Fly Pen #2

My Fly Pentop Computer bundle, ordered from Leap Frog online, came via UPS a day earlier than they ‘said’ it would be delivered. So, it’s been here since early Tuesday afternoon, and I am enjoying using it here and there ever since.

Now I have to wait to get some of the FlyWare titles that will aide the family in Spelling, Writing, and Math functions, which are products made for the Fly Pen. The top comes off of the unit, and the “Fly Ware cartridge” of whichever title you have fits onto that space. The Fly Pen then works with the pre-printed Fly Paper for whatever FlyWare title you have, and somewhat on Open Fly Paper depending on what it is, as well.

I have Fear Factor games, it came in the bundle I purchased. It’s interesting. There is a pre-printed booklet, and that works with the Fly Pen. I have looked at it, but haven’t used it yet. I have looked at the sample Games booklet that came in the Launch Pad and find them fun and challenging enough to stay interesting to an adult, though they aren’t fully super adult challenging for smaries, you know, of course.

Anyway, there are game modes built into the Fly Pen as well, you use the Fly Pen and draw FlyCons on Open Fly Paper to create menus and game boards. Like for one, FlyMatch has quite a few categories, though not a ton of them, and you draw an even number of circles up to 20 to use as the game board. Then choosing categories and options, you use your game board by touching the Fly Pen to the circles. It’s harder than Leap Pad system games, since it’s blind and audial — you have to listen and remember where things are based on which circle you touched — it’s something to use to get the mind quicker, indeed. 20 circles makes it confusing, but it’s doable in decent time, just something to work at getting better at. It’s challenging for Tweens, no doubt. The lovely thing is, you make your game board as large, up to 20 circles, as you wish. I made two different sets of Fly Match on one notebook page in my Fly Notebook of Open FlyPaper. One is 20, the other is 10. FWIW

I used to do puzzles in puzzle magazines, but had dropped off of that in the last umph years, getting one in the past couple of years, and another sometime before that, but nothing like I used to get them when I was in my younger twenties, and before that too. It’s nice with the Fly Pen to have some mind quickening activities at my finger tips with the proper paper. I hope to get things moving faster and get back to some of the challenging puzzle mags sooner than later. (It’s important to keep the mind as lightening quick as you can all your life, and don’t let it slide for long when getting older, but keep it up, ramp it up, keep it going … )

I really do like this Fly Pen technology. It’s different, it’s interesting, and it takes active interest in it to make it work, and manual writing also, and well, it’s just a nice bridge for paper and computer … but on a different level than computer and printer, by far, quite more archaic, but new, different, a fleck of site into future development possibilities in this technological vein. It’s a tool for writing and figuring things out, and playing interesting match-up games, and making music. It has broader usage than that with Fly Ware, and I hope Leap Frog will develop more in this line than they did in the Leap Pad line, with Quantum Leap Pad especially, that was a dissapointment –> really.