Month: January 1970

“Canvassing my Friends” is a blog created by graphic designer and painter Sarah Ritchie to showcase her wonderful art, and as she puts it: “….to make myself accountable, for my painting, to all my ‘friends’ on Facebook. One by one I will paint my way through my list of friends, using each person as the source of inspiration for one painting – their personality, life story, my memories, our interactions, etc.”

As someone who makes her living through her obvious artistic talents, it surprised me to read that Sarah has felt constrained by a bit of fear in allowing the painter inside of her to emerge. But of course, most creative people have self-doubts regarding their talent and are often reluctant to actively produce.

It is a credit to Sarah that she is confronting this fear, and is brave enough not only to admit it on her website but to push through it by actually producing as she has promised herself, her friends and–through her site–the whole world. At the moment there are nine canvases featured on “Canvassing my Friends”, each one of them inspired by a person in Sarah’s life. While this is Sarah’s way to hold herself accountable in her stated effort to produce more, one has to believe that the world is a better place for her having executed her plan as well.

This is an absolutely inspired format for a website! Just imagine how honored any of Sarah’s friends must feel to have a painting dedicated to them featured on this site. Apparently it’s working for Sarah too, as there are over 100 blog posts on “Canvassing my Friends” already, and the blog is only six months old. Keep going Sarah!

I also found Sarah’s musings on art and creation interesting; it’s a pleasure to read the thoughts of a creative person as they consider their world, and one gets the feeling that Sarah’s written expression of her thoughts on art history and related subjects informs and potentially expands the scope of her art.

Blogging lends itself very easily to presenting the fruits of a creative person’s labors, and it gives them a way to give meta-commentary on their art and their life at the same time. In this way a fuller picture of the artist emerges, one that complements the art without complicating it or diluting its impact. “Canvassing my Friends” is a perfect example of this, and also a reason why Facebook, wonderful as it is to help us reconnect and stay connected to friends, isn’t quite enough to adequately present the work of a person who has a lot more to reveal than what they had for dinner last night.

I hope Sarah continues painting–having created a perfect context in which to present her art, as tributes to/celebrations of friends, I suspect the momentum evident on this blog will continue.

One very small suggestion I would have for the site is to give us a larger photo of each of the canvasses: there are obviously deserving of it!NULL

Moon Costumes supplies adult and kid’s costumes, holiday costumes, ‘cosplay’, holiday costumes, outfits for magic and clowns, and all sorts of costume accessories such as makeup and tattoos, masks, hats and wigs, props and decor, party supplies, and even costumes for pets and team mascots. They have over 10,000 costumes and masks for sale on their website. Talk about one-stop shopping!

In addition to selling costumes for parties, Halloween, and to people who simply like to dress creatively, the Moon Costumes site caters to the costume subculture, and the company behind it has the foresight to do more than just sell to its customers. The blog attached to the website keeps them updated with all sorts of timely information on the subject of costumes. You see this more and more with commercial sites: savvy online retailers understand that they have the makings of a online community in the shared interests of their visitors, so they cater to those visitors even when they’re not actively engaged in buying. The operators of these sites are usually quite passionate about the niche products they sell, so not surprisingly they become authorities on the culture to which they supply their products.

As I looked through Moon’s Costume blog, I realized what an enormous industry surrounds costumes for adults and children: by no means do people rent or buy costumes only for Halloween nowadays! Clearly for many people, elaborate dress-up games are a way of life.

This blog has many reviews of industry events like costume trade shows, conventions and competitions, from all over the world, and I know I was surprised at just how many of them there are. YouTube videos are liberally featured, which makes sense for a visually-oriented site. One large source of interest in costumes is Japanese anime, which has been hugely popular around the world for many years. Anime fans put a lot of time into incredibly creative and often outrageous costumes. In the ‘cosply’ area, the Moon Costumes blog has a huge selection of outfits that people who are passionate about anime will appreciate.

The Moon Costumes company is a family-owned business, and they have created a website that is a comprehensive online supplier of costumes and outfits for every occasion. It’s also an online destination for the latest news and information about the costume industry, and the latest outfit designs.

Very good design, excellent overall execution!NULL

The Four-Hour Workweek blog is the companion online presence to the book of the same name, by Tim Ferriss. If you haven’t read the book, or even if you have, I would highly recommend checking out the blog, because I think there’s something in it for everyone who’d like to improve their life.

