Having too much fun with my new toy!

So yeah I haven’t checked in for awhile… I’ve been keeping busy, partly with work, and partly with… well, not work…

I made that comic of a few random things I’ve been up to lately with one of my favorite apps on my new iPad!  My new time-sucking toy is a combined wedding and christmas gift (thanks Matt and Mom+Dad!!), which had some complications causing the delay, but now I have it.  And holy crap you guys, it is way too much fun!

I’ve been playing with many imagey apps – like Pixlr-o-matic, which made the pictures directly above and below:

And ComicBook is super quick, easy, and fun – a couple more comics of just random stuff I’ve been doing:

(Oh yeah, another thing that’s been taking up some time is family visiting – first, Pete’s uncle Terry came to take us to see the Go-Go’s, as mentioned above, and now his mom is visiting, so we’ve been having some fun times with her…)

Another fun image-making app – Photosynth makes panoramic photos, which you can scroll through on the iPad (it’s actually an iPhone app, so it’s miniature on the iPad, but still looks cool) after shooting it… it’s hard to explain, but it looks awesome.

Instagram is fun for taking a photo, adding a quick filter/border, and then tweeting immediately, all in one place.  This one is also iPhone-sized.  (Some time-suckage has also been due to our new addiction to this board game, Settlers of Catan… yeah, we’re nerds, I know.)

This app – joyOfLight – is simple but cool looking.  I couldn’t find a way to save images in the app, but I did learn how to take a screenshot, so that works (as shown below).  Oh wait, after I wrote that I played around with it some more and found that touching the screen with 3 fingers saves the image.

And this one, oh man, super addictive – Flowpaper.  I just want to scribble on it all day long.

These are all just quick scribbles I’ve done.

Too much fun.

Most of my iPad time wasting has gone to researching and downloading recommended apps – apple gazette blog has been super helpful, with lots of app reviews, and posts like How To: Get the Most Out of iPad’s Virtual Keyboard and 10 Essential Free iPad Apps for Newbies.  I got all the apps on that list, have been heavily using Dropbox (screenshot below) and Kindle, and have played around a bit with Moleskine and Flipboard…  (and I know, I still haven’t blogged about my pattern in the new Twist Collective, which is ohmygod so exciting, yes, and you can see a glimpse of it below; it will be blogged soon……)

I’ve been using Pandora (screenshot above) a ton, and the NPR music app (screenshot below) is great, though it’s iPhone size.  I’ve bought a couple fun multiplayer games that Pete and I have played around with a little so far – Catan (I told you we got into it) and Sketch n’ Guess, which is like Pictionary, super fun!  And the New York Times free crossword app is awesome; and Sheep Shift (screenshot below) is a must-have free game for sheep lovers (they all have different baaa sounds!)…

Those are most of the ones I’ve gotten that I’ve been using lots so far, or know that I will be… there are many more I’ve gotten but haven’t taken the time to explore yet (like Goodreader, several sketching and/or note-taking apps, many rss reader and/or news apps…).  So hey, iPad owners, what else should I get?

And then, check it out, I made an iPad case!  I used my Screen-Friendly Gadget Case pattern, made to custom fit my iPad.  My major change was that I decided I liked how the reverse stockinette side of the fabric looked better than the stockinette, so I made the main case part inside-out.  Bad idea; don’t copy me with this modification.  Part of the reason the case pattern works well is that the stockinette naturally curls around the gadget – when turned inside out, it wants to curl back, away from the iPad…

But hey, it still works okay, and it was just a test anyway.  I chose some old leftover hand-dyed yarn that I don’t really like, just to try out the pattern on the iPad and see if it would function well.  Conclusion: yes, it does function, but there are some issues (needs to be removed to use the camera, for one) and I just ordered the official Apple smart case because I think that seems like the best thing out there to protect it.  I might end up knitting up another one of these in a yarn I like, fixing some problems, for a padded cover for carrying it around in my bag… we’ll see…

Oh, and it does work to keep it on for charging/syncing, and headphones, as pictured in the first shot.  I think the pattern is better suited for smaller devices, but it does indeed work for iPads, so that’s cool.

Ok it’s time for me to get some actual work done… hopefully…