Link roundup: September 27, 2013

Finally picking these up again: I miss how they make my life a bit easier to keep track of. (Coming up here sometime next week: a review of Oyster, the ebook subscription service you may be curious about.)

Libraries and technology:

• My boss did a great post on his blog about search tips and tricks and that post links to a couple of others you might like too.
• A map of online access speeds in the US (and a bunch more data)
• 12 places to find free stock photos. (I haven’t tested all of these, but the ones I do know have good things. Note that you have to check the permissions per image on a bunch of those.)
• Making a neat library tour for very little money. (From the Wikiman) and there’s some interesting discussion of dealing with updates in the comments.
• I’ve been thinking about this post about how kids can’t use computers for weeks now, and have more comment sometime soon, really. (There are things in it I’m not sure I agree with, but I do also have a lot of conversations with people who don’t necessarily know how to sort out their own tech problems, and I think it’s a skill we could help people learn more easily.)
• An interesting Metafilter discussion of social media sites, age ranges, and links in the discussion to a bunch of reports, data, and so on.
• The demise of the independent bookstore may not be such a demise.

History, full of wicked awesome stuff: 

• Roman nanotechnology. No, really. Goblet that changes colour when lit from behind.
• Ex Urbe compares The Borgias and Borgia: Fear and Faith with the actual history. Good for historians, historical fiction readers, historical fiction watchers, people who like costume dramas, and people who like detailed explanations of why something’s interestingly done. (If you have not already read, well, the entire blog, I recommend it.)
• Someone doing a series of essays about the town of Wellesley, MA (where I went to college) did a great roundup of information about the first building of the college, College Hall, which burnt down in 1914. I lived in Tower Hall, which was built on the ruins, my first year. There’s a bunch of photos I don’t think I’d seen before of the interior.

Let’s sidestep into colour for a moment: (No, really, I have a bunch of links about colour).

• A discussion on colour in Homer. (From MetaFilter)
• The Colorful Stories of Five Obsolete Art Pigments and More Vibrant Tales of Obsolete Pigments.
• If you like these and have not read Victoria Finlay’s Color: The Natural History of the Palette, I recommend it.
• Ok, technically about light, but this report on searching for Earth-like planets in the galaxy is fascinating.

Music and the arts:  

• Masters of Global Music at the Smithsonian has been posting free full-length recordings of amazing concerns, along with substantial information. (link to the MetaFilter discussion of it, which highlights some particularly awesome stuff.)
• Boil the Frog lets you trace a path from one composer to another slowly changing styles through a series of tracks. I’ve thrown some weird stuff at it, and it’s come up with paths. You can listen excerpts of the tracks within the page (the full track if you’re a Rdio subscriber), so it’s a great way to try out some new music.

Intriguing applications:

• A Day of Grace: Vimeo video of time lapse photography of a day in the life of Studio 7 at the Boston Ballet. (If you’re sensitive to strobe or flash lighting, there are places the method + movement + natural light is very similar.)
• Houses of the Hobbit Diaspora. (I share a birthday with Bilbo and Frodo. Hobbits are sort of on my mind.)