Me and My Two wonderful Kids!

It’s Hot Outside!

This summer has been nothing but a scorcher for me and my kids.  Every day its just so hot, but there isn’t much we can do.  I’m in between jobs again, I really hate that.  So if you know anything about kids, they are constantly wanting to jump around and do something.

“I’m bored!‘, said Timothy.  Slouching about.

“Can I play with your iphone?“, ask Timothy!

Although I really get upset when he ask that question because I don’t have any Apple Products,  I really have no reason to have an Apple product.  I really don’t trust Apple and their strict ways, so I tend to keep away.  I on the other had have an Android HTC Inspire that I unlocked.

Having to worry about my school work is one thing but having to come up with things for my two kids to do while I’m studying or even keep them busy is a whole other task.   

No one said this would be easy!

Having been a parent for several years, I am quit good at finding games that they won’t learn something or other with.  I’m constantly asking myself this question “How can I get them to think outside the box?“.  I’m sure as a parent this is something we all deal with from time to time.  It is something that we are constantly trying to evolve, after all we just don’t want them to play mindless games all summer.  It is my hope that they keep developing their math, their english, and their spelling skills for when they go to Junior High and also High School.  

Educational Games to Play on Android!

I’d figure I’d give you a way to have your kids learn while playing type of situation.  I know nothing we do will prevent them from not playing games but at least we can try to encourage them to play the right games.  I won’t say this is ever going to be easy because, kids will always be kids and they will have their own attitudes and personality.  We can at least try to keep them from becoming a vegetable in the summer time.

My List of Education Games to play:

• Sprinkle — Although this doesn’t have any actually match or spelling, it does however use a lot of physics and thus is good clean game that they can play because it does sometimes make you think out side of the box per say.
• Spelling Sea Word Game — The more you play this the better your spelling will become.  I’ve seen my daughter improve in spelling and they do have levels that are acceptable for anyone who is a beginner to an expert.  Should at least see if your kids will want to play this game!
• Math Attack — I know most kids hate math but it does do some good from time to time.  I haven’t had them complain to much when they play this game. 
• Math Training for Kids — This is another math game that my kids have not complained about.  I’m sure they would want some other’s but usually I try to keep the minimum of the non educational games on my Android Device!
• World of Goo — Although this isn’t an educational game per say, it does however make the kids think outside of the box and figure out how to solve problems or puzzles.  This is a great way to encourage them and get them ready for a job. I must warn you, that no actual goo was harmed in the making of this game!
• Cut the Rope — Again this is another good problem solving game that will keep them thinking outside of the box and keep them entertained for hours on end.  They will learn problem solving skills just by playing these types of games!

I won’t do all the work for you but at least I can send you on the right direction.  These are just a few that I’ve installed in my HTC Inspire to make sure my kids will learn something other than not learning at all when they play my Android phone.  If you have more games that you know that might benefit others, you can check out my discussion board and register.   Let others know what you know and help out the community.

Paul Sylvester

New Forums are available!

If you would like to find send me a note or just say something that you are interested in.  The Discussion board is now up and running.  I will be monitoring them in the coming weeks but they are intergrated into the site.  If you want to join the fun.  Here is one place you can find out about Specials that I have found and keep up to date on those really good deals that I find through my affiliate networks!

Paul Sylvester

I’m back into the game!

It hasn’t been a real secret the last few months but if you didn’t know, I am in the process of getting a divorce.  It probably isn’t something that is going to shock or amaze people.   You’d probably think it is normal to get divorce, and I’d tend to agree with you.   It however doesn’t mean, that I long for the touch of a female.  After all, I think it is ingrained in everybody to have someone special with them for most of their life.  I have started to look around to see what I could find in the way of Free Android dating Apps, but in truthfulness most of them fell short.

They’ve fallen and can’t get up!

As I’ve been looking around for all the free sites out there that might be useful in finding someone special, I’ve really haven’t found anything really significant out there but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few good runner ups out there that I would recommend to my friends and family.  I figure I at least point you in fairly safe direction and let you figure out which ones you may want to explore.

