Friday, April 25, 2014

23 Mobile Things: Thing 23


I am sad to be done, in all honesty.  I have really enjoyed this experience and I hope to repeat it in the future with more 23 Things!

I think my favorite thing was the Notetaking app Remember The Milk.  It's a great list making tool and I am a huge list person, so it's awesome.  It is now in the bar along the bottom of my Ipad since I use it every day.  Never would have found it without this!  I am also hugely glad to have finally gotten connected with Dropbox and CloudOn.  I always wondered how to edit my documents from computer to computer and those two apps let me do just that - it's a life saver.  I've attached my work computer to my home computer and it's much easier than having to email back and forth to myself!

While doing the 23 Things, I was also teaching a technology class monthly in the library to help people connect more with their devices.  23 Things helped me immensely with that, giving me ideas and apps to try out with my patrons that I might have overlooked in the past - some of them did better with the ideas than others, but it was all worth while.

I said before that I am looking forward to participating in another 23 Things.  Perhaps that is an understatement and eager anticipation should be used instead.

Fantastic!!

23 Mobile Things: Thing 22

I chose the Apps Gone Free app and am quite pleased with it.  Being able to look at all the apps that no longer cost money is great and since you can search back by days, you can make sure you haven't missed anything you can't do without.

I admit to usually just grabbing a free app card at Starbucks, but since I'm not that app crazy, I've never felt the need to scour the internet for free apps for my device.  Now that I have this app, things might get better.  Who knows, maybe I'll fill up my folders at last!

23 Mobile Things: Thing 21

Best. App. Ever.

So, the bestest app in the world is the app RunPee.  It's not free and it sounds obnoxious, but let me tell YOU, if you like movies, this app will be your best friend.

The app is designed for those of us who can't sit through an entire movie without having to use the bathroom.  It gives the best times to take a potty break, tells you how long you have to do it (between 3 and 6 minutes) and gives you a synopsis of what you missed.  It even gives you the cue line so you know when to get yourself going.

On the newest update, they installed a timer so that if you start it just as the movie gets started, your phone will buzz you with an alert for the pee times!  During the Hobbit, I used this service twice and it made the entire movie much more bearable.  Brilliant family for coming up with this idea.  Someone give them a big gold star.

23 Mobile Things: Thing 20

Games, games, games.  Is there anything better to do with your device than play games?  Well, there probably is, but this is still a fun thing.

I already own Temple Run, so I can vouch for is being a really great game.  I, however, have the Disney Brave version, where you are Merida escaping from the insane bear and you get to shoot your bow at targets along the way for extra points and goodies.  Sure fun, especially the bear growl noises they've put into it.

I have two other favorite games: one is a quiz game and the other is a shooting game, depending on my mood.

You Don't Know Jack (YDKJ) is a quiz game that is humorous, naughty, and sometimes just disturbing.  There are only five questions in each round and they can be anything from multiple choice to rhyming nonsense, to true or false.  The last question is the bonus round and involves a theme.  The player must touch the screen at the appropriate time during seven mini-rounds to get the correct answer.  If you answer wrong, you lose money, so it is actually possible to finish this game in the hole.  It's an on-going game, so your scores are tracked and you can play against other people.  Very entertaining.

My other favorite game is called "Stupid Zombies" and just involves shooting zombies in different locations with different sorts of guns.  The idea is to use geometry to be able to shoot around obstacles and you have to clear the screen with a certain number of bullets or you can't advance in the game.  We'll say this helps with math skills, but really it's just fun to watch the blood splatter and the body parts go flying around.

Yay, Games!

23 Mobile Things: Thing 19

I am an avid gardener.  I love dirt, love getting my hands in the soil, love the smell of green and growing things.  So it would be no surprise that I chose MyGarden as the hobby app of choice.  Unfortunately, I spend money on gardening apps and they are all much better than this one, so this one probably will not be kept around.

What I like is that the list seems pretty comprehensive and people appear to be able to edit information for various plants, but it didn't seem like there was all that much information on the various plants already in there.  Many of the plants that I am growing at home were not in the database and I couldn't figure out how to add them in myself.

While the database was searchable, you had to be VERY specific.  In other words, you could search for Cherry Red Tomato but if you searched for Tomato Cherry you wouldn't get anything.  I think this is a problem that should be rectified if the app is ever charged for.

My favorite app for crafting is actually YouTube because there are how-to videos.  I find I learn much better if I watch a video than if I read about it - gasp! And I call myself a librarian.

