Cool Site of the Day

So I found this cool site through clicking around on Facebook. It's a site of free MP3s. I've been downloading all day. The thing is, they're all songs by unsigned artists that upload them to the site. The truth is, I usually like songs by the undiscovered artists more than the popular artists out there, so this site is right up my alley. So go check it out. Go to www.GarageBand.com and start listening and downloading.

Cornucopia

Let's see. Lots to catch up on today.

First of all, after the hideous display the other night at Grace's soccer game, (hideous in terms of Grace being WAY above the level of most of the other kids), I called and had her bumped up to the level she was supposed to be at in the first place. She wasn't sure about switching teams, but she did, and she's now on the Bengals (as opposed to her original team of the the Eagles). They had their first game last night and it was MUCH better. There are some really good kids on her team (and the best ones are girls... WOOHOO!), and I think she'll learn a lot more at this level than at the younger level.

But I suck and totally forgot to take my camera with me, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait to see her in all of her black and orange glory. (As if you care. LOL!)

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Let's see. What else? Uhhh... not much actually in terms of what's going on here. So how about I review some more cool new (free) software. I'm in love. That's right my friends. I'm in love with Cozi. Cozi is a free online (or offline) family calendar/shopping list/organizer type thing. It's so freaking cool! You can enter all of your appointments, birthdays, etc. for everyone in your family and it automatically color codes each family member's activities. There's a separate tab for each family member, as well as one that displays everyone's stuff.

From the calendar, you can send a reminder to your email or phone or print it out. And get this. If you have other family members' cell phone numbers saved in your profile, you can actually right-click on an event, select a person from a list, and have a text message reminder sent right to their phone or a reminder email sent to their email account. No more excuses for hubby forgetting to pick up little Johnny at soccer practice!

There's also a shopping list area where you can type in your shopping list. And then, right from the main interface, with the click of a button, you can print the list, send the list to your cell phone, cross items off the list, etc. There's even separate lists for groceries, wholesale, etc. if you want to divide your lists up according to where you need to buy the stuff.

As if that isn't enough, it also comes with a cool automatic screensaver. You just tell it which directory on your hard drive your photos are stored and it automatically creates random collages of photos that appear as your screen saver. AND if you're watching your screen saver and you particularly like one of the collages, just click "S" on your keyboard and you can email that WHOLE COLLAGE to anyone you choose. Now how wicked cool is that?

And the best part of this? If you choose to download the local version to your computer and use that to enter your appointments, activities, etc., you can still access that stuff online from ANY computer ANYWHERE. How cool is that? It automatically syncs your local stuff with your online stuff. Sweet.

Anyway, go check it out for yourself. Again, it's called Cozi. And even if this doesn't sound like something you want, go sign up anyway because right now, if you sign up, you get a code for a FREE photobook from Shutterfly. And that's worth $30 or so, so what the hell, right? LOL! What are you waiting for? GO!

Photoshop Sites and Blogs...

These are especially for Tink, although I'm sure some of the rest of you will have fun browsing through them too. :)

First and foremost we have the Photoshop Killer Tips blog. This site kicks ass. Everyday, a new tutorial is posted. This guy is AWESOME at Photoshop. The tutorials are little 60-second or so movies so it's REALLY easy to follow along and see what to do.

http://www.photoshopkillertips.com/

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Next we have The Photoshop Blog. This one definitely has good tutorials, but I find the actual blog to be cluttered and hard to navigate. If you sift through all of the advertisements though, you can learn how to do some pretty cool things.

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/photoshop-blog/

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Next is Spraguelab. This blog is mostly geared towards using Photoshop (and Photoshop Elements) to digital scrapbook, but there are a quite a few tutorials that are specifically about doing cool things to photos. And she is FANTASTIC at explaining things so even a first-timer can understand.

http://spraguelab.squarespace.com/blog/

And here's the direct link to where all of her tutorials are listed. (She posts a new one every Friday):

http://spraguelab.squarespace.com/photoshop-friday-index/

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Next is the Photoshop Roadmap. Sign up for their newsletter and every day or so, you'll get an email with REALLY cool things you can learn to do in Photoshop (like aging a woman's face in a photo and creating a pancake monster, complete with teeth... LOL!). This site also has a bunch of free brushes, downloads, plug-ins, etc. Good stuff.

http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/

 

I have plenty more, but I can assure you that you will spend hours (or days even) just messing around with these sites, so I'll post the rest later. :)