The Big Brag and Yertle the Turtle – ebooks for the iPhone and iPad

Oceanhouse Media has recently released the next set of Dr. Seuss books as universal apps that work both on the iPhone and iPad. I've already expressed my love of Dr. Seuss books, so once again I'm thrilled to see the collection continue to expand. The Big Brag and Yertle the Turtle feature the ability to read the story yourself, have the story read to you (manually turning the pages), or auto play (pages turn automatically). Sound effects can be turned on or off. In case you're not familiar with these titles: in The Big Brag, a rabbit thinks outloud to himself about he thinks he's the best animal of all, at which point a bear listening nearby disagrees with him and boasts that he is the best of all animals. So they put their skills to test against each other, the rabbit trying to hear as far away as possible, the bear trying to smell as far away as possible. They are then interrupted by a worm who says he can see so far, he sees around the world and back again to two fools who have nothing better to do than argue who is better than the other. In Yertle the Turtle, Yertle is king of his pond, and all he can see, but he is greedy and wants to be king of more - to do so he needs to see more. So he orders his poor loyal turtle subjects to come and make his thrown higher and higher. They obey, but one turtle complains that it isn't fair. Yertle ignores his pleas and continues to order more and still more turtles over so he can sit on them. Finally the complaining turtle sneezes and makes the huge turtle tower crumble to the ground, sending Yertle into the mud and freeing all the turtles. I think you'll love these stories as much as my kids and I do. Zach happily listens to the stories over and over again. The Big Brag: $1.99* Yertle the Turtle: $3.99* *price at time of this writing Disclosure: I received a free copy of these apps for review purposes

life continues

T hat is my poor dog. He's been on Prednazone for a number of weeks and while he needs to be on it to keep him stabilized (we already tried reducing the amount he takes with bad results) the drug itself is causing all kinds of problems. The more annoying of which is it makes him pee. Endlessly. It's like he manufactures pee from the air he breathes. I couldn't keep up with all the accidents and even though he looks ridiculous, I broke down and made him a "doggie diaper". Basically it's just band that goes around his belly and I line it with an incontinence pad. Does the job. And this way he can still walk freely around the house. In other news, I haven't mentioned it on this blog - but I'm speaking at WordCamp Utah. I'm doing a presentation on using WordPress as a CMS. I finally finished making up all my slides and know what I'm going to say and I think it's going to come out really well - so long as I stop saying "um" in between every other word. I've been doing a few practice sessions (including taping a few so I can see how I sound) and that's the biggest thing I need to fix. I'm thinking shock therapy. I'll rig it so it zaps me every time I say "um". Eventually it should work, right? 😉 I'm almost finished reading Ender's Game and when I do, I'll write up a review. I had been so proud of myself for how quickly I was able to read through "The Help" - (it only took me about a week - maybe two - that is definitely a record for me - especially for a book that size!) But that was during my vacation. LOL! Definitely hard to keep up that same pace while "normal life" is going on.

Highlights My First Hidden Pictures – iPhone Kids Game

IHighlights Magazine falls into that category. Of course, one of the best parts to the magazine was always the hidden pictures game. This game is now available on the iPhone with Highlights My First Hidden Pictures. The game is every bit of fun on the iPhone as it was in print, but with more bells and whistles. The pictures are in color - when you find an item, simply touch it and it's marked as found. You can zoom into or out of the picture. The game comes with 8 puzzles, and if you register, you get 2 bonus puzzles. More puzzles are available for purchase as an in-app purchase. One thing I really liked that they did was explain how to TURN OFF the ability to purchase items from within an application so if you don't want this ability freely available to your child, it's pretty easy to enable and disable. When I played the game, the pictures were fairly easy to find - although I did struggle on a few. Zach also liked the game and found a few right away, but seemed to struggle on some of the items as well. I would have assumed that the game would have been easier than it was given it's title, but I still thought it was well done. Also, features like the "hint" button help reduce any frustration a child might have from not finding the item more easily by zooming in closer and closer to the item, each time you lick the "hint" button, to help you find it. The game is available for both iPhone and iPad (however, and iPad Optimized version is still in the works). Additional puzzle packs cost as little as $0.99. To see a video of the game click here. Highlights My First Hidden Pictures: $1.99* *Price at time of this writing. Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Sure Sign of Overtiredness