23 Mobile Things: Thing 18

Education is the game on this one and I did NOT pick the first thing on the list.  Instead, I downloaded TWO from this extensive category and discovered that both of them were well worth it.

Bill Nye the Science Guy: My daughter and I LOVED this app.  It's fun to scan your thumb to get in (so, not really, but it's fun) and the "lab" is very cool.  Opening the book brings you to a list of experiments that you can do yourself using regular household items.  The TV on the table (you can click on all these objects) lets you watch show segments.  There's a section of optical illusions, planets, and even a drawer you can open to learn how to tie a bow tie, Bill's quintessential choice of neckwear.  Definitely a keeper.

I also downloaded TED because those talks are darn handy.  I really like the fact that the app lets me search by topics or presenters, but keeps a page of the most popular out front for me.  Also an app to keep on the Ipad for those times when I need a little pick-me-up or some good information from excellent speakers.  Hooray Ted!

This was a very fun Thing!

23 Mobile Things: Thing 17

I've come to the realization that it must look as though I am simply picking the first thing on each list.  I'm not, I swear, though it happened again this time.

I chose the Superior Hiking Trail app and it is really good!!  Since I am a novice hiker, I like having all the loops and trails that are part of this system explains in details and the interactive parking maps are wonderful.  It helps to know where to go!  We went hiking in Colorado a few years ago and didn't have signs for the trail heads, which made finding them really hard.  This app fixes all that and I wish every trail system had something like this.

Links to websites, information, a more details guide, and contact information help to make this app something that will be very useful when I head up to Duluth to hike.  Good job!!

Thursday, April 24, 2014

23 Mobile Things: Thing 16

AudioBoo is a cute program - I like that I can search things that other people have uploaded for soundbytes.  I'm sure there's a way to make my things private, though I didn't check into that, I simply made a test byte.

After hitting the record button, I like how the dots turn colors to indicate decibels of noise - that entertained me while I was making raspberry noises.  The quality of the sound when I played it back is actually quite good, so it's an app I would use again to record small bits of sound from my kids.

It's a very simple app - no frills.  Something I also appreciate.  I hate it when apps are so complicated you can't figure them out right away.

23 Mobile Things: Thing 15

Infographics Hub was the one that I chose and I wasn't all that impressed.  They had some nice graphics, but the ones that I chose to look at had some information that was wrong.  How do I know? Because I'm a huge Game of Thrones fan and they had two of the ruling Houses mixed up on their graphic, which was pretty blatant - also two houses you SHOULDN'T mix up, honestly, with one being a dragon and the other a stag.  But enough about my nerdiness.

I guess I was disappointed that you couldn't make your own graphics with this one.  I could look up graphics by category, which was nice, but I couldn't tweak them or edit them, which made some of them unusable for anything I might need an infographic for.  These were cute, but really only useful to send to someone else or post online as a silly thing for friends to comment on.

I'm sure there are some with great information, I just didn't find them.  There may be a few hidden gems in here for people to seriously use, but you'd have to wade through a lot to find them.

23 Mobile Things: Thing 14

I am trying out Magisto because I was actually unable to get Vine, Viddy, or Socialcam through the app store.  Not sure why, but NONE of them would come up for me and after about an hour of headaches, I gave up and moved on.  I would rather have tried Vine, since I have heard so much about it, but I wasn't really given a choice on this one.

I do not really like the app - it insists on push notifications while it works on your movie. I do not like push notifications, so I had to wander back several times to see if my movie was done.  It seemed like it was far more work that six pictures should warrant, so I'm not impressed.  Still waiting for the final product twenty minutes later.

Thirty minutes have passed.  And forty and still waiting.  I am so not blown away by this app and am completely convinced that Vine would have been a better experience.

45 minutes later and the images that came out were acceptable, but not something I would do again.  It was neat that they could use my own music for the soundtrack, so I had sledding pictures with "Baby, It's Cold Outside" which was cute, but not worth the wait.  Thumbs down from me: I deleted the app.


Thursday, March 20, 2014

23 Mobile Things: Thing 13

Haiku Deck is pretty fun!  At first, I just did the introductory slide show that gets you acquainted with the tools of the app, but then I branched out on my own.

You can change fonts (sort of) and alignment, which is great.  You can upload your own pictures from your Ipad or search a rather large selection that's inside the app (I found about 20 pictures of hedgehogs, so you know they've got some weird stuff in there).  They have related tag options when searching for pictures that get you more of what you might be looking for and I think that's a nice feature.

