Make a pledge to Corner Bakery and get a free combo!

My pledge for the Corner Bakery:

1) I will not eat as many Milk Chocolate Covered Mint Espresso Beans, even though I'm totally stuffing my face with them now. But I WILL stop.

2) And then I shall watch what I eat and go to Corner Bakery and order from the 600 calorie menu with my little printout of the 100 combinations.

3) And I shall strike off each menu item as I order them in my quest to have all 100 combinations.

4) And I shall order off the list by whatever table number if given to me at the cashier. So if the table number is 34, then I shall order #34 on the list. And if I already had #34, then I shall order from the next available item after #34. Such as #35.

5) I shall document my progress as I order these items in a text document on my computer. And I shall have a story to share with the Corner Bakery of my quest.

6) That is my quest. Please feel free to share my pledge across the nation and the world with everyone who enjoys delightful sandwiches, scrumptious soups, and delectable salads.

Ten years ago on 02/02/02 I started a new comic strip, Groundhog Croquet. It lasted a whole two strips. Check 'em out at spudart.org/groundhog

word:
putemup

definition:
The interjection one yells while one's fists are raised and is requesting that the other person engage in a brawl. Short for "put em up."

example:
You just ate all my milk chocolate covered toffee popcorn!? Putemup! Putemup.

tags:
fight, brawl, fist, fistacuffs, ask, request, engage, interjection, put, em, up

I'm looking for paper companies to like on Facebook, so I do a search for paper.
It's pretty funny that the top pages are not paper companies, but silly things like, "Paper cuts: so small, but so evil." and "I like when my scissors glide through the paper so I don't have to cut." And here you have paper companies that make real paper. And yet, they don't have nearly as many fans.

Neenah Paper has 4,529 fans.
Domtar Paper has 951 fans
Paper cuts: so small, but so evil has 735,633 fans.
i CANT stand writing on paper with pen if the paper is just on the desk 652,268 fans
I like when my scissors glide through the paper so I don't have to cut has 883,598 fans

It goes to show that people connect to things they relate to, not companies. Paper cuts, people can relate to that.

Is Google Plus worth using? Most people respond, "I already have Facebook." Yes, but consider you can use Google Plus as a complement to Facebook without going into social media overload.

Facebook is a place to share what you are doing.

Google Plus is a place to share what you are reading.

People tend to not like it when you post a ton of links on Facebook. It's too much. Instead use Google Plus as a place to post all the stories you like. People don't view Google as a social media company. People view Google as a resource. Google provides tools. Fabulous tools. Thus it would make sense that Google would provide a wonderful tool to share articles.

There aren't any mega wide-ranging social news sharing sites out there. Yes, there is reddit. Too dorky. There is digg. It's dead. There is delicious. Not really social. All three of those sites are fine, but they don't reach to a wide audience. Google Plus does.

Not only are there tons of people on Google Plus. But what you post on Google Plus also appears in Google searches. If a friend of mine searches for "Lincoln Square" on Google, they will now see my Google Plus posts about Lincoln Square. Some people are freaked out by the invasion of privacy. I have to admit I used to use Google Plus more freely, posting wise-ass comments thinking only a limited few will see them. But now that all the content on Google Plus appears on the top of Google searches, I'm much more careful.

Having this wider audience makes me want to share MORE things on Google Plus, because now I know it will show up in my friend's searches.

In fact, it makes me want to add WAY more people to my circles and have people add me to their circles. In all the other social media (twitter, facebook, flickr, yelp, foursquare) I have limited how many people I consider a friend or contact. But now I'm just considering going crazy with Google Plus and adding a ton. Why not? You can limit the amount that you see on Google Plus by using the very easy circles. Put only the people you want to read into a "must read" circle.

Use Google Plus to reach out and find new people. You can't really discover new people on Facebook unless you meet them in person first. Google Plus presents an opportunity for you to find more people to share content you like.

What do you think? How do you use Google Plus?

What makes you joyful? Not just happiness. But joy. The comfort and pleasure of joy. We set out to answer that question a couple years ago in my bible study group. We were to write about what brings us joy. I missed the group that week, but I still wrote my joy story. I'm told that mine was really long. lol. That's good!

What brings me joy is the awareness that God is here.

The simple things that remind me that God is present. That God's creation has design. How amazingly balanced our seasons are. Even though we may think of our seasons as extreme with the cold weather we have now, the fact remains that our planet has seasons that are within limits that sustain life. An amazing array of life. All the shapes of trees. All the different types of animals. All the amazing different ways animals behave. All designed by God.

