Another Cool Site: Vintage Printable!!! (And a Manifesto to Boot!)

 Need free vintage images? Then you will want to go here:

Vintage Printable


About Vintage Printable
"Vintage Printable provides public domain antique scientific, naturalist, and other images for you to print or download. The illustrations here are curated or, tossed as has been pointed out, by me, Swivelchair, an anonymous biopharma worker"

 Besides spending huge amounts of time feasting on the marvelous images to be found here, might I also suggest that you take a look at the site's About and Public Domain Manifesto page?

Swivelchair's take on the issues of copyright, public domain and who controls (or would like to control) access to information is important for everyone to know about. You may be surprised to find out who some of the players are in this game.

(Miss Bun is of the persuasion that Swivelchair ROCKS!)

It's TGIFF! Take a Poladroid!

Here is a fun app that mimics the Polaroid instant cameras of ye olden days.......remember them? Now you can create your own instant Polaroid (sort of) pics and get a real slice of retro to boot! (It's free, too!)

First go here: Poladroid Project and download the application.

 Then go a little crazy! (You know you want to!)

The fun part is watching your photo develop. Love the sound effects, too! Just like the real thing!

Here is a Miss Bun favorite photo of kids painting a mural in the library's Young Adult room. How cool is that all vintaged out with Poladroid???

And in case you want a little history check out what Wikipedia has to tell us about Instant Cameras.

Enjoy!

P.S. Thanks to the Snowbound in NH!!! You always find the coolest stuff!

Do You Know the Snowflake Man???

Wilson A. Bentley, aka "Snowflake Bentley", from Jericho, Vermont was only 19 when he made the world's first photomicrograph of a snow crystal in 1885. His process was so unique and innovative that professionals at first doubted his results and his veracity.


 "In 1898, at the age of 33, he began to publish articles of his findings and images. He published 49 popular and 11 technical articles about snow crystals, frost, dew, and raindrops, including the entry on "snow" in the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica."

During his lifetime he filled nine notebooks with 47 years worth of observations and lived to see his book, Snow Crystals, published.

To learn more about this fascinating scientist & his work check out these links:

The Bentley Snow Crystal Collection of the Buffalo Museum of Science
(includes his photographic process, bio, photographs, notebook entries, articles & more!)

Wilson A. Bentley, The Snowflake Man
( by the Jericho Historical Society)

More resources below :

Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

is the author's site about her 1999 Caldecott Award winning book that has good resources for classroom teachers & homeschoolers.

Kind of makes one look at the white stuff in a whole different way, doesn't it?

Enjoy!

Make Your Own Advent Calendar

Here is a nice template and instructions for making an Advent Calendar using your own photos from the good people at Kodak.

Yes, I know the season has started already but there is always next year, right?

Enjoy!

Mind Your Manners @ the McCord Museum of Canadian History!

The McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal was founded in 1921, and embodies the vision of  passionate collector, David Ross McCord, whose abiding wish was to shed light on the history and cultures of his country and thus bring its people together.

Here you will find online exhibits, history online, thematic tours, educational resources and more!

The website of the McCord Museum is definitely worth a visit if you do nothing else but try the Mind Your Manners role playing game for the Victorian Era. (FYI: there is also one for the Roaring Twenties). 

 This online game has many delightful Monty Python-esque attributes. Be sure to have your sound on. (Miss Bun especially appreciated the fate of the lady who wore the wrong dress to the evening dinner at home.) The whole game is very amusing! And be sure to check out the other interactive games to be found on this interesting site. 

P.S. A "thank you kindly" to my sources in New Hampshire for alerting me to this site!

Days of the Dead. . .

 

Between October 31st and November 3rd many cultures around the globe celebrate remembering the dead in some fashion or another.

Days of the Dead from Boston.com is an interesting photo journal of those celebrations from the White House to Paris to Mexico and beyond.

(It's always fun to see what the neighbors are up to!) Enjoy!

A Haunting We Will Go . . .

LibraryGhost is all about Willard Library (over 110 years old & the oldest public library building in the state) in Evansville, Indiana and the Lady in Grey who walks alone among the bookshelves there.

 There are ghost cams set up in three locations in the library that avid library ghost hunters can watch to their hearts content as well as photos, videos, and related links to explore.


It's too bad that some of the links don't work but that shouldn't stop you from checking out this awesome Victorian Gothic building that any self-respecting phantom would be honored to call home.

Halloween road trip, anyone?

Who ya gonna call????

Ready For An Adventure Without Leaving Home?

Extreme Fullscreen QTVR (quick time virtual reality) is a directory of fullscreen panoramas of buildings, museums, events, landmarks and more that you can explore with your mouse.

Each tour has multiple views to explore. It's almost like being there! Check it out!

This site is a collaborative effort between Hans Nyberg of panoramas.dk,
and Marco Trezzini of VRMAG.org, the Virtual Reality photography and travel magazine, Arounder, hosted by VRWAY Communication.

"This website is one of various common steps finalized to establish high quality fullscreen QuickTime Virtual Reality as a standard for photographic virtual reality exploration on the Internet."

P.S. Be sure to take a look at the collaborators sites for more amazing views of people, places, and events!

How cool is this??? Enjoy!

Be A Filmmaker For A Day. . .

On The Civil War by Ken Burns, Public Broadcasting website you have the opportunity to tell your own civil war story using narrative, period music, & archival images.


There are several options to use with the images such as still, zoom in, zoom out and pan.


It was quite interesting to put everything together in a cohesive way. (It's always good to use different parts of ones brain from time to time.)

To start your story just click on "make your movie".

Next you choose your narration and then your music.

At this point you can view images in the Bin Monitor by placing your cursor over an image from the top line of the content bin.

To select an image you click on it and then choose your effect in the bottom line of the content bin. This is the point where you drag and drop your selection from the bottom line to the movie sequence timeline.

It's great fun to watch your creation in the Monitor Bin as you add or rearrange images to your story. You can also email your finished film to friends.

So, Peeps, what are you waiting for? Go make a movie! Enjoy!

A View of Father's Day via the Shorpy Photo Archive

Happy Father's Day!

This image is of President Woodrow Wilson and his newborn grandson, Francis Sayre, Jr., taken in 1915 and can be found on a wonderful vintage photography blog.

The Shorpy Photo Archive is an online archive of thousands of high-resolution vintage photos from the 1850s to 1950s. Its namesake, Shorpy Higginbotham, was a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years
ago.

You can search Shorpy for something of interest or you can peruse several galleries by subject as well as by photographer.

And there is an opportunity to participate in the site. By creating your own free account on Shorpy you can share your own vintage photographs. Visitors to the site are particularly interested in images from the dawn of photography to the 1940s.

This is a great site that offers an intriguing window into our past. Enjoy!