Does anyone know of any data recovery programs for Macintosh? My computer recently has been giving me the blinking question mark system folder. I have done the following:

• Booted up my computer on the Apple Hardware Test CD (everything passed, including the mass storage)


• Booted up my computer with a OS 10.3 installation CD, ran the Disk Utility and First Aid. It could not find my hard drive


• Zap the PRAM


• Held down option at bootup for Startup Manager (no drive appears)

I've tried all these in many different orders, but my computer still cannot boot up on its own. I continue to get the blinking question mark system folder icon.

So now I'm looking to buy some data recovery software. Maybe Techtool Pro. Maybe Allume's CheckIt System Perforance Suite. Maybe Alsoft's DiskWarrior. Maybe something else. Does Norton make any data recovery software? There's so many options. Which one to choose?

If anyone knows anything about these programs or others, please leave a comment in the comments below. Thank you. (Please do not email me as I don't currently have access to my email with my computer down)

I'm starting an art project where I'm having everyone I know draw an outline of their left hand on a sheet of paper. I'm going to photoshop all the hands together into one image to show the range of hands.

If I haven't seen you in awhile, you can send in your hand tracing.
1) Get a blank white 8.5x11 paper
2) Get a simple black ballpoint pen (Please no thick sharpies or markers)
3) Trace your left hand on the paper (Hold the pen with your right hand and trace around your left hand)
4) Write your name on the same side of the paper in the upper right (This is for tracking purposes, plus having the name on the sheet makes it look nice when I compile all these into plastic sheets in a binder)
5) Mail your tracing to:

Matt Maldre
c/o Hand Tracings
4809 N. Bell Ave, #1E
Chicago, IL 60625

6) Come back to this site to see the updated collage

Thank you.

1) Miniature roadside attractions
Inspired by the mini-houses at bicycle saftey towns... It would be really cool if there was a bike trail that had miniature versions of famous American buildings and monuments. You'd be riding your bike and then look! The St. Louis Arch! Get your photo taken next to it and you'll look like Godzilla. There could even be world monuments. Look! It's the Egyptian pyramids!

In Peoria there's the Interplanetary bike ride where via bicycle you can tour the inner solar system from the Sun to Saturn and back. All the planets are set at different locations according to real-scale distances. This 24-mile ride takes about 3 hours.

2) Fun terrain
Another idea that would make for a fun bike trail is to make the trail have repeated mounds--kinda like speed bumps, but it would have a nice flow so you go up and down, up and down for like 15 seconds straight. And then the trail could have embankments shifting from left to right, left to right. So it will be like you are on the ocean.

Or there could be like fifteen seconds of those horizontal mini-bumps--much like the median on streets. A-drr-drr-drr-drr-drr-drr-drr

Or the trail could have a bunch of mini rocks to drive over. Or maybe crushed G.I.Joe figures.

3) Color schemes
As you ride along, there could be 200 foot stretches where everything in the area is painted one color. So you could enter the yellow section, then the blue section. Blue benches. Blue pavement. Blue flowers. Blue public artwork.

4) Tire tracks
Have a part of the trail have three-foot poles with different colored chalk attached at the end of the pole. You are encourage to pick up a pole at the start of the trail and ride along with the chalk dragging on the ground. At the end of the section, there's a bucket for people to put the chalk poles back. The only problem is that you have to make sure that people only drag the chalk along one section.

It would be cool to dump a bucket of paint at one end to make cool trails, but then people would get paint all over their tires. But hey, we are just tossing ideas out here.

Other ideas?
Any fun ideas for a bicycle trail? Please leave them in the comments below. Or even if you know about any existing bicycle trails that have a creative idea.

Here's something to try maybe later.
while inside descending elevator:
Walk in circles going clockwise.
This is something I highly advise.

For while you on the descend
and walking round-n-round my friend,
the qualities you quite imbue
Is like you being a corkscrew!

Twisting and turning down below
Into the bottom floor you go!
Walk out the door dizzy and dope.
Maybe no one will see you I certainly hope.

You can read more of my elevator writings, including a couple other poems, under the "Elevator" category on my site.

