Image courtesy feuilllu via creative commons

The South Pole has reached negative 90 degrees fourteen times so far this year. The lowest being –95 on June 14 and June 23. Can they break negative 100?

Here's the temperatures for June:
http://www.wunderground.com/history/station/89009/2008/6/1/MonthlyHistory.html

When you want to separate a bunch of information on one line, what do you use? Let us look at some options.

The pipe
Your Name | Fancypants Title | Acme Widgets
Classic, although it's essential to use two spaces before and after the pipe, otherwise it looks like an l (that's a lower case L)

The bullet
Your Name • Fancypants Title • Acme Widgets
Very institutional

The tilde
Your Name ~ Fancypants Title ~ Acme Widgets
So early 2000s. This is like putting an orbital shape by your logo. Don't do it! oh noooo!

The plus sign
Your Name + Fancypants Title + Acme Widgets
Cute, as it's a math sign. What does your name, title, and company add up to? It would be funny to have an equal sign in there somewhere. What that would equal, i have no idea.

The double slash
Your Name // Fancypants Title // Acme Widgets
Hip. Very hip.

The dollar sign
Your Name $ Fancypants Title $ Acme Widgets
Oh good gravy, I hope there is nobody on this planet using this. But you know there is. Somewhere.

The greater-than sign
Your Name > Fancypants Title > Acme Widgets
What is this? A navigational breadcrumb? I think not. Let's not mix our metaphors here.

The double greater-than sign
Your Name » Fancypants Title » Acme Widgets
Cousin to the greater-than sign is this funky double-version. It's like a set of twin cousins.

The coolest character to use (and the point of this blog post) The division sign
Your Name ÷ Fancypants Title ÷ Acme Widgets
It's got it all. A dash. Two dots. And the joy of mathematical richness. Dividing. What happens when you divide your name and then divide that by your title and then your company? Who knows? But it's really cool to think about. And we all know that when you line up a bunch of division signs, they make a stitched line effect. Now that's just frankencool.

When you put a bunch of division symbols next to each other, they look like a stitched line. The horziontal lines are the seam. The dots are the holes where the thread goes through.

I was playing with my email signature and thought the division symbol was pretty cool. Who uses that in their email signature? Nobody that's who. Here's my email sig in all its divisional glory:

Tänan!
(That’s thank you in Estonian. Pronounced “TA-nahn.”)

Matt Maldre ÷ Artist/Designer ÷ Spudart Productions
http://www.spudart.org ÷ matt@spudart.org ÷ 312-505-3830
÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷  ÷ 
To view the entire series of “thank you” in other languages,
visit: http://www.43things.com/things/view/1692376

See! It's totally like a stitched line. Oh you know it.

Tomorrow's blog post will touch on other symbols you can use in your email signatures. (Hint, the division symbol wins)

photo courtesy Library of Congress

What if this was the regular road uniform for the 2008 Cubs? Goodbye red, white, and blue. Welcome pure charcoal gray.

(image from benandclare)


(image from neowneow)

Who knew that Springfield, Illinois had such a cool building? I like how the dome is stretched taller. And that silver color. Very cool. (I encountered this discovery from a photo on a chicagoist post about the state worker rally).

whoat

definition:
Interjection. (used to express surprise or confusion. a combination between "whoa" and "what").

example:
as in, "Whoat! You must be kidding!"

Every Tuesday after sunset in 2008 from July 15 to August 22, Chicago will show free movies on a 50-foot by 34-foot screen in Chicago's downtown Grant Park at 100 S. Lake Shore Drive. (It's south of Millennium Park, and north of the Art Institute).

The 2008 Movies in the Park lineup:
8:57 p.m. July 15: “All About Eve” (1950)
8:51 p.m. July 22: “The Odd Couple” (1968)
8:44 p.m. July 29: “The Blues Brothers” (1980)
8:35 p.m. Aug. 5: “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951)
8:25 p.m. Aug. 12: “Touch of Evil” (1958)
8:15 p.m. Aug. 19: “An Affair to Remember” (1957)
8:03 p.m. Aug. 26: “Grease” (1978)

Rock-n-cherry-rocky-road

definition:
Interjection/Slang. (used to express delight or joy).

example:
as in, "Rock-n-cherry-rocky-road! That bicycle is incredible!"

first usage:
Andertoons Cartoon Blog: "Parts of the Tribune Tower remind me of this cube. Too bad our actual cubes don't look like this. That would roooooock-n-cherry-rocky-road."

You know when someone is past the Gen Y or Gen X generation when they wear a braided belt. Those things died out in the 90s. Let them be buried circa 1995.

Y'know those braided belts that people wear on your pants under belt loops. They are not big (the big ones that women wear over dresses and stuff are nice), but i'm talking about the regular belt size that people wear with a shirt. THOSE braided belts.

If you see someone over the age of 30 wearing the dorky braided belt, you know they belong to that older generation. If you fit that description, get a clue and TRASH THE BRAIDED BELT.

Barack Obama (democrat)
A boar am back

John McCain (republican)
Jam Inch Con

Ralph Nader (independent)
Harder Plan

Chuck Baldwin (constitution)
Wild Cab Chunk

Bob Barr (libertarian)
Barb Orb

------------------------------------------------
Dropped out:

Ron Paul (republican)
Our Plan

Hillary Clinton (democrat)
Lo Tyrannic Hill

After seeing the photos in this post and this post, I want to visit Amsterdam.