This is one of those blogs that doesn’t rely on amazing design or stylistic touches. Like Tim Ferris, it’s all about substance rather than style. The point here is changing your life, and if you are drawn in by the prospect you have to take a look at this website.

Some of the things that Ferris talks about on the site, which extend the themes of the book, are how to create passive income streams and free up your time to pursue activities that really interest you. There are specific suggestions on how to use the Internet to create infrastructure and recruit help in the name of building often small businesses to enable you to do this. It all about being an entrepreneur, and it never seems so do-able as when Tim Ferriss talks about it.

Travel is a big part of Ferriss’ lifestyle, but not the sort of ‘binge travel’ vacations that we take as 1-week antidotes to lives that we aren’t happy with. He suggests the sort of travel that enriches rather than simply being fun, and not just for short periods either. There’s plenty of talk of ‘mini-sabbaticals’, constructed around an activity you’ve always wanted to try, and places to which you might go to do things like this. In the blog Ferriss also elaborates on his philosophy of ‘geoarbitrage’ i.e. living in inexpensive parts of the world while you’re making money from customers in parts of the world where people will pay more for products that you are selling. I had not encountered this idea before, but it was one of the really liberating concepts from the book and there are many, many practical suggestions on ways to do this in the blog as well.

As Ferris makes heavy use of technology and the Internet to build ways of making a living, he also somewhat ironically advocates carefully restricting the amount of non-actionable, non-value added information we consume. He calls this the ‘low information diet’ and he suggests we all get on it! He points out the dangers of endless news consumption, game playing, etc. which can degenerate into distractions from producing a means to liberate ourselves and lower our quality of life in general.

Like the book, the Four-Hour Workweek website is an exhilarating experience full of specific suggestions that anyone can use to get off the employment treadmill and become a small-scale entrepreneur. Ferriss has done it himself and the website also features guest posts from people from all walks of life who have completely remade their lives in original and impressive ways. This is an inspirational weblog. And every time I visit I find practical steps and ideas on increasing my quality of life. Highly recommended.NULL

The SacredScenery.com blog is a wonderful net destination. It’s well written, with gorgeous photos of tropical places and video snippets to boot. Clearly it was created by someone who cares about the environment and is really inspired by natural scenery. There is also emphasis on personal development, and I think it’s worth a bookmark just for the positive message projected by the whole site.

The blog’s primary writer, John, has somehow managed to find a way to spend a lot of time in Bali, Indonesia, and uses the island’s breathtaking natural beauty as a starting point for his photography and musings. Apparently he spends a lot of time on the beach at sunset (!), and knows all sorts of gorgeous corners of this tropical island. Certainly sharing his images as well as his positive attitude as inspired by his surroundings is worthy subject matter for this first-class blog.

The design of the blog is wonderfully simple, without the busy feeling that so many bloggers today seem to think they have to establish in order to engage readers. So often less is more when it comes to design, and this is one of those cases where the subject matter, i.e. John’s photos and inspiration, require no further embellishment in terms of blog template or general layout.

I found SacredScenery.com to be a place worth visiting especially in these dark, short days of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Spending a little time on the site reminds me of sunny memories of my own, and when I perused the site I found myself getting a lift from these thoughts. I would suggest paying a visit, even if you didn’t spend part of today charging through snow or cold rain.NULL

It seems to me there are not enough instructional sites on blogging catering specifically to people who are new to blogging. If you know your way around different CMSs or you’re very familiar with WordPress for instance but would like to be made aware of the latest helpful plug-in or theme, there are plenty of places where you can find this information.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who express interest in blogging but sound overwhelmed at the thought of what they would have to learn to get their own blog up and running. And while it doesn’t require a college degree, let’s face it, there is a learning curve.

BigBlogTool.com looks like a site geared specifically towards people who are tempted to start a blog and create a web presence for themselves, but really don’t have a clue where to begin. There are reviews of blog tools obviously, and pointers to tutorials and various tips from all around the web. There are also posts with general thoughts on blogging, where blogging is going as a medium, and what you probably do and do not want your blog to be. All good things to keep in mind as one gets their blog started.

It’s a good looking site using WordPress and the Thesis theme. It looks pretty informative and I found a couple plug-ins for WordPress that I didn’t know about. I would say that if you have a friend or relative who asks you where to look on the Internet to get started in blogging, BigBlogTool.com would be a pretty good site to suggest to them.NULL