scatterpig

This post was going to be more about house hunting and my new style board over at Pinterest, but really I think I want to share how much I love the direction digital magazine publishing is taking – mainly thanks to tablet devices such as the iPad.

Martha Stewart Living is a perfect example of publishers and designers harnessing the potential of digital issues of their magazine – it’s full of interactive features, video, sound, panoramic images and external links. What grabbed me right away is not only the great quality of images but the structure of the pages: scroll down through a story, flick to the right to the next article, jump to the bottom of a story for this recipe and then easily return to the point of the story you were up to. It’s very well done :)

I’m just testing an app that offers many magazines through it’s service, Zinio, I’m off to a rocky start with it due to a special National Geographic price download offer that was rejected at the final checkout due to the fact it is only valid for US subscribers – but it certainly has a large variety of magazines on offer.

I like that the Martha Stewart Living app is focussed just on their magazine and the experience is tailored just for them, already downloading the next issue :)

We were trapped by some rain on a walk into the city over the weekend, so I took the opportunity to play with a new iPhone camera app that I found last week. Silly name, Hipstamatic, but a fun app.

Something I found irritating but now like is that you can’t just run the app as a filter on existing images in your iPhone Photos, it’s nice to have to think about what combination of pretend filters and film you’ll use to take a picture rather than dressing up a boring iPhone photo.

I took screen shots of the app in use… you’d be better off checking out the website :)

*The flower photo was on the way home after the sun had been back out for a while.

The photo above I snapped with my phone on my way to climbing yesterday, then ran it through ShakeItPhoto for iPhone – pretty cute app and I have a soft spot for overly processed looking saturation and exposure effects so I’m having a bit of fun with it at the moment.

Climbing felt just spectacular yesterday despite my injury last week and a shaky start, I attempted climbs above my current level and completed each one – not looking particularly elegant or controlled in the process, but I got there!  I then had a quiet afternoon home so I sat down and finished knitting Mousie by Ysolda Teague and just about finished the Drawstring Chemise. It’s blocking at the moment, I just have to seam it, complete the arm holes, and then make a decision about what to use for the drawstring. Even with all of this Christmas weight, looking at it all laid out I can see I’ve gone overboard with the positive ease… I’m pretty sure I’ll just give it to my Mum, I think she’ll like it :)

Photos of these projects to come. I have a fairly busy day today, I have to make time for some baking this afternoon for Australia Day tomorrow and then more climbing tonight (yay!).

Apple Cinema Display

Magic Mouse

I love my macbook pro, it’s seriously the best computer I’ve ever had, but I need to rethink his current friends. I’m planning to introduce him to a new display and mouse, a magic mouse at that! ;)

My Dell secondary monitor at home is driving me crazy, no matter what I have tried there’s just too much yellow in the display. As I begin the colour calibration for a brief instant it flashes to a perfect setting, but of course you can’t capture the settings of that flash, so I go through the options and even though it seems like I’ve got it just right… too much yellow or suddenly way way to much contrast. I of course blame the monitor and decide an Apple Cinema Display is an absolute necessity :)

The Magic Mouse just looks really cool and intuitive in the way it works.