Have you read The Lego Star Wars magazine recently? No?

Have you read The Lego Star Wars magazine recently? No?

You’re missing out. Well, at least I enjoyed it.

To be fair, it wasn’t really the magazine itself I enjoyed. You see last weekend we went down to St Ives for my niece’s wedding. It’s a long old drive from Cumbria so we decided to treat the boys to their choice of a magazine for the journey.

Anyway, this type of magazine usually has some kind of game in it, so when we got to the hotel, Alastair, Edward and I sat down to play it. The only snag was you needed a dice… and we didn’t have one.

I wasn’t about to drive all the way home to get one… but luckily it didn’t matter.

A few seconds later and I’d downloaded an app onto my phone that would “roll” a dice for you. You can even tell it how many dice you want to roll so if you need two you don’t need to roll it twice.

Better than trying to make a spinner out of a drinks mat and a pencil…

Now that app is on my phone, ready for if I ever need it again.

But my point isn’t really just about the dice app (It’s just called “Dice” and is by a company called Teazel if you do want to try it – it’s in the Google Play Store with a picture of a red dice as its symbol).

It’s that whenever you’re thinking “If only I had a whatever with me” it’s worth stopping and thinking whether there might be an app you can download to your phone to do that.

Want a dictionary? Your phone or tablet can definitely do that. A calculator? It probably has one already. A torch? Yep, you can get an app for that.

A magnifying glass? You can download apps that turn your phone into one, though you might find just turning the camera on and pointing it at whatever it is will do the trick. I just tried it and it worked brilliantly – probably better than most real magnifying glasses! Definitely something I’ll remember next time I need to see something closer.

Depending on the camera you might be able to zoom in on the camera and use it as a sort of telescope as well.

A pocket radio? Well, you probably have an app already for the radio but it might only work with headphones plugged in (they work as the aerial). But you can download apps for particular radio stations that don’t need headphones.

So there you go – it’s not just a phone (or a tablet). It’s also a set of dice, a radio, a magnifying glass, a calculator, a torch and umpteen other things as well.

New iPad and iPhone books
The new iPad and iPhone books I mentioned last time are still available.

I’m not going to mention this again, but in case I confused you last time and you’re wondering what I was going on about, the short version is Apple have updated the system that runs nearly all iPhones and iPads – you’ll get the update shortly if you haven’t already.

So we’ve updated our books to cover the new version and they’re available here (you can choose which books you want) or by calling 01229 777606.