New Photography Site
My husband has been doing photography for a bit now and finally asked me to create a website for his photos. I spent the weekend finishing the setup and loading a sample of his photos.
What does this mean for my web design clients? Custom stock photography! We will be slowly building a large collection of images that can be used for stock photography for everything from web sites to advertising. Our goal will be to offer stock photos that will be of use to WAHMs and other small businesses for a reason price, with out needing to buy large amounts of credits to do so!
Eventually we may decide to expand this to product photography to go along with my graphic editing services. You’ll be able to have Web Savvy Mama not only design your website but supply the images to go along with your products! Of course, this is still a bit in the future, but the white box I made my husband build is just itching for use!
In the meanwhile, what would you like to see pictures of?
iOS 4 Critically Wounded My iPhone 3G
As an apple fan girl it pains me to say it, but my 3G iPhone is now almost completely unusable. I am incredibly disappointed with the lack of warning 3G users were given. It leaves me to wonder 2 things: did Apple simply drop the ball and not test enough on the 3G phones? Or was this killer iOS 4 software upgrade an intentional ploy to get 3G users, who are most likely near the end of their contracts, to upgrade to the new 4G phones? Either way it makes me instantly have painful flashbacks to my Microsoft days and the crippling money pit that was Windows ME. *shudder* Why Apple, why?!
I first thought that maybe it was just me. Perhaps I had a bad download and upgrade? Maybe I needed to reboot my phone more than a dozen times? Maybe I’m just expecting too much? A quick Google search confirmed my fears, 3G users all over are having issues and Apple has been silent.
Like most people, I anxiously plugged in my iPhone to do the upgrade that promised to rock. I knew I would be missing out on some features, but that was ok. At least I wasn’t being left in the dark like the 2G users were, right? I’d soon discover that perhaps they were the lucky ones. After upgrading my iTunes and struggling with the upgrade process freezing several times I finally decided to delete all backups and start over. I should have seen the signs and given up at this point. Over 2 hours later, or longer – after awhile I was too frustrated and just walked away to let it try to sort itself out, I finally had the coveted iOS 4 on my iPhone. Yay! Or so I thought.
It didn’t take long to figure out that my iPhone just wasn’t the same. As I was drooling over the new features I started to notice that my once fast companion was now very sluggish. My phone is not even half full so this shouldn’t be an issue. After several reboots the issue had not resolved. I took a deep breath and told myself I could deal with that. If that had been my only issue I could have lived with it, unfortunately it was just the beginning.
I’m not sure of the extent of other iPhone users’ issues because many are complaining about features that were not intended for our phones to begin with, but here is a list of the ones I have been having. For disclosure purposes I have a 8GB iPhone 3G. My husband has a 16GB 3Gs and while he has not experienced the vast list of bugs I have, he has noted quite a few himself. Each of us have iMacs that we use to sync our phones with.
Here are the wounds that are crippling my poor iPhone:
#1 Sluggishly slow. The phone lags so bad that texting or inputting any text on the phone can be almost painful.
#2 My phone freezes more than a slurpee brainfreeze in Antartica.
#3 Folder glitchiness. When switching between apps and folders they sometimes behave erratically, and then lead back to issue #2.
#4 Incoming calls randomly fail to display name or number.
#5 Incoming calls lagging when connecting, sometimes not able to even answer the call.
#6 Any notification received by the phone while in standby mode causes the phone to become non-responsive. This forces me to do a frustrated series of home button mashing while trying to restrain myself from chucking the phone across the room.
#7 When trying to simply wake the phone from sleep/standby mode the slider bar often is non-responsive. I found that I can bypass the slider button by performing the aforementioned home button mashing enough times. This causes my phone to suddenly come alive with a random app open. Hey, at least its past the dang slider bar screen!
#8 Random contact list and folder errors. I found that the phone function on the phone is very glitchy, especially the contacts. On several occasions now I’ve opened up my phone, selected my contact to call from my contact list, placed the call, finished the call, closed the phone and proceeded to open an app or do some other function on the phone before putting it back into sleep mode. When I decided to try to use the phone again I attempted to get to the home page and would find that the contact page would be open again and when I closed it a folder would be open as well. Its almost like my phone is trying to evolve into a multitasking phone on its own and failing miserably.
