I've been writing on my iPhone pics

because sometimes a picture needs a little explaining:

I posted on the apps I currently use on my craft blog if you're interested!

Me in Draw Something

Another way I'm having fun in Draw Something is it gets personal.

I loved this rendering by my friend--I wish my hair looked this cool in real life!

I shared my personalized Draw Something drawings on this post.

Drawsome Fun

Sooo hooked on Draw Something. Unfortunately this means my attention to Words with Friends is flagging--I'm actually losing some games there because Draw Something is that addictive. But similarly to my WwF experience, I have a tendency to start guessing words right away from the available tiles in Draw Something. Sometimes I'm way off base:

This drawing eventually finishes out and becomes a MISSILE. Duh!

Sometimes I really enjoy the mad drawing skills of my friends, like this pretty Drawsome Colonel Sanders:

Or the detail (the brick! the ash! the cigarette!) for this hobo drawing:

Sometimes, when I don't have any ideas of what the drawing is, I just start trying words that don't necessarily make sense:

Or making up words:

Until my daughter figures it out for me:

When I draw, I'm not quite sure the direction my drawing will take place.  Like it wasn't my intention to draw two guys holding hands in their underwear until I realized that my word was plural:

But I do like to think my drawing skills are improving:

And sometimes, I get a little juvenile and giggle during my friend's young son's drawing:

TING-TING!  A slight digression:

Comedy Central Stand-Up

Anyhoo, the word was eventually "wedgie":

So I guess I wasn't being so juvenile after all--HA!

Definitely fun--I'm giving this Draw Something app 5 stars--it's a blast!

Draw Something App round

I'm still digging the Draw Something game app, though I still do not know how a game ends or how someone wins. But still it's a bit of fun--here's a drawing that Linda drew for me:

A happy couple--COUPLES?  No, too many spaces.  Let's see wedding...wedding night...Oh wait, uh...could it be...

No.  Then finally it hits me:

And then sometimes, the other player will comment on your efforts:

Almost like hanging with my friend in person.

Heartbreak in the Mitten/Draw Something app

The Louisville Cardinals brought heartbreak in the Mitten with their sound defeat of Michigan State last night. As well as totally busting my bracket. Argh.

On the bright side, Linda introduced me to a new game app, Draw Something, and I am hooked! You basically try to guess a word that your friend is drawing and it plays a recording of sorts of the whole effort as she is drawing, not just a final drawing. I love it -- maybe it makes me feel like I'm there with my long-distance friend for a moment.

Though I have to confess, I don't know how the game is scored (I'm guessing it has to do with the coins we earn) or how somebody wins or even how the game ends. But it's really fun to play. Similar to a lot of Words games, you play when you have time, and you get to see a replay of your friend guessing your word as you draw it. I wish I could save some of these replays or at least go back and watch them.

Anybody want to play with me? I may just be upgrading to the paid version soon--I'm definitely addicted!

Favorite Productivity apps: DropBox and Genius Scan

Being here in NJ helping my mom with her medical issues and appointments has definitely been a team act with my sister and I have really come to rely on a couple of great productivity apps: Dropbox and Genius Scan, both of which are currently free and are not limited to the iPhone.

Dropbox is a mobile server where I can load up files (documents, photos, mp3s, pdfs, etc.) from my iPhone or PC that I can access from either of them or share links to those files.  It's great to load up say, the French Macaron primer pdf and be able to access it at home on the laptop or at a friends house on the iPhone.  This example shows I obviously have not fully utilized all the efficiencies that this app has to offer but the possibilities are fairly clear.

I came to really put Dropbox to use in conjuction with Genius Scan on this trip. Genius Scan allows me to "scan" documents with my iPhone camera and save them as pdfs in my Dropbox.  As my sister and I were sharing some of the appointment and follow-up duties, it was handy that I scanned some lab reports (she took the originals with her to fax) with Genius Scan and saved them in my Dropbox.  I was able to e-mail the lab reports and expedite some appointments.  Between the two apps, I'm able to scan and save records and paper work that I'd like to keep a copy of and not have to find a copier to make copies and then carry around a bunch of paper files.  Upgrading to Genius Scan+ (for $2.99) gives you direct upload choices to Dropbox, EverNote, etc., but so far the free version just has the extra step of hitting the "other apps" icon and then selecting Dropbox, Evernote, etc. from there, so I'm totally happy staying with the free version.

Currently you get 2GB of memory on Dropbox for free and you can pay a monthly fee for more space.  Or they offer incentives that earn you more space, like referring friends to Dropbox.  So on that note, if you are interested in Dropbox, help this girl out and use this link: http://db.tt/cJyBd4A  We'll both get an additional 250MB of space if you get it.

