Archive for February 1st, 2010
Designing a Bathroom with Ceramic Tiles
Monday, February 1st, 2010A tasteful and chic bathroom can be achieved by correctly using tiles; it will also be co-ordinated. To insure that the end result is a complete success there are some things you might want to consider otherwise you may end up with a style disaster!
Bathroom tiles are now very much seen as a critical way of ensuring that your bathroom looks elegant chic but also timeless. If you choose bathroom tiles that are very trendy, they can look somewhat dated in a few years. It is far better to concentrate on using contemporary tiles that are stylish enough to still look effortlessly chic in 5 years or so.
I thin band of colour half way up the wall is a popular look with cream or white tiles. Whilst this still can look stylish, it can be seen up and down the country in thousands: if not millions of bathrooms.
To create splashes of colours, the random use of coloured ceramic bathroom tiles from the same range, can interject colour, but look stylish and contemporary, without creating a style that will easily date.
For a stylish and chic appearance try using larger tiles, they also take much less time to install. Mosaic tiles tend to date quite quickly, but look ok around wash and baseness and showers.
Many people try to imitate far grander bathroom designs within a tiny, standard bathroom. Don’t go for the look of the five star hotels you have seen in Dubai! What will happen is that the bathroom simply doesn’t work, if your space is significantly smaller than the original bathroom. Take some of the key features of the bathroom such as the shower, hand basin and copy the style using your own taste and style to guide you in your choice of tiles. If you do this the tiles will be the right size for the room.
In a small bathroom, go for small tiles as large ones can make the room look even smaller.
Thus designing a stylish look with bathroom tiles is not too difficult, but you do need to think about your bathroom, its size and how the tiles will wear and look in the future. Be realistic when designing, you have to be realistic with what you have to work with.
Bad Music: Is It Getting Even Worse?
Monday, February 1st, 2010Usually people who love music tend to like to write about music they love (in my case that would be bands like The Who, Blur, & Ween.) But sometimes it’s fun to talk about bad music. In fact in some ways it’s more fun. And it’s certainly much easier to find. Just check out MySpace music to see what I mean. The worst thing to me is that some of the absolute worst music I’ve listened to on MySpace is also the most popular.
Hollywood Undead has to be the worst example of this. They are unbelievably bad and even more unbelievably popular. I mean I know it’s normal for “the kids” to be into awful music, but isn’t this just taking it a bit too far? Usually the really awful music in the past had some sort of musical quality to it. Sure Milli Vanilli was cheesy but their songs were catchy and had some good production values.
But they certainly are not all alone in the world of crap music.
How about country pop singer Dierks Bentley? Have you heard this guy? He’s amazingly awful. I had heard his name before but had never checked out his music before as I have no interest in country pop but one day I came across his latest single “Feel That Fire” and I was just floored because it was so much worse than I thought it would be. And that really is saying a lot because I thought it would be flat out horrendous. But no, it’s far worse than that.
It’s no big deal that guys are making bad music. There is absolutely nothing new about that. The big deal to me is that so many people actually think this is good music. Why is that? How can people be so amazingly clueless about music?
The easy thing to blame would be American Idol. And I’m sure that does have a part to play. Now millions of people think that having a pretty voice is the only thing that matters. This means these are people who have no way of understanding music with any depth or any real artistic value.
But I’m sure it must go much deeper than that. Of course it’s not like people being into awful music is a new thing. The masses are always attracted to the easy to swallow garbage that usually fills the top forty every week. And it’s the real music that real music lovers listen to and that lasts for years.
Obviously there will be no one listening to anyone from American Idol or Dierks Bentley in 50 years (except out of pure nostalgia or as a joke) while people will still be listening the music of true musical geniuses like Spiritualized & Led Zeppelin.