In the spirit of Vanilla Ice's song "Ice Ice Baby," here is a rendition for defrosting your fridge:

All right stop collaborate and listen
Ice is back in our refrigerator invention
The door just won't close tightly
Defrost the fridge during the nightly
Will it ever stop yo I don't know
Let's try and give it a go.

This was part of an email I sent out to the entire 14th floor of the Tribune Tower about removing the food items in our mission to defrost the ice-laden fridge.

I'm a newspaper designer that has to adhere to the AP Style Guide. Anytime a caption mentions a USA state location I have to use the AP style to abbreviate the state name.

Ala.    Kan.    Nev.    S.C.
Ariz.   Ky.     N.H.    S.D.
Ark.    La.     N.J.    Tenn.
Calif.  Md.     N.M.    Vt.
Colo.   Mass.   N.Y.    Va.
Conn.   Mich.   N.C.    Wash.
Del.    Minn.   N.D.    W.Va.
Fla.    Miss.   Okla.   Wis.
Ga.     Mo.     Ore.    Wyo.
Ill.    Mont.   Pa.      
Ind.    Neb.    R.I.     

Why do some states get a two letter abbreviation and some get as many as five letters? You'd think they would keep it consistent and just pick the first four letters of the name. There are eleven that already do that: Ariz. Tenn. Colo. Mass. Conn. Mich. Wash. Minn. Miss. Okla. Mont. But the rest are just completely random.

Here's why the AP does this random abbreviation style. It's so that you have to constantly pull out the AP Style Guide and check it. This way it ensures you always remember that the AP style guide is the ruler.

Okay, so i'm obssessed with spider monkeys now.

Or you could say I'm ape for spider monkeys!!!!

Yesterday I asked if a photo of a baby spider monkey was cute or scary. Now what happens to a spider monkey when it grows up? See the photo above. YIPES!

Do you find this Central American spider monkey (aka black-handed spider monkey) to be cute or scary?

Here's a bunch of weapons made with one-line ascii art. They are handy to put into IMs and text messages.

>>---->                       Arrow/Dart
 
||||||[::]|||||||||||||       Belt

`=o==   o                     Cannon

-==|)-                        Crossbow

=-O *   *    *                The Enterprise firing photon torpedoes

=-O~~~                        The Enterprise firing phasers

O/////])===================== Light sabre

-|-------                     Sword

oxx)=----------               Sword

==-----------                 Whip

If you have any more weapons made with just keyboard characters, please leave 'em in the comments below.

furilla
interjection
1) Short for "for real"

When printing in Firefox you can add stuff to the headers and footers. Right now it only lets you choose from:
--Title
--Document URL
--Date/Time
--Page Number
--Page number "of" Page Total

It would be great if Firefox allowed custom fields. Sometimes I'll make a ton of printouts about a particular Bible verse, and I would like to have the Bible Verse reference in the header. So every printout would have "Romans 8:28" printed. That way it's much easier to file later on.

But the print.print_headercenter variable in the about:config file only allows for the five variables mentioned above. And there's no extension that allows Firefox to add custom fields for the header or footer when printing. If anyone knows of help, please leave it in the comments. Thanks.

Here's the secret ninja recipe for how they say the word "auto". You MUST do all of these at once:
--Say it slow
--Say it in a deep voice
--Say "auto" like it's two words. Aww. Tow.
--Make the last syllable "tow" last longer.
Ready now? Aww-Towwwwwww. Now just add a "hi-YAH!" to the end and yer all set, you ninja master.

White Sox broadcaster Hawk Harrelson looks like Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis. They have more in common than their looks. As a vampire, Grandpa Munster sucks blood. As a baseball announcer, Hawk Harrelson just sucks.

A nine foot tall bronze statue of Irv Kupcinet was recently installed to commemorate the man behind a record-breaking 60-year Chicago Sun-Times column. He even is depicted holding a Sun-Times final edition under his right arm. The 9 feet tall statue is on the Northeast corner of Wacker and Wabash, just across the river from the site of the previous home to the Sun-Times paper. Makes sense. Put the statue by where the Sun-Times used to be. Nice memorial.


Now look at this picture. It's odd how the statue's left hand is pointing towards the Trump Tower. It's like the statue is saying, "Now lookit this great building (that is not the Sun-Times building) across the river!"

