The remote control gallery is up.

Ice Breakers Gum has to be the worst gum on the planet.
It looses it's flavor almost immediately. The "TFC" Tiny Flavor Capsules are little hard chunks that make you wonder if a piece of your teeth is in your gum.

They will be at the Taste of Chicago on Saturday and Sunday (check this for other cities). If you see them. Let them know that their gum sucks big time. Instead of merely spitting their gum back in their face, I suggest a more tatical 7-step approach.
1) Get a free "gum" package from the hander-outter
2) Standing in the same vicnity of the hander-outter, place the gum in your mouth and chew
3) Ask them what they think of their gum.
4) They will say it's great and blah de blah.
5) Rationally explain to them that it loses its flavor, the TFCs can be confused for broken teeth parts
6) They will try to ignore you, because they will be too busy handing out free "gum." So then comes the grand finale...
7) Spit the gum out at them (while aiming at shoes or pant leg is preferrable, the hair is an option if you are really feeling gung-ho)

The snakehead fish has hit the United States.
* Survives icy winters and oxygen-deprived waters
* Grows to three feet
* Can crawl out of water, wiggle across land for four days
* Capable of clearing out a pond of all living creatures and then wriggling on to new hunting grounds on its belly and fins.
"If you catch it, kill it," said Bob Lunsford, biologist. "It's not a dead or alive thing, we want it dead."

Can you imagine having one of these fish in your acquarium? It hops out of the tank, waits for you to leave, and then eats all the food in your fridge!

The snakehead fish in defense of its bad rap has started a new public relations campaign in the U.S... "SNAKEHEAD... The friendly domesticated killer fish" And in order to further his quest for respect and admiration by Americans it's driving a van cross country to stump for his cause!

Sources: Sunspot.net, Washington Post

I was going to photograph a closeup of the gap between two doors on a storefront, but the security guard quickly came over to warn me. I was understandably posing a security threat, because I might be using photos for research on how to break through the doors. Some other security-issue gaps, i.e. Windows, doors, car trunks.

I just photographed a ton of remote controls at Best Buy. Why are all remotes designed so that the user has to point the end to the tv? I would think it would be more ergonimic to hold the remote upright, so you can see the numbers better. The sensor shooter doo-hickey would be on the backside of the remote, so you can easily look at the remote, punch the button and shoot it to the tv.

I think the sensor shooter is on the top-tip of the remote because, it gives the reomote control a sense of a magical wand. You point the stick, it shoots out the tip. Makes sense. Although my idea for the remote control would be similiar to the memory eraser on "Men in Black". Kinda makes you wonder why the producers of "Men in Black" have them hold the memory eraser stick up when using it.

I was doing some thinking about doing rubbings (placing a piece of paper up on a wall, rubbing a pencil or charcoal on the paper to reproduce the texture underneath paper).

It made me think of how I could walk around chicago and make rubbings of various famous and/or interesting things. Similiar to how I always carry a digital camera around with me to capture intereting items, except this rubbing is a much more intimate reproduction of observations. Here's a chart of some differences between the media of photo and rubbings.

A new photo series that i'm working on. "Gaps". I was walking along the sidewalk and realized that gaps are everywhere. Sidewalk, bricks on buildings, doors.

In comparison an earlier series that I'm still working on: "Gradiations." Gaps occur much more in society than gradiations. Perhaps it's the tendency to build, to add one thing on top of another. Gradiations tend to be created more through time. I wonder if the gap/gradiation ratio in nature has more of the gradiation factor.

Since summer is officially upon us, I made pulled the photo highlights from Spring 2002.

For the Chicago Croquet Squirearchy of Gentlefolk's game reports, I'm going to do alot more character development to make the stories much more interesting. I even took out some how to write short story books and character books from the library.

The eight typical hero profiles:
Chief, Bad Boy, Best Friend, Charmer, Lost Soul, Professor, Swashbuckler, Warrior

The eight typical heroine profiles:
Boss, Seductress, Spunky Kid, Free Spirit, Waif, Librarian, Crusader, Nurturer

I saw Star Wars: Clone Wars today in a DIGITAL theatre. I was hoping for a longer Yoda fight scene. I would write more about the movie, but I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet.