Anyhoo, whether personal or for work, both these free apps are pretty handy and easily applicable to a variety of situations.  I highly recommend both--especially since they're both free!

Pic Collage app

Another app that I've been playing around with is the free (currently) Pic Collage app:

What a great way to use a bunch of pix, especially when you can't decide which one is the best (or cutest). So easy to pull in, move, and re-size pictures, though I would thoroughly appreciate it if I could pull in multiple pictures in at a time (rather than one at a time which can get tedious with a lot of pictures I want to include or a camera roll as large as mine) The text feature offers a variety of fonts and colors and there are a variety of background and seasonal "stickers" as well, though I would admit the selection is somewhat limited.

I would really love a way (or template even) to get all pix evenly and neatly laid out (in, uh, a non-collagy way) for those times I do want the whole pictures in. It's kind of difficult to do it by hand on the iPhone screen and definitely looks laid out and re-sized manually:

For a free app, I love it for being a way to share multiple pictures or share the highlights from an event without clicking and sending actual multiple picture files. And in a collage format, you can highlight the meat of the pix by the collage arrangement. If any of this appeals to you, I highly recommend it--it's one of my new favorite apps.

Super Sunday: Super Bowl 46

For Super Bowl Sunday, I went up to the city to help babysit this cutie while his parents had an appointment:

Is it naughty of me that I thought it was hilarious that he's "holding" my coffee?

Anyhoo, I fell madly in love with my Hipstamatic app all over again today!  Deets on lenses/films are in the caption.  When he woke up, I took him to the playground:

Loftus lens, Pistil film

He enjoyed it much more than holding my coffee.

Loftus lens, Pistil film

Then my sister, Augie, a friend (Colleen), and I grabbed brunch at Maharlika.  This time I had the ilog breakfast with garlic rice, fried egg, and bony milkfish--delicious:

Loftus lens, Pistil film

It was great catching up with Colleen, a friend since Annabelle and her went to college together (hee! do you see the little guy napping in the pic?):

Chunky lens, Pistil film

She's one of those wonderful people with such wonderful positive energy that always puts a smile on my face:

Chunky lens, Pistil film

After brunch, we got geared up for the Super Bowl:

Loftus lens, Pistil film

With moments of contemplation:

Buckhorst H1 lens, DC film

While squeezing in a selfie with Auntie:

Buckhorst H1 lens, Cano Cafenol film

And there was awesome food to be had, including Luke's lobster rolls, chips and dip:

Loftus lens, DC film

And we were thrilled when the Patriots scored a touchdown:

Loftus lens, DC film

Including some high-five celebrations:

Chunky lens, DC film

This guy definitely had a good time and went to bed before the final score, therefore he went to bed happy.

Loftus lens, DC film

Personally I thought the best part of the Super Bowl was the half-time show with Madonna.  That grand entrance, the parkour guys, that wacky tightrope guy, the drum corps, the robed choir, the awesome guest singers--I loved it all.  Kind of made me want to put "Madonna concert" on the bucket list.  I remember having a slight anxiety that the half-time show was going to end any minute now because I was enjoying the show so much.

What disappointed this year were the Super Bowl commercials--I can hardly remember them.  What was with those GE ads?  Am I supposed to buy a turbine?  And those Budweiser, historical, post-prohibition ads did nothing for me though I thought it was a catchy soundtrack on its Eternal Optimism ad to lay Flo Rida's "Good Feeling" vocals over the opening bars of The Cult's "Sanctuary".  And I thought those commercials that tried channeling a "Victoria's Secret Come Alive!" theme were over-the-top to the point of eye-rolling (Fiat and Kia, I'm looking at you--yeesh, are you really expecting an uptick in sales from those ads?)  And good grief, haven't these typical GoDaddy.com commercials of promised unrated girlie material run out of gas by now?

I will admit that the Chevy Sonic ad made me Shazam the song ("We Are Young" by Fun featuring Janelle Monae).  And I've been enjoying the current run of Samsung ads that poke fun at the Apple devotees who are constantly waiting for the latest iDevice and the Super Bowl version was the most lavish version yet.  Other than that, a disappointing Super Bowl ad year.

So on that note, looking forward to next year's Super Bowl!

Lunch with TomB, PictureShow App

I lucked out that my old college friend (who also has a political blog and a family blog) was able to meet up for lunch while I'm here in Jersey.  I feel like I spent most of the time kvetching and lamenting the necessity to monitor our health as we get older and older, no matter how we feel. But like a good friend, he patiently listened, concurred, and offered me updates on folks from school to cheer me up.  Just what I needed on this extended trip.

Another plus, I played  more with my Picture Show app ($1.99 on iTunes) and ran these pix through the Retro filter. It's one of my favorite apps in terms mixing up filters, frames, and effects really well:

Unfortunately, it can't do anything about my big potato-head.  Even switching to sitting behind my friend, my face. Is. Still. So. Huge.

