Who doesn’t like free? Sometimes, you write a blog post and you need a pic to draw those eyeballs, something colorful but also cheap. The New York Public Library has more than 600,000 images online at digitalcollections.nypl.org and if you click “Search only public domain materials,” anything you find is yours to download and use however you want for free. (Make sure you click “public domain.”)

The NYPL collection has everything from scans of menus to greeting cards to publicity photos to stereograph slides – which are like an early version of a View-Master disc. It’s two images that blend into a 3D picture in the right device. If you want to try it out on the image below, try crossing your eyes like one of those Magic Eye pictures that hides a sailboat. That might work too.

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We’re headed back to 2001 for today’s episode of “Man, that singer really sounds like that other singer.” You’re watching the first season of “Scrubs,” the episode guest-starring Sean Hayes as a new intern that might be cooler than JD. Toward the end, you hear “Camera One,” a song with a singer who sounds a lot like Michael Stipe. “Camera One” eventually makes it to Number 22 – and Number One on the Adult Album Alternative chart. You call your local radio DJ and ask for it. That’s when you find out “Camera One” isn’t REM, but Josh Joplin Group.

To be fair, only parts of “Camera One” are REMesque. I would say it’s solidly in the male singer-songwriter pocket that was popular at the time, even if that singer was backed by a band. Remember Semisonic? Five for Fighting? Train? Josh Joplin was right there, giving radio and MTV what they wanted.

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