What's your choice? Walking up a nice set of granite stairs or up an echoing metal staircase? You couldn't have more a difference between the two new staircases installed in the Grand red line station.

For the commuters from the north side of Chicago that use the Grand station, you have two options. The nice staircase for the riders in the front of the train. Or the prison staircase for the riders of the rear of the train.

Everytime I walk up the metal staircase for the rear riders, I swear I think I'm in prison. The staircase is all metal. When you get a line of people walking up the stairs, you can hear the metal stairs echo with every step. You end up with this prison staircase effect. It's like we are walking to our jobs and chained to our desks. What a way to start the morning!

OR you could walk up the nice granite steps for the front-of-the-train riders. No clombing sound of being in prison. Instead it's nice solid granite. I tell you what, I'll always walk up these stairs. It makes me wonder if the metal stairs are temporary, because they'll eventually install an escalator there. I hope so. Otherwise we'll have half our Grand station commuters continuing to experience their exit out of the station to be not so grand.

The number of searches on google for puzzles have been steadily declining since 2004. Are people just not interested in simple puzzles anymore? My first thought was maybe people are playing more online games.

But I think the decline in searches for the word "puzzles" is more tied to the decline of searches for sudoku. It blasted onto the scene in 2005, and naturally has calmed down once people figured out what it was.

Hey, that's not actually Kool-Aid in the Kool-Aid Man's pitcher. That's actually sangria. Yum!

Other than NASCAR, baseball is most like croquet.

Both baseball and croquet has the main objective of the player to go in a circle by reaching certain stations along the way. Baseball you you go in a circle and touch four bases. In croquet you go in a circle by making your ball go through 14 hoops.

Croquet the main point is to hit your ball through the hoops in a certain order. You have something aim for. In baseball you don't hit the ball to a particular spot. You have to hit the ball to avoid the opponent.

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View other posts from this series:
-- What is baseball, really? (part 1 of 4)
-- What is baseball, really? (part 2 of 4: thoughts on homeruns)
-- What is baseball, really? (part 3 of 4: Baseball is most like NASCAR)

Baseball has more in common with NASCAR than another sport.

Both baseball and NASCAR involve getting around a circle as fast as possible. That's really the point of baseball. To run around in a complete circle. I can't think of any other sports besides track and NASCAR that has the main point to be running in a circle. In baseball, they just slow things down a bit by adding the fact that there's a ball involved.

Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE baseball. It's just fun to think of baseball abstractly.

----
View other posts from this series:
-- What is baseball, really? (part 1 of 4)
-- What is baseball, really? (part 2 of 4: thoughts on homeruns)
-- What is baseball, really? (part 4 of 4: Baseball is also like croquet)

The celebrated homerun

As the previous post mentioned, the main point of baseball is one of avoidance. You hit the ball where it escapes your oppoents to you have enough time to run around in a circle. Whereas other sports of like baskeball and football center around getting the ball into a specific place.

But a-ha! You say, what about the homerun? That's putting the ball linto a certain place. True. And perhaps that's part of the reason why our sports coverage on tv loves the home run so much. Every night we see tv replays of homeruns. Do we see tv replays of triples? No. A triple is hitting the ball to such a remote corner of the ballpark, so you can run extra bases. There's a certain psychology behind a triple that tv doesn't like. Hitting the ball into some corner that people don't normally stand in? TV apparently doesn't like to show that.

Instead the glorious homerun. It's the final landing spot for the ball. It's long. It's grand. The ball soars through the air to give the team the runs they need to win.

But really the homerun is the ultimate in avoidance. The ball is hit to a spot where no fielder can possible field it. There's nothing like it in sports. In tennis if you hit the ball into the stands, it's the worst shot ever. In soccer if you hit the ball into the stands, you just incredibly missed the goal.

In baseball the complete point of the homerun is avoidance. The homerun says, "you can't touch this." If it's like if in football, the quarterback decided to score the most points for his time by making the ball as untouchable as possible by chucking the ball beyond the endzone and into the stands.

