Thursday, November 17, 2011

Can It Be?

Yes! Sewing for MEMEMEMEMEEEEEEEE has begun! I've cut out a long-sleeved draped neck top from the pattern morph of my TNT Ottobre tee from the print I showed you the other day.The Fire makes a good pattern weight. ;-)


I'll sew this up tomorrow night for FSNI and maybe I'll get something else done too. I'm full of ME mojo!




Handmade by Heidi


But I'm actually not too worried about quantity right now. It will be a very casual Thanksgiving and if I have to wear the same 2 pairs of jeans the entire time, I'll survive.

The hard part for sewing output will be keeping myself off my new Kindle Fire. I just adore this little gizmo. Between it and my phone, they do everything computer-wise I want to do while I'm away from my desktop — which, let's face it, is mostly just playing. ;-)

I'm not going to do a full review of the Fire because there are lots of them around. This one (Yes, it's that good) covers all the main points and I think it's very accurate. But I'll share my thoughts over the next few days/weeks as they come to me and I'll try to answer questions left in the comments.

I connected to my county library last night and downloaded 4 books, for FREE. Love the library. Love NOT GOING to the library to get books. It was so easy, as Amazon and my library talk to each other and all I have to do is check out the books and then go to my Amazon account and send them to my Fire. The whole process took about 5 minutes, after I had decided on the books I wanted.

But have I even cracked any of them yet? Nope. I'm currently reading Water for Elephants, downloaded for free from Amazon's Lending Library (well, "free" if you sub to Amazon Prime, which I did because it's well worth it). I see a little label on it with 32%, so it looks like I'm just about one-third done with it already.

This is my actual Fire, complete with smudgy fingerprints. These are all Droid X cellphone pics, BTW. Not bad. I emailed them to my desktop from my phone. Hah. I'm such a dork.

If I have any complaint at all, it's that my cover/case has still not shipped. Apparently, the green is on backorder. So I ordered a brown one tonight. I can live without green but I WANT a cover for this thing before my trip.


As you can see, it's set up like a bookshelf. You scroll through side to side and up/down and the media flips like on a carousel. It's a pretty intuitive interface, although there is a good manual pre-loaded too. I'm a geek. I like to read manuals and always do that when I get a new anything.

I don't know if I'd buy one as a gift for the technology-challenged for just reading. A lesser Kindle should be fine for that and lots cheaper. I can't compare e-ink to the Fire's display because I've never seen or used e-ink. I'm so used to reading on a screen that that aspect doesn't bother me a bit.

I love being able to eat my lunch at work and read at the same time without needing to prop up a book or rearrange when I need to turn pages. I look like quite the dweeb reading on my Fire with earbuds to my phone in my ears. Very convenient that my office PC has 2 front USB ports so I'm always charging.

I love that the screen is big enough to not feel puny to my old eyes, like my phone. Video is gorgeous on it, and streaming is very smooth. Almost better than cable. The color/resolution is beautiful. Better than my phone, I think, a Droid X, and equal to Alex's Droid Razr.

I've downloaded some magazines onto it, but I haven't really explored what's available yet. It definitely would be great if Threads would go the e-book route. How do we start a write-in campaign. I've looked at Lucky, Self, and Glamour because those were free. Lucky isn't very interactive but it's just as good as reading the paper version to me, without the hassle of deciding what to do with old issues. The other two have interactive extras, which is both cool and annoying because I feel like I'm losing my place. But that's just the newness talking. I'll figure out my own process. I also wonder if it's my imagination but the advertisement pages seem to need an extra swipe to turn the page, like they are programmed to be looked at longer. It wouldn't surprise me if this is true, but I honestly like ads in magazines so it doesn't bug me.

Susan asked if there's a spreadsheet app. There is, an actual spreadsheet, but I haven't used it yet. I don't see me loading up either my phone or my Fire with a pattern or fabric catalog. Too much work to do that. ;-) But maybe I can export my pattern catalog from ListPro (Palm days) to something to work on one of them. But I'm not in a rush to do that yet. There are also other cataloging apps that I haven't explored yet.