At 5:04am this morning the date was a neat countdown number 08/07/06 05:04 am

"HE GONE!" is a catchphrase that Chicago White Sox broadcaster Hawk Harrelson likes to say when people on the opposing team strikes out. It's so incredibly annoying as it does it all the time and in a 5th-grade tone.

Now, does Hawk Harrelson say that phrase at home? Someone leaves his house, "HE GONE!" A mouse gets caught in a trap, "HE GONE!" He finishes his cereal, "CEREAL GONE!"

LEGO Master Model Building Event
Friday, August 18, 10:30am - 6:30pm
Saturday, August 19, 10:30am - 6:30pm
Sunday, August 20, 11am to 6pm

The LEGO Store at Westfield North Bridge
515 N State St, Chicago, IL

Ever wondered how those giant LEGO models are made? Here's a chance to satisfy your curiosity! A LEGO Master Model Builder is coming to Westfield North Bridge and kids of all ages are invited to help him build a gigantic eight-foot-tall YodaTM – a favorite character from Star WarsTM- made entirely of LEGO bricks. This a great chance for kids to get a hands on experience with a LEGO Master Model Builder. All participating children will receive an official LEGO Building Certificate while supplies last.

Make sure to try your luck in the "Guess the Number of Bricks Contest." The winner that guesses the closest to the amount of LEGO bricks used to build Yoda™ wins a $50 LEGO Store gift card. The contest and Yoda™ display will take place through August 27, 2006. The LEGO Master Model Builder Event is free and open to the public. Reservations are not required.

Graphic designers in America are projected to show a 24% increase in jobs by 2012 (from 197,460 in 2002 to 244,320 in 2012, according to projectionscentral.com)

In 2002 Illinois there was 8,590 Graphic Designers. They are projecting in 2012, there will be 9,890 for a 15% growth--that's 46th place. Ouch. Makes me wonder how much of that is Chicago.

The number one state for growth in graphic design? Nevada with a whopping 51% increase. Followed by Kentucky and Utah with 39% each. Kentucky? They have graphic designers down in Kentucky?

The state for the lowest increase? New York, 10%. Haha. In your face, New York!

There's a cool database with projections for how many jobs are projected for 2012. Here's the top ten for Illinois:


Some of the items in this list are interesting.

Social and Human Service Assistants
More social workers? I'm glad to see that Illinois is going to have more of these, because we can certainly use more help in this unpraised area.

Fitness Trainers and Aerobics Instructors
I also find it surprising that Fitness Trainers would be increasing. Yeah, we all want to be fit, but I imagine the people who are trying to find these jobs now are having a hard time.

Medical Records and Health Information Technicians
We all know that medicine and health care is growing a lot, but this area is rather odd. Medical records? It's too bad we can't just have one major health database.

Hazardous Materials Removal Workers
This one takes the cake for the top 10. We got a lot of Kryptonite lying around?

Yesterday Spudart.org recieved its 10,000th comment! Spudart.org leaped over the 10 grand mark with Gary's comment on the post about Roof Leapers of America. Thank you to all my readers, it just blows my mind that so many people are so kind to leave comments here. This site certainly would not be the same without you. Thank you!

It would be fun to walk into work and say "good morning" to my co-workers in a different language every day. But to make it stick in my head, it makes more sense to do one translation every week. So every week I say one version of "Good Morning." (this is an item on my to do list)

There are plenty of sites that offer lists of translations for "Good Morning," but none of them give a good listing of how to actually pronounce it. Here's a few sites so far:

574 versions include many dialects. Actually, this list is rather confusing with the all the different dialects. Just give me the one official version of "good morning" for a lanuage.
No pronounciations listed.

116 versions. No dialects.
No pronounciations listed.

122 versions. No dialects. It does explain the differences between "hello, morning, afternoon, evening"
No pronounciations listed.

99 versions. No dialects.
A few have spoken word pronounciations.

If anyone can find a site that offers the pronounciations for all the translations of "Good Morning," please leave the link in the comments. Thanks.

In a blog post from 2003, I said, "With large umbrellas, come large responsibilities." I'm glad to see that it has now spread over to Japan.