I got home just in time to gather everything up and go to dinner with my friend Angele. Then it was off to Fiber Therapy. By the time I got back, I barely had time to unload pictures before I needed to go to bed.

Today was another busy day. I had a meeting this morning. By the time I got back to the building at around 11, the school web site had lost most of its navigation, the battery on one of the school wireless phones had died, someone else was having a crisis with their computer, and UPS had delivered most of the toner that I’d ordered earlier in the week. I spent the afternoon clearing up all of those messes.

After school, my third year Computer Club kids got together for the first time this year. The kids were so happy… You would think that I’d been ignoring them for a year!

They were so full of energy, which turned out to be a good thing. We spent about an hour unboxing and labeling 32 NetBooks. (Each box contained two more boxes, and each box needed flattening so that they could go in our paper recycling.) By the time that the kids cleared out, I had a huge dumpster filled with flattened cardboard (with another huge pile of cardboard stacked next to it), two huge trash bags full of styrofoam, a trashcan full of plastic, and two carts loaded with NetBooks, cords, and CDs.

Bless those kids! I don’t know what I’d do without them!

When I got home, I was too tired to go out and take a picture elsewhere, so I just took a picture of a pretty flower on one of Little Grump’s hats. (Yes, she wears hats with flowers!)

Little Grump has been talking about wanting a tablet device for the computer for months. I had done some research on Amazon and found one that would be not too expensive but functional for what she wanted.

If you’re not familiar with tablet input devices, they’ve been around for years. It looks like an over-grown trackpad, but uses a pen for input. It allows the user to draw as if they were drawing on paper, but the output is on the computer instead. The least expensive one was about $70. The most expensive is over $2,000. I was looking in the $100-175 price range.

We went over to the Apple store in Fort Worth, but we didn’t tell her why. When she walked in, she was dazzled. The Apple store is pretty amazing for anyone who likes Apple devices. When I walked her over to the shelf with the Wacom tablets, her eyes started to mist over. We quickly picked one out, and, as the clerk checked us out, she kept saying, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

As soon as we got home, she started working with it right away, and I have to say that I’m impressed. Within a half hour, she was sketching away on the computer and declaring that the device was a miracle.

She is so happy! She says that it exceeds her expectations, which makes me happy.

She was also quick to send out messages to her friends from school to let them know of her gift. I think she could probably be a good salesperson for tablet devices, because more than one of her friends now wants one too.

I look forward to seeing what all she creates with it. Maybe she will even let me share something that she has created someday!

It’s certainly not a bad app. As I said, I’ve used it and depended on it. They’ve added a web interface so that patterns can be set up at a conventional computer rather than tap-tap-tapping at a touch screen. For me, it wasn’t that hard to figure out.

I never thought about how usable JKnit was until I introduced my friend Wendy to JKnit. To say that she seemed a little mystified is likely an understatement.

JKnit relies on a series of forms to allow the user to re-define the pattern into small, discrete pieces. There is a problem with that. I never really thought about it, but as a programmer, I’ve been trained to break big problems down into small black boxes. I’ve learned how to make things less concrete and fit them into more generic structures.

Not everyone has that skill though. For some, it really IS a bit much to ask them to break down a pattern and figure out whether a row with some increases scattered at seemingly random intervals is “increase left”, “increase right”, “increase evenly”, or the ever-reliable (and often over-used) “other”. It’s even more of a stretch to ask them to do that without introducing an error into the mix.

The other issue is that it has no charting capability. If you’re not a big fan of charts, it’s not a big deal. If you love charts with all of your heart, it’s a deal-breaker.

I’ve also tried Goodreader quite a bit. It’s a generic PDF reader that allows “mark-ups”. For me, “mark-ups” means a translucent line that allows me to mark where I am in the pattern. Think of it as a straight-edge on a conventional piece of paper.

My very favorite feature of Goodreader is that I can connect it to the Ravelry pattern library. If I’ve added a pattern to my Ravelry library (either through purchase or access to a free pattern), I can easily download the pattern from Ravelry and store it on my iPad even when there is no WiFi available. It has been a gift because I can keep multiple patterns ready “just in case”.

On the down-side, there’s no row counter. If I have to repeat the same section several times, the only way to keep track of the iterations is if I use another counter.

Today, I started playing with KnitCompanion. It provides the ability to read a PDF as well as row counters. The set-up of projects is far more intuitive than JKnit. The user can break a PDF down into portions with just a few finger flicks. Up to four counters are available, so that you can say, “I’m on row 4 of the 5th repeat.” That will come in very handy! There’s even a place to store a stitch key (another feature that JKnit lacks). I set up the Flapjack Frogs pattern that I’m working on up in about 5 minutes and was back to knitting!

