London – A Message In A Blog

I find it very…Pinteresting.

May 12, 2016May 12, 2016A Message In A BlogLeave a comment

Obviously one of the best blog post titles ever devised by a human being. Extremely witty; full of pure banter. Completely original in every single way.

So Pinterest, eh.

Do you need ideas for your office? Pinterest. Do you want ideas for your new living room or for the perfect bedroom? Pinterest. Are you looking for beautiful tattoo designs or pictures of your dream car? Pinterest. “Oh no, where am I going to find designs and decoration ideas for my birthday party, or the wedding?” Keep Calm and Pinterest.

Pinterest is the homeland of pictures, for anything and everything you could possibly be looking for. Create boards and Pin images to them so people looking for the same things as you, can find them quickly and easily. And as you search, and search, and search for hours, upon hours, upon hours your Pinterest experience is tailored to suit you personally as a professional Pinner. Any images that Pinterest thinks you might like, go directly to your homepage. So you can log in, or open the App on your phone and you have a mixed selection of office designs, cars and bikes, dogs, cats, gardens, tattoos, music. I mean, literally everything, just waiting to be liked, and re-pinned to your own boards and profile.

I found Pinterest when I was looking through the app store for something new, saw that fancy looking P and thought it looked… interesting (I never pull the same pun twice), that would look Pin..diotic, ok maybe not. But you can see why I don’t try puns too often. I started using it for pictures of bands I enjoy listening to, then I gained an interest in cars and bikes. My main focus, however, is my ‘Fashion’ board. It has almost 300 Pins and is the pride and joy of my Pin..file (Profile…). I use it to Pin everything I can find about Men’s fashion. I also love my ‘Chic’ and ‘Architecture’ boards, I know, I’m SO Tumblr these days.

You know my favourite thing about Pinterest is the fact that it is one of the more PG Social Media sites. It’s quite a chilled community and i’ve only ever really had any poor comments once or twice on one of my pins. Generally people are quite helpful or more likely they’ll keep to themselves and just enjoy pinning away. In fact, a lot of Pinterest is used by mums and their hobby craft addictions.

I think one of the things people often find weird about Pinterest is its friendly feel. Most other social media sites have darkened over the years, and have gathered a bad reputation for being confrontational and full of internet trolls. Pinterest is a social media site and App where you can just chill and not worry about any ‘keyboard warriors’ ruining your day.

Pinterest is a wonderful thing and I strongly urge everyone to give it a go. You might feel a little alienated by it at first, but trust me, you’ll be pinning like a pro in no time!

Here, I’ll leave a link to my very own Pinterest profile ‘MiddleFloorDan‘ so you can have a look and see for yourself. Then it’s up to you to set yourself up and get pinning.

Until next time…

BYE!

London I Love You

March 3, 2015A Message In A BlogLeave a comment

I used to visit London a lot as a child; but it’s only really recently that I have come to actually admire quite how much of a beautiful city it is. I spent eight, yes EIGHT hours filming in London last Saturday for my YouTube channel (Sibling Junction) working on a short video which massively differs from my others. Whilst walking around – and subsequently ruining every muscle in my body – I realised something. You see, ever since I was a child, London has been portrayed by the media as a crime ridden place full of gangs and violence. And then every now and again they say “oh but it’s not all bad, we’ve still got the memory of the 2012 Olympics!”.

Back to the point. There was a moment on my Saturday outing when we came to China Town; a section of London filled with vibrant colours and people and the smell, oh yes! THAT SMELL! The Chinese population were at the time celebrating their New Year, (and although to me London has always been a place of fun and excitement) the city became such a bright place. It seems weird, but what with all the tension these days with -*warning, taboo topic*- immigration, everyone just got along and the place simply…mingled. There was no atmosphere that suggested any form of tension in the city that day; it was beautiful.

One of the things that I love about London is how random it can be. I mean, take that Saturday for example; I was walking from Waterloo train station to the London Eye, no big deal right. I had to walk through a car park; again, what’s so random about that? In the middle of this small (not even a large) carpark, the floor was all ripped up and a structure made in to a loop replaced it with a car stuck upside down on it. Actually i’m finding this far too difficult to explain… Here it is.

How random can it get? It matches randomness levels of the floating house that someone (I never know who does these things) plonked in the middle of Covent Garden one day last year. Here’s a picture of that as well… Who comes up with this stuff? Really.

