Study the following phrases carefully:

• Absent-….ed professor
• One-track ….
• Get your …. out of the gutter

If any words appear to be missing, you may have lost your mind.

The good news is, your trusty camera can keep your mind from wandering off!

Snap a picture of anything you want to remember and drop the photo into Evernote.

This clever little app turns your picture into a note (it can even read text in your photo) and creates a collection of little reminders.

Use tags to search for related notes, or add them to a to-do list. You can access the database from your smartphone, desktop, or the web, so it’s available wherever you go.

Take snapshots of places you want to explore, or ideas scribbled on napkins, and pretty soon you’ll remember everything!

Your mind may still wander, but at least you’ll know where it was.

Evernote: Use Your Camera to Remember Everything
Thanks to reader to Lindsay Leung for the tip!

p.s. Evernote works with your scanner too! (And screenshots, and your webcam, and Eye-Fi cards…) Check out their blog for ideas and tips on using the app.

Ya know what we like best about Teh Intertubes? The pictures.

No, wait, scratch that — the FREE pictures.

Now that the Library of Congress and NASA and the New York Public Library all have their collections online, there are more copyright-free pictures around than you can shake a stick at.

What to do with all those free pictures?

• Cover your ceiling with photos from the Hubble telescope.
• Frame some vintage portraits and tell people they’re your relatives.
• Make DIY greeting cards and you’ll never have to give Hallmark another dime!
• Beautify your abode’s blankest, bleakest, boring-est white walls.
• Heck, sleep in a big pile of prints if it makes ya happy!

Keep reading for where to find the greatest photos on the web, and what to do with ‘em when you find them.

The Best Free Photos (Where to Find ‘Em and How to Use ‘Em)

Photos courtesy of: The Library of Congress and NASA

Jimmie went to a bad part of Rio. Jimmie’s nice shiny camera got stolen.

Jimmie uglified his next camera. 4000 photos later, Jimmie still has his camera.

The moral: an ugly camera attracts less attention when you’re shooting in a rough area.

How to uglify your camera:

• Cover the shiny surface with artist’s tape or black photo tape, which come off without leaving residue on your camera.
• Color the tape with black and/or brown markers to make it look dirty.
• Use pieces of duct tape to make the camera look barely held together (layer the duct tape over artist’s tape to avoid sticky residue).

Using your ugly camera:

• Don’t carry a nice camera bag. Use a nondescript bag or a diaper bag instead.
• Turn off the LCD screen (or cover it up) and hold the camera to your eye instead. If thieves think you have a film camera, they won’t want it. Sad but true.

Urban Camouflage: The Uglified Camera
via Make

Photo credit: connors934

Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2

Water stains. Ceiling tiles. All those pencils you stuck up there.

So many evils can mar your ceiling. But take heart, photo peeps!

Your ceiling’s not the boss of you.

Cover that water damage with a colorful mural, or slap a collage of fluffy clouds over those grimy ceiling tiles.

All ya need to make it happen are some photo Post-its and a stepstool.

Yessir, everything’s looking up!

How to Make a Photo Mural for Your Ceiling

p.s. Hey Chicago! Hey Milwaukee! Photojojo readers are gettin’ together to shoot pix. Check out the forum thread for dates/times/mucho bueno info!

Sveinn Birkir has been collecting images from 1976 to make a visual anthology of the year he was born.

Freaking rad!

Wanna make your own Project 1976? Search Flickr or Google Image Search for your birth year and see what comes up.

Look for events that happened and things that came out that year (cars, products, albums, movies). Who was on the cover of Time or Rolling Stone? Who died or was born that year?

Sprinkle in some family photos and show off your time capsule! Start a photoblog, or print the photos and stick ‘em on the wall.

Better yet, do this for a pal (or your kid, if you’ve got one of those) and make it into a book for their birthday. Better even than cupcakes, amigo.

Project 1976
via Kottke

p.s. We really wish our name was Sveinn.

Photo mags: stylish, stirring, spendy.

Unless you know where to look, that is.

Get all the art rags you could want online without dropping a single ducat!

We’ve been dredging The Internets and rounding up 10 of our favorite webmags.

Get inspired, see what’s new, or submit your work and start building a name for yourself; just start reading!

10 Online Photography Magazines We Love

p.s. We still love printed magazines, too: JPG and Blind Spot are two favorites!

Photo credits: James Harris, Laura Pannack

Those people who think photographs can steal your soul — absolutely right.

We’ve got proof: a site that turns perfectly pleasant people into soulless automatons, ready to eat your brains. If only they weren’t trapped in your computer.

Create your very own zombie: Upload a photo, tweak the expression for maxi-creepiness, and add your voice.

(We tend toward the traditional… “I will eat your soul”, “Braaaiiins!” etc.)

Finally, send your undead self out to terrorize your friends by email!

Just pray that your evil minion never escapes the confines of the computer.

Behold the Evilizer (a.k.a Oddcast PhotoFace)

p.s. We made this one and we may not sleep for weeks.

Long long ago, Black-and-White ruled the Earth.

Frosty white highlights frolicked with rich black shadows in the Meadows of Grayscale, and it was good.

Then came Digital, whose dingy whites and muddy grays nearly drove Black-and-White to extinction.

But now, like wild-eyed scientists cloning a mammoth, we’ve found the best ways to convert digital color photos into the REAL honest-to-goodness-that-looks-like-Ansel-Adams-took-it Black-and-White. NOT the pale washwater grays and off-white whites you get with “Convert to grayscale”. And we’re going to show you how.

Converting Digital Color Photos to Glorious Black-and-White