@JimForADay over at iPA, you may recall, sent me a photo to play with. This post is a record of some of the stages I went through and my two favourite images after all the play/sketching/experimenting...what DOES one call the process?

The last first...these are the two images that I was most happy with;

I put Jim's iPhone photograph, (which is the first image in the 2nd and 3rd strips.) through Tiny Planet. Next was Stripecam, it's an app that I'm not 100% sure about, but as a tool simplify and focus on colour, it's excellent. Fracture came next. Water my Photo was the last one in this sequence and you all know how addicted to that I was for a while...but it did come after Kaleidoscope X. The 'X' is important, I don't like the app without the X...Kooleido is another kaleidoscope app that I love. Most of the others that I've tried have been a big disapointment. The two mentioned allow a good choice of variables and let you use photographs from your phone photo album.

I've been exploring Photo Studio again recently. Until now I've not used it very much, not sure why. Perhaps because of the amount of competition it has...yeah, I'm a bit of an app addict ;( This sequence is mix of Photo Studio filters and, naturally, Water my Photo again.

The Photo Studio filtering continues, but this time I start to layer the results using HDR Fix. I like using this for blending two images together - partly because it's quick and easy and partly because it allows for plenty of adjustment. Then I went to Juxtaposer to combine elements togther collage style. Juxtaposer was the best app for this for quite some time, now we have Superimpose too which has more scope but the UI isn't as intuitive.

I resized this with Paintbook - not sure what effect that will have on the quality of the image though...?

I'm wondering if I can keep a red theme going for 30 days...or maybe a primary colour for 10 days...we'll see on day 11 ;)

I have very little energy...or spoons as we fatigue fighters will often refer to it and I struggle to cope with it. I was lucky enough to do a 16 day pain management programme at the Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery some time ago and one of the main mantras there is 'Targeting & Pacing'

But I suck at pacing. Oh I can set targets...but pace myself? Just over 3 years with this illness and I'm still not dealing with it very well... A talented tweep Matthew Watkins pointed me in the direction of Michael Nobbs another talented chap who's being creative despite having ME/CFS.

Michael's site is jam packed with useful tips for those of us short on energy, but it's also useful for those who are short on time. There's a free email micro-mag every 2 weeks to try to keep you on track and usually a podcast too. Well worth signing up for... (go on, click the link and leave me...)

So Sand the point of this post is...? Well, Michael suggests splitting tasks into 20 minute chunks...kind of. You need to click on his name above to read the post I'm referring to. So I regularly set a timer on my pc or whatever for 20 -30 minutes, but when it goes off I have a habit of ignoring it... Not good eh? A quick surf around and I ordered this,

Now of course I just need to remember to use it...properly.