucy, and I’m addicted to Instagram.

I’ve always been an avid photo-taker. On nights out, I was always the one who caught every moment on camera and my friends dreaded the eventual upload of the pictures to Facebook. But the discovery of Instagram has definitely encouraged this habit, not just on nights out, but in everyday life! Now, although not big on selfies, I am constantly updating my Instagram with pictures of myself, my friends and whatever I happen to be up to on that particular day. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this, and it certainly helps to update my blog if I capture the pictures as I go along, but it makes me wonder what I used to do before Instagram – just three short years ago!

I find it amazing that an app can so affect how we live our lives in such a short time – Facebook and Twitter did a similar thing and I find it fascinating how our lives just seem to envelope such technology and adapt to fit it in. It makes me wonder just what the next addition could possibly be!