The 16 best free Android apps every user should have in 2014!

Days left widget

Gentle Alarm is a superb app, great for people like myself who aren't awaken by a regular alarm. The alarm starts of quiet with an extremely annoying high pitch repetitive sound and slowly gets louder, until you wake up! Another feature which helps me wake up is the fact you have to answer three math equations, which you can choose the difficulty of, in order for the alarm to stop.

2048 Number puzzle game is a fun little game. You swipe to move the tiles on the beard and when two tiles with the same number touch, they merge into one. Your goal is to reach 2048!

Flightradar24 allows you to see airplane traffic from all over the world in real-time! It's super neat for when you're waiting for someone to arrive but they're on the plane and you can track them!

Days Left Widget allows you to add cool widgets telling you the days left until an event of your choice. You can choose a number of colours, icons and sizes — so cute.

Clean Master app

Split Camera is great for Instagram addicts! It allows you to take two pictures, then puts them together in one square frame. You can change which image is bigger, as well as where it fades.

Draw Line: Classic is a simple, yet VERY effective and fun game. All you have to do is match the coloured dots together, which may seem easy at first but after 10 minutes your mind will be boggled!

Super-Bright LED Torch is an app which allows you to use your phone flash as a torch. It's simple really.

Clean Master defines itself as an optimizer and security app. It not only scans your phone for viruses in just eight seconds, but frees up RAM and deletes cache files to improve SD card performance.

TVCatchup allows you to watch live TV from anywhere you have internet connection!

uTorrent mobile app

Audible is an audiobook app which allows you to collect a library of audiobooks which you can listen to at any time, including a fully featured player.

uTorrent — it's 2014, of course you can torrent from your phone.

GoKeyboard allows you to have Emoji's on any Android phone (rather than just the latest ones).

Voltage Control (root required) allows you to overclock your phone for maximum performance (on some devices), and underclock for maximum battery!

Screencast (root required) is a unique app which allows you to record your devices screen. Great for video sharing and Youtube tutorials.

PVSTAR+ not only allows you to watch Youtube videos, but allows them to play in the background. Anybody who has tried to play music on Youtube on their photo will know how frustrating it is when the music stops when the app is in the background!

FlashFox enables flash on your device. It's not perfect, but it's great for those occasional moment it would be handy to have a flash browser!

How to get emojis on Android (works on ALL phones)

Want to get emoji's that will work on twitter, instagram, SMS and anywhere else you can type—on an Android?! Find out how below.

You could have these!

Method 1: 

1. Go to the Play store
2. Download "Go Keyboard" — It's free!
3. Then, download the emoji keyboard
4. That's it, you can now post emoji's all over the web and use them anywhere on your phone
5. Comment this post to try it!

Method 2:

1. Go to the Play store
2. Download "Symbols keyboard Free" — It's also free
3. Press "S3" on the keyboard to get to emoji's

Method 3 (for Android 4.4 or above users): 

1. Go to the Play store
2. Download "Google keyboard"
3. There you go! This only works on Android 4.4 or above, sorry

I hope this post helps, at least one method should work for you, and if not—I'm really sorry! Emoji's aren't as good as people make out, but they do make conversations a bit less dull. 

Leggings are unisex!

Yesterday was the first time I wore leggings. I think all clothes are/should be unisex, and I just wear what I find stylish. Ironically, these leggings were BOY London—coincidentally designed/made for men. Still, this didn't distract from the fact they were leggings, and I knew they had the potential to cause controversy (another advantage of re-defining clothes as unisex!).

It didn't take long for somebody to get bothered by the way I was dressed. A lady on the bus said to me "Why are you wearing leggings, you're a boy?", to which I replied "Why does how I dress affect you?", and put my headphones in. I didn't say much as it was too early for an argument. 10 seconds later I hear a woman storming downstairs on the bus... "You can't talk about how he's dressed, you look like a mess love!" I heard her shout at the woman who was rude to me. They continued to have an argument for a couple of minutes, which was fun. It was ironic how the angry woman was more bothered about it than me.

the outfit i was wearing. taken from my instagram. follow me @leonmcgann if you like!

Something else I realised was how comfortable they are! I now know why some people wear them year round. They almost outweighed the discomfort I was getting from my un-broken-in Docs. Several people complimented me and a few people asked me where they were from (2 were people I'd never spoken to before) so I'd say I was successful in my goal.

The only problem I have with them is that they show your bulge REALLY easily. I had to go through a bunch of t-shirts and shirts to find one that covered that area; I feel super uncomfortable with an obvious bulge. However, I can understand that some straight guys would wear these like jogging bottoms and not mind their bulge showing... once they got over the fact they were wearing leggings.

20 things to do alone when you're bored!

originally posted on my old blog on MAY 30, 2013 (wow, over a year ago!)

1. Write your thoughts in a journal, if you’re angry write down what made you angry and screw it up or burn it. It can be fun to keep a journal to look back to in years. I have a 10 year one!

10 YEAR JOURNAL, BUY AT HTTP://WWW.JOURNAL10.COM

2. Read your favourite magazine or book (or buy one!) and sit on your bed and read it with a cup of tea (or maybe coffee if you’re American)

3. Do something nice for someone without them or anyone else knowing you did it. Sometimes seeing someone smile is nice enough, that you don’t even need to tell them you did it – cute I know.