 

• Plenty Of Fish(POF for short) — I’ve been using this app pretty much every day checking to see what it would find.  I haven’t had any hooks yet but that just might be that I’m a blogger.  Most females, I think are a little turned off by that, don’t want to be in the lime light sort to speak!
• Skout —  I’ve pretty much given up on this app.  I constantly be bugged with advertising and thus it got really annoying really quickly.   I also didn’t like the atmosphere, they were always trying to get you to buy credits or something to impress girls.  I’m not here to impress just to date them.
• Zoosk — This one is pretty a joke but I thought I would at least tell you why.  They seem to think that you would want to pay to send and receive messages from girls.  I am not going to pay a monthly subscription for something that has no guarantees.  So it was good to a point but it wasn’t one that I’d recommend to a lot of people.  Zoosk was the one where I’d get those dating scams a lot, so you’d be best to look elsewhere!
• MIU Meet — I don’t really know what to say about this but It looks really promising,  It just recently came on the Android Marketplace and thus I haven’t had a lot of chances to play with this.  The User Interface is really good on this but other that one, I can’t say much else until I do more research on this one.
• OkCupid Dating — Another good look UI but haven’t yet had the chance to sit down and look into this one.  I will be doing that later on this week and updating this post when I find out if this one is really that good!

Those are the good but I do want to point out which ones you might want to avoid because they are basically a paid service, in which you have to pay a monthly fee!

Fee Based Services!

There are going to be several but I am going to at show you a few of the ones that I’ve found to be fee based.  It isn’t as though these sites are bad but they do have problems with the prices and since there is no guarantee that you will find someone.  I just don’t believe this is the right avenue for me!

• Match.com — I really don’t have a problem with this service but then again, I don’t want to be a paid member!
• Christian Dating Cafe — Another one of those but again, I really don’t have a problem with them it just isn’t my cup of tea!

As you can tell these are just 2 of the many sites out there that have their own agenda of charging people to do more things with their account. Most of these that you will go to will always have a paid version but I just wanted to show you some that you can use without having to pay just to send messages back and forth.  I hope this helps you and others find what your looking for!  

 

It wasn’t extremely difficult!

I am not saying you have to be an expert on Android, but it does help!  I didn’t have to do some things that would actually make it easier for me to install Android 2.3.7 but the hard part was first you will definately need to root and possibly unlock your cell phone!  I did have a few hiccups when it came to installing this new Android operating system.  In this little tutorial I will be discussing how to do that!  In case some of you were curious, I am using the HTC Inspire that I unlocked and rooted a few weeks ago!

After Unlocking and Rooting the Device!

You have several options available to you.  You could just leave it that way and use it with any carrier you may want to use or you could add Ice Cream Sandwich to your newly unlocked and rooted phone.  I will say that doing this may void your warranty of the phone in question, so it is best to only do this with phones that have no warranty that way if you brick your phone then having to worry about paying for it out of pocket if it is under warranty!  So I leave that up to you and I will make sure to tell you, I am not responsible for anything that happens to your phone.  You do this at your own risk.

Download the ROM Manager!

This is how I did to install the Android Ice Cream Operating System, but others may have their own way.  Some of the more user friendly ROM managers are:

 

• ROM Manager by Clockworkmod — I used this one to make to upgrade my phone to ICE Sandwich, I used my HTC Inspire which now my phone tells me it is a HTC Desire.  Guess they used the same hardware just changed the  name!  On a Side note, if you need to boot into recovery Mode, just press POWER+Volume down.  (You should clear cache, data, and something else but can’t remember on my HTC Inspire!)  
• Droid 2 Recovery Bootstrap by Clockworkmod — Haven’t used this but it is again by the same company so it must be decent enough!
• ROM Toolbox Lite by JRummy16 — Another one that I haven’t tried but looks promising!

These are just three that I’ve found but you must know that their are probably a dozen more ones out there that you may want to try.  These are just recommendations on which ones that I have used or might try later on!

Last step!

The last step is to find your mod that you are wanting to install and install it.  I used the Cynagenmod for my chance to have the Ice Cream Sandwich update, but it is totally up to you what mod you may want to install.  You just have to remember to backup your data that you think is the most important and remember that you have to pick carefully what you want to install and hope that it won’t brick your phone.  Which may be a possiblity, although unlikely.  

Paul Sylvester