Gadgets

It won’t have escaped your notice that we have been refurbing our kitchen recently.  It was a very big job and whilst the major work was done all at one time, we didn’t really think about appliances (apart from leaving spaces for them) till afterwards as the dust was settling.  Part of that was budgeting, but a lot of it was that there were so many decisions to make that we chose not to make them all at once.  That meant that we were able to shop around and research our appliances in a bit more depth rather than rushing into decisions because of deadlines.  It helped too that we were going for free-standing appliances rather than built-in ones, as we felt that was more flexible.

A key part of the look of your kitchen is your fridge or your freezer.  We had a look at quite a range of fridge freezers going around many a retail shop and out-of-town warehouse to see a good selection of appliances and find a good deal.  I think it’s important to understand what you want from a fridge freezer before you start shopping and points to consider include:

• Do you want the same size fridge and freezer space?  Would you prefer a bigger fridge or a bigger freezer?
• How big a fridge freezer can you fit in your kitchen?  How much food storage place will you need? Think about the future too – will you need more in the foreseeable future?
• Do you want your fridge at the top?  Or the bottom?  Or do you want your fridge and freezer to stand side by side each other, with each extending vertically?
• Do you want a drinks dispenser?  Ice maker?  Any other features?
• Consider energy efficiency.  Fuel bills are high these days, so it can save you money to have an energy-efficient fridge freezer.

My iPhone comes with me pretty much whereever I go and it certainly comes on trips away.  MyTrendyPhone offered me the chance to try out their iPhone 4 travel kit which contains all the things you need when you are out and about with your phone.

Contained in the kit are:

• iPhone 4 Stylus
• iPhone 4 USB Wall Charger
• iPhone 4 USB Car Charger
• iPhone 4 Charge/Sync Cable

Over the last few weeks I’ve been trying these out.  I’ve found the car charger to be very useful and I leave it in the glove box of the car with the charge/sync cable.  It seems to take longer to charge up from the car than from the mains, but on a longer journey that won’t be an issue.  I discovered that my phone had died as I left the house and it was charged sufficiently to do 1 or 2 short tasks by the time I’d driven for 5 to 10 minutes.  That could be handy if you are meeting someone and perhaps need to be able to pick up a text or phone call in case of delays.

I tried using the stylus at home, but preferred to use my phone without it.  That said, I think it would great to use it if you were out and about in the cold and wanted to keep your gloves on.  I’ll be keeping mine handy for that.

I didn’t get to use the two pin wall charger, but I’m planning on taking that on my next trip abroad.  One of the issues when travelling it that charging up your phone takes up one travel plug and that can be rather restrictive.  Now I can leave my three pin plug behind and just take the two pin one when I travel in Europe.

If I was getting a new phone, I’d certainly want a kit like this iPhone 4 travel kit to go with it and I rather wish I’d had it long ago because it would have been very useful.

A little while ago the MyTrendyPhone Company asked me if I would like to try out one of their accessories for either the iPhone4, iPhone 4S or iPhone5.  It was a bit like being in a fabulous cake shop and being able to pick out whichever cake you wanted to eat.  Eventually, after much browsing, I settled on this Telescope Camera Lens.

Whilst my iPhone is very good at taking pictures, I’ve been feeling for a while now that I want to raise my game a little, but wasn’t sure whether to get a DSLR or not.  I’d heard about accessories for iPhones to enhance their picture taking capabilities, but I’d not had a chance to properly put them to the test.  So I was up for trying the Telescope Camera Lens out.

I tried using it at Blog Summit in Manchester, and found it a good way to get a close up picture of what was happening at the front of the room.  Also, it avoided having lots of heads in the way.  The only downside was that you need to hold the phone very steady or use the tripod provided to get a good shot.  I struggled a bit with holding it steady.  The tripod is very portable which is a good thing, but that means that the legs are quite small so you need a surface to rest them on.  So I decided to try taking some photos with the lens and the tripod combined.

I decided to venture into the garden and started experimenting with taking pictures of my flowers with the tripod on the ground.  This worked quite well and I felt quite the professional camera woman lying down on the floor to get the right shot.  I couldn’t quite get the shot that I wanted though despite the lens working very well for me.

Then one of my cats (Amber) wandered out in the garden just in time to act as a model.  So here’s a series of pictures taken with the Telescope Camera Lens for the iPhone.  I’m really pleased with them.  I love the detail and focus, which concentrates on my cat as it should do.  Also, I’ve been able to capture expressions that are distinctly him without realising what I am doing.

I was able to take these of him sitting on the garden table with my tripod set up on the garden chair a little way away.  So I think the expressions I have captured are more natural for that.  I’m very happy with my Telescope Camera Lens and I think it will enable me to take my photography to the next level without the expense of buying a DSLR.