Here's the original for comparison:

Picture Show is a well-loaded app. It lets you add text to pictures, it has toy camera multi-lenses (which I haven't really explored), and it also has a cool tilt-shift effect which I would like to play with more:

And if all the filters and effect don't bring the magic, maybe the free app, Happy Snapper can:

I really, really love iPhone photo apps.

Some PocketBooth fun

A little PocketBooth fun with Augie, though I couldn't quite get him hip to the concept of making different faces for each snap:

Though I certainly had fun trying!

iPhone App: Pocketbooth

Ever since I upgraded to the iPhone 4s with a front-facing phone, I've been having fun with Pocketbooth. It has the fun pacing of the old-style Photo Booths and with the front-facing camera, you have an idea of when the camera is going to go off and you can see where you're positioned. I had actually gotten this app while I still had the 3G (which only has a rear-facing camera) and it's not nearly as fun without the front-facing camera and if you include yourself in the pix, you're pretty much guessing whether you're in frame and when the picture is being taken. The only hitch is that the front-facing camera is not nearly the quality of the rear-facing one. But I found the black & white fairly forgiving and captures the fun of Photo Booth pictures:

As well as the "1975" setting:

But most of all, it's just fun.  And currently, it's on sale for 99 cents.  At that price, I gifted a few to some folks who I know upgraded to an iPhone 4 also--hope they have fun with it!

Another favorite iPhone app: PS Express

I love the simple efficiency of PS Express (aka PhotoShop Express). And to top it off, it's FREE. I use it frequently, especially for quick edits of pix for my blog or when I resend to friends.

Say, I've got a pic of me and Linda's big, Ethan:

I've got some of my key options on this pull-down:

I use Crop pretty often to cut out extraneous distractions in a pic or to bring a more flattering focus on the people in the picture.  I also manage to use Rotate often--somehow a good number of my pix end up being landscape when I thought I was taking it in Portrait or vice versa--this is an easy quick fix here in PS Express.

I use Exposure pretty often because my 3G doesn't have flash and this is the easiest way to lighten up (or darken) a pic.  And Black & White makes a nice, simple B&W conversion--done.

But one of my favorite effects is "Sketch":

Which turns your pic into a cute cartoon. You're welcome, I just saved you at least 99 cents from purchasing one of those Picture to Toon apps.

This is probably one of my most frequent go-to photo apps.  Not really exciting but very useful.  And free!

Favorite iPhone apps: Words With Friends

I've managed to reference my favorite iPhone game, Words With Friends, plenty, but I wanted to give it it's proper due. First, if you enjoy Scrabble, you're going to love Words With Friends. But instead of sitting at a board for an evening, you're wirelessly playing with someone through your smartphone for a few days (unless both of you are unemployed or have some serious downtime). Each has a set of tiles like Scrabble, and you lay down a word (yes, like Scrabble) and submit it. Then you just wait for your friend to play his or her word.  You can also use a turn to swap tiles or skip a turn straight up if you have nothing (usually done at the end).  It's at a go-at-your-own pace feel, but f you let a number of days (9? 12?) go by without making a move, it'll forcibly resign you.  But overall it's a fairly relaxed pace unless you're addicted to making words. That's where having multiple games going fills that need. Color me addicted.

Second, WWF lets you "try" words: you can put down some letters and if it's a word you'll see it "sending" it or if not, it'll tell you that's it not an "acceptable" word and not let you submit the word. I've learned some surprising acceptable words like "fiz" and "axon" this way. And it negates the need for challenges and dictionaries.  The "dictionary" it uses won't allow words that may be deemed objectionable and I have been frustrated that it took another player's "joyed" but not my "cryer".  Hello, WWF, ever heard of a Town Cryer?!

Finally, it's free!  The downside is you'll see an ad every time you play. Truthfully, given how many games I have going on at once, it was so worth the 99 cents (or $1.99?) at the time to get rid of the ads that sandwiched my moves.

Similar to Scrabble, it slays me when I have a great word and nowhere to put it:

Oh, Ddub..., I'll get you on the rematch.

E-mail me if you want to play me.  I'll be gentle.  At first.

Favorite iPhone Apps: Diptic

Just wanted to share another one of my new favorite iPhone apps: Diptic.

I love it for its easy way to make quick collages from my iPhone pictures, right on my iPhone.  It's a great way to capture a theme or event:

And it's great when one picture isn't enough to capture all the dimensions of cuteness, like this little guy:

 

 

And then it's really easy to save back to Photos, e-mail the pic or upload to the blog.  There are lots of layout choices and it's ridiculously simple to use.  Worth the $1.99 to me!