You can add as many slides as you want and share it online if you want, or save it to your account.  You can go back and edit, which is great.  There are all sorts of themes you can use to make your presentation unique.

While it's not as fantastic as powerpoint, it's a good tool that I will keep on my device.

23 Mobile Things: Thing 12

Books, books and more books!

I used the app FreeBooks by Classicly and was quite impressed with it.  I like the layout, which allows for browsing by subject across the top and titles along the right, with a description of the subject on the left.  The colors and bright and inviting and the titles available aren't too bad - classics mostly, but there's a good selection of Lovecraft, which I find interesting, and the original Grimm Fairy Tales in the horror section.

It's an app that I will keep, though I must admit to using Kindle most often for books.  I love how Kindle works on the Ipad, much better than the Nook app.

Friday, February 21, 2014

23 Mobile Things: Thing 11

I must admit, I am not the best ELM user.  I have taken the training class a few times, but since no one ever asks for help with ELM, I rarely get a chance to practice.

That being said, I think the interface is great and I will be recommending it more and more as we slowly move away from having as many print periodicals as we currently have.  Not only is the site easy to search, but it provide information that might be difficult to find if you were just searching paper copies.  I really like that there are newspaper archives, especially the Argus Leader, which is technically more local for us than the Star Tribune would be.

In addition to ELM, Plum Creek has access to Overdrive for our Ebooks and I am familiar enough with that site to assist patrons in getting the books they are looking for.  It's a good site, though I think it could be a little more user friendly and clear - the instructions can get a bit pedantic.

We are going to have Zinio within the year and I am looking forward to playing with it - being able to have patrons check out magazines to their home computers will be a blessing for many of them, especially since they don't really have to return them and will be able to peruse back issues at home or from a mobile device.  How cool is that??!!

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

23 Mobile Things: Thing 10

I'm trying out Instagram and I must have tried it before, since an account for me already existed.  That doesn't bode well, honestly.  If I've made an account but didn't like it enough to stick with it, I may delete it in a few weeks without ever having really used it.  BUT - my little niece has an instagram account, so that might be enough to keep me active.

I took a picture of my desk as my first post, set up more followers, and changed all my push notifications so I don't get one every three seconds.  I hate the push notifications.  In fact, I wish NOTHING had push notifications.  If I want to know if someone has sent me a message, I'll check when I have time, not when you ping me, you silly thing.

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but it does take time to get it all under your belt.  I'd almost be willing to say that it takes MORE time to learn everything and I bet that's why people get discouraged.  If you don't have the time to use it over and over again, it won't become second nature and it will just get in the way.

But I digress.  Instagram seems to be entertaining.  I will post a few more pictures and see how it goes!

23 Mobile Things: Thing 9

Aviary seems to be a very cool program!  I can change frames on pictures to give them more effects, write on them in various colors and pen sizes, crop them into specific sizes, and even create memes.  Seems to be a great app!

I tried a photo of a hat that I made for a friend, resized it, gave it a cool frame that made it look like a stamp, then wrote "For Phoebe" on it with red.  At first, I used a pen size that was quite large and had to find the eraser to remove the writing.  The eraser was rather fun as the original picture appeared as I erased the red.  Once I changed to a smaller size, it was easy to write the message I wanted and it looked almost like a postcard when I was done.  Way Cool!  I can't wait to play around with this even more!

23 Mobile Things: Thing 8

Social Media Management Tools!

So I've heard all about Hootsuite - lots of people use it for keeping track of all their social media needs, but I'd never tried it.  Mainly because I think that I'm not that interesting and couldn't possibly have a need to keep track of that many things.

In order to really get a feel for it, I got an account on Foursquare and attached that, Facebook, and Twitter (which I put back on my Ipad) into the Hootsuite account.  Fascinating.

I can look at everything at once, from inside one app, and the thing I like best about it is it shows you EVERYTHING on Facebook, not just the entries that Facebook thinks you should see - know what I mean?  I can see all the pages I like if they've updated, all the friends on my list (not just ones I've interacted with recently) and it flows continuously.  I'm not sure I quite understand the "Pending" column, but I'll probably figure that out as I go along.

Will I keep using it? Maybe, who knows.  I still don't think I need that much management since I have a real like I like to experience once in awhile and I've never managed to stick with Tweeting, but it does seem to be a very useful app for those people who have a lot to manage.