Speaking of Palm, I *love* that there's a Graffiti app for my phone so I can "write" with my finger in Palm-ese. I'm much faster with that than texting on a tiny keyboard. I can type 90+ wpm on the real keyboard and about 8 on the phone. Hah. I hope Kindle gets that app too, although its keyboard is big enough that I don't feel clumsy on it.

And with that, I'm going to go watch the end of the football game and browse through an e-magazine, but I couldn't let this comment from Bev pass:

"Are you sure you're getting a divorce? Any time there are issues, you guys are there for each other."

Yes, I am definitely getting a divorce. And, no, we are not there for each other. Only one of us is there for anyone and she's tired of living on this one-way street. ;-)

11 comments:

  1. lucky you!
    I have the nook with e-ink and it is super fabulous for reading. No glare at all. Love it. I have a first gen, would love the new tablet or just the e-ink touch. If you are going to be reading a lot---the e-ink is soooo much better on the eyes than one that is backlit. Altho, magazines are much more colorful on a color unit.

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  2. Debbie, you make the Fire sound so tempting, especially at 3 am.

    I will need a new replacement for my nearly three year old Ipod Touch, which feels way too small, soon.

    No, no, I must be strong!

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  3. Couldn't you sew your own case? I think it would be awesome if you had a case with little pockets or whatever exactly where YOU want and need them. Also: In YOUR cute fabric choices.

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  4. Good to hear that you like your Kindle. I've got an original Ipad and just love it. I downloaded the kindle app for ipad and have bought and downloaded and read many books from the amazon store.

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  5. Re: an e-edition of Threads magazine... they already make a DVD of their archive with yearly updates available - so most of the hard work is done already LOL!

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  6. """Yes, I am definitely getting a divorce. And, no, we are not there for each other. Only one of us is there for anyone and she's tired of living on this one-way street. ;-)"""

    Strange, but you still share a bedroom, as I think you said and you picked went out and collected him after the accident. Why not go see a marriage councillor (sp?)together, of course. Work on things. I know divorce sometimes seem like the solution but then that is the easy way out if the marriage does not endanger your life.
    I once read an article about Anne Burda and her marriage, and in fact she did an interview on her life. She thought divorce was ridiculous and that women had nothing from it...of course we are all entitled to our own opinions on that. But, when she found out that her husband was seeing someone else and had a child with 'the other woman', she took him to task, demanded that he handed over the publishing house to her, he was kept on of course, then she went on to buy out the failing business of 'the other woman' who had a small publishing house too!
    I think that was quite smart of Anne. Had she divorced what would she have had left with 3 boys to raise? Anyways, just a little story to brighten your day...smile....yeah, I know!

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  7. I'm intrigued by the Fire - can you Skype with it???

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  8. Thank you for sharing your kindle fire thoughts.

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  9. I thought the comment from yesterday that Debbie responded to was a little weird, but thought maybe it was from a friend. The anonymous comment today is beyond creepy. Anon, I can't tell if you're concern trolling or just that daft but EWWWW.

    Anyway, moving on... I'm glad you're loving the Fire and that you've gotten a chance to use it! My small children and their grabby hands have kept me from playing with my new iPad as much as I'd like.

    I hope you enjoy a weekend of sewing for yourself and getting to know your new toy!

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  10. I am envious, I wish I could just sew! But everytime I sit down to sew, I have to deal with some *crazy* family member who needs a hand held! UGH! Anyway, enough complaining - thank you for the link on the Kindle Fire. It sounds very tempting . . . also, I enjoy reading about your sewing projects.

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  11. So glad you are sewing for you again, and the Fire seems like fun. You already answered my question about reading on the Fire. I have a Kindle and love reading on it, and I'm not sure I could read (like read books for pleasure) on a backlit screen like the Fire. But since you haven't had a device with e-ink, you can't comment. Maybe a future version of the Fire will be a tablet like it is, plus an e-ink reader. Now that would be awesome.

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Thank you for each and every comment. I appreciate them all, but I have to be honest and let you know that I'm usually bad about answering questions. I hope you understand that there just isn't enough time in the day to do everything I want to do.

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