I love Chicago's river. Amsterdam's river here has such neat little boats all along the sides. It's so naturally part of a community with the houses and fun bikes. I would love to photograph their river.

I have added over one thousand photos of other flickr users to my favorites on flickr. You can see all 1,038 in one big image file. Or if you would like to see the individual images, download this zip file and open the html file in your browser.

Oh wow, this proposed Eco-Bridge off Chicago's lakeshore is just fantastic! One of Chicago's true jewels is the lakefront. Yet, it seems that many people outside Chicago aren't aware of how great our lakeshore is. Dude, the Chicago Ecobridge will certainly make the lakefront a stronger part of Chicago's identity.

Blair Kamin gives an excellent review of the bridge in his Skyline blog. Here's my notes from his review:
• Two miles long
• Connects Adler Planetarium to Wacker Drive (just south of the Chicago River)
• Wind turbines dotting along the bridge
• Observation tower at the peak (I wonder how tall it's planned to be)
• Observation tower could possibly hold the Olympic flame (I get chills thinking about that!)
• $1 billion cost
• Part of Daniel Burnham's plan
• You can walk and jog on it
• Built on permeable slag, so fish can live in it
• House 5,000 to 10,000 boats
• House the rowing competition for the Olympics

And the bridge is like one giant hug for Chicago. It looks as though the observation tower has big arms coming out hugging Chicago.

UPDATE: The architectural firm Adrian Smith+Gordon Gill has some more images on their site including this wind turbine:

It would be really cool if people could leave public comments on ebay auctions. I'd love to leave a comment on a goofy auction.

Or better yet, I could release my angst when someone outbids me. I recently I was bidding on some original art used for a Topps baseball card (Lloyd McClendon), and I got outbid. Who bids on Lloyd McClendon stuff. Sheeesh.

Now we know that ebay doesn't want public comments on their auctions. But a 3rd party site could create a site where people can leave comments. It could even tie into greasemonkey, so when you pull up the ebay page, it inserts a link to how many public comments are on that auction. I don't know how legal that is, but it would be great to read other people's thoughts on auctions.

It would be great if there was some way to easily export the information for your flickr photos. I want to back up all my captions and tags.

I'm alright with doing it manually since I only have about 100 HDR photos in flickr. But I'm running into a problem converting the spaced separated tags from flickr into comma separated ones.

Here's how flickr stores the tags:
hdr chicago olympics "stir the soul" "lasalle street" "adams street" "summer olympics" winter day daytime illinois "nikon d80" spudart maldre 2016

I can't just replace all the spaces with commas, because there are many items that are a phrase. How in the world do I make them look like this:
hdr, chicago, olympics, stir the soul, lasalle street, adams street, summer olympics, winter, day, daytime, illinois, nikon d80, spudart, maldre, 2016

If I owned a car, I would totally drive it to some scenic location, and then photograph myself with my foot perched on the bumper. Classic photograph. Every car owner needs to have one of these. Then you can have a collection of these type of photographs as you own different cars throughout your life.

Can you guess how much money is in this bag?

Our copywriter at work Lisa was exchanging her change and we agreed this would be a fun game. How much money ya think is in here? My original guess was $40.00.

John McCain has a rather odd way of asking people to volunteer for him. I got an email from his campaign asking me to put my life on hold for a few months. There's gotta be a better way to phrase this.

Clearly John McCain is trying to ride off Obama's democratic nomination win. Headlines across the country read "Obama makes history."


So now McCain sends out an email saying, "Can you put your life on hold for a few months to make history?" Clearly McCain doesn't know how to get support.

The Chicago Olympic Committee is asking you to complete this sentence:

Chicago is _________.

Tell the world what Chicago means to you at www.chicago2016.org.

Here's a few things I submitted to this form:
• Chicago is loving the Olympics
• Chicago is a melting pot of the world
• Chicago is working hard
• Chicago is optimistic
• Chicago is embracing the world
• Chicago is working hard and dreaming big
Feel free to use any of those or write your own. If you do submit something to their site, please also post it in the comments of this blog post. :)

UPDATE:
There is a limit of 30 characters for your answer on the chicago2016.org form.

New word: Kamino

definition: to disappear

Ok. Not so much a new word, as a new definition for an existing word. Kamino is the planet in Star Wars that was erased from the official library records. The planet virtually disappeared! More info at the Kamino wikipedia entry

In usage: "Where did John go? He totally went all Kamino."

(image is from http://simonz.co.hu/update_eng.html).

Major Leauge Baseball's website doesn't allow you to have a password over 10 characters. They used to allow you to go beyond 10 characters, but now, for some odd reason, they limit it to ten. Maybe they want someone to hack the All-Star vote.

What letters come out when you clean your keyboard? Here's what I just got:

4l,mkn, vm,nbvcvbbvbc Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler,zaz˛ Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler,bnmbgnjmghfdsghjkhgfyghjkkkikl;oikjuikloghqaQa1A6455555ERazSaqsasdadssdq e12qew341232wwwwwwwq1qqqqqqqq23wq1w`1 12[p';L=\
77ioum,=.3012-9.310.2 xcv bnm/=.0312/.3012*/.3=/.012*=/.34dfg687 n,m.cnbvnm,bvcbnbvc Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler,vbnm,.978 bnm cvb Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, cbvcfghvb Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler,sZ`1z'
23AA A Zx

The art director was using my computer to lay out some entertainment pages, hence the "Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, " being repeated, it was on the clipboard. I think the F2 key is paste.

Feel free to bookmark this post and whenever you clean your keyboard, paste in your text here.