Nimavenl - Nicole's Random Ramblings

Baby animals are cute. How many people can resist smiling when faced with adorable kittens and gorgeous puppies? Maybe it's just this photo but I think I may have found my all-time 'favourite baby animal' because baby pandas are ridiculously cute, gorgeous and adorable! #DYK . When born, a #panda cub is just 1/900th the size of its mother. pic.twitter.com/21nN7eADqU — WWF (@WWF) August 26, 2015

Photographer Nicole S. Young recently partnered with Adobe for a #StayOutThere 10-day Photography Challenge. She shares her images online every day and explains her reasons for participating in the challenge on her blog / website:   " Over the next ten days, I am partnering with Adobe for a “#StayOutThere 10-Day Photography Challenge” to help you look for new ways to invigorate your photography! Each day I will share a photo that fits in with a daily theme (see the next section for more info). Please follow along with my posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to view my interpretations of each daily theme, and don’t forget to share your own images as well! " Source: 10-Day #StayOutThere Challenge | Nicole S. Young Challenge yourself to #StayOutThere over the next ten days with @nicolesy ’s daily themes: http://t.co/XoabB50ZuR pic.twitter.com/4UlaqQ1Zbn — Adobe Lightroom (@Lightroom) August 24, 2015 As an avid photographer myself (albeit not a professional o...

The past few weeks and months, I've been spending a lot of time on my blog and on Twitter. Reading Tweets, reTweeting them, posting photos and links to articles I'd read online, sharing some of my views and opinions with the world. I use my blog to share photos and use Twitter to read and post about what's going on in the world. Oh, and I use Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends! Of course I also use email to stay updated on current events and to keep in touch with family and friends, however I use social media more. Until I stopped doing so for a few days. Last week, I decided to take a break from the world of Twitter, blogging and Facebook. Partly because I've been playing Grand Theft Auto V on the PlayStation - it's addictive, that game! - and partly because I wanted to spend more time reading books than posting and sharing on social media. And also, because spending so much time online doesn't always feel 'right' any more. I'm not th...

This photo by Will Gater reminds me of a Vincent van Gogh painting. How cool and amazing and stunning and beautiful is the universe we live in?! Down below on earth, we fight and argue, we kill and destroy, we rape and pillage. Yet far above, far away from our little lives, there is the sun. Older than any of us, older than our earliest ancestors, even older than the planet we call home. Right now, I'm taking a moment to appreciate that big light in the sky, to look at this image and remind myself that compared to the sun, big and vast and old yet so immensely powerful, we are but babies. Here's a white-light solar filter pic of the sunspot causing all the excitement today (AR2371) http://t.co/4n3KJpbFmS pic.twitter.com/wFBX4JL0M9 — Will Gater (@willgater) June 19, 2015

#AnneFrank Hatred killed her yet she saw the good in others. She continues to inspire me. https://t.co/vnYGoc1JOC — Nicole M. Verhaaf (@nimavenl) June 12, 2015 Anne Frank would have turned 86 today. Anti-Semitism killed this gifted young writer. #NeverForget pic.twitter.com/UYiK7pizGc — Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom) June 12, 2015

Such a simple message... Yet so hard for so many... Different does not equal wrong or less. Different simply means unique and special!   Don't Hate What You Don't Understand! #imagequote #quoteoftheday pic.twitter.com/R7zjfZnJxm — The Quote Today (@TheQuoteToday) June 10, 2015

What if it was you? Your mother, sister, niece, friend, aunt, wife? Assaulted, sold, gang-raped, beaten, tortured... https://t.co/OEZ6yDF28K — Nicole M. Verhaaf (@nimavenl) June 9, 2015 As ISIS brutalizes women, a pathetic feminist silence http://t.co/cftyoVewcO pic.twitter.com/iEMiXBqCRY — New York Post (@nypost) June 8, 2015

Be who you want to be, not what other people want to see. — Success Motivation (@successins) May 22, 2015

#quote #life pic.twitter.com/ihfRSgGghr — The Quote Today (@TheQuoteToday) May 21, 2015

How cool is it to be mentioned or featured online?!!!! Thanks for featuring my photo / blog post Steve G. Bisig, I'm honoured! :-) Nature & Landscape Photography is out! http://t.co/vis0AtuIh0 Stories via @NLCT @nimavenl @RSarkuv — Steve G. Bisig Photo (@SteveBisig) May 19, 2015 Thanks for featuring my work Steve G Bisig Photo , I'm honoured!

I logged on to Twitter yesterday and one of the first things I saw was this post by the amazingly talented Alison Jardine. It felt a little like she'd read my mind in writing this captivating caption. Having lived in New Zealand where it is often much quieter than in the middle of Europe, I sometimes miss the connection to nature and to the environment that somehow feels more 'available' there than here. I'll find myself day-dreaming about deserted beaches where all you hear is the sound of the waves, the wind and a few birds in the distance. In my dreams there is silence, indeed! 'In My Dreams There is Silence' 22"x30" charcoal, graphite & coffee pic.twitter.com/DieLMaT79C #art . — Alison Jardine (@alisonjardine) March 3, 2015

Have you ever smiled when hearing a favourite quote or instantly liked someone because of the book they happened to be gushing about? Language connects us and words are powerful. The way we use them says a lot about who we are as people and as a society. Personally, I'd love to live in a world where insulting or belittling others is unncessary and hurting others using words is a thing of the past. A world where people talk to each other, accept and respect others as they are and do not feel the need to try to change people just because they don't happen to think or believe as we do. I am very much in favour of free speech and believe it is extremely important that people are able to honestly say (and write) what they think or feel, without having to fear for their lives. However I also believe that it is important that we respect others as they are, without belittling them using words or actions and without the need to insult the choices people have made in their lives or be...

