stuff i found



Sweet dreams are made of these 
Who am I to disagree? 
I travel the world 
And the seven seas-- 
Everybody's looking for something. 
~ Eurythmics, Sweet Dreams


socrates advised us to know ourselves, ponce de leon spent his life looking for the fountain of youth, and francisco pizzarro wanted more gold than he could shake his toledo blade at.


indeed, everybody, apart from wanting to rule the world, is also busy looking for something.


just look at google.  really, all it does is it helps us look for things.  all sorts of things, granted, and most the size of needles in the vast endless mother-of-all-haystacks that is the internet.  and, well, look at google.  massive internet giant.  so massive, they're about the only company who can go to an entire country and say "we do not like what you're doing."  their presence is just ubiquitous, they have become a word.  not just a word mind you.  google is a noun and a verb.


now imagine that for a second.  nobody goes, "go microsoft where orchard road is"  or "go ibm what that means and sap it.  ill oracle it right after you're done."  but everybody, at some point has googled something.  "why can't my ipad read this file?  dude, either rtfm or google it."


yeah, i know i have succeeded when i have become a word.


anyhow.  myself, i've no ambitions, illusions or aspirations about helping people find stuff.  i'm busy enough looking for stuff myself.  even worse than most, i suspect, is that i am also busy trying to remember stuff i've already found.


trying to remember where i placed my keys, my wallet, my phone and my glasses is one thing.  trying to remember that insanely helpful photoshop masking tutorial is quite another.
sure, i could google it (see what i mean?), but i first have to remember what i had searched for when i found it.


yes, i've heard of de.li.cious, and no i cannot, for the life of me, remember my password, nor the email i used to create my de.li.cious account.


i once came up with the idea of putting all my passwords in a file so i don't have to remember anything.  brilliant, right?


of course nobody leaves a password file lying around.  that would be just daft, not to mention a recipe for disaster.  so being the cautious sort of guy that i am, i put a password on my password file.


we all know what happened next.


i've since understood that i am also a list kind of guy.  i like having lists, i like ticking things off lists, and i like looking at stuff from lists, instead of having to remember something to remember something to remember something.


and so here it is, a list of things and places and spaces, nooks and crannies that i have found in that vast unfathomable place called the internet.  not everything will be useful.  not everything will be interesting.


but i can assure you, quite a few things can be found, and  nothing will be forgotten.


at least not unless i forget the link to my own blog.


what i like looking at:
http://blog.50mm.jp/
http://www.dianevarner.com/
http://dbshanks.wordpress.com/
http://www.lightstalking.com/


what i like reading:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/

where i learn stuff:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/

where i go to find out stuff about stuff i want to buy:
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/
http://www.fredmiranda.com/