UFO's and iPad Keyboards

In the view from my balcony, the UFO cloud, previously documented on September 25's blog post, appeared again this evening (which is coming entirely too early since going off daylight savings). It seemed to swoop in leaving that visible path and feathery accompaniments. No aliens were seen emerging.

And in other news of the day, behold the new, full sized, regular keyboard for my iPad.

The iPad sits in a channel and is magnetized to hold well.

The keyboard is bluetooth enabled, made by Logitech and becomes the cover for the iPad with a magnetized strip along one side (shown on the left) once the iPad is removed from the channel.

This is the super slim width when closed. It works like a charm, makes typing easier and I give it two thumbs up as a must have item for iPad owner writers.

A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to The Blog

Actually, I'm not entirely sure what did happen. Life happened, for sure, in all the ways that life has to absorb me. I have a particular habit of delving into the important thing of the moment and diving into it sometimes at the expense of other important things. I do it, I read and research about it, I talk about it, I want to hear from others about it. It's a laser focus that can get too narrow before I feel the mastery I like and resurface. Then I look around and see that more time has passed than I realized (loss of a sense of time is part of my narrow focus), I get genuinely amazed and I reconnect with what else is still important. Very important but now part of a bigger world for me.

I've been wrestling with whether or not to share this since I wish it were something more momentous or worthy somehow, even tragic, that has involved me, but instead I've been involved in the world of gaming. Specifically a game my grandson introduced me to called Dragonvale on the iPad. I was only able to blog sporadically anyway in dial up land where my daughter's family lives and where I spent two months. I had time available to live their life and to play. I'd been looking for a way to connect with my grandson in his great love for gaming but couldn't really understand his fascination with the ones I'd seen up until this game.

Dragonvale has it all- clearing Islands, building habitats, breeding dragons, including special or seasonal dragons, planting food to grow the dragons, landscaping and decorating the Islands, making decisions and planning for who, how and where to maximize finances to be able to best develop this world. I got obsessed, shut down other things, and thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful process of world building. It's graphically beautiful, highly imaginative and just plain fun. I talk to my grandson multiple times a week about our strategies and results, I email my niece who's also involved, even my daughter works with her son making dragon decisions and cheers us on.

Island 1:

Island 2:

Island 3:

Island 4:

But I look at my last post's date and can't quite believe this much time has passed. I've reached mastery in Dragonvale, I want to get back to writing. It's been too long and there's lots more to share. Gaming vs writing- oh god, does that make me shallow? Is it unseemly at my age? Oh well, there it is.

Are any other closet gamers out there?  How are you connecting with your grands?

Celestial Fireworks | ESA/Hubble

This image from Hubble Telescope of "Celestial Fireworks" was posted in the app "Star Walk" on my iPad the same day that Steve Jobs died.
In part, the accompanying script says: "This…is from a massive star that died…This filamentary material will eventually be recycled into building new generations of stars."
So true. Good bye, Steve. Thank you.

Click on this:
Celestial Fireworks | ESA/Hubble

The Cool New iPad

I'm writing this post on my new iPad. My iMac is a desktop so, when I travel, I obviously can't take it. But I wanted a way to get email, FB and the internet, especially for the blogosphere. With the iPad I can do all that and also carry my photos, songs as well as any of the 65,000 apps that I've downloaded. Or that my grands have downloaded since both of them have a folder on my desktop with their games.

There are many so many cool things about this iPad that I don't know where to begin. just to name a few: the keyboard is full size, The apps are amazing to a mere novice in this world of things technical, it corrects my spelling as I go along automatically or I can cancel the correction if I want to, it takes a very, very light touch to type, the screen display is 9 1/2 ", photos are large as a result and a flick of the finger moves them forward or backward, it is intuitive which is good for a non techie, it's all done by touch so my finger is my cursor, I can download and read books, and one of the apps is called "Star Walk" which displays the stars and constellations of any direction that I point the iPad and then goes deeper into space with a touch (this is unbelievably, gorgeously cool!).

Deep breath, you really wouldn't believe the number and types of apps under 20 categories. I'd be interested in swapping info on favorites if others have iPads or iPhones. My current fav is the Star Walk- total knock out! If I have access to the Internet, email, FB and my blog, why do I need a computer? I heard Steve Jobs call this a post PC product. Maybe that's what he meant. Hmmmm.

What's your favorite app?