fauxtographic / dreaming in digital

I’ve set up a place for a mobile photoblog – fauxtographic – I’ll be posting random shots straight off my new phone, taken and processed and uploaded all with the power of Android (& it’s apps) and the lovely WordPress. Go have a look if you’re interested, and let me know what you think!

It’s been a week of new toys for me! On Friday I got my new phone, a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Android phone. It is my new favourite everything. I’ve been playing about setting it up to work with my various accounts, and adding some fun apps to make it a little bit more me.

One of the apps I’ve really been enjoying is the Retro Camera app – it’s really fun for a free app, and it can produce some really good images. I took this one yesterday afternoon – it’s a very broken piano over at Dan’s grandpa’s old house. His uncle Phil is in the process of doing the house up, so it’s a wee bit messy…

I also downloaded Flickr Droid so I can upload to Flickr and keep on top of things there whilst I’m out and about, and I do believe that Twidroid is my new favourite Twitter friend. In exciting news there is a WordPress app for Android, which I am pleased to say I have installed – it is excellent, does exactly what it says on the tin. This fills me with lots of exciting ideas! I’m thinking about starting some kind of 365 days photo project, or maybe just a little mobile photoblog kind of thing… anyone got any thoughts on this? I think I want to keep glitterbat.net as a place for longer entries, detail, old school sitting at my laptop or the big rig posts.

Oh, and my fringe is purple again – well, almost black for now. The magic of the purple dye I use means that it starts out black-ish (with a super bright purple flash in sunlight!) then fades through many other purples to a hideous pink (that most people like ) before being re-dyed. The Enchanted Forest green was very nice, but it only lasted for about two weeks before looking pastel-y turquoise. The purple feels more like me anyway, it’s been like this for a long time now, and it’s kind of who I am.

Well well well… What do we have here then? That’s right, it would appear to be a clean and sparkly, revamped version of glitterbat.net, how very exciting! Okay, so maybe it’s not all that exciting yet, but it will be. At least, it will be for me.

It’s been well over three years since I started using WordPress, and if I’m completely honest my blogging has been somewhat… fragmented. Up until now glitterbat.net had been my Blythe blog, with a little bit of urban vinyl and other toy related chatter thrown in for good measure. I flirted with a personal blog at /alive, and in all honesty can’t really remember what happened to it or why I stopped writing there. My Livejournal is pretty much dead now, I’ve not updated it in almost a year… and you know what? I miss blogging! So, in a bid to get back into this, I have decided to spring clean glitterbat.net, and revamp the site as my blog – after all, the little bits and pieces I have scattered all over the internet are bits and pieces of me. It feels so much better (and makes much more sense) to bring it all together in one place.

I think it would be best now to round up what’s been happening in my world. Since finishing my psychology degree I have gone full time at Rocky Horrors, and am ridiculously happy there – for the time being. My lovely colleague Kim has gone back to college, and I have taken her full time hours looking after the shop website, as well as all the day to day joys of working for Sheffield’s finest alternative retailer. I kid you not, I don’t think I could be more happy at work. The sensible part of my brain knows I can’t stay there forever, but for now being paid to fit corsets, have funny coloured hair, and be choked by Alice Cooper is a pretty sweet deal.

Dan & I have moved out of the student hovel, into a lovely flat in a converted Victorian detached house in Sheffield. It’s huge, beautiful, and cheap – and we have a cellar that’s perfect for home brewing! We share our home with the most adorable dwarf hamster, Earl Arashi von Shiverbug. He’s not the brightest hamster in the world, but I love him to pieces regardless.

I’ve been getting back into my dollies, now I have free time that is actually free time and not just time for sleeping between full time university, critical discourse analysis and working 32 hours a week. I may even be getting a new Blythe doll soon (it’s been a while, believe me!) in the form of Simply Guava! Look how beautiful she is!

She’s the one with the pink hair, and the sausage dog, just to clarify. I’m not struck on Mango at all really. A good friend of mine will be visiting Japan soon, and much to my delight will (hopefully!) be bringing a Guava home for me!

Fuelled in part by my plastic girls, and mainly due to my need to do something creative/useful with myself, I have taken up crochet. I’m still learning, but enjoying every last stitch immensely. It’s something I have been threatening to learn for a long time now, as my Mum is ridiculously good with a hook, as was her Grandma. Though my Nan can’t crochet, she used to knit loads, and has kindly given me all her old knitting needles so I can try to teach myself to knit as well. My most recent crochet success was the Blythe Bubble Dress I made, just by playing about with some Twilleys Silky cotton and a 2mm hook over a couple of evenings.

I think that’s just about covered most, if not all, of the important goings on for now. I’ll be tweaking bits and pieces on the site for a little while, so please excuse anything messy or broken for a little while!