Zach was throwing up most of the night last night. When he wasn't throwing up, I spent the time trying to fall back to sleep, a wasted effort. So I'm really short on energy today - and brain power. While I was driving Rachel to her day-camp, Sam stayed with Zach back at the house. In my head I was mentally listing off what I needed to do that day, how I would juggle it all with Zach staying home. On one mental item, I thought "we should feed him the BRAT diet today - I think that's what they usually have you do with a kid that is recovering from vomiting, etc. Ok. BRAT diet... Bananas... Rice... Apples? No Applesauce, right...? And something starting with a "T". What the hell is it. Tofu?....Turkey?...  Tepid water... How many foods could possibly start with the letter "T" - what the hell is it?? I kind of gave up thinking about it and figured I'd just look it up on Google when I got home. So I get home, Zach asks for some toast, I say sure. I'm making him the toast and while I'm getting it all together I start thinking again... What the hell is the "T" word??? GAH!! Why can't I remember what it is?! Yeah. It wasn't until I finished making it and handed it to him... TOAST! Oy. It's going to be a long day.

Mountain Bluebell

WDonut Falls. I thought it was so funny how the bees go completely inside the bluebell, wiggle around in there and then back themselves out. It was pretty funny to watch. When I wanted to write this post, I was 99.9% certain this flower was a Mountain Bluebell, but I wanted to make sure I was right. I found this other website with pictures of tons of wildflowers here in Utah: Western Wildflowers (Most of them are named on there). Very cool website.

AutoStitch Panorama vs. Pano – iPhone Panorama Apps Review

A previous post about the You Gotta See This! app - I went looking to see what other types of panorama apps there are out there. I had bought one several months ago called Pano - but the favorite it seems, as far as I can tell from posts I was finding online, is another one called AutoStitch Panorama. I was impressed with a few of the AutoStitch Panorama features - namely the fact that you can just take as many photos as you want, using the regular iPhone camera. You don't have to take them in any particular order - just shoot away (but try to get a 30% overlap). And you can crop the photo yourself at the end. However, despite the rave reviews the app was getting - I was not impressed with it's stitching results. I tried several times to be as careful as possible about the photos I was taking, making sure the phone was the one rotating, not me - making sure the photos were well in focus, angles were consistent, etc. - and yet in just about every panorama I took, there were way too many "bad overlaps" and a lot of ghosting for my satisfaction. This was especially noticeable if there was a definitive structure line in the picture (like a post etc.) However, the application I had bought those many months ago - still created the best looking panoramas. But where Pano fails, is what I liked about AutoStitch; with Pano, you do have to take the pictures in a particular order, and in fact, you have to take it in a particular direction too - left to right (I can't find anywhere a way to change this). Also - you're restricted to taking the pictures going in one straight line, if you want to add more "height" to the panorama, you can't. But in the end - the panorama you get, is very clean - with minimal oddities in the overlap. When you're taking the pictures - it shows you a shadow of the edge of the late photo you took, so you can be sure to get the right amount of overlap and help line things up. (However, this isn't very useful if the scenery is somewhat repetitive) 🙂 But the proof is in the pictures. Take a look below. Same scene - two different Panorama apps: First by AutoStitch Panorama: (right click - and open link in new window or tab to see the closeup. The "lightbox" thing doesn't do so well with how wide these are...) Might be easier to see the details on VR rotator (You'll be able to zoom in/out in the VR rotator thing) Second by Pano: (right click - and open link in new window or tab to see the closeup.) And again the VR rotator. I think the difference is really clear. You can see I was able to get more height on AutoStitch, but the ghosting was ugly. Pano's panorama was beautiful - but limited. Again, this is why I think that there is in fact room for one more panorama app despite You Gotta See This!'s claim that "there are already plenty of panorama apps." I think making use of the gyroscope in the phone is an excellent way to improve on what's already been done. (And actually on a slight tangent - with the gyroscope in the phone; WHY oh WHY!???! is there no "stabilizer" in the iPhone camera? In this day and age - all digital cameras have stabilizers so that you don't have to hold your breath and hand very very still so you don't shake the camera. And yet the iPhone camera lacks a stabilizer. Really?? I hope we don't have to wait as long as we did for "copy/cut/paste" to get camera stabilization. Seems to me, with the gyroscope in there, it should just be a matter of software. What good is that great camera on the iPhone if every photo I take is blurry???) =steps off soapbox= AutoStitch Panorama: $2.99* Pano: $2.99* *price at time of this writing. Updated to Add: I just recently made another panorama using Pano - I still think this app does a much better job than AutoStitch - but just to prove it's not totally perfect -you'll see in this most recent one - a small oddity to the right of the picture where the trees and grass are duplicated. It didn't get the overlap perfect at the end there - but still pretty good. Also - This time I used the app in portrait mode, rather than landscape to get as much height as I could. It's a smaller area (only about 90degrees rotation). Here it is.

Morning Commute

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