After spending a good few hours getting some shots for the video, we made our way to Trafalgar Square to visit one of my all time favourite buildings; The National Gallery. There’s something about that building that just calms me (you know, once I manage to zone out all the rambling tourists and crying children). The thought of having so much history in one building, so much beauty over hundreds and hundreds of years of human life, is astounding. If you haven’t already visited The National Gallery and are planning a trip to London any time soon, go and have a look; it’s free entry and you get to look at the jaw dropping talent that adorns every wall. Here’s a little taster of what you can expect when you visit this quite extraordinary building. Again, try to blank out all the other people.

So there you go, I love London and to me it will always be the greatest and most beautiful city on the planet. Let me leave you with some other snaps I took while I was wandering around near the river that day….

Even managed to get a rather arty one of me crossing one of the Golden Jubilee Bridges.

Until next time, friends…

Bye!

Battle of The Sherlock’s

March 16, 2014A Message In A Blog2 Comments

I was addicted to Sherlock (BBC 1) right from the get-go and other than TopGear it is by far my favourite television program. I watched series 1 and then automatically thought that the modern twist was not only done extremely well, but that it was in fact better than some versions which stick completely to the books. Now this is all after I found out that the best version of Sherlock Holmes was the one in which Robert Downey Jr showed off his awesome English accent. This created a split, and therefore required me to choose between the two; but I couldn’t, obviously. They’re both incredible in their own unique ways, the modern twist of Cumberbatch versus the traditional but epic route taken by the creators of Sherlock Holmes (the film). So instead of this being a something – vs – something blog post, I thought I’d explain why they both deserve to be in the spotlight. It’s elementary really, my dear reader.

By now you should all have realised that my favourite actor on the planet is Will Smith; so nothing I say in this blog post will in any way go back on that; he remains at No.1 and that’s that. I do however maintain that Robert Downey Jr is my second favourite actor and this therefore means that I was always eagerly looking forward to the release of Sherlock Holmes, wherein Jude Law plays Watson, another genius move by the casting director there. Well done, people. The film is set in a late 1900’s London in which Sherlock Holmes (Downey Jr) and his trusty partner Watson (Law) follow the story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with remarkable accuracy. The times in which the book was originally set is matched by the films and even the slightest of details are perfectly executed. Downey Jr and Law both portray Holmes and Watson exactly the way I imagined them to be when I read the books. I will add, I’ve only read three! But they were perfect nonetheless. Every movement, every sarcastic comment made by Watson towards Holmes was put across brilliantly.

So the traditional setting and traditional everything works well; but let’s delve a little in to Sherlock (BBC) and see why the modern twist works so well, and why it is that even the most hardcore Holme-ies (see what I did there?) would love it. My favourite book of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is like many of you, The Hound of The Baskervilles. When I heard that this new modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes was going to attempt it, I almost had a heart attack, I worried that they would ruin it and that they’d make it far too modern to be even in the slightest bit recognisable. I was wrong. Very wrong. OK so obviously it was boosted in to the 21st century, but my my did they do it well. In case you haven’t seen it yet (and if you haven’t then why on the good earth haven’t you?) I won’t ruin at all by saying anything about the episode. You just have to watch it to believe how incredible it is. And how out of this world Martin Freeman (Watson) and Benedict Cumberbatch (Holmes) are as the mighty duo.

For anyone that has never read or watched a Sherlock Holmes book/film/TV Series, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend watching the BBC’s adaptation until you’ve either watched the Downey Jr films or have read a Study in Scarlet. Then you can appreciate the genius that is Doyle before you watch a modern version and get all confused as to why he talks like an 18th Century ‘high-functioning sociopath’ within a 21st century London. You’d get yourselves in a bit of a pickle and wont know what the hell was going on. So watch Downey Jr’s version first, then read the books, then I give you permission to watch Cumberbatch.

I’m pretty sure i’ve stated at least a few reasons why both of these Sherlock adaptations are in their own rights brilliant and deserve an equal place on the top podium. I love both of the actors and I love both of the styles; and when you watch them both I think you’ll agree. It’s very very tricky to choose between the two; in fact I purposefully go out of my way to not choose because I actually can’t.

If however you think that one is better than the other, let me know with a comment.

Bye 🙂