Diary of a Network Geek

Free is relative, but a lot of entertainment can be relatively free.

Regular visitors to my blog will know that I love free things. I’m also very much like an ancient Roman in that I love nothing more than laying on a couch while eating and being entertained. Yes, it’s decadent and primitive of me, but, well, there it is. The problem with all that, of course, is that if I’m being lazy, I probably can’t afford to pay for a lot of entertainment. Thankfully, the internet has solved that problem for me!
Specifically, Gizmodo’s guide to How To Find The Best Free Movies and Music On The Web will show you, and me, where to find free entertainment. They have links to the old favorites like PBS and the Internet Archive, but they have other sources that are more obscure. Or, they have suggestions that may be familiar, but not the first thing you think of as a source, like listening to music via YouTube, which I know I’ve done.

In any case, the guide is free and so are the sources they list and since you’re not working this Friday afternoon, you may want to see what they have available to amuse you.

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

I love me some ambient, sci-fi atmosphere!

For you poor souls who are regular readers know I am a little obsessed with science fiction. And, I also am on a constant quest for the perfect background sounds to keep me from cracking up in the silence, without getting to “into” what I’m listening to at the moment. I think that started with an ex who used a white noise machine at night, which started me using one. Eventually, though, when I was travelling, I started using my phone. I tried a number of white noise generator apps, but the most fun was one that had science fiction sounds. It was good, mostly, but pretty limited. Now, though, there’s an alternative; 42 Hours of Ambient Sounds from Blade Runner, Alien, Star Trek and Doctor Who Will Help You Relax & Sleep.

A sound artist who goes by the on-line name of “Cheesy Nirvosa” has been creating these ambient sci-fi soundscapes since 2009 and they are absolutely fantastic. Now you can fall asleep to the comforting background noise of Rick Deckard’s apartment from Blade Runner. Or, use it as background noise while you work on your latest science fiction masterpiece! You can head over to Cheesy Nirvosa’s YouTube channel and play them from there in your browser or even download shorter loops. You can also find “real world” loops like the ambient sounds of a nuclear submarine, which sound surprisingly similar to some of the spacecraft. And, if you want to cut out the middle-man, so to speak, and just download the MP3s, you can check out Cheesy Nirvosa’s Bandcamp, where, for a few dollars each, you can buy the sound files to play on the digital device of your choice. (Don’t tell my wife, but I think I’m going to get a couple!)

Anyway, it’s been the kind of week that leaves me wanting to sooth my nerves, and these seem like a good start.
Y’all enjoy your weekend and come back next week for more!

This post originally appeared at Use Your Words.

I can’t believe I didn’t include this last week.

Okay, so this may be a little boring for people who aren’t thinking about creating videos or setting their home movies to music, but, boring people with this blog has never stopped me from sharing something before, so I won’t let it now.  This free and mostly unrestricted resource requires a Google account of some kind to access, but I think it’s worth setting up a Gmail account to get to this amazing collection of audio.  It’s the free, YouTube Audio Library.  Notice, though, that I called it an audio library, not a music library.  That’s because half of this is music, much of which you can use without restriction.  But, the other half of it is a collection of relatively high-quality sound effects.  Now, I wouldn’t want to make a whole movie with this library, but, conceivably you could.  This has everything from music for every kind of emotion and scene, but also pretty much every generic sound effect you could ask for, from bullets to kids to Summer nights to pocket change hitting a wood table.
As free audio libraries go, it’s pretty complete.

Also, it’s been kind of a long week and y’all are lucky to be getting anything at all from this blog this Friday.  Maybe next week will be better.  Maybe not.

This post originally appeared on Use Your Words.

Or, more specifically, music for your projects.

Clearly, I’m not talking about a manufacturing project here, but, rather, music for your creative project.
Maybe you have a dream project that you’ve filmed on your iPhone and want to add some cool background music to your creation before uploading it to YouTube.  Or, maybe you need a little musical intro for the background of your podcast credits.  Or, something cool to add ambiance to your artisanal website.  Whatever you need, Music for Makers probably has you covered.  You can sign up for free and get limited numbers of tracks, sent to you one at a time on a daily basis.  Or you can pay and get more access. Just remember, you can use their music in as many personal and commercial projects as you like without paying royalties or including attribution, but you can not sell or redistribute that music in its original form.

If, however, you really just want some background noise to distract you from the hum of the fluorescent lights above your cubicle, try the free Zenmix, instead.  With this webpage, you can mix together various looped ambient sounds, like a waterfall or birdsong or rain, to create your own custom blend of white noise distraction from the terrible sounds your co-worker’s lower intestine is making after lunch.  Or whatever you may need a distraction from.  (And, all the tracks on Zenmix are from Music for Makers, which gives you an idea of what you can do with those tracks.)

So, there you go, that’s two free things for you this Friday.  Enjoy!

This post originally appeared at Use Your Words.

Also, they’re free.

In 2015, Sploid, a sub-site of Gizmodo, had a short film festival. Just to be clear, that’s a festival of short films. There were 21 films, many of which include some actors you may recognize. All the films were creative and, frankly, pretty amazing.
And, let’s face it, it’s Friday and you’re reading this blog, which means you weren’t doing any actual work anyway, so you might as well head over to YouTube and watch all of them. They are, after all, short films, so it won’t take too terribly long.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this week, because I’ve been a bit sick and didn’t have a chance to get anything better together.
But, I think this will be good enough.
Enjoy, and I’ll see you back here next week!

This post originally appeared at Use Your Words.

Free training, of course, for my favorite content management system; WordPress.

Not familiar with WordPress?  Well, you should be since it runs or manages a significant percentage of the web.  As of this writing, “significant” means about 25% of all websites.  Yeah.  That’s a lot.  And, there are a lot of reasons for that.  For one thing, it’s well supported and lots of developers work with it, so getting help and customization work done is relatively easy.  For another, it’s easily…
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Want to watch a free 90 minute Star Trek movie?

No, it’s not an officially sanctioned, studio-made movie, but it still looks pretty good.
And, it has some stars from the franchise in it, reprising their characters, albeit in roles that have changed or progressed from where they were in the series.  Yes, it’s entirely fan-made, and fan-sponsored via three Kickstarter campaigns.  (See?  Sometimes Kickstarter does actually produce things!)

The link comes via Space.com and the movie is on YouTube.  The movie is…
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Free, open source tools are the future of software.

I’m not the only one who thinks so, either!
One of the coolest tools out there that’s both free and open source is Blender.  Blender is a full-featured 3D program that lets you do everything from sculpt the models to rigging and animating them, complete with shading and realistic physics, for everything from static images to movies.  It even has camera and motion tracking as well as compositing to let you integrate special…
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Some are better than others, but at least they’re free.

So, yeah, I’m pretty tapped out when it comes to creativity or creative content this week.  It’s kind of been a busy, challenging week in a lot of ways and I just am drained of whatever little bit of creativity I may have this week.  I mean, I’m just out.  But, I post something every Friday, so I’m trying to maintain that little bit of consistency at least.
At least my frustration…
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I’m obsessed with photography lately, mainly because I feel so stymied by it.

It used to flow so much easier for me.  I had even gotten to the point that I could go a shoot anonymous portraits on the street or at a fair or carnival and be comfortable doing that.  But, lately, it’s been problematic for me.  Of course, I have no one to blame by myself.
Still, as a result, I find myself quietly obsessed with photography as a medium…
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