Our awesome underwater world. Our Shedd Aquarium is wonderful. The creatures in our oceans instill awe. For awe is to be aware of God's AWESOMENESS. From Psalm 104:25, "Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great. "

Another thing that brings me joy is when we sing songs in church. Especially when the songs are about things that I've been learning. A few recent examples. Over Christmas I learned about how incredible it is that at Christ's birth, the shepherds were invited to share the praise of Christ's birth. That as they shared the good news of Christ's birth with others, they were in essence singing with the angels. What an incredible thought. To sing with the angels. Now whenever we have a song at church about singing with angels, it gives me great joy.

Also last sunday when we sang the song, "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say again I say rejoice" is based on the verses in Phillippians we are studying now. I love to have the background behind the songs we sing.

What brings me joy is to hear others pray. And when I read prayers. For prayers in print are just like hearing other people praying. I have a Lutheran Book of Prayer that I read from almost every morning. The Monday prayer says the following:

Heavenly Father,
We thank you for the privilege of work.
Use our talents and energies in Your service for our fellowman.
Help us to see our tasks as expressions of trust from You.
Keep us from seeing our chores as cumbersom duties and toil.
Remind us we are doing more then merely making a living.
Give us the joy in Christ to do all things to Your glory.
Enable us to see in all our tasks that we are called as laborers in Your vineyard.
Keep us faithful and useful to all as men and women who have only one Lord, even Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

I find great comfort that God uses our commonplace work as a way of sustaining our world as a whole.

I find joy in that we have the true word of God. Through the ages God has worked to perserve his Word, so we may have it. I find immense joy in the comfort that God is bigger than culture and He can achieve what He wants--which includes preserving his Bible.

I find joy our pastors preaching every week from God's Word. And in the sermons preserved in podcasts and text online. [note this was written in january 2010] I find immense joy in being able to share sermons with others. My mother who is currently in the hospital comes to mind. Joy is found in trials. James 1:2-3 says, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness."

I find joy when I bow down. For when I submit myself, that's when I become more aware of God.

I find joy in all things deep, like the ocean. I find joy in things small and well-designed, like grapes. I find joy in things vast like the sky. What a wonderful reminder we have every day. As things can get so busy and cluttered down here, we can look up to the the open sky. God has kept our sky open, so we can be reminded of his vastness.

All reminders of God's love and forgiveness that is vast, deep and wide.

TV:
-- Uncle Iroh (Avatar Animated Series)
-- Spongebob Squarepants
-- Ron Stoppable (from Kim Possible)
-- Jazz (Transformers)
-- Balki Bartokomous (Perfect Strangers)
-- Rolf the Dog (Muppet Show)
-- Gonzo (Muppet Show)
-- Kramer (Seinfeld)
-- Tom Haverford (Parks and Recreation)

Movies:
-- Quorra (from Tron Legacy)
-- Buddy (from Elf)
-- Linkavitch "Link" Chomofsky (from Encino Man)

Books:
-- Orion Pax (Transformers)

Favs of mine that should have a favorite character, but no specific ones stick out:
-- The Office
-- Jack Chan Adventures
-- Star Wars
-- G.I.Joe

Matt: i'm having a hard time picking a favorite from Star Wars. UNBELIEVABLE. I don't have a fav character from Star Wars

Tom: Oh my, that would be hard for me too ... Star wars relies on the relationship between the characters. I love C3PO but he would be nothing without Luke or R2D2

Matt: Oh good reasoning tom! That's totally why. Oh man. Maybe that's big part of the reason why like Star Wars and Lost.

word:
lll

definition:
laughing laughing laughing. Not just a short laugh. Not just a laugh out loud. But a prolonged laugh of good length.

example:
Did you see that potato? lll

tags:
laugh, laughing, long, extended, length, happy, funny, hilarious, acronym, netspeak

Thanks to unlikelymoose for coming up with this definition over IM. For those curious how it developed here's the original conversation:

Matt: what do you think this word is? putemup
Erik: putemup? some kind of computer blip
Matt: nope! Branden got it on the first try

Pause.

Matt: put em up
Erik: i have no other guesses!
Matt: that's what it is! putemup = put em up
Erik: what? i can't put up any more guesses
Matt: lol. you thought i was just saying "put em up" to you. l o l
Erik: l l l
Matt: l l l that's cool! What's it mean?
Erik: laugh laugh laugh
Erik: lll
Matt: lll
Erik: lll

Matt: are you going to submit that to urbandictionary?
Erik: no. be my guest

Matt: that definition is not on there!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
Erik: LLL
Matt: lll

Matt: what should be my sample usage for the definition?