Thumbs up!

Sunday, February 2, 2014

I Love Me Some Tagalongs: UMSJ 3

So it's come down to something ridiculous.  A friend of mine posted today that she is upset that her daughter, who is a Girl Scout, might get rejected for cookie selling because of the Girl Scout Organizations politics.  You see *gasp* the GS supports Planned Parenthood, sort of, by supporting a politician named Wendy Davis.  Remember her?  She campaigned for women's rights in Texas by filibustering for hours on end in pink sneakers without even stopping to go to the bathroom.

So don't buy cookies because the Girl Scouts is pro-choice.

What??  Leave those scrumptious, delicious cookies alone and break a small girl's heart because you think, in a roundabout way, that the organization she is selling for somehow rips babies from wombs?  And this little girl has something to do with it?  My friend phrased it best: she doesn't support abortion, she loves her daughter, who is more important than Planned Parenthood.

So that wouldn't have been my first reaction.  See, I support Planned Parenthood.  You know why? Because when my ex-husband cheated on me with who knows how many other women, I didn't have very good health care and I had no one to turn to for testing.  For STDS.  That he could have given me.  It wasn't enough that I was humiliated and brought low by his actions, I had to possibly suffer long-term consequences.  So I went to PP and I asked for a test.  The women there were understanding - they held my hand while I wept on the exam table, they made the tests as painless as possible, and they gave me timely (thankfully positive) results and they do this everyday.  For anyone who asks.

But they perform abortions!!

Yes, they do.  For the women who come in and need help.  Do you think these women undertake such a procedure lightly?  Do you think they think "Hey, I'm preggers - better go abort it." It's possible that some think that way, but a vast majority do not make this decision like it's changing their underwear.  It's a long process, agonizing, heart-wrenching, and nothing anyone else can understand without walking miles in their shoes.

For all you folks out there that are pissed off about Obama making healthcare decision for you because of the Affordable Healthcare Act (which gives us free birth control), I call foul.  Shame on you for wanting to prevent me from making my own health care decisions about an abortion when you rant and rave at Obama for making you change your plan.  I tell you what - I'll vote against the Affordable Health Care Act if you keep your sanctimonious hands out of my uterus.

For the record, I am not pro-abortion.  I am pro-choice.  I believe that abortion is wrong - FOR ME.  That doesn't mean it's wrong for someone else, and it's certainly not my place to tell another woman what she can and can't do with her body.  If she feels this is her only recourse, then it should be an option that is available to her.  It hurts no one but her, when it comes right down to it, and the father if he even cares.  It doesn't hurt you down the street.  It doesn't hurt the man protesting outside.  It hurts her.  The baby is a cluster of cells, unable to live apart from her.  Without her good-will, it has no future.  We are a culture that wants to bring babies into the world, but we don't want to care for them, as is evidenced by the protests against the ACA and the incredible education cuts that have been occurring.  We don't pay our teachers beans compared to CEOs of companies that make trillions of dollars off the backs of the working poor, but we value the life inside a uterus when it can't survive on its own?  We have our priorities backwards.

So don't judge, folks.  God will do that himself, it's not our place.  You can protest and say "It's murder" and then turn around and murder the abortion doctor instead, or vilify the woman who has the abortion, but do you think that's what Jesus would do?  No.  Jesus would hold her hand while she wept in her silent grief and help her recover, so that in the future she could choose a different road and save her soul.  But he will do that, not you.  Hurtful words and epithets do nothing to advance the cause of Christianity.  Please keep that in mind the next time you tell a woman that it's her fault that she got pregnant (even in the case of rape) and it doesn't matter how she feels, she has to have that baby.  Nice.  Really Christ-like of you.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go buy a box of Tagalongs from the nice little girl, who has her innocence intact and her whole life ahead of her, who is standing at my door.  Because of PP and women like Wendy Davis, she will start to believe she can do anything she wants to do with her life.  She could be an astronaut, a home-maker, a teacher, or a politician and she could change the world.

Enjoy your cookies.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

23 Mobile Things: Thing 7

I am already a Pinterest addict, let me make that clear.  I have the app on the Ipad and I almost never use it because once I start, I can't seem to get off the darn thing.  The interface is easy to search, fun to use, and I think they did a great job with the design.

