Follow the Adventure.

It has to be said that I have not been social media's greatest advocate.  The day job throws up too many instances of how in the hands of brutal, callous and quite frankly stupid people it can be such a destructive force.  That said the cosy corner of the Blogosphere that '28mm Victorian Warfare' inhabits has been nothing but a joy.  My hobby has flourished with the support of its followers and I have made genuine friendships along the way.  This has prompted me to explore other avenues, but as is always the way I seem to lack the impetus to maintain the initial enthusiasm and so they have fallen into disuse, gradually buried under a shroud of virtual dust.

As a result, I have decided to use the summer holiday as an opportunity to explore and experiment with a couple of different platforms, whilst dusting off some existing ones.  Now I used to have a Facebook profile, but decided that this wasn't for me.  I am, at heart, a very private person and so while I am happy to share my hobby progress or hobby related visits, I wasn't sure the world was ready for my extended wisdom, extolling the virtues of the J. D. Wetherspoon's traditional breakfast whilst waiting for one's dry cleaners to open. 

Similarly I had already set up a Twitter account, although I am ashamed to say three years ago now, so have dusted this off.  Twitter is a curious thing that I have to confess that I don't fully understand, but I have subsequently followed a couple of the companies that I use and can instantly see how product updates and customer galleries could prove enriching.  Fear not, good reader, as I am not about to hang on every tweet of @POTUS or start engaging in the politically biased banter* that seems to proliferate today's society.  That said, I can see a genuine benefit to my hobbying world so happy to give it another go over the summer.

*A word that makes me cringe overtime I hear it used as an excuse for shameful humiliation of others.

Pinterest has always intrigued me and will be another platform that I intend to investigate in more detail.  I use a lot of web based research when it comes to painting my miniatures and more often than not save these to 'my photos' on my computer to use at a later date.  Of course this means that I have no end of random images interspersed with holiday snaps making locating them, when needed, often time consuming.  The idea of dedicated 'pin' boards to relevant subjects makes perfect sense, especially when we consider that they also credit and link to the original hosting.

More recently, I was taken with the way that some of my pupils were using Instagram as a creative tool to log progress with their ongoing projects and this has inspired me to give it a go myself.  I like the idea that progress can be shown through a trail of individual images, forming chapters in a project's development, that and it has some rather fun filters to play with!  

Now, let's be clear this is not some great conversion to the instant gratification of social media and I certainly don't envisage a raft of posts, tweets or pins documenting my every move or paint stroke, but I will certainly look to explore, over the coming month, whether or not these 'tools', as I like to think of them, will further benefit my enjoyment of this most wholesome of hobbies.

The first tentative steps along the road to media enlightenment have seen me redesign the appropriate icons to something more befitting the dusty halls of '28mm Victorian Warfare'.  These, in turn, have been linked, after a considerable amount of research and the occasional blue word, to their respective site and our now safely located on the right sidebar of this humble weblog, do feel free to follow the adventure.