4. Get up early and watch the sunrise. Instagram it if you’re a cool kid.

5. Go for a walk to some nearby parks or flower gardens. Take photos or just relax.

6. Treat yourself to breakfast

7. Treat yourself to lunch

TEA AND SCONES…SO BRITISH

8. Spray your bed with lavender so you can sleep better surrounded by the wonderful smell (cute)

9. Make a bowl full of your favourie fruits and eat them as you watch your favourite TV show (my personal favourites are watermelon….all types, oranges and grapes)

10. Daydream about what you’d do if you won the lottery, then imagine it happening. Maybe all that wishful thinking will pay off.

11. Go to your nearest big city (like I live in Wakefield but it’s crap so I go twice as far to Leeds) and go on a shopping trip, buy some nice clothes, shoes, CD’s, books, whatever, then you can spend your time listening to the CD’s, trying on the clothes, reading the books – fab!

12. Make a list of 100 things you want to do by this time next year, and do 2 every week.

13. Take up a new hobby or activity. Watch video tutorials on Youtube and learn for a few days, if you enjoy it, you can continue doing it and become an expert!

14. Run a nice hot bath and just relax.

15. Learn a foreign language, maybe for somewhere you plan to go within the next few years. In my sidebar there is ‘hello’ written in a random language!

16. Make a chocolate fondue, complete with fruit and marshmallows, yum!

17. Try something new!

18. Go to a book store and find a few new books, then come home and read them next to the fire.

19. Go to the shop and buy tonnes of biscuits, then have a tea party all day long!

20. Do something artsy, like draw or paint. If you’ve ever gone to an art gallery you’ll see that anything can be art, no matter how simple or messy it may look!

Young adult's views on guns in the United States versus the United Kingdom

A few weeks ago, a friend on mine got burgled. In the story she told me, she was laying in bed when all of a sudden she heard her window smash and people downstairs; it was clear what was happening. She was in the house alone, so called the police (which you should do even if not alone, but many people wouldn't). The woman on the helpline told her, however crazy it may sound, to go downstairs and distract them until the police got there. As with most burglars in the UK, the two men were unarmed, and did nothing when she screamed. Eventually, a few minutes passed and the police came and arrested the men.

I got to thinking, if the same thing had happened in the US, there is a very possible chance there would be two more men who didn't deserve to die (maybe it's a cultural thing, but I don't think burglars deserve to die). Some Americans would've got their gun, gone downstairs, and shot the men. As well as the chance of becoming a murderer, there would also be a chance of the burglars—who had no intention to cause harm to the homeowner—becoming aggravated and attacking you, or turning your weapon on you. There were 59 gun deaths in the UK in 2012. The US annual gun death rate has hovered around 10,000 for years.

click for full size!

I then begun thinking about guns in the US, how easy they are to get, and how people don’t think of them as immoral. I saw the Keeping up with the Kardashians episode where Kris managed to pass her gun exam with no experience, proving how easy it is. From real life stories and excerpts, as well as in the media and on movies and TV (I’m aware they’re not always true and are often over exaggerated!), it appears that Americans have no problem morally with using guns. They see them as fun, and have no problem using them for sports. I’m aware this happens in the UK too, but there is no denying it is much more popular in the US. In my opinion, this creates a society where people are used to using, or knowing people who use, guns legally. This makes them more likely to feel comfortable when using them illegally.

I decided to do some research in order to aid my curious mind and my thoughts on guns. My research is quite small-scale and specific, and not representative of the whole population, however it gives me the results I wanted. I wanted to find out the feelings of young adults age 16-24, in both the US and UK, on laws relating to guns in their countries. I interviewed 24 individuals from each country. I asked ONE simple question.


US: How would you feel if guns were harder to access, controlled, and not allowed to use against criminals, even if trespassing into your property? Would you feel more unsafe than you do now?
UK: How would you feel if guns were easier to access, and you were allowed to use guns to protect yourself, such as when someone trespasses into your property?
18 of the US participants aired views that they think it would be a positive thing, and they would feel more comfortable and safe than they currently do.
5 of the US participants aired uncaring views, that they didn’t feel affected either way. They said they wouldn’t feel like their safety was affected.
1 of the US participants felt comfortable with the fact that they could defend themselves, having previously been burgled before. They said they’d feel unsafe and at a disadvantage without self-defense laws.
17 of the UK participants thought guns were already hard to access in the UK and thought of this as a good thing, they also didn't feel at all unsafe without guns being part of their culture.
3 of the UK participants said they didn’t care if guns were made easier to access, or laws were made to allow them in certain situations, as they felt most crimes wouldn’t need the gun to actually be fired in order to scare the ‘criminal’ away.
4 of the UK participants thought UK were too strict in terms of firearms. They believed you should be allowed to protect yourself and property, and that a gun would be more appropriate than an alternate weapon.

I must admit I was shocked by the amount of British people who didn’t care or thought guns should be made legal in certain situations, however the fact that 18 of the US participants thought it would be good to not be allowed to use guns. It gives me hope that over time, the amount of guns (and gun related deaths) in America.