Fun Friday Resources

Now that I’m back on track, here are some resources to help you out during the Captivity.

Since everything is on Zoom these days, here’s a new website to help you create an actual event page for your Zoom thing: zmurl.com. I’m trying it out for my birthday next week: since I can’t have people over or go out, I’ll host a Zoom room out in the labyrinth where people can drop in and say hi and visit with each other. (If you’d like to come, shoot me an email.)

edited to add: After setting up an account, I was a bit concerned by the lack of transparency on the site: there is no About or Contact links, no info about who’s doing this, etc. A quick search on “who owns ZmUrl” gave me this article on TechCrunch, and it’s reassuring. The chat helpers on the site admitted they hadn’t got around to putting all that stuff up.

And because you’re bored with where you are, the fabulous people at the Public Domain Review have given us sixteen stunning backgrounds for your Zooming.

How about some resources to STEAL FROM THE BEST?

One interesting aspect of having to reconfigure your online life after a hard drive disaster is that as you type in the URL for your favorite websites, the browser doesn’t yet recognize where you’re heading and so you get autofilled URLs that you may have forgotten you ever visited.

Thus I rediscovered Synaptic Stimuli, a website where people can share collections of images they’ve found and present them with aphorisms/poetry/thought-provoking material. Lots to look at and use for your own inspiration.

Quick recap on the Precept of STEAL FROM THE BEST: It’s not the same as copying (although that is a good approach). If, for example you went to this page and were fascinated by the artist’s technique, STEAL FROM THE BEST would mean that you analyze how he did it, reverse-engineer it, and then use those techniques to see what you can do with it. I guarantee you that it will be nothing like the original artist’s work, but it will be yours.

Over at Open Culture, they have rounded up 270 short documentaries of artists at work. Again, watch what they do. Do that same thing. STEAL FROM THE BEST.

And at the Library of Congress — or as we librarians refer to it, the Mother Ship — they have a new project going: Citizen DJ, for all your mixing needs. If you really want to keep up-to-date with all the stuff they have for you to STEAL FROM, subscribe to one or more of their emails.