Matt: Did you see that potato? lll
Matt: I should make all my examples on urbandictionary involve a potato.
Erik: when you're not laughing out loud, you're just laughing, hence lll.
Matt: no. lll means laughing in a long seuqence. It's a long prolonged laugh.
Erik: oh. ok.

Matt: right?
Erik: right

UPDATE: urbandictionary did accept my definition.

Dick Durbin is selling American flags for a mere additional $4.05, you can have your flag flown above the U.S. Capitol. Pretty rad. However, you have to PRINT out a pdf, MAIL it in with a CHECK. What’s a check?

The asterick on the page is pretty funny:
* Requests for flags not flown over the United States Capitol should deduct the $4.05 flying fee from the total amount.

How about the other way around? What if I pay Dick Durbian $4.05 to fly my own flag over the capitol? I’m going to mail them an Estonian flag and send them a check for the $4.05 flying fee. And a $4.00 check for them to mail my flag back to me. I already bought the Estonian flag for $6.47. I can't wait.

Spotify. Why use Spotify? "Millions of tracks, any time you like. Just search for it in Spotify, then play it. Just help yourself to whatever you want, whenever you want it."

Here's my reasons why you need to sign up now.

1. I really like being able to play any music i want at any time. And not having to buy it all.
2. Make your own playlists and share them with other people. I have 18 playlists including "Beat it remixes and covers," "Hand Clapping Songs," "My most-played songs of 2011."
3. Playing other friends playlists. Think of playlists as mix tapes.
4. It scrobbles to last.fm, so you can keep track your most played tracks, artists, and albums. Anyone who listens to music should be on last.fm. PERIOD. All the music services I use connect to last.fm: Spotify, iTunes, Mog, even Pandora. Pandora requires a firefox add-on.

Bad points:

1. It doesn't have all older music. Some of my favorite albums from the 90s aren't on Spotify. That stinks. But heck to pay $5/month, I'm happy to have all the current recent music.
2. Intrusive to facebook at first. I don't want all the music I listen to to be posted on facebook. But there's a setting to turn that off.
3. Spotify itself really isn't a music discovery system like how pandora or last.fm works. Where you put in an artist or song and have it play similar tracks. BUT. There is a website that people post their playlists and that is a great music discovery system. http://sharemyplaylists.com

Third party mashups

One of the great strengths of spotify is its API, which allows some very interesting third party mashups. I've been keeping track of them on my delicious account with a spotify tag, http://delicious.com/spudart/spotify. Here's the highlights:

BRITify - Daily Spotify Playlists from Awesome BBC Radio
http://www.britify.com

biblify.com - the latest album reviews for new spotify releases
http://www.biblify.com

Spotibot.com - Generate Spotify Playlists powered by Lastfm!
http://spotibot.com/playlist

Listen Spotify Playlists
http://www.listenspotify.com/en/playlists

Playlistify.org - Bake, share and discover playlists.
http://playlistify.org/

Spotify Mac Remote is a plugin for Spotify that allows you to use your Mac’s IR remote control & multi-touch gestures to Play, Pause and change tracks.
http://themacbox.co.uk/smr/

freshspotify notifies you when new music from your favourite bands is added to spotify's library and lets you browse the latest new music
http://www.freshspotify.com

At my work desk, I have a round table by me that rarely gets used. It's now an art pedestal for the 1400 Gallery. (The gallery being my workspace in the Tribune Tower). This particular work of art is three leaves laid out in a composition. One might say it's inspired by Andy Goldsworthy. Or perhaps Robert Smithson.

The leaves are found from the local foliage (the official work plants on top of my storage cabinet).

Normally these would be just three leaves sitting on a table, but it's interesting how a mere sticky note with a caption activates the leaves into artwork status.

"3-leaf composition"
leaves
2010

Photos by Miss Construed, Amadika, Jheppcatt.


I have a bunch of BuckyBalls sitting in the 1400 Gallery (my desk at the Tribune Tower). At the time the gallery was showing an exhibit of 10 puddle jumpers curated from a list of 56 puddle jumpers from flickr.

One day one of the sales people came over and started playing with them and put them on top of the puddle jumpers. He quickly realized that they can be put in a string and make the people into jump rope jumpers.

It was really cool. Even how in the orange photo, the rope is cut so it appears to go under the boy's leg. The BuckyBall jump rope really fits in well with these photos, because these are already happy photos. As if leaping over puddles wasn't fun enough, now the people are having even MORE fun jumping rope over a puddle.

I look forward to implementing the BuckyBalls into future exhibits of the 1400 Gallery.

