Does anybody have any good quotes?

Every week in the newspaper spreads I design, there are two blocks for quotations. One of a humorous tone, the other is a "Words of Wisdom." I search high and low for some interesting quotes. But now I ask if you have any quotes that you would like to see in the newspaper. The quotes have to be a bit short, under 25 words. And I need the name of the person who said the quote. It can even be yourself, if you have your own interesting quote!

Here's a couple examples of what I ran the past couple weeks:

Humorous quotes:
"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting." --Mark Twain
"You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing." --Michael Pritchard
"The habitually punctual make all their mistakes right on time." --Laurence J. Peter

Words of wisdom:
"Pride leaves home on horseback, but returns on foot." --German proverb
"There is no failure except in no longer trying." --Elbert Hubbard
"A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man." --Arthur Miller

Please leave your quotations in the comments, and I will let you know if when I use it in the newspaper. Thank you so much!

When is waiting fun? I'm compiling a list of things that are fun waiting for. Please feel free to contribute to this list in the comments of this post.

• I like to wait until I eat my entire fortune cookie before reading the fortune.


• When converting an entire CD to mp3s, I like to wait for them to finish converting before listening to any of the songs.


• In the morning during rush hour in Chicago, sometimes I like to wait for everyone ahead of me to go up the stairs first and then I run up the empty stairs.


• Waiting at the the deli counter can be fun watching what the deli cutters work. (Unrelated fact: Although now I don't buy deli meat, but I do buy cheese)

What are some of the things you enjoy waiting for?

(Matt Stairs' rookie card in 1993)

I'm dedicating today, May 25, 2007 to the Major League ballplayer Matt Stairs. In the past week, the 39-year-old journeyman has hit 4 homeruns. That is hilarious for a number of reasons:
1) That he's still playing baseball
2) That a team would actually start him enough to hit four homeruns
3) That he would hit four homeruns.
4) He's Matt Stairs. Anything he does would be funny.
5) He did it for the Blue Jays. That's funny that there is still a Major League ballclup in Canada.
6) He stole one base so far this year. I would like to see that.

But seriously, I do like Matt Stairs, he played one year for the Cubs and he was a neat guy to have on the team. He's played for 10 teams so far.

Matt Stairs trivia
--In 1999 he placed 17th in the MVP balloting when he hit 38 homeruns for Oakland.
--So far he has 225 career homeruns.
--He is currently the 8th oldest active ballplayer.
--In the offseason he coaches hockey for John Bapst High School, a private high school located in Maine.
--He played for the Canadian Olympic Team at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.
--He is only the second Canadian born player to ever hit more than thirty-five home runs in a season and only the second to hit more than 25 home runs and drive in more than 100 runs in back-to-back seasons. He ranks either first or second in power hitting categories of any Canadian to ever play in the Major Leagues. He is one of only two Canadian MLB players to hit more than 200 career home runs, (the other is former major league outfielder Larry Walker).

Sources: wikipedia and baseball-reference.

Throughout college and six years after, I was a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 25.4 (5'11" 182 lbs). Technically 25 BMI is considered overweight, which seems a bit odd to me, but anyways. Then I lost 20 pounds through a change in workout and eating habits. Now i've been a 22.4 BMI for the past three and half years.

Here's what I've been doing:

• No more cow milk. Drink soy milk.
  
• No more soda. Only one every one or two weeks.
• Eat halves more often: Occasionally for lunch, if it's a big lunch, eat half. Save the other half for next day.
• Eat slower.


• Change workout routine. It's easy to get in a rut. For three years prior to the weight loss, I was doing the same thing over and over. But then I started to do different things in the gym and saw results.
• Yogurt, nuts, chocolate.
• Lots -- lots of sleep.
• Mini-workouts at home. Just a few sets with dumbbells here and there.

(photo from Bright Star under creative commons license)

Every year in October we carve pumpkins. There should be a summer ritual where everyone carves a watermelon! Check out the amazing watermelon carvings on flickr.

Welcome to the Gapers Block readers. One of my photos was featured on the Rearview of May 22, 2007.

You can see the photo at flickr and read a nice story about my run-in with the security at the Northwestern train station while snapping this shot.

You can also buy a print at deviantart.

You can now get the newest spudart.org blog post sent to your email. Subscribe now, it's freeee! You'll get only one email every weekday.

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On the Chicago Craigslist artist board someone posted about having a Nerf basketball tournament. Yes! It's hilarious that this was posted on the ARTIST board. Can you imagine a bunch of artists playing nerf basketball?! lol.

Anyone interested? (artists and non-artists) Where do you think we should have it?

I'm gonna hafta install a hoop at work in the Tribune Tower for practice. Anyone is welcome to come over and play a game of H-O-R-S-E.

Help me decide. Which hoop should I get?

Option A:
The ultra-cool lights-up hoop:


Option B:
The standard hoop, with ultra-cool Nerf water bottle. How cool would this be to be shooting hoops, and then take a water break from an officiel Nerf water bottle? VERY cool, i tell you.

I'm looking for a simple, cheap digital camera to take videos. Most older digital cameras are able to take short little digital videos. I used to have a Canon Digital Elph S110 that was a 2 megapixel camera that could take videos. But it was stolen from from a car that was in a car repair shop.

I was looking at the videos I shot and uploaded onto YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/spudart and was remembering how much fun they were to shoot. So now I need a simple camera to always carry around in my bag.

