Been busy over the holidays, barely even in front of a computer at all. Fun daily posts will be start up again on January 2, 2005. Thanks for visiting!

It's a weird sensation to wear old shoes that you haven't worn in awhile. With each step you become aware of how worn out the soles are. And you think, "Wow, this is how i used to walk two years ago. How did i manage to walk like THIS?"

2ƒ predicted for the high on Christmas Eve to be chicago's 2nd coldest Christmas Eve ever.
-11ƒ in 1983 was the coldest.
5ƒ in 1972 is the 2nd coldest.
(from Tom Skilling)

What do you think the high will actually be? The winner will receive a free gift bought from the dollar store (shipping included!).

I will be using the official temperature used for chicago and that is O'Hare's reading. Even though I think Midway should be the official reading since it is truly inside the city of chicago. But the high temperature at O'Hare on December 24 is what we are guessing here.

The last minute you can make a guess is at December 23 11:59pm.

And yes, you can guess the same number as someone else. I will mail out a maximum of 10 prizes to the correct guesses. If there is not exact correct guess, the closest winner(s) will get a prize.

I rediscovered the automatic bookmarklet that makes it a lot easier to add links to the link section on spudart.org. So you'll be seeing much more links in the future

The movie Shrek brought out lime green. Normally lime green would have died a long time ago, but thanks to the sequel of Shrek, lime green stayed on the radar. Movies with sequels that have the main character in a bold color will make a color last longer. Don't underestimate the power of children's taste in color. It influences the market.

Source: 11/17/2004 talk by Pantone Insitute Director Leatrice Eiseman at a Unisource/International Paper breakfast

I'm sitting here looking at a cup with cheese popcorn in it and wondering, if you stuck a bunch of cheese popcorn in a blender, can you make a drink? It might be a bit dry, maybe if you added more cheese. Come to think of it, is there such thing as a cheese drink? A beverage made primarily of just cheese?

People who repair public signs are "linguistic landscape repairman."

Thanks to the inspiration left by unlikelymoose on a previous post, I now have some paper towel artwork hanging in my kitchen. View the full photo.

Having a big hole cut in the middle of the paper towel renders it pratically useless, yet by retaining the familiar rectangular shape, it still evokes the essence of paper towel.

Another nice touch is how the texture in the paper towel is actually round imprints reflecting the round circle cut in the center. View closeup.

There's some great auctions up by now featuring the duel turtle artist Georgie and Nikki. Yeah, those are the actual artist's--a couple of turtles walking on a canvas. Auction 1: Spring, auction 2: Dreamscape, auction 3: Blue Dragon, auction 4: Sunset Clouds.

So I emailed the seller the following:

Hi. I really enjoyed your auction for the turtle paintings. i like how the turtle is actually investigating the painting as he's making it. It leads you to believe that the turtle is actually considering the marks that he's making on the canvas. Oh, excuse me, I just read the auction the turtle is a "she" and i see that she told you what colors to use. nice. wait. wait. the turtle is now speaking to me. the turtle is saying... the turtle is saying, "I want a round canvas next time. Give me a ROUND canvas."

and another email:

Hey, it's me again. Again, loving the other turtle auction paintings. You say that there are a bunch of photos documenting this. Does the buyer get to have those photos? It's not very clear. It's the photos that really make this piece. It'd be a great idea if you had a nice framed photo collage that would hang nicely alongside the painting. Then people would love to hang both next to each other. oh yeah! what a great idea!

Part of the brilliancy behind these paintings is the fact that the "animal communicator" (the human) used turtles for this. Turtles are nice and slow and thoughtful. We would dismiss something more crazy like a dog. Unless if it was a really slow thoughtful dog, like those hotdogs. Even then. The canvas would have to be a lot bigger. With the turtles, the paintings can be kept small for better ebay shipping.

I really enjoyed this line: "A portion of proceeds will be donated to organizations that rescue and help turtles & tortoises."

Plus the rest of the description is brilliant:
"During an animal communication with Georgie he told me the colors he wanted to paint with that day."
"He titled the work 'Dreamscape' after completion."

Now I just need a pet to make paintings for me. I was going to get a fish aquarium to sit next to my computer at home. But fish can't really make paintings. Or can they?...

It would be so fun to do a comic strip. But it would take so long for one person to make 365 comic strips a year!

So why not pick one theme, and have a bunch of artists write and draw their own strips? Like there could be a character guide where everyone has to use the same characters. And maybe every month there could be a theme that the artists work with. Each person can draw it in their own style and their own jokes.

That way, it doesn't become a boring stale comic strip like how many others are in the newspaper. And you got lots of variety and talent working on it.

What would make a good comic strip for this model? It would be good to come up with a set of stable characters. Characters who could be put into interesting situtations.

