Sophie

www.sophielancasterfoundation.com

Illamasqua S.O.P.H.I.E

In today’s Social Media class we talked about morals, rights and wrongs and different ways that people look at them (the ends justify the means, do no harm etc) and I couldn’t stop thinking about something that happened that is just plain wrong. While the point of today was to understand about Online Communities and the morality thing came up as a part of that this is where my mind went. I’ll do another blog post that’s on topic a little later.

In August 2007 Sophie Lancaster was beaten to death by a gang of youths simply because she was a goth. The worse part in my eyes is that she was trying to protect her boyfriend from being hurt by cradling his head with her body. When I read about this back in 2007 I was sick. I was a bit of a goth myself back then too. I’ve had my share of the taunts and mockery from narrow minded idiots thrown at me for no other reason than it made them laugh. I’ve toned down because life happened, I grew up. Not because of anything anyone said or did. But this story still makes me sick.

I don’t wear much make up in uni these days because it’s too much effort and I have enough to stress over these days. I still love to play with make up and when I have an excuse I love to dress up for things like parties and nights out. Illamasqua, my favourite make up brand, supports the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. A charity set up by Sophie’s mother after her death in order to raise awareness of this tragedy and teach respect and tolerance towards other cultures. As well as charity wristbands, £3 from every sale of their bestselling black eyeliner pencil, named S.O.P.H.I.E in her honour is donated to the charity.

…come to think of it, it’s about time I bought a new eyeliner pencil…

Social Media Classes are about teaching us to use the Social Media platforms at our disposal to communicate things, raise awareness and share things with each other. I hope that by sharing this story I’ve helped to raise a little more awareness

Mscsm blog – The Horse Does Not Eat Cucumber Salad

This blog post is a little later than I intended. I’ve been kinda VERY stressed recently and needed a little time to myself.

This week we discussed the issues around Convergence and how the world is getting smaller, and how stuff that was in the realm of Sci-fi as little as ten years ago is now commonplace. We were live tweeting the discussion during the class (and by live tweeting I mean discussing things that were mentioned then going off on random tangents. Android-loving people, I’m looking at you :p) The mention of Sci-fi made me want to mention something, I like Sci-fi and I love reading, yet I’ve never read the book Neuromancer despite it being recommended to me many times. I follow the book’s author, William Gibson, on Twitter. Not long after I’d made my confession, Gibson himself came online and tweeted a video of a flock of birds. I watched it with the sound off, thought it was lovely and I re-tweeted it, then George Konstantinidis, who was sat next to me, sent a tweet to GreatDismal saying that the birds were fantastic. GreatDismal is William Gibson, one of the most famous of American Cyberpunk authors and the kind of person who, not that long ago, I’d have thought I’d have no way of ever interacting with in any way, much less inadvertently introducing someone to in such a small way.

I started following Gibson on Twitter after I read an interview with him that I’d wanted to use a quote from in a report I was writing (I ended up being unable to work it in in a way which made sense. I’m still sad about that). And he’s awesome. He posts some really good things, Including an article about Johann Phillipp Reis, the original German inventor of the device that would later become the telephone. It could only send transmissions one way, so the person talking couldn’t reply, and the first words he said were ‘The horse does not eat cucumber salad’, a random sentence that nobody could have guessed in order to prove that it was clearly transmitting his voice.

I have plans to get myself a new iPhone later this week. My boyfriend pointed out to me that this is not only a phone, it’s a media player, game platform, internet browser and much much more.

I saw this video a few months ago and, yes it’s completely Apple biased but it shows just how quickly the technology has grown.

CNET UK Presents: History of the iPhone, dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs from Drew Stearne on Vimeo.