I'm looking to spend no more than like $30 on a small (nothing too bulky), old, used digital camera. So if you have one that's not being used in some drawer somewhere, I would greatly appreciate if you are willing to part with it. Just let me know the model number and I'll do the research to see if it can take video. Either drop a line in the comments. Or contact me at www.spudart.org/blogs/contact. Thank you very much!

Creativepro.com reports "Adobe has officially announced that it won't release new versions of FreeHand -- not even maintenance updates."

Heh. Good ol' Freehand. Does anyone out there have any memories of this program they would like to share? Here are three of mine:

In college from 1993 to 1997 we were not taught Quark for layout. Instead we were taught to use Freehand for all our designs. Our design teacher was a Freehand expert. She even did some Freehand tutorials for the company or some publisher on CD-ROM.

For some reason I still have the Freehand 3.0 manual at home (see photo above). I guess it somehow traveled with me home from school. Now it's just funny to see it on my shelf. I'd love to have a Photoshop 3.0 manual.

I work at Tribune Media Services who is in partnership with Knight Ridder Tribune (a competitor of AP). For years KRT made their graphics in Freehand. It wasn't until last year that they finally switched over to Illustrator. It just goes to show how slow the newspaper industry works sometimes.

Any Freehand stories out there?

Literally, draw right ON it. Take a dry erase marker and you can start doodling right on your screen. Your co-workers might think you are crazy, but it's an interesting exercise to see your monitor in a new light.

If you draw enough on your screen, you'll notice that your mouse arrow actually looks like it's about an inch below the glass. It's as though your monitor is like a swimming pool. What you normally look at is at the bottom of the pool, while the glass surface is the top part of the pool.

There's no worries, because if you use a dry erase marker, it will wipe right off.

Here's a classic from my video archives. My twin brother Erik "The Hammer" Maldre accomplishes the first ever half-court run in the Chicago Croquet Squirearchy of Gentlefolk by going through half of the court's wickets IN ONE TURN! Here he celebrates his new record.

Projectplaylist.com allows you to create a playlist of your favorite songs and listen to your friend's playlist.

• Check out my project playlist.
• You can post your playlist on your MySpace profile. I have mine posted on my MySpace profile.
• You can even subscribe to a playlist using iTunes. Here's mine (this link will open up iTunes). If subscribe, you can download all my current tracks; and you'll get new tracks whenever I update my playlist!

If you create your own playlist, lemme know! :-)

1. Bible
It's written by God. It tells the truth. It doesn't hold back. Everything that's important that we need to know is in this book.

2. Mere Christianity
"Lewis employs logical arguments that are eloquently expressed." A great book on theology, culture, and society.

3. The Amazing Body Human
"This book examines in detail the fascinating anatomical differences betwen humans and animals in order to appreciate how all of these differences are part of God's design for us as persons." It's really fascinating how we are so completely different from animals--especially explained in a scientific way.

4. Tipping Point
A great book about how little things make a big difference. Excellent structure to the book with great stories. A very fast read.

5. The Monumental Impulse
Compares architecture to biology. The number five slot was a tough one to fill. There are so many runner ups.

The summer olympics come every four years. The cicadas come every 17 years. That makes them the Olympics TO THE EXTREME. Here's some cicada postcards for you to collect:


The cicada high jump


The cicada 100 meter sprint


The cicada 800 meter swimming race

You can even print out this cicada and color it. Check out Color a Magicicada over at cicadamania.com.

Here's the photo I submitted to "24 Hours of Flickr." Please view the image on flickr and add it to your favs. I would like to get a high interestingness ranking, so you clicks and favs will help! Thank you!

I nearly got ran over by a Doritos truck this morning while walking to work (well, kinda nearly). And it got me to thinking, whatever happened to Doritos? I remember them 15 years ago being much cooler. Is this just me?

Outside every subway and L station should be some sort of compass/directional device that points out which way is north. So often people come out of train stations all confused about directions. A simple item embedded in the sidewalk would certainly come in handy.

But a temporary solution may be to print out stickers with a compass on them. And then just stick them at the top of the handrail or something. With my public art I never like to place something that is difficult to remove, so I'm kinda against the permanance of a sticker. Maybe if it was stuck onto the sidewalk? But then some wisenheimer could come by and peel it up and turn it around.

Ideas anyone?

Back in 2003 there was a giant photography project called America 24/7 where more than 25,000 digital photographers participated. For one week during May 12-18, 2003 they took pictures of their homes, family and community to create a visual time capsule of American life.

From the thousands of photos taken, 51 books were published. One for each state and then one master book for the country. I got seven photos into the Illinois 24/7 book. :-) It was a crazy week for me as I shot over 2,000 photos. I blogged about it back in 2003.

Here are the seven photos in the book:

Flickr.com wants you to chronicle your day on 05/05/2007, and then you can submit one photo to: http://www.flickr.com/groups/24flickr. And you might just get published in the book!

Oh yeah! From the 24 hour flickr page:

The event will be commemorated by a companion 24 Hours of Flickr book, which will contain a selection of photographs chosen from the group. Additionally, the group’s photos will be featured at Flickr events around the world this summer.

Cool! I had good luck with the America 24/7 project back in May 2003, getting seven photos published. :-) (I'll post more about those seven photos tomorrow.