Posts tagged filter
Ditch the Plastic with SIGG
33 months ago
I have been challenged by SIGG to ditch the plastic this February – more specifically, to stop buying single use plastic bottles for one month.
The fact is that in the UK we just don’t need to buy bottled water. We have clean running water in our homes, in our offices, in our schools, in our high streets. Bottled water is expensive and creates a lot of waste – tap water plus a reusable bottle is a much cheaper and environmentally friendly way to drink.
To help they have sent me one of their reusable bottles to use. It’s a 750ml “Active Top Performance Bottle” that has a special drinking system – ok, it’s a straw with a valve on the top. The stainless steel construction keeps drinks cool and fresh, and this particular bottle is suitable for still or carbonated drinks. I’ll review the bottle properly at the end of the month, but so far so good.
I’ve been using my SIGG bottle when I’m exercising, in the car, in the office and when I’m out and about. I fill it up with water from the tap or our Britta water filter when at home, or from the water cooler at work (which is plumbed into the water supply, it doesn’t use bottled water). I have no intention of buying any bottles of water this month, and so far so good.
To be fair I already try to use glasses or reusable bottles for my water consumption where possible; we don’t buy bottled water for drinking at home and I don’t need to buy it when at work. But we do often buy it when travelling in the car or when we’re out for the day – I must be more organised and make sure I fill up a reusable bottle or two before we go.
I do spend each week on other single use bottled drinks though – Diet Coke, Dr Pepper, Lilt, and so on. I will more than happily buy these when I’m out and about or at work and don’t even think about them being the same plastic as bottled water comes in. I should stop buying all 500ml bottles and use either my SIGG bottle or my glass for my soft drinks.
And this of course opens other questions. The challenge is about single use bottles. As opposed to reusable ones. Does ditching the plastic also include cordials? Does it include large 2l bottles of fizzy drinks? I’m not sure how far to take this yet. I wouldn’t want to give up flavoured drinks completely, that would make February very boring. I think it’s ok to buy large bottles, even if they are plastic – I think SIGG are encouraging me to use my bottle instead of buying water, which is readily available out of a tap. That’s how I’m going to understand it anyway. Agreed?
Do you buy bottled water regularly? What about 500ml bottles of Coke? Would you consider ditching the plastic to save money and the environment?
Disclaimer: SIGG selected me to ditch single use plastic bottles and replace with SIGG bottles to help drive their online social media activity.
Chocolate and Instagram
21 year ago
It’s perhaps one of those iOS apps you either love or hate. I’ve been using instagram on my iPhone for a while now and I’m in the love camp – I like how you can easily crop and add filters to your photos and share them on twitter and Facebook. I also like how other instagram users can “love” your image and comment on it away from other social media using the instagram app.
Instagram is a free social media photography app that allows you to take and share photos with or without pre-set filters directly from your iPhone. It has a very simple interface that shows your own, your friends and random popular snaps, and links with twitter, Facebook, Flickr and foursquare for sharing purposes.
These photos I took of my five year old mini-lop bunny Chocolate yesterday evening are examples of what you can do with instagram. In each case I’ve added a different filter, which I think suits the particular snap and gives each something different for the purpose of sharing online.
The original photo of Chocolate and the mug is ok – not spectacular of course it’s only an iPhone snap, but it’s cute and I thought worth sharing with my bunny-loving friends. So I stuck it in instagram and had a play with the available filters and chose this one just to give the image a warm glow, something different.
In many cases (like the one above) I will take a quick snap knowing I will be cropping them to a square, and therefore will compose accordingly – I wasn’t worried about the paperwork on the left or the plates on the right of the original shot. As for choosing which filters to use when, I tend to choose the image first then apply different filters until I particularly like the look of one.
I only use instagram for social media sharing, it’s a “for fun” app not there for serious images (the resolution of the edited image is only about 1400 pixels square at 72dpi). In many cases I won’t use any filter because I like the image just as it is. But I do rate the app highly and will continue to use it for twitter photos in favour of posting on twitter or TwitPic directly, or at least until something even better comes along.
When it comes to browsing other people’s instagram shots, I actually use the instapad app which has a lovely designed interface for viewing, loving and commenting on images. I love looking at the photos other people take, although the unhealthy food ones do make me hungry, and the gorgeous seascapes make me wish for the waves. That’s the point though, the reason people post them, right?
There are some downsides to instagram. One is that it is an iPhone only app, it doesn’t even work properly on an iPad, and you can’t upload, love or comment on photos on a computer. Another is that if you only have a GPRS connection, or even Edge, you won’t be able to upload your pics – you need 3G or WiFi for it to work properly. Considering the small size of instagram images that is pretty poor really. It also has no Google+ integration yet (many apps and websites don’t).
They say a picture says a thousand words, and instagram is great ways to share yours with your friends and followers. It might be a just for fun app, but it’s free and worth having a play.
If you fancy following my images on instagram I’m Splodz on there too.