Just imagine having a bad day on Mercury... Some say men are from Mars and women are from Venus... Today I'm mighty glad that we (women!) migrated to earth a long, long time ago as a bad day lasting almost 117 days is so not my idea of fun!  How long does a day last elsewhere in the solar system? #Space #Astronomy pic.twitter.com/2zHD17wQEn — Upper Atmos (@UpperAtmos) February 21, 2015

I spent most of today thinking, reading and working on a story. After dinner I checked the news to catch up on what's going on in the world. One dead and three wounded in a terrorist shooting in Copenhagen, Twitter practically screamed at me. It seems likely that I'll write more about that, however first I want to write about another attack, this one in Turkey. A 20-year old Turkish woman named Özgecan Aslan was buried today. According to Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News she'd been missing for two days, last seen by a friend while on a bus travelling home from university. Her burned body was found Friday in a riverbed near Tarsus disctrict in Mersin province. "Three suspects have been detained for stabbing Aslan to death and later burning her remains. According to their testimonies, the woman was killed when she fought back a rape attempt by the driver of the minibus she took to go home." Assaulted, almost raped and stabbed to death. What must this po...

"Remind yourself that you don't have to do what everyone else is doing." pic.twitter.com/pZRMsitIBb — banksy (@thereaIbanksy) January 28, 2015

I'm getting old! My favourite Star Trek show :-) Worth celebrating! MT @DavidLoConto : Twenty-two years ago today, DS9 premiered. Best of the bunch. @reneauberjonois #StarTrek — Marguerite Krause (@markrause) January 3, 2015

I've been busy. Both in real-life and in the online world. How busy I've been online over the years shows itself in the amazing amount of emails I receive about Friend Requests, New Posts, Great Offers, New Games and more. The thing is - these aren't spam emails, they're newsletters / updates from websites and social networking sites I've subscribed to over the years. So, I've started a huge clean-up action. I plan to keep lots of online community subscriptions - Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Goodreads, Youtube and Google are the keepers, off the top of my head. Thing is, these are websites / communities I actually use. Some of the ones I no longer use are Hyves, Yahoo, Bebo, MySpace, and several others I can't even remember the names of, just that I un-subscribed from them yesterday. One inspiration for doing this was Googling my name and coming up with a whole list of hits that weren't about me but someone with my exact same name. Not that strange...

What's the deal with people who follow you on Twitter and then unfollow you almost straight away? I'll get an email that such and such has subscribed to my Twitter feed, that they are interested in what I've got to say, in what I'm doing or thinking about, in the photos I share... Yet I click on the link to their profile in the email and where it should say "Follows You", it doesn't say that. Which means people followed my account only to unfollow me again almost straight away. Leaves me to wonder: Why do that? I'm not a celebrity or a famous author or a politician or a well-known journalist or anything of the sort. I'm opinionated and straightforward and not afraid to speak up, however that's not unique to me. I speak two languages, call two countries home, enjoy being a citizen of the world, enjoy knowing what it's like to have lived elsewhere, to have experienced life in different countries. Also not unique. I am interested in the wo...

I'm looking to buy a new phone. Have been looking around - online, in shops, at phones my friends have. I've pretty much narrowed it down to a list of four. So now what? Ask the nice people at the shop if I can pretty please try each one out for a week?! Fat chance. Still, if only! Guess it's back to asking friends if I can pretty please play with their phones for a minute. Ok wow - that sounds rather dodgy... I'm currently looking at the Nokia N8, the iPhone, the HTC Desire HD and the Samsung Galaxy S. Being female (or just me!), I love pretty colours and pictures. The HTC has the prettiest colours. And NO - I refuse to base an important choice on pretty colours. So, it comes down to statistics. Every cellphone I've ever had was simple, easy and straightforward. It calls, it sends txts and it might even take simple photos. No internet, no eBooks on it (which is what makes some of these phones sound so awesome !!!!!), no music, no Twitter or Facebook or che...

I've been looking for a job for about a month now. Haven't replied to every ad or anything like that; I'm simply applying for jobs that look interesting and feel like they suit me and I'd suit them. Perhaps later on in the game I'll start applying for just about anything, but right now I'm still being picky. I may not have finished Uni, however I am University educated and have half a Bachelor degree - my thinking is at University level, I write good essays, my research skills are ace and I learn quickly. I'd like a job that involves using my brain. I've done cleaning jobs and supermarket jobs and I really enjoyed them, however now I'm looking for a different challenge. So today I applied for a job. I apply for one or two a week it seems - Yup I did say I'm picky. The funniest thing though was when the website had processed my application and it asked me if I'd like to Tweet about applying for a job. Now I may have a blog and a Twitt...