I ordered a new "extreme mallet" from the same company who supplies equipment to the official Croquet Canada team.

I went to the night ballgame at Wrigley Field yesterday that marked the first time that four players with 400+ career homeruns played in the same game. Also Rafael Palmeiro came back to Wrigley for the first time since 1988. And the game also featured the AL home run leader (Alex Rodriguez) and the NL home run leader (Sammy Sosa). Check out my pics.

Marketleap: based on how many sites out on the web link to your site
(spudart.org got 393)
Alexa: based on number of visitors using the alexa toolbar
(spudart.org got 1,011,592)

Window washers are a recurring theme in my photography. I put up a window washer gallery.

In the outfield in that small strip of a section where there are only three rows. Either the first row (dive into the baskets) or the third row is great.

The third row, you get to stand up and stretch whenever you want. Plus you get to see where the outta ballpark homeruns land. And oh, you can also catch a buttload of homeruns that hit that big freakin' fence with those dumb windbreakers on 'em.

I like to sit either right by the left foul pole line (easy acces without climbing over people) or all the way over to the right...next to the bleachers (so nobody climbs over me during the game). So there it is my secret of where to sit. Too bad the Cubs are gonna knock 'em down when they build that stupid expansion next year. At least I got tickets to the last game ever in that section in the history of Wrigley Field.

Today was the opening day for the Chicago Croquet Club. This is official professional USCA croquet on super smooth courts, real heavy mallets, heavy balls, skinny strong wickets. And wearing all white. Well... Laura and I weren't in all white. But the 30 or so people there, almost everyone was wearing white. (and about half of those people never played on an official court, so how did THEY know to wear white? odd).

It was lots of fun. I highly recommend anyone to try playing on a court like this. Your shots are soo much more predicatable, so it's excellent for the novice. I posted pictures up on my site.

Some of my art depicting 1970s tv stars
* Erik Estrada "Ponch" of C.H.i.P.S.
* Cindy Brady of The Brady Bunch
* Mr. Kotter of Welcome Back Kotter
My current auctions on ebay or check out my art for sale webpage. The price of my art is reduced for one week when it's posted on ebay.

I emailed the Unicode Consortium, the folks who are developing Unicode (which is equivalent to ISO 10646) as an ¸ber-character-set that could assign every character in the world a unique 2-octet code.
*****
What is the character "|" called? The vertical line? Surely there must be some other sort of romantic name attached to it. Please do not deny the | character the name is so deserves. It is a very hard working character. It puts in many long hours in text navigation bars on websites. And it is a character very fitting for our times, as it is a postive character, always pointing upwards. Someone once told me it points downwards, but I would have to strongly disagree. Surely this type of person would often confuse it for the upper case "i".

So please let me know the name of this hardworking and underdog character. Otherwise it shall be known as the vertex key. Or the erigere key. I'll go with erigere key. It sounds more romantic. It is middle english for "to set up".

What do you think?

You are staying at the 32nd floor in a hotel. You keep your curtains open figuring nobody can look inside your room when suddenly window washers appear out of nowhere!

The Hyatt hotel outside my window at work is a 38-story building. The window washers are out on the platform thingy cleaning the windows. Alot of the windows have the curtains open. How does a hotel handle this privacy issue?

Claudio Maccone for Astrodynamics in Turin, Italy is proposing that a radio tower be built on the "radio oasis" on the "shielded zone" of the moon to observe "clean" radio waves from space that aren't cluttered up from planet earth and its manmade satelites. Story 1, story 2

Now if we just build a Death Star satelllite (a la Star Wars) to orbit our planet, we can have as many "clean" radio stations on the far side of that as we like. Long live the Death Star and the Empire.

