Today I Was Walking By The Internet... And It Tripped Me

And when I say 'tripped' I mean that I fell up the stairs and landed flat on my face while the entirety of the free world stood watching.  And like a high school stairwell, no one offered to help me up. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a tad. 

This is what really happened.

I was wasting time, looking through my friends facebook updates (don't judge me, you were online while I was doing this), when I saw a post that said,

“Curse you stumbleupon!”

Now unless you are already a design clutz I bet you are just as confused as I was.  So I am going to let you in on the secret, stumbleupon is a website.  One where you make a profile (which is completely free and simple) and choose topics you want to see.  Then, like magic, you press a button, and in my case say the word ‘stumble’ like a comic book sound effect, and BAM! it takes you to a new page.  Design is one of the topics you can choose to stumble through.  Some others are books, entertainment, fashion, etc... Basically anything you could want to trip over on the internet can be found on stumbleupon. While you make your way through the stumble pages you like and dislike the pages that come up and stumbleupon begins to learn what you like, and what you want to see.  With your profile you can also make your own pages for other users to stumble through. 

Now, you know when you fall up the stairs and it takes you a second to figure out what happened and in that second you're mind is kind of blank? Well, that is what being on stumbleupon is like. 

I tripped.  I looked up, stood and brushed myself off.  Then I made a rookie stumbler's mistake of looking at the clock.  I had been stumbling for 2 hours. 

This is the best and possibly the worst thing that has ever happened to me (extreme exaggeration). 

In those 2 hours I found more awesome than I think I usually find in a month.  Some of the pages are blogs, photography, fonts, architecture or something completely different. The list is endless.  In the process I was in complete awe of some of the designs that I came across.  I was even inspired out of the design pit of doom that some of my projects were becoming. 

Stumbleupon Definition: Bittersweet.  It is a blessing for the wealth of information, and a curse for the amount of time you can spend stumbling.

www.stumbleupon.com

Go there, but only when you have no pressing appointments with life.

Heading back to the stairwell, Nicole