Pinterest is a brilliant way for all of us to share websites, pictures, recipes, craft ideas, all sorts of things just by pinning them to our boards.  I have a virtual bookshelf inside of Pinterest to keep track of all the books I read over the course of 2014.  it will be fun to look at that shelf when I am finished.  I also have a Dream House board where I keep track of decorating ideas I will never use, a Yurt Board for my fantasy yurt, and a board of silly pictures of animals where I make up dumb quotes to go along with the pictures.  Yes, I know, these boards are really only for my own entertainment, but the fact that other people can look at them does make me quite happy.

More fun than Facebook!

23 Mobile Things: Thing 6

First off, I decided that Cloud On would be the best one for me, considering I use Microsoft at work and at home and would love to be able to access it with my Ipad.

I did NOT know until I started that I needed a DropBox account, which I don't have.  So I made one.  I should have made one a long time ago, considering I could take things home with me much easier on a snow day or when I'm traveling to edit documents and improve my book orders from the Ipad.

I 'dropped' my book order file into Dropbox without choosing individual documents to see if it would take the whole thing and it did!  I could open everything that was in the folder as separate documents in both Excel and Word, which was crazy awesome.  This will definitely improve things for me.  Two apps with one download - without Dropbox, I never would have accomplished anything!

This is so much fun and a great thing to do at work on Saturdays, when not many patrons come to visit us.  I am still doing library related work and learning more about my device and how to help people and filling up the empty hours at the same time.  Great!

23 Mobile Things: Thing 5

I tried out Remember the Milk and Bamboo Paper, both of which I think I will keep!

Remember the Milk is a GREAT list tool. I really like the simple organization of the week and that I can mark things completed as I do them - along the left side it tells me how many things are scheduled for the week, by day.  Love it.  A dream for an OCD librarian like myself.  I can have personal, study, and work lists, which is also great, though I wish I could edit the titles of the lists.  There might be a way, but I haven't yet figured it out.  If I upgraded to a Pro account, I bet there would be more bells and whistles.

Bamboo paper is cool, though I wish I could type in it.  I like that I can change the size of my lines when I sketch (which would be easier if I had a stylus) and that I can change colors - that is very cool.  Occasionally I have an urge to sketch things out, though not often.  This will come in handy when those urges arise.  It's a pretty neat app.  I like that I can change the colors of notebooks, add more notebooks, change titles, etc.  It's very user friendly.  Tells me how many pages, when it was last edited, etc.  I like it!

An app that I really enjoy that was NOT included in this list is Evernote.  One, it's represented by an elephant, and two, the interface is really easy to use.  I'm not sure if it's free or not (I don't remember), but I really like being able to keep track of different "notebooks" and have one for the library, one for daily tasks for myself, and one for travel notes.  And it emails pretty easily.


23 Mobile Things: Thing 4

So I gave Flipboard a shot and I didn't like it at all.  I don't think that it is as user-friendly as it wants to be and, after adding content and trying to make sense of things, I deleted the application.  I guess I'm a BBC or MSN news kind of girl.

I did like the fact that I could blog surf, that was fun, and it was nice to save those blog posts for later reading, but the whole magazine layout idea I didn't get and didn't like.  Maybe I'll try it again in the future and see if it makes more sense.

Friday, January 24, 2014

23 Mobile Things: Thing 3

So these apps are utilitarian apps and totally worth it.  The assignment only required that we install one of the mentioned apps but i went and experienced three of them - they are all awesome!

1. RedLaser:  I had heard about this one before - it reads barcodes and QR codes, so it's useful when you're out and about or at the grocery store.  One bummer of this is my local store is not listed (I'm too far out in the boonies) so finding close by deals when I'm at home isn't going to be an option I can use.  However, I have wandered around the library scanning barcodes and been delighted at seeing the cheaper prices online and where I can find them.  We don't have too many QR codes, but it worked on the one on the website and took me back to 23 Things.  I'm looking forward to using it at the grocery store tomorrow.

2. Wi-Fi Finder: I got this one and was surprised to see that the location I was using was not listed, so if anything comes out of this, Meinders Library got added to the Wi-Fi list!  Hopefully that will help other users in the future and using this in other areas of the country will be very useful for me.

3. ISleep: Obviously, I haven't had a chance to use this yet since I just downloaded it.  It looks awesome, though - tracking my sleep patterns, allowing me to choose how I wake up (my music, beeps, etc) and I can't wait to try it next time I am in a hotel room.

This 23 Mobile Things is a huge amount of fun.  If you haven't tried it, you should!!  You have to be a librarian to register and get prizes, but you can look at the list and explore the website as a normal person, too! (HAHA!)

