BLOGAHOMA

DISCLAIMER
Keep these points in mind: I am old enough to be on Social Security, I have only had my smart phone (Pantech Breakout) for 3 months now and I’m more interested in utility than anything else. Note that my smart phone came with a bunch of apps already in place half of which are bloatware which I just hid. I would absolutely recommend that your smart phone have a camera front and back so that you can use Skype (any type smart phone) or FaceTime (iPhone), Nuance speech recognition, and Swype ( a way of moving your finger across the keys versus hitting each one individually).   Right now I do not need it anymore recommendations as I am all app-out.  To some of you experts out there these are not the best applications however the optimum word here is EASY!

SOCIAL MEDIA
Why choose a go-between when you can get the direct app. I use the following: Facebook, Twitter, and eBay. Enough said.

PHOTOGRAPHY
My Pantech Breakout is a smart phone for the budget minded therefore the camera leaves a lot to be desired. After trying many apps here are the ones I use the most for photography manipulation: Vignette offers one the option to use it to take a picture by touching anywhere on the screen. It has a whole lot of effects but I feel the choices and menus a little over the top and yet it still doesn’t do everything I’d like. Paper Camera is a funky little app that can turn your image into a pencil drawing, comic strip or give it a poster like appearance you can make your choices as you scroll through the effects. I especially like the drawing effect. Pic Say is a fun app to allow you to use captions under photos however I think it has one of the best editing tools out there for contrast, brightness, tint, exposure etc. a cool app enabling you to send that picture you just snapped as a postcard to whomever. The postcard is just $.99 and will be sent to anyone in United States.

DAILY ORGANIZER
For day-to-day diary entries I use Private Diary (it comes free but I bought the real deal because it’s making irritated me). Once again simple good graphical look without a lot of add-ons. I’m on a diet (once again) and the easiest way for me to lose weight is write down everything I eat. The app  My Diet Diary keeps track of the calories and nutritional value, your weight and your goals. My newest Is Out of Milk another freebie that takes care of your grocery needs, pantry contents and to do list. Once you have your grocery list compiled the Of your finger will cross out when you put the item in your cart. It can then put it back on your list by tapping it when you run out of it at home. It also scans in barcodes which will enter the brand and all the nutritional information.. Because I have allergies and asthma I use Allergy Alert to keep track of the pollen count.

GAMES
I am not an arcade kind of woman. I prefer well-designed word and number games. My favorite game of Scrabble and I do have it on my iPod touch but so far the android version is free and annoying I am waiting for the paid version. My favorite word game so far is Boggle Lite fast fun and with the good vocabulary. For card games I prefer Klondike and Free Cell by Softick. if you into sudoku I recommend Sudoku Daily, Which Serves You up A Fresh Group of Puzzles Every Day.

UTILITIES
I have found the following useful in small ways: Gesture Search, by writing with your finger you can find most anything on your smart phone, Barcode Scanner is a way to look up information quickly by, what else, scanning or codes for products or websites. Flashlight I think any flashlight (any app will probably do) can guide you to your car or to your bed at night, Alarm Clock, (the Pantech came with a perfectly fine one) and aCalendar which is clean, clear and functional.

Not surprisingly I am using my smart phone for whole lot more than I was ever aware. I bought it to be able  to find our way while we are traveling, and it works for that, but it is useful for a lot of things I had never considered. Currently 50% of those who have cell phones have smart phones which is not surprising because of the usefulness of smart phones. My hat off to Steve Jobs and Apple for leading the way.

In the month of December before the year was out, we had appliances and electronic equipment breakdown. It all happened within a couple of weeks. Where it began I can’t tell you. It may have been my new smart phone. It just stopped working. I went into my Verizon store and the salesperson (after trying several things) agreed with me I had a defective battery.  Next our printer, not new by any standard, gave out in the middle of our Christmas card printing. We replaced it with a Canon Pixma MG8120.   We did have to wait for it as I ordered it online to get the best price. Some of our recipients got their Christmas card a little late or maybe we should just call it a New Year’s card.  No sooner was that problem solved then refrigerator fan, that had made questionable noises for a long time, gave out in the refrigerator shut down, forcing us to move its contents to our neighbors freezer and our refrigerator items to the screened in porch. Over the next 3 days the repair man, a congenial guy from Mr. Appliance, had to make 3 calls to get  everything working again. Meanwhile my MacBook trackpad decided to stop, altogether, this meant a trip down to Wichita Falls about an hour from us, and several hours waiting. We decided to make the most of our time while were waiting in Wichita Falls lunching at Casa Mañana. Arriving home  we believed,  it was all fixed, but no! The 1st time I tried to export an image via Bluetooth from my smart phone to my computer, I was informed that Bluetooth was not installed! Not that I wanted to see  Wichita Falls again so soon, but we had no choice but to go back. The  Bluetooth in fact had not been connected correctly by the tech (its complicated). It is said that bad luck comes in threes, our breakdowns numbered four. So let’s knock on wood or metal or plastic and welcome in the new year!

The priciest thing I owned as a child was my glasses. True they were clinic glasses those semi transparent orange-ish/ pinkish generic frame but most everything else in my little life was second hand. I didn’t hate them as when I finally put them on at age four because I was no longer walking into walls or tripping down stairs, however, once I hit school age I realize quickly that the kids that wore the same frame were marked as “clinic kids” or needy.  By high school I was going to a local ophthalmologist and able to choose my own frames keeping price in mind.

