What’s interesting is that none of these speakers is British. I think we are too worried about the stigma. I’ve wrote a series of Mental Health Focus blog posts to help to #EndTheStigma around mental health and to encourage others to talk openly and honestly about their own mental health. Each week in January, I’ll be posting one of these Mental Health Focus blog posts.
How do you manage your own mental and emotional health? Leave a comment below.
If you are experiencing an episode of poor mental health, two useful websites are: Mind and SANE. If you are feeling suicidal please visit your nearest A&E Department for crisis support.
Speaking Out is a collection of photographic portraits of LBGT young people (aged 14-24 years old). 65+ young people, mostly from the USA are photographed. On each portrait young people have shared their thoughts, feelings or an experience. The young people have been honest in sharing their joys and tribulations of being an LGBT youth in a heterosexual world.
In Speaking Out photographer Rachelle Lee Smith took the portraits, handed young people a sharpie pen and left them to write what they wanted. Among other topics, young people wrote about: stereotypes, identity, homophobia, self-love and romantic love. Young people identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered. It was great to see transgendered young people represented, however the vast majority of the young people identified as lesbian.
Years later, some young people reconsidered their portrait. They wrote about how their lives had changed and what they would write now. It was enjoyable to read these reflections from young people and the book would have benefited from having more of these. Several pages of the book felt wasted as they contained quotes that either praised the photographer or the book its self. Never was there any praise for the young people who were actually brave enough to share their stories.
Speaking Out is presented well, it’s a large book with 127 glossy pages in full colour. There is the odd page where a young person’s hand writing makes it difficult to read what they’ve written, but at no point is it unreadable.
Speaking Out is an enlightening book that shows how we are all the same, rather than how we are different. It should be available in every school, college, library and youth club.
A Jam Jar stores Jam.
A Sun Jar collects and stores Sunshine.
So that you can use it at Night.
…Or so the Sun Jar box says.
The idea is great: use a solar panel to charge a rechargeable battery during the daytime and then when a sensor senses that it’s dark use the battery to power a small LED light bulb.
The Sun Jar features:
Two modes: Auto mode and Charge mode. In auto mode the sensor is supposed to detect when it’s dark and power the light bulb.
A solar panel, rechargeable AAA battery and LED light bulb.
Waterproof – meaning that it can be used both indoors and outdoors.
Comes in a choice of light bulb colours: orange/yellow, blue and pink.
The frosted material gives a glow to the light.
But unfortunately, due to a flawed design the Sun Jar is disappointing and essentially useless. The Sun Jar isn’t bright enough to be used on it’s own as a night light; but switching on any sort of artificial light causes the sensor on the Sun Jar to switch off the LED light bulb. Making the product essentially useless.
What’s annoying is that Suck, the creators of the Sun Jar, could have easily solved this problem. They could have had three modes on the Sun Jar: Auto (use of the sensor), On (sensor off but light bulb lit) and Charge (sensor off and just charging). It’s shocking that they didn’t discover this fundamental design flaw in the product prototypes.
The Sun Jar could be significantly improved by alternating the colours of the lights. This could have been done through each Sun Jar unit having a number of different coloured LED bulbs. It would be even better, if through a switch, the customer could choose what colour light will be produced or set it to random.
My final thought on the Sun Jar is that it was expensive, costing £20. I don’t think I would have felt this was expensive if I had been able to use the product as I intended: to be a night light, along with another night light to give adequate light.
The Sun Jar is available to buy on Amazon, but honestly, I wouldn’t bother until they’ve made significant improvements to the design.
The numbers are in and according to my WordPress Jetpack Annual Report in 2014 I had 20,000 views of my blog. Not bad for a little personal blog! Click the image left to see the screenshot. Any image in this post can be clicked for full size.
My hosting provider Vidahost (who you can learn more about here) provide AWStats software. According to AWStats I’ve had (see image below):
58, 101 unique visitors to my blog in 2014.
Who have visited 149,103 times in 2014.
And have resulted in over a million hits in 2014.
AWStats from Hosting Provider Vidahost.
The WordPress Jetpack Annual Report reports that my biggest referrers in 2014 were from social media sites Facebook and Twitter:
Jetpack Annual Report 2014 – How did they find you?
Jetpack Annual Report 2014 – Attractions
The WordPress Jetpack Annual Report indicate that my five most popular posts in 2014 were:
I’ve really grown my blog in the last few years, with Reviews of books, films and technology seeming to make the big difference to increasing the number of visitors. But what keeps my visitors returning seems to be blogging about my personal life. Below is the result of a readers survey undertaken in 2014. It that shows that readers enjoy the current content I create and would like more of everything. It shows that 80% of readers surveyed said that they would like more personal blog posts:
Readers were asked: What sort of blog posts would you like to see more of?
I think these statistics are great. In the next year and beyond I hope to continue to grow my loyal blog readership.
The blog costs money to host and takes up a considerable chunk of my time. So if you have a product or service that you’d like to advertise on the blog, please don’t hesitate to Contact me. Your advert could reach 20,000+ unique visitors a year.
Blog soon,
Antony
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Friday 2 January 2015
About
Antony Simpson - Author, Blogger, Nurse & Witch.
Author of eight books.
Categories
Amazon
Antony Simpson is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.