Some ideas:
* Characters based on animals
* A family
* Office workers
* Aliens
* Inanimate objects that can speak and walk. (i.e. a toolbox as home, with hammer, screwdriver, etc)

Who's in? It would be fun to get a large group of people, like thirty people. So then you only have to do one comic a month. No drawing talents required. ANYBODY can join. You can join the new Yahoo group, Common Comic at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/commoncomic

Here's a bunch of different ideas i'm playing with for my 2004 christmas card.

• Bubble wrap (I have a lot left over from my halloween costume)
• Including a birthday candle (for Jesus's birthday). Then the recipient can use the birthday candle on their own cake, or a friends cake in the future.
• 2000th birthday for Jesus (don't they say he was born in 4AD?)
• How many days since Christ's birth... 73,047 days. Represent these numbers by filling up a tiny container with 73,047 grains of sand.
• Connect the dots game, but the dots are all stars in the sky that the wise men are looking at. Once the dots are connected, they form some image, maybe Jesus in the manger
• Send out four advent postcards, one for each advent week. (i'm too late to do this now)
• List some amazing feats, amazing gifts, amzing discoveries. Then inside says how Christ's birth is MORE AMAZING than all of them... The almighty perfect God coming down to our little dirty sinful planet.

A hot combination is to include brights into a palette of neutrals.

Peach, toupe, pale mauve with rich brass and coppers. 2005 will see more bronzes and coppers. While 2006 will see a marriage of silver and gold.

Alot of yellows. Espicially olives, darker greens, bronzes.

Side note: here's a page with links to download the Spring 2005 "exclusive swatches palette" from the magazine design weblog. I like how they make such a big deal out of how it's "exclusive." Uh yeah, any bloke can download this. big deal.

So in honor of their EXCLUSIVE swatches palette, i'm offering the palettes that Leatrice mentioned in her talk. Here they are as a LIMITED TIME EXCLUSIONARY swatches palette. Oh wait, i didn't make this palette yet. soon. very soon.

Source: 11/17/2004 talk by Pantone Insitute Director Leatrice Eiseman at a Unisource/International Paper breakfast

when coding websites, you assign color by a six-digit hex value. This value can have the following numbers/letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0. So a piece of code for to color this text looks like this: color="#AA3399". Seeing that you can use letters A to F, you can spell words with them. Like color="#DECADE".

Here's all the six-letter english words that can be spelled with those letters and what their hex color looks like.

ACCEDE
BACCAE
BAFFED
BEADED
BEDDED
BEEBEE
BEEFED
CABBED
DABBED
DAFFED
DECADE
DEEDED
DEFACE
EFFACE
FACADE

Leatrice often looks at movies are in production and what colors will be emphasized in those films.

And of course, fashion. Leatrice and the Pantone Color Insititute talk to designers and query them about the colors they will be using in their collections, then the Institute statistically comes up with the top 10 hues of the season.

Technology often introduces new colors, because it allows colors to be used where they were never used before. Car interiors are a place to look for where the up and coming colors will be.

The technology used for materials in cars often tend to be more expensive, because they are new ways of engineering surfaces and treatments. Brushed metals will become hot in 2006, because car interiors are starting to introduce this material. Once it becomes cheap enough, the technologies used to create these surfaces for multiple purposes will spread across product design everywhere.

Oh if you want to know what they top ten hues for spring of 2005 are, Leatrice says:
ïÝTurquoise/aqua blues
ïÝvibrant green
ïÝpinks
ïÝyellows with a hint of green
ïÝa red-orange shade
ïÝa dark blue that's not quite navy
ïÝkhaki
ïÝcantaloupe/coral shades
ïÝlavender
ïÝslate gray

Oh yeah, i'm watching out for the teal

Source: 11/17/2004 talk by Pantone Insitute Director Leatrice Eiseman at a Unisource/International Paper breakfast

While getting my mail, i dropped a plastic bag containing 12 eggs inside a regular foam container. The container dropped flat on the ground. Six eggs were cracked. Six survived uncracked. 50% not bad.

A triple threat match. Which one do people prefer the most? I want to email Kit Kat and tell them to continue to make their delicious dark chocolate kit kats, but i need the statistical ammo to convince them. So, i'd like to post a poll very similiar to the Pop vs. Soda page. But i need to figure out the programming first.

The form will look something like this:
What do you prefer:
* Dark Chocolate
* Regular Chocolate
* White Chocolate

What is your age?

What is your zip code?

Are you male or female?

I'm shocked at how many more double dog dares there are vs. the triple dog dare. And what is up with the non-existent Pentuple Dog Dare!!!

7: Single Dog Dare
218,000: Double Dog Dare
6,740: Triple Dog Dare
63: Quadruple Dog Dare
0: Pentuple Dog Dare
0: Hextuple Dog Dare