#9 Apps suddenly closing or crashing more frequently. Memory issues?
At times it seems my phone can’t decide what it wants to allow me to achieve. It feels like trying to convince a cranky overtired toddler that peas are the best food on Earth. In the end I am left with a barely functional iPhone and my family is avoiding me in fear that they may unintentionally get in the path of a flying phone if I lose my patience one.more.time. The 3G phone that I ran through the wash on extended rinse cycle is looking like it just might be more functional than my current phone is now. That is, as long as I don’t upgrade the OS on it.
Apple, where is the update? Why are you so silent on this?
Getting creative in other mediums!
I like to think of myself as a creative person, and that’s why I love to web design! When I’m not designing websites, going to school or working outside the home, I like to explore other creative outlets that let me experiment and play creatively! I recently found the fun of baking cakes and decorating them with a stiff frosting called fondant.
My 3 kids all have birthdays in Feb and March and love it when I bake their cakes for them. They get to pick out the flavor and how we decorate. This year I turned things up a bit and made fondant decorated birthday cakes. What a Hit! The kids had a blast picking out colors for the icing and telling me what they wanted. Mackenzie requested a ultra girly creation with lots of pink. Andrew just wanted anything race car. And my oldest child Joscelyne specified that “its gotta have a lot of flowers mom!” which turned into the ultimate pre-teen “dress” cake.
The hardest part is getting the courage to cut into and eat the fun cakes! My kids are already thinking up cakes for next year and I had a blast doing it! If you haven’t tried this yet I highly recommend giving it a shot. But I’m warning you now, its a highly addictive hobby!
Spelling as a Fine Motor Skill
The other day I was shopping Target and found some cool scrap booking letters in the dollar section. I just knew that I’d find a use for them out so I snatched them up! Then it hit me: Letter Tiles! I’m always looking for new ways to introduce letters and words in my preschool classroom and these are perfect. I used ceramic tiles that you can find at any home remodeling store to make these. The best are the double sided tiles, I used double sided tiles and place lower case letters on one side and upper case letters on the other.
Kids love to manipulate small objects and these are perfect for building and creating at the table. Even if the kids are not actually spelling they are getting letter exposure. It’s not uncommon to hear “Can you pass me the B please?”. To extend the letter play I created words that start with whatever letter of the week we are working on and then laminated them. We all brainstorm up these words during group time and then they get hands on play with the words they helped think of. The kids love matching letters to the words and showing off full words they have created!
Read More…
That Other Stuff – New Category
As many already know I am a mom of 3 children. Our middle child also has Autism. I’ve learned a LOT about Autism, Sensory Integration and all things related! I’m also a preschool teacher.
Working with my own children and also preschool children for years has given me a lot of ideas that I just HAD to implement or create and some I’d like to share with my blog readers. I’ve let the other site I had a lot of this hosted on fade out because it became too much work to keep several personal websites updated. I’m moving some of the favorites here so that others can still enjoy it. I get lots of messages and emails asking me when I’m “bringing xyz back again”. I also have a lot of resources for babywearing families and businesses as well that I’ll be moving here too.
So.. here it is!
Just for kids: Sling Moms!
Who needs Superman? We have Slingmoms! Moms are super heros too and we’ve learned to multi-task with style! Interactive coloring games and a digital paper doll babywearing game for your toddlers and preschoolers that celebrate babywearing and how ‘super’ it really is. It’ll have your little one saying: “I sling, what’s your super power?”
To get back here after playing a game please use your browser’s “back” button or bookmark this page. To clear a game, hit your browser’s “refresh” button.
 Interactive Sling Moms The origional interactive game. Help 2 Sling moms try on different slings and wear thier babies. |
 Wrap, on back An interactive coloring page with click and color features. |
***For more interactive games and coloring sheets please click here: Read More…