This Saturday, June 15, I wanna go learn some croquet from the croquet master Bob Kroeger. He's gonna be teaching at the Chicago Croquet Club's opening day. Their press release welcomes anyone to come.

Who wants to come? It's right behind the Museum of Science and Industry.

Here's the schedule:
9am-11am: Bob Kroeger teaches the 7 basic shots.
11am-12pm: Demonstration game of USCA Croquet
12-2pm: Lunch & open play
2pm-5pm: Play USCA rules croquet with Bob Kroeger instructing

If you glue two one-dollar bills together so you cannot take them apart without destroying them, what is it worth? One dollar or two dollars?

Yes, it is two dollars glued together, but since you cannot take them apart, you have destroyed the function of each dollar bill.

Is it a new creation? A two-dollar bill? If so, can you just create money?

Looking at it physically on quick glance it appears to be one dollar, but in actuality it's two. Will a cashier be willing to take the time to accept it as two dollars? If so, will she be willing to try to explain it when she recirculates it as two dollars?

If you glue it slightly imperfectly then it stands a better chance to be considered two dollars. It's ironic that if you spend the time to glue the two bills perfectly together, that only makes it worth one dollar.

By making two two dollars look like one is actually destroying the orginal function of these dollar bills. So in theory, they wouldn't be worth anything, because you destroyed their original worth.

I just ordered a bunch of stuff off http://www.orientaltrading.com to promote my site. Here's what i got:
* 36 plastic leis (gonna put a little spudart tag on it)
* 12 beach balls (with spudart.org written on it)
* 96 tiny plastic lizards (with spudart.org written on the bottom)
I'll drop the lizards at random spots at the taste. Hang the Leis on trees and statues at the taste. And throw the beach ball at Cubs games this year.

I also got 216 plastic american flags. But I'm not gonna put my URL or anything on that. I got the flags so I can put them all over downtown chicago during the work week before July 4th. And I'll take pics of where I put all the flags. Just spreading around the Americana spirit.

"We should consider every day lost
in which we do not Dance at least once"
~Nietzsche

I really like how homer simpson carries through with his ideas.
* He was Mr. Safety putting up safety signs around Springfield
* He protested the Isotopes baseball team moving to Alburque
* Carrying through with his idea of the greatest work of art of all time
Homer doesn't sit on his ideas. He's an activist

www.maldre.com is now officially reserved (by me). I took it so that no freak can take it before me. So here I squat on maldre.com. What to do, what to do. Right now it's just a lame page with links to my brother's site and my site. Any ideas on how to spruce it up? (keep in mind it can only be one page).

A funny thing at slashdot.org:
Copyrights have to do with rights to restrict others from rewriting (copying) what one writes, not about the actual writing. I hope that I have made myself clear writing about the right to rewrite. This post is copyright 2002 by some guy I know. The right to write about the right to rewrite what was written here rightly belongs to me, and you have no right to rewrite what I wrote without my permission.
Right?

I was on the bus this morning and was looking at the wedding ring of the lady sitting next to me. Wedding rings look weird. This tiny little odd shaped diamond perched up and standing out. I would think it would more stable to have that rock turned upside down. That way you also get a nice point sticking out for the occasional moment where you need to cut a mirror or some glass sheets.

In 2001 :
* 160,000 working graphic designers
* 18,000 students enrolled in BFA design courses
* 3,500 graduating and entering the workforce
* 750 enrolled at MFA level
* 250 graduating
based on a survey of all schools of art and design conducted by National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD)

I've got an Underdog bobbin head doll on my desk at work. I loved underdog as a child. I remember one time when i was in kindergarten, I was watching him at home in the morning. But then I had to leave to go to kindergarten. So being the crafty child, I figured if I unplug the tv set, then when i come back home, he would still be on tv. When I came home later that afternoon, i happily found the plug still unplugged from the wall. (I'm guessing my parents wanted to teach me a lesson, so they didn't plug it back in). I happily plugged the plug back with the anticipation of being able to watch Underdog. But he wasn't on! At that point in my life I learned the cruel reality of TV programming.