QA Graphic
November 9, 2019

blocklayer.com

Useful site with all sorts of design calculation ideas.

BlockLayer.com is great place to go to get all your printable diagram templates. Then have templates for everything imaginable, there's Gable Roof Framing Plans, Deck & Floor Board Spacing & Gap Calculator, Angle Calculator, Posts and Rails - Spacing and Material and so much more.

Yes, they also have Graphic Paper and printable rulers.

Block Layer
https://www.blocklayer.com/

There are 140 different designs to pick from. Lots of good choices, and certainly a good site to bookmark for when you need designs with calculated settings.

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November 2, 2019

Thanksgiving Menu Maker

Helpful to make your Thanksgiving a bit different this year.

Thanksgiving is coming up, and it's time to start the early planning the biggest meal of the year.

You may have a traditional meal planned out or you may want to experiment this year with something new.

Checkout the Food 52's Automagic Thanksgiving Menu Maker. It's a great place that breaks down all the main parts of the meal - Such as the Meat, Stuffing, Potatoes, drinks and so much more.

It's a good place to look for ideas on what to bring to a Thanksgiving invite. (The Perfect Cheese Ball looks good!)

Website Description

Answer a few questions, Select your own recipes, Come away with a custom Thanksgiving menu (plus all the tips you need to start.)

Food52 Thanksgiving
https://food52.com/thanksgiving/menu-maker

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October 26, 2019

Sprout Social Image Layout

Cool tool to upload the proper size images where you need it.

Nowadays you need to change your images so they look good on computers and mobile. Mobile users like to see images as a reverse landscape.

One source to help to create the proper image for different layouts is Spout Social. You can create sizes for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, Pinterest, YouTube or any custom layout.

Website Description

Landscape is a powerful image resizing tool designed to help social media marketers, content creators, and business owners develop a standout presence in an increasingly visual social world. Our tool offers social media professionals an efficient way to produce multiple image sizes optimized for social media profiles, messages, and campaigns - ultimately giving them more time to focus on what matters most: fostering engagement and authentic conversations through social.

Sprout Social
https://sproutsocial.com/landscape

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October 19, 2019

DriveMeInsane.com

Control the lights and send a message on this webcam

One of the first Internet Webcams was at the University of Cambridge looking at the coffee pot to see if it was empty. That was 1991.

We have come a long way.

Today you can view just about anything on webcam. One of the funny ones is the "Drive Me Insane" by Paul Mathis. You can turn on/off lights, and display messages on the computer screen.

Website Description

This site allows you to use home automation to have fun at someone else's expense. Turn on the lights, play with the sign, and get visual feedback on all of it. And yes, it's all real. Time:07:08 Current Insanity Level: 9840.30%

Drive Me Insane
http://www.drivemeinsane.com/

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October 12, 2019

Space Type Generator

Create Cool graphics with your text

The Space Type Generator is a cool website where your phrase can look like animated art.

There are 8 main categories to select from: Cylinder, Field, Stripes, Coil, Flag, Morisawa, Cascade, and Ribbon. Within each style, you have the option to change the presets and style.

The person behind this is Kiel Mutschelknaus, who also runs kiel.com. He's a very talented artist, and I highly recommend checking out his page and Space Type Generators.

Space Type Generator
https://spacetypegenerator.com

Sample Design

Pretzel Space Type Cryan

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October 5, 2019

haveibeenpwned.com

See if your personal email is in the open

Just about every week you hear about a major database breach where hackers are stealing personal data.

A couple of years ago, Troy Hunt put together a website to see if your email address has been compromised in a data breach. Making it easy to see if your "personal" email is accessible to hackers.

Website Description

This site came about after what was, at the time, the largest ever single breach of customer accounts ??? Adobe. I often did a post-breach analysis of user credentials and kept finding the same accounts exposed over and over again, often with the same passwords which then put the victims at further risk of their other accounts being compromised.

The FAQs page goes into a lot more detail, but all the data on this site comes from "breaches" where data is exposed to persons that should not have been able to view it.

pwned
https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Why Check Your Email?

If you use your personal email for logins, then it might be useful to check the database. Especially if you use the same password through most accounts.

I checked some old work emails, and I was surprised they were in the database. I know that it doesn't belong to anyone else because the company isn't in business anymore.

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September 28, 2019

PhotoVisi

A great online collage tool with lots of templates

Creating Collage can be tricky. If you don't have the right template - it can look boring and lose the appeal of the pictures. Thankfully there are sites online that can make it easy to combine photos.

One site to consider is Photovisi. as they have a lot of design options to pick from. In fact, there are more than 250 designs to choose from. Thankfully there are broken into 19 categories, so you can search for the design that works best for you.

Photovisi has templates for YouTube Channels as well as Facebook covers.