23 Mobile Things

23 Mobile Things: Thing 2

WOW!  I had no idea there was so much to learn about my Iphone.  I mean, I knew I wasn't utilizing it to the best of my ability, but I had no idea how much I'd missed from not watching these tip videos before.  Having an Ipad and an Iphone, some of the tricks I knew already, but when I watched the Iphone video, I was totally blown away.

IPhone tricks video

What I loved:
1. Dynamic wallpaper - it moves.  I have set my wallpaper to the green dots and I love it.
2. Shared Twitter links - I can go to Safari, open up the bookmarks area, press on the @ sign and it will show me any links that have been shared in my Twitter feed.  If I tweeted, this would be awesome.
3. Siri has so many features I never knew about - I might have to talk to her more often.  She can search for images (it's Bing, but that's survivable), she can be taught proper pronunciations, and she can search Twitter for you! Now I am thinking perhaps I should be Tweeting more often.
4. There is a compass app that can also function as a level!  Now I don't have to search around my house for that pesky plastic bubble level, my phone can do it for me.  This is awesome!
5. I can put everything in bold text - I am so in love with bold.  I have a hard time seeing as it is, and now things are so much better.
6. You can slide to the left in messages to see time stamps on all the messages - this is great.  I know when things have been sent!  Whoo hoo!
7. Unlimited pages in the folders.  I knew there were multiple pages, but I didn't know I could make as many as I wanted.
8. Background app refresh - when this is turned on, the apps that are set up for this can refresh in the background when I have my browser open.  I like the idea that those apps are getting caught up.

So this was very useful to me.  I can't wait to see what the other Things have in store.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Cottage Industries: Mundane Endeavors 3

Fox hat - What DOES the fox say?
I have decided to start a cottage industry in my house that consists of crocheted hats, jams, and whatever else I can think of.  I have named myself Happy Halls and plan to go to a craft fair in November.  Crazy?  Maybe, but I'm really enjoying myself while I do it.  The hat above is for my second cousin who is undergoing chemo and needs something to cover her head.   I'm also making her a bear and a narwhal.  The unicorn hat at the bottom was sent to her at Thanksgiving when we found out she was really sick, the other three are because she needs to be able to change the animals around.

Zebra hat, complete with stripey mane
Doing hats for her has not only made me feel good about using my hands, it has taught me a lot about crocheting.  I have learned new stitched, courtesy of friends and the internet.  I have also learned that I'm pretty good at figuring things out in my head and making them with yarn.  The narwhal will be the ultimate test, of course, and that will come this week after the bear is finished.

Jellyfish hat - need to make longer tentacles

This jellyfish I made for a friend who is also undergoing chemo (too many people with cancer lately) and she really liked it.  I would like to figure out how to make the tentacles longer and how to have them hang down from the front.  I think a multi colored jelly would be pretty awesome.  I'll have to work on that.

Unicorn hat - would look awesome as a rainbow
The unicorn.  Dagny was upset that I was giving it to someone else, but she understood the reason behind it.  When I asked her if she wanted me to make her one, too, she asked for a bunny instead, which means new stitches!

Since there's a lot of shows on TV, we sit on the couch most nights.  I love to watch TV and I love to crochet, but if I do them at the same time, I tend to miss things that are on TV.  Must find a happy medium! :)  Perhaps one night a week with no TV? Interesting thought.  We had one a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it, just sitting around listening to the radio.  Perhaps we'll have to make that a weekly event.

We've also started family game nights and are currently learning Settlers of Catan, which is really quite a fun game.  The kids seem to get it better than I thought they would, so maybe we'll have a night where we will each be our own team.  Wouldn't THAT be fun?  I haven't played on my own team for eight years.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

23 Mobile Things: Thing 1

So. I signed up for this library program called "23 Mobile Things" which will help me learn how to use my IPad more completely than I have been.  Through a series of self-explored apps and activities, I will learn all sorts of things that I didn't know how to do before.  This really pumps me up!!  I love my IPad but I've always had the sneaking sensation that I wasn't utilizing it to the fullest.

Hopefully, this selection of apps will help me remedy that.  For each Thing, I will write a blog post detailing the app and what I learned from it.  Each of these posts will be titled "23 Mobile Things" followed by the Thing I am working on.  these posts should be easy to spot and won't get confused with the other trains of thought I have going.

Not that I write that much anymore! but maybe this will. Inspire me!!