----
View other posts from this series:
-- What is baseball, really? (part 1 of 4)
-- What is baseball, really? (part 3 of 4: Baseball is most like NASCAR)
-- What is baseball, really? (part 4 of 4: Baseball is also like croquet)

Baseball is a game of avoidance

The main idea behind baseball is that you hit the ball where the opponent isn't, so you have time to run around in a large circle. All other sports have the goal to get the ball into a specific area to score.
-- Football: carry the ball into a large rectangular field of grass
-- Hockey/Soccer/Water Polo/Lacrosse: shoot the ball into the net
-- Basketball: place the ball through a small metal rim
-- Croquet: hit your ball through metal hoops

In baseball, you don't really hit the ball to any specific area to score. You just kinda try to not hit the other guy.

----
View other posts from this series:
-- What is baseball, really? (part 1 of 4)
-- What is baseball, really? (part 2 of 4: thoughts on homeruns)
-- What is baseball, really? (part 3 of 4: Baseball is most like NASCAR)
-- What is baseball, really? (part 4 of 4: Baseball is also like croquet)

Someone should steal the letter "m" from Myspace to name it Yspace, cuz y would anyone still use yspace?

I've been posting of all my comments on delicious since March 2009. Just today I hit my 1,000th comment. It was on vivagirlco's photo, Rock Hard Gym.

Here's the top 15 places where I have left comments in the past year.
111 comments: spudart.org blog
82 comments: unlikelymoose blog
65 comments: vivagirlco on flickr
61 comments: sparxmind blog
47 comments: srhbth on flickr
25 comments: prettyhandsome on flickr
17 comments: digicat on flickr
14 comments: andertoons blog
13 comments: chicagoist
13 comments: sparx on flickr
12 comments: chi_cowboy on flickr
10 comments: chicagonow
10 comments: thrillarama bog
10 comments: tom's food blog
9 comments: little guys doodles blog
Note, this does not include twitter or facebook.

It's easy
You might think it takes a good amount of time to post these comments to delicious, but it's really easy. Whenever I'm writing a comment, I just copy the text and hit the delicious button in my Firefox toolbar.

Benefits
Why it's good to do this.
1) All my comments are archived. That's kinda nice.
2) My friend's blogs and photos get extra SEO by having the links on delicious.
3) I reserved my name, @mattmaldre on twitter. But I wasn't using that account as my main twitter account. I currently tweet under @spudart. I didn't want @mattmaldre to be released to someone else because I wasn't using it. So now I have my delicious bookmarks hooked up to automatically post to @mattmaldre. It's kinda fun to see how the comments function as tweets.
4) If something is good enough to be commented, then it's also good enough to be bookmarked. Maybe people will find these interesting photos and blog posts on delicious.

Leave bouncy balls in public areas for people to have fun. Really push the message across by attaching a note. Here's some ideas what the note could say:

-- Have some fun today --

-- Carry this ball around with you all day --

-- Give this ball to someone --

-- I hope you have a bouncy day --

-- This ball will unlock secret treasures if you bounce it 1,000 times --

The most popular letter for any transformer Autobot or Decepticon is one that starts with the letter S.

You know you are an Autobot if your name starts with the letter
-- C
-- F
-- H
-- P

You know you are a Decepticon if your name starts with the letter
-- D
-- M
-- R

What is it with the letters D, M, and R? Do they sound more evil?

Dead End
Deceptitran
Devastator
Dirge
Divebomb
Drag Strip

Megatron
Menasor
Mindwipe
Misfire
Mixmaster
Motormaster

Ramjet
Rampage
Ratbat
Ravage
Razorclaw
Reflector
Rippersnapper
Rumble
Runabout
Runamuck

Thanks to sparxmind for compiling a list of Autobot names and Decepticon names. It inspired this blog post.

My number one most listened-to song in March 2010 was Franz Joseph Haydn's "Fire." As I tweeted about last month: "Franz Joseph Haydn's 'Fire' could easily be named "Jack it up." Apparently I liked the song enough that it was the song I listened to the most last month.

You can preview it on Amazon Music at http://ow.ly/1hkOI (it's song #9).