Photovisi is free to check out - even the editor is free. However, if you want to remove the watermark it cost $4.99 a month. Which isn't a bad price if you do a lot of collages.

Website Description

Making photo collages with our easy to use editing tool is the simplest way to get stunning results. Giving you total freedom over the way your photos are displayed by cropping, resizing or adding effects to them.

With our unique photo editing tools it's never been easier to create great-looking photos. We got you covered with filters, frames, stickers and tons of other image editing capabilities!

Photovisi
https://www.photovisi.com/

Sample Designs

Photovisi Example1
Clothesline Layout Example

Photovisi Example2
Inkblots Layout Example

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September 21, 2019

ezgif.com

Convert MOVs to Gif super easy

Animated Gifs are all the rage, and there's no better place to create and touch up GIfs than ezgif.com. It's the one stop shop for all your basic GIF editing.

I like to use their optimize feature to better compress GIF files that have been created using different applications.

Website Description

Ezgif.com is simple online GIF maker and toolset for basic animated GIF editing. Here you can create, resize, crop, reverse, optimize, and apply some effects to gifs.

ez G I F
https://ezgif.com/

Sample GIF Images

Here's a couple of images that I converted from H.264 to GIF:

M B T A Window
Boston's MBTA Commuter Rail. Using ezgif.com I was able to convert the original 2.9 MB MOV file to the 732 K GIF

School Locker
This Movie was 1.8 MB, but using ezgif.com I was able to get it down to 652k.

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September 14, 2019

Spot the International Space Station

Find out when you can see the space station from your home

NASA has a cool site that shows you when you can expect to see the International Space Station. This is a fun thing to look for when you know when it appears.

You enter in your street address and the site will tell you when and where to look up at the sky.

Website Description

Watch the International Space Station pass overhead from several thousand worldwide locations. It is the third brightest object in the sky and easy to spot if you know when to look up.

Visible to the naked eye, it looks like a fast-moving plane only much higher and traveling thousands of miles an hour faster!

Spot The Station
https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/home.cfm

Bonus Video

Did you know that there's a live video feed from a camera on the International Space Station? If you time it right, and the camera is pointing in the right direction, you may see your area from Space!

Check out the Live ISS Stream video cam and see the view from the International Space Station.

Next time the International Space Station is over your house, check out the video feed from the space station. Miss the live feed? Don't worry there's a 6-hour replace video available.

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September 7, 2019

Browser Information

Getting detail information on what the world gets from your browser.

Getting Browser information from an external source is a good way to learn what information your browser is sending. It's a good way to learn your external IP and what features might be enabled.

MyBrowserInfo.com is a great site that makes it quick and easy to get information about your browser settings. I like it because it can tell me the User Language, which some sites use to determine if they need to display information related to Canada's Anti-Spam Law.

Website Description

MyBrowserInfo.com is the fastest and easiest way to determine your IP address and information about your Web browser.

mybrowserinfo
http://mybrowserinfo.com/

Browser Information List

Here's the things that MyBrowserInfo.com can find out:

Operating System, Platform, Internet Browser, Beta Version, Connection Speed, Restrictive Firewall, Local Date/Time, Language, System Language, User Language, Popups Blocked, SSL Support, SSL Enabled, Style Sheet Support, Supports Tables, Table Cell BG Colors, Table Cell BG Images, CDF Support, Color Depth, Supports GZip, Supports Cookies, Cookies Enabled, Supports JavaScript, JavaScript Enabled, JavaScript Version, JavaScript Build, Supports VBScript, Supports ActiveX, ActiveX Enabled, Supports Java, Java Enabled, Java Vendor, Java Version, MS JVM Build, Supports DHTML, Supports Uploads, Supports Frames, Gecko Engine, Screen Dimensions, Browser Dimensions, Supports IFrames, Images Enabled, PNG Support, XML Support, MS XML Parser, Background Sounds, Supports MouseOver, Windows Installer, .NET CLR Installed, MS Media Player, Apple QuickTime, RealPlayer, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe SVG Viewer, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Director, Macromedia Authorware, Citrix, iPIX Image Viewer, Crystal Reports, Viewpoint, Autodesk MapGuide, NetMeeting Build, Using PDA, WAP Support, Proxy Connection, Font Smoothing, Font Sizing, IE Text Size, Fonts Installed

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About

I will highlight a fun Internet site every Saturday. The basic premise is to highlight sites that I regularly visit for a variety of reasons. All site recommendations are mine and are unsponsored. By highlighting these websites, I hope to provide value to those who may not know of the sites or who might be interested in visiting the sites. I also want to share the sites that I find valuable in the hopes that others will find them just as beneficial.

Check out all the blog posts.

Blog Schedule

SaturdayInternet Tools
SundayOpen Topic
MondayMedia Monday
TuesdayQA
WednesdaySnagIt
ThursdayBBEdit
FridayMacintosh