Contact lenses were never an option for my monocular, amblyopic, astigmatic, farsighted vision I then need to really like my frames. Before the Internet you had to trust that your eye doctor had interesting frames. That didn’t happen until I went to Dr. Robert Sunkle in 1978 that got in trendy eyewear for artists such as my husband and myself. And it didn’t hurt that Doc was friend and neighbor and would deliver the new frames to your home. One of my favorite frames of that era is the Silhouette steam-punk style frame I selected in 1980.  I wore them off and on for 8 years. I keep them for the time that I will put a new prescription in it. Then the wonderful world of eBay and e-market opened up a whole world of selection. The last four frames I purchased through eBay. One of my all time favorites was a rectangular matte silver pair by Prada and I would still be wearing them if it wasn’t for an unfortunate tumble I took that blackened my eye and broke the frame arm rendering them unwearable.

Three weeks ago I went completely madcap and purchased “new old stock” modified cat-eye shaped ORANGE frames on a “buy it now” on eBay. Aptly named “Vivacious” and made by the American Optical Co they are stand outs. No sense being timid at 66. Orange is my favorite color after all. They are bound to clash with some of my clothes but that’s the way it goes. I’d have a second neutral pair if I could but my lenses alone are over $250. A second pair is not an option for me. Going vintage has an advantage if you want to stand out in a crowd because you won’t see yourself coming and going. Today I surfed the net I found the oversized, modified cat-eye frame is back. These retro frames sell at 3 times what I paid from mine. Do I wish I had “good” eyes? YES, a thousand times, YES, but by being very choosy about my frames I have made the best of a less than perfect situation.

We waited in the Milo Gordon Kia dealership for Shane to complete the paperwork to our purchase of a Molten Red Kia Soul+, a techie little car ready to drive us into the next decade.  To make use of the time I began futzing around on my new Pantech Breakout smart phone. In the waiting area was a 70 something dignified little woman waiting for her oil to be changed. We’ll call her Margaret. Margaret asked if we had bought a new car and I responded I did. We began chatting about gizmos the car came with. She said she no longer wanted to learn another thing. Curious but believable. I get it, where learning something new, might tire one out. After all the amount of information and systems those over 60 have already absorbed is mountainous. It would be one thing if the new tech I was learning went smoothly like syncing my telephone book on with data back up on line. Suffice it to say, learning the new phone was not going smoothly, it took several  attempts just to get the kinks in my plan worked out.  Margaret, on the other hand, was only  interested in her church group and traveling. Margaret’s husband did even less, not even traveling.  While we waited we watched the “Occupy Wall Street” latest news on TV. Her reaction, “Why don’t they stop all this nonsense and get a job?” Margaret did not watch television or the news.  I did relate to her that my niece was part of the demonstration and she did have a job. Margaret pulled out her cellphone. It was the kind they advertise in AARP magazine for seniors.  “This” she said, “is all the complicated I want to get.”

I admit I occasionally get digitally drained, and yet there is something in me that does not want to be left out of the ongoing parade of fascinating inventions. Frustration with a new media can lead to hacking and actually finding out the stuff that is not in the sad excuse for documentation that nowadays accompanies hi tech gadgets. After a long night at redoing my contact list I am getting quicker with highlight-cut-paste and delete. For instance, I have now taught the computer how to pronounce our last name by putting in the phonetic “Fairy in” for Fahrion (otherwise I would have to say “Fa Rye In”). I have pretty much decided to leave  the learning Kia tech gadgets to my husband to work out like solving the mystery of the three buttons on the bottom of the rear view mirror. To be fair the Kia Soul manual does a decent job of explaining. Currently the car’s UVO (voice recognition and activation) does not understand my husband, perhaps there is a bit of West Virginia intonation still in his voice. But there is a solution to his dilemma, he will have to teach the UVO to understand his dialect.

What I need now is to NOT take on any more new technology for a while. Pardon me as I go over and put a piece of toast in the toaster. I’ll just turn a nob to 5 minutes and wait until I hear a very mechanical sound “ding”.

It began with a gift of cartoons purchased at an estate sale by Michael’s 4th cousin once removed, also an artist. Out of the blue we received a package from her bearing this fascinating group of cartoons. As it was BG (before Google) we had no luck trying to figure who created these unsigned cartoons. Sure we surmised they were done during WWI just from the uniforms but who created them. Every once in a while I would take them out and study them. And the wild fire happened after which we packed up the house as they cleaned the interior and then unpacked sorted deciding what would stay and what needed to go. This lead to be revisiting the cache of drawings. Now I picked up clues…. dates: 1918, 1919, key words: Chestnut, Everybody’s. Before I started the keywords I searched “WWI cartoonists”, “Judge Magazine” and Delineator Magazine (turned out to be false clue) netting nothing. Moving on I found Everybody’s Magazine and in the magazine I found a humor feature “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree: edited with cartoons by Ralph Barton. Could it really be him? Yes and after downloading several pdfs of the Everybody’s I found the same cartoons we owned in print.

Yes, I admire his style but feel someone else might want to own them. I am considering keeping one. Meanwhile I will be searching for the best auction venue for this illustrator’s group. I prefer to sell them as a group ideally with an organization that will share them online.  Or possibly in two groups one WWI themed the other not. I have sold on ebay for 14 years but I am not sure it will be the proper vehicle for these drawings. I don’t have to decide yet.
Want to know more about Ralph Waldo Emerson Burton I recommend this excellent Graphic Arts Blog by Julie L. Mellby.