I bought my niece all the plush mascots keychains from the 2010 Winter Olympics. To make mailing stuffing to keep them from jostling around, I made 11x17 xerox enlargements of each figure. A couple extra copies were made to hang up in the 1400 Gallery.



The tiny cute little keychain mascots become much bigger. A portrait of each mascot. But since they are so short, their heads sit down lower in the frame. Except for Quatchi, he's the big mascot.

I'm told the xerox style looks like Blair Witch Project. The irony is quite nice. These friendly little mascots with the stark black background and intense lighting.



To have some extra fun, I also put one of Sumi by the magazine rack peeking out.

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Current museum projects

I've got several art projects that take place in art museums. Last summer I got reciprocal art museum pass from the Walker Art Center and it allows me to go into over 400 art museums nationwide. With this freedom, I’ve been attending art museums more. Ideas have been sprouting for how I can create art in the museum. And how that art can interact with the existing collection.

To help me aggregate and see what's on my plate, here's a collection of ideas and projects:

1. Origami made from Felix Gonzalez-Torres paper

Felix Gonzalez-Torres' stacked paper has much potential. A stack of paper waiting for your imagination to take hold and shape it into something. This origami series is to show some of the possibilities of what this stack holds. As the origami object is photographed on top of the stack, it moves the stack upward into the world of creation. This is how the typical museum functions. The final product is upwardly shown.

Read more about this project on the flickr set.

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2. Autograph Aesthetics

Some baseball player autographs have wonderful aesthetic qualities. I went on eBay and purchased the autographs that looked most visually interesting. Then I went to the Art Institute of Chicago's modern wing and matched up the aesthetics of the autograph with modern paintings. Read more about this project at this blog post. The Art Institute of Chicago's official twitter account calls this series "wild card."

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3. Self-portrait reflections in modern art

Little did Joseph Albers know that 46 years later his "Home to the Square, Soft Edge--Hard Edge" would be used as a self-portrait by the admiring artist Matt Maldre. I want to start a series of self portraits in modern art. (flickr set, facebook post)

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4. Ewok and ______

The first ten photos of this set are images of an Ewok action figure and artwork in my parents house. I plan on bringing my Ewok action figures to art musems and take photos of the ewok and the art.

I like how the ewok can be transplanted into landscapes or other stituations. It makes the artwork come alive and it makes the ewok come alive. (flickr set)

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5. Light reflections on art

Ellsworth Kelly featured in this photo. I'd like to do more explorations of how artworks look when you stand close to the work and see how the museum lighting reflects off the artwork. (flickr set)

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Upcoming art museum projects

On the Spudart Facebook Fan Page, I explore potential ideas for art projects. Here are the museum-related ideas I've posted in the last several months.

6. Color light reflections on art

Taking the light reflections project further and take photos of famous artworks with colored lights shining on them. (facebook post)

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7. Art behind fence

Bring a section of chain link fence and photograph museum artworks behind it. This particular photo isn't a museum artwork. It's a nativity at the Farmer's Garden Market across from my apartment. Seeing this inspired the idea to do it in art museums. (facebook post)

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8. RC car in museum

I really want to drive a remote-controlled car around in an art museum. The above are some tweets that I made with the Museum of Contemporary Art's response. (facebook post)

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9. Security guard answers

I'm starting a new Spudart series where I ask art museum guards a question, and then later I draw their portrait from memory with their answer. What would be interesting questions to ask the guards at art museums? (facebook post)

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10. Other people's notes in museums

Whenever I see someone writing notes in a gallery or museum, I want to ask that person if I can take a photo of their notes. What do you think of this as a new art series? (facebook post)

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11. Notes left on museum benches

I'm thinking of doing a series called "notes left on museum benches." (facebook post)

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12. Museum guest books

Anybody know of any museums or galleries in Chicago that have guest books that people can leave comments? It would be really cool to photograph the comments left in these books. Often the comments are more interesting than the art itself. (facebook post)

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13. Glass and art

It would be interesting to bring a sheet of glass to an art museum and photograph it in front of artworks. The idea is that it would capture other interesting reflections that would interact with the artwork behind the glass.

It would also speak to several points:
-- How we view artwork behind glass.
-- Who is viewing the artwork (as seen in the reflections).
-- What is around the artwork (as seen in the reflections).
-- What is sight/what is object (by the nature of glass itself).
-- How is the art object and object that needs to be protected.
(facebook post)

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Throughout 2011, whenever I saw a video I liked on Youtube, I would add it to my 2011 favorite playlist. Now you can enjoy all 68 fun youtube videos!

If you are curious, I already have a video in my 2012 favorite playlist.
There are 122 videos in the 2005-2010 favorites playlist.