Three years ago today I signed up for twitter. My first tweet was very grand:

Signing up for twitter, duh.
-- 4:07 AM Apr 9th, 2007

Here's my eight favorite tweets from the past month:

1. Vending machines should have anti-gravity pulsors, so you don't have to bend down to get your candy.
   -- 1:17 PM Apr 2nd
   
   
2. IDEA: Cute little anchors to keep a teabag from floating
   -- 12:30 PM Mar 23rd
   
   
3. IDEA: next time you walk back to your desk from the bathroom, walk backwards.
   -- 5:40 PM Mar 22nd
   
   
4. Picking up some Dove chocolate Easter eggs @walgreens which will make good bullets for my chocolate cannon
   -- 4:45 PM Mar 20th
   
   
5. I L-O-V-E U-S-I-N-G D-A-S-H-E-S I-N B-E-T-W-E-E-N W-O-R-D-S I-T R-U-L-E-S!, I M-E-A-N L-E-T-T-E-R-S, N-O-T W-O-R-D-S.
   -- 9:56 AM Mar 18th
   
   
6. IDEA: Make a video compilation of you knocking on all the different surfaces you encounter on your commute
   -- 9:12 AM Mar 17th
   
   
7. What if every time you saw a bus, you'd board for one mile and repeat for ten times?
   -- 6:22 PM Mar 15th
   
   
8. I'm thinking of doing an art project where I get a ton of foreign currency and leaving it around the city.
   -- 11:36 AM Mar 1st

Three years. That's pretty cool. 2,000 tweets in that time.

Since March 3, 2010 spudart.org was unreachable for people who use Comcast cable internet. The nice support people at the company that hosts spudart.org found that there was a loop in the DNS setup.

Huh?

Good news is that spudart.org should be available once again for users of Comcast high-speed internet. Thank you and welcome back my comcast peeps.

MLB.com has a game called Beat the Streak where you try to put together a hitting streak to beat baseball's legendary record of 56 games. Choose one player every day who you think will get at least one base hit. If your player gets a hit, your streak is extended. If he fails to get a hit, your streak ends and you can start a new one.

Be the first eligible participant to get a hit in 57 straight games and win $3,000,000 in cash.

I'm also doing my own little pool/league and if you win the league, you get $20 via paypal from me!
How to join the Amazing League:
1) Send me a message via the spudart contact form
2) I'll send you an invite to join our private league via mlb.com.
3) You click on the link in the email and join the league.

So far nobody has ever defeated me in Beat the Streak. One year I got an 11-game streak. In 2008 I won with 12 games. In 2009 I won with 13 games. Think you can beat that? If you get the longest streak in the Amazing League, you get $20. It's totally free to join my league. I'm offering the twenty bucks out of my pocket just to make it interesting. One year, we had about 10 people in the league.

West Side Grounds where the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908 is still a park. Or at least on Google Maps it looks like a park. It's only a couple blocks from the Polk stop on the CTA pink line. I'm gonna have to swing by there sometime.

What should I do when I go there? Some ideas:

1) Re-enact the Cubs winning the World Series
Dress in period attire and start cheering about the Cubs being world champions.

2) Ask people if they know where to find Joe Tinker
Or if they know where Heinie Zimmerman is.

3) Survey people if Orval Overall was a better pitcher than Three-finger Mordecai Brown
Mordecai Brown: 29-9, 1.47 ERA, 27 complete games, 123 strikeouts (3.5 SO/9)
Orval Orverall: 15-11, 1.92 ERA, 16 complete games, 167 strikeouts (6.7 SO/9)

4) Leave a 1908 pennant in the ground
Mark the turf!

5) Ask people how in the world Joe Tinker got 39 errors in 1908
Tinker is part of the infamous fielding double-play combo that inspired the song lyrics, "Tinker to Evers to Chance." Yet Tinker biffed it 39 times? Yipes. (for the record Evers had 25 errors and Chance with 15).

The same artist who did the Chicago Bean (Cloudgate) is designing this super huge sculpture for London and their Olympics in 2012. (via the Guardian)

The structure will officially be called the ArcelorMittal Orbit, after steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, the richest man in Europe, who is funding it. It's kinda wacky, right? I like it. But here's how to make it even better.

1. Tree houses
That thing is begging for people to take up residence in it with little tree houses. Or even caccoons.

2. Spider-man visits
They should have Spider-Man come and crawl on that thing 24 hours a day. Oh wait. That's too much. How about once a day spider-man comes and slings some webs?

3. Water slides
This thing looks like a maze of water slides. Why not actually make them into water slides! YEAH!

4. Power-up mushroom boxes
On level five of this stucture, there should hang some boxes with blinking question marks. When someone jumps up and hits their head on the box, a mushroom would come out of the box. Whoever touches the mushroom will then immediately grow to twice their size.

What else can they do to improve this monster sculpture?