Is KnitCompanion perfect? Nope. If you are working on a chart, there’s a nice straight edge to help keep your place, but not if you’re working on a conventional text pattern. There’s also no Ravelry connection. So to get a pattern from Ravelry, one must use GoodReader to access the pattern and then use a command within Goodreader to open the pattern in KnitCompanion. (Alternatively, you can load the pattern when sync-ing the iPad.)

The other HUGE downside of KnitCompanion is the price… 16 bucks!

Yep… I said that right. Sixteen bucks!

That’s a big pricetag, especially when compared with Goodreader, which can be used for all kinds of PDFs, and JKnit.

However, I started to think about the price in terms of some of my other knitting tools. I have one pair of needles that I bought for about $30. They are one size (4) with a specific cable length (24″). I’m not going to use them for ever project, but they’re beautiful and comfortable. The quality exceeds those of the needles that I typically use. If one good pair of needles that I can’t use on every project is worth $30 to me, why wouldn’t an app that I can conceivably use with every project be work $16?

I went ahead and bought the full version for $16. I just so happened to have an iTunes gift card for $20. I can think of no better use for a gift card than on an item that I wouldn’t otherwise buy because of the price!

So which app is “best”? Unfortunately, as with many things in life, it depends. I’m still not done with rigorous testing with any of them. However, I suspect that it will depend on what one is doing.

For my part, I think that I will continue to use all of them. Which I choose to use will depend on the case and my mood.

Every year, I start with an empty cart. At most, it has a spray bottle with vinegar and water and a soft cloth (for cleaning monitors) and my iPad (for updating inventory).

Every year, I finish the last room with a cart filled with miscellaneous cables, cords, and crap!

How is it possible?

One would think that eventually, the rooms would run out of cords. But no… This year was actually the best year so far. (Last year, I had two carts full of junk!) So I guess it’s progress.

I figure that it’s probably kind of like the force that removes and/or returns socks from the dryer. Somewhere there’s another universe where there’s a poor campus tech looking around for missing cables. If she came to my universe, she’d find them!

The teachers came back to the building today. I spent my day running from room to room and connecting classroom networks and various computer-related devices.

The teachers are dears and always want to know what they can do to help. It’s usually easier for me to just plow through the task. (If the cords are untangled, it’s easy!) However, if someone is insistent (like they crawl under the desk and ask me which power cord to plug in), I let them.

Several of the rooms have rather complex set-ups… Computers, projector, document cameras, VCRs, speakers, a printer, and more all connect together. In one, the teacher was one of those that crawled under the table and plugged things in for me.

She plugged in the first cord. A few seconds later, I hear a loud sound. It was like something had fallen off my cart and snapped, but we checked the cart and found nothing amiss.

She plugged in another cord. Nothing happened.

Then she plugged in another.

Pop! We both jumped a bit!

We looked around to find the source of the sound. At first, it seemed like nothing.

I smelled something burning though. Then I looked down and noticed the smoke rolling out of the switch!

I quickly disconnected it and pulled it off the table. Then I looked at the power bricks that had been plugged in so far. One was 15 watts (for the switch). The other was 18 watts (for the speakers). Apparently we had reversed the cords and plugged the one for the speakers into the switch.

Oops. One switch… extra crispy.

This one wasn’t so bad, but some of them are a huge mess!

Today, I played with Pixelmator. It’s pretty much a replacement for Photoshop. It has some pretty fun features, including this filter that turned a picture of a ball of rubberbands into a very pretty kaleidoscope.

Overall, I like Pixelmator. It appears that there will be a new version that adds even more Photoshop-like features to the package. I look forward to seeing how those work.

On the down-side, it was rather slow on my MacBook Pro. Granted, my computer is no longer the speediest horse out of the gate, but Photoshop Elements still performs admirably. I think the difference is that Photoshop Elements uses disk caching to kind of fool the computer into behaving as if it has more memory than it does. Pixelmator doesn’t have that capability, and the performance suffers because of it.

Still, for the cost difference ($29 instead of Photoshop Elements’ $79), it still does a great job. ($900 is MUCH more affordable than $2400!)

So I came home, drank lots of water, took a shower, and napped for a couple hours. I so needed it!

It has been a lazy afternoon since.

At some point, I checked on the status of the iPad that Mr. Grump ordered for me for Mother’s Day.

I love that the status was updated tomorrow!

Then I used Google Earth to figure out how to get from there to here.