24 Jan 2006 ... Stock Photos & Clip Art

Okay. I admit it. I am a total sucker for cheap Stock Art. I am the person who keeps spam alive, because I always buy the $10 CDs of clip art when some random company sends me email about their great deal. haha, somebody drive a stake through my heart, please.

The last set I bought was a "DVD Edition", which of course did not work in Fiasco because I only had a CDrom. But a DVDrom was first on my list of things to buy once I get a job. So my two stock art DVD discs sat out in the open, to remind me, and I patiently waited.

And now I have this wonderful new computer, Tiny, who has a DVDrom. I put in my stock art disc and installed the software. well. Tried to install the software. It said that such and such file was not a proper installation something or other.

I looked into the problem. And discovered the INI file had toggles for Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and NT... but no toggles for the stupid operating system I have, XP. Curses.

So, okay. I'll just install the software across the network on to SO's computer, which has Win98... I got that all set up and started installing. And got the same stupid error.

Arg. Stupid Cheap Software! Why?! Why must I buy stupid cheap software that never works?!

So, okay. Now I have the brilliant idea of going through all of the zipped up archives on the stupid cheap DVDs and picking up all the stock photos and stuff that way...

Yep, it works. Except I have to view every single piece of art individually: Wait for files from DVD to display, double click on the one I want, wait for it to load into Paint Shop Pro, type up it's file name and a description, repeat endlessly.

So far I've looked at approximately 330 black and white photographs of people and objects. And you know what? I am very sick of black and white photographs of people and objects, I tell you.

And then I saw some black and white photographs of elephants, and I was so excited to be done with the people and objects photographs that I just jumped up and down with extreme joy.

And then I quit because I can't handle that much exercise, and I had to go lay down.

Haha, just kidding.

If I were smart, I would stick to the websites that provide free stock art... I love all of the following sites, and use stock.xchng and morguefile pretty extensively...

stock.xchng
morguefile.com
MagazineArt.org
Clipart at ibiblio

P.S. I was only kidding about the spam thing at the top of the page... I only buy stuff from reputable companies that I trust! You don't really have to drive a stake through my heart.