Free Sounds

I was reading my dad's blog today, and he posted a link to a whip-poor-will call. He was talking about the difference between the whip-poor-will's call and the call of another bird, and it was very nice to be able to hear what he was talking about. While I was listening to the bird sound, I noticed that it was hosted on a site I hadn't seen before, so I had to check it out.

It's called soundboard, and there are all kinds of free sounds and sound effects - tens of thousands, they say. You can browse the site to find sounds you like, or that fit a particular blog post. Sound boards are organized by category, or you can search for the sound you need. You can download the sounds you want. Sign up for a free account and upload your own sounds, you get 125MB storage, or just add the sounds you like from other members' sound boards. You can even choose a specific sound and embed that into a blog post or website, like this:


(I'm watching a Star Trek special on the History Channel, so I thought this was appropriate)

I suppose my dad could have done the same thing with his whip-poor-will call, but then I wouldn't have had to visit soundboard! I just signed up for my free account because I think this site is going to come in handy.

BloggerStyles Free Blog Templates

Here's another source for blog templates.

BloggerStyles converts Wordpress themes into Blogger templates. There are some really nice looking templates here. All templates have been tested and rated, using criteria such as browser compatibility, proper display of images, links, comments, and more. There are 27 pages (as of now) of great-looking templates to browse, preview and download. Is your new template there?

Another Template Source

Falcon Hive - Wordpress themes Bloggerized. There are some really nice templates here. There is one that I especially love, and I'm tempted to start using it. Still thinking about it, but I definitely want to be able to find this site again. Check it out and see if you don't agree.

Free PhotoShop Brushes

Image by Counteract.
via Flickr

This is a great site to get free Photoshop brushes. Filter by category or Photoshop version to find brushes you can use. I downloaded a bunch of them today, because they all look so neat. Then I found this tutorial in some of the comments, so I had to try it. I'm not completely happy with how it turned out on the first try, but I can see some potential here.

Now, if I can just remember that I have these tools to use.

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Gone, Forever

Image via CrunchBase

Just a word of advice - if you haven't upgraded to a Pro account on Flickr, do not whatever you do mark an old photo that is no longer part of your photostream as 'private' or you will never see it again.

And since that was a really long sentence, let me explain. I don't upload enough photos to Flickr to justify a Pro account, so I've never upgraded. Instead, I just put the thumbnails on a webpage or in a blog post and link them to the photo page. Flickr makes it easy by providing the code. Then, should I ever want to use those photos for anything, I can still find them.

Yesterday Cory asked me to remove a picture in one of my blog posts. I thought I could just mark that photo as private, and I could still see it because it's my picture, but no one else could see it. Wrong. As soon as I marked it private, I was redirected to a page that said I didn't have permission to view that photo. I hit the back button on my browser and tried to change it back, but that didn't work. As far as I can tell, that photo is gone, forever.

Yes, I have it here on a DVD, but I can't find it on Flickr any more.

Another tip for people like me who haven't upgraded to the Pro account on Flickr: tag all of your photos with your username or something unique to you. Then, you can always search Flickr for photos with that tag, and your photos will be the ones that come up - all there, whether they're still part of your photostream or not. Unless, of course, they've been made private. :P