Some Cool Research!

When you are retired, you may or may not have LOTS of time on your hands...I'm still trying to find my way after coming off the road from full timing in a motorhome for three years, and landing in a house in hot, humid, sunny Florida. Talk about an adjustment! It's not been easy, because I truly am an ADD adult with a VERY short attention span. If I don't have two or three projects going or more at one time, all in different stages of development, I'm extremely antsy and have to make something, do something, or go buy something. Those make something, do something projects can either be crafts or stuff to do with the house. Right now, I have 1/2 of the tile and grout cleaned in the house which is about half tile floors, the bathroom is painted, one cushion has been recovered on the dining room set with five chairs to go, and I'm contemplating stripping the wallpaper in the bedroom, which is starting to come off all by itself!

When I get tired of doing house stuff, then I think about my crafts and which one of THOSE do I want to work on?--a hat for my daughter started, a dishcloth part way knitted,  some breast cancer bracelets to be finished.....I don't have all my craft supplies present at the house, some stuff is back in Indiana.  I'm trying to organize my craft room so I can find stuff, what stuff I DO have. In between painting, stripping wallpaper, and trying to find just the right touches for each room in the house, I love to be doing crafts or being on the computer. 

And that's where I'm headed right now, to the computer....Going over my Big Picture Classes I signed up for, then promptly forgot to follow along according to schedule. But that's ok, it's an online "university" of digital classes, some self-paced, some where you really need to follow a schedule if you want to, or you can just participate any time later when it's convenient. They give you all the materials for those who can follow directions and a schedule, not really MY haphazard style, or you can just go back and do all the assignments on your own time. What you miss out on by doing it on your own, is feedback from the instructor at appropriate times, live chats, stuff like that. But you have permanent access to the handouts, the materials, the class info and how to's. So, I have this class to catch up on..The Phone Photography Project. 

It was a 30 day project with TONS of information and cool stuff about ideas for photos using your phone camera. That's where I got the inspiration for the foot photo documentation of summer, "where I stand".  They had some great ideas in that series--"Be a Tourist in Your Own Town"...Done...check! (See "Where's Eldo?" travel blog for all about Sarasota if you are new to this blog.) Some more--"Summer Shoes", "Lazy", "Clouds", and lots lots more. In each class "challenge" as they call it, there were lots of great references to help you take better photos on your camera phone  and lots of suggestions for cool apps to try. There are tons of additional handouts that came with this class, like taking the photos off your phone and using them in all sorts of crafty ways. 
Or having your own View-Master reel made from your phone photos--Yep! They are still making these!

A company called Image 3D will make a custom View Master reels for you from your phone photos that you upload. It's a little pricey, and you can only use 7 images at a time for each reel, but what a cool gift idea! It comes with a viewer, in case you were wondering about where the heck are you going to get one of those old things. These reels are new!

Sets:

Each set contains one reel, one viewer and one white handout box.

Reels: 7 of your photos with 3D captions & customized center of reel.

Viewer: View-Master style in your choice of Red, Black, Blue or White.

Box: A handsome glossy white box-- Size: 3x4x5

Complete Sets pricing as follows:

First Set . . . . . . . . . . . . .$29.95

2 to 5 Sets . . . . . . . . . . . $20.00/set

6 to 25 Sets . . . . . . . . . . $15.00/set

26 to 50 Sets . . . . . . . . .$12.50/set

51 to 99 Sets . . . . . . . . . $10.00/set

100 or More Sets . . . . . $8.00/Set

Another app mentioned in the Big Picture Classes on phone photography, was the Red Stamp app. It's a quick way (isn't everything about being fast and quick these days? :-(  to send a personalized thank you card or note right from your phone using your own pictures. It's a FREE app.. You have all kinds of cards to choose from. Some of the cards have spaces for your own photos, most are free, but some have a small charge of .99.  Priced a card at the store lately? You can also have a printed card sent if you prefer the old fashioned way for 1.99, which includes the postage. Personally, I love the idea that you can have it sent in the mail. There's something really special in this digital age about receiving a card or letter through "snail mail", mainly because it doesn't happen as often as it used to!

Here's one I made for one of my daughters...Hard to see, but the card says, "U R Awesome! Congratulations on your new job! You will make a fabulous teacher!

I like this one, called "Collect", an everyday photo collection. You collect one phone a day from your iphone, (only available for ios) and it plops it into a calendar window for the day. After a month, you have a whole instant recollection (with tags and descriptions if you put them in) of each day of your life for that month. I just started mine the last few days of August, so here's what it looks like....the gator farm one day, a great dessert at the country club, Myakka River State Park flooded,  and some shells I bought from the Sea Treasures and Pleasures Store in Venice, FL. 

Here are few more of the apps that the iphone photography class reviewed. You can't see their reviews, but I thought it would be very helpful to have these at least listed with which operating system they work with. View #1--Hope you can see them!

More coming next time...maybe I'll just type a list!