Year: 2009

I’ve posted 22 tr.im URLs on twitter (I’m user spudart). What gets the most clicks? Drama and iphones! 41 clicks It’s kinda funny that the Chicago trolley service is ELIMINATED! http://tr.im/chicagotrolly Note: People love drama. Oh no! Service ELIMINATED! Maybe…

Play a fun game at work on your whiteboard. Have people guess what the first 70-degree day will be in your city. We started this competition about a month ago. Guess what today is? THE FIRST 70 DEGREE DAY IN…

According to urbandictionary.com, the 2nd definion for my initials MPM is “Common typo for lol. Most of the time it happens when you don’t look at the keyboard or when you are typing really fast :p” Let’s all take in…

AIGA is a great resource for graphic designers. But the annual membership fee is $315. Ouch. $315 a year. I recently wrote a letter to the AIGA asking if they have considered lowering their annual fee. This isn’t an exciting…

It would be nice to have a setting on Twitter to get only @replies sent as a text message to my phone. Getting tweets from all my friends would be crazy. But getting just the @replies would be really nice.…

Photo courtesy josephp via creative commons license Wow. They moved the entire Sears Tower over to Navy Pier. And they built a huge dome over it. A few questions: 1) How did they get the Sears Tower to fit inside…

Outside Tribune Tower in Chicago today is a promotion by Cricket Wireless and Samsung. I know this because I work on the 14th floor of the Tribune Tower and all I hear today is the guy on the loud speaker,…

“Mountain Dew Monkey” recently added me as a contact on Flickr. What a great name! Can you imagine a monkey drinking Mountain Dew!?

Give me back that filet-o-fish. Give me that fish! Give me back that filet o fish. Give me that fish! What if it were you hanging up on this wall? If it were you in that sandwich you wouldn’t be…

It’s great that Comcast’s Customer Support are on Twitter. They respond right away to your problems and guide you in the right direction. However, in the middle of helping you, the support team is also twittering to each other about…

The following is a letter I sent to the Borders corporation and to the Borders bookstore on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, which right now is planning on closing shop in January 2010. Greetings people of Borders. I heard recently that…

(Above photo: The chips after they were picked up off the ground) Let’s say you are sitting in one of the world’s greatest public spaces on one of the area’s first warm days of the year. Everyone is sitting outside…

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo. This is a great video that explains all this economy stuff. On a side note, in Chicago’s Pioneer was an Obama spending protest (photos). While I’m cautiously concerned about how…

Today is a square root day! 3 x 3 = 9. 03/03/09 I hope your day is full of square roots. And may your happiness be exponentially multiplied

At rest areas on highways, I’m leaving these brochures for people to pick up. I’m hoping they will spur good conversation between friends and families on our highways. Here’s a few preliminary photos of the brochure as I’m designing it…

Hawaii is so cool, they should change the last two “i”s in “Hawaii” to exclamation points. HAWA!! or Hawa!!

Delicious.com is a great online bookmarking service. Use it to bookmark all the cool sites you find, and then in the future when you are trying to remember the name of a site, BADDA-BING BADDA-BANG! You can find it easily.…

Just look at how this paperclip box gets totally destroyed in my drawer. I’d love a cute paperclip box. Etsy? Help!

A bucket list going around on facebook has a line item “Have you ever shot a gun?” My brother and I both checked “yes” to it. Which caused curiousity among our friends, “When did you shoot a gun?!” Matt: Erik and…

When the only chocolate in my apartment is the empty chocolate-covered raisins bag in the garbage, it’s time for me to get some chocolate. I’m staring at the empty bag with hopes of chocolate in my head.

Pioneer court in Chicago on Michigan Avenue has been called one of the world’s best public squares in existence. Surrounded by great architecture on the south with 333 North Michigan Avenue and the London Insurance Building, on the north with…

Budgeted for highways and transit in the stimulus bill: ‚Ä¢ $27.5 billion: US highways ‚Ä¢ $8 billion: high speed transit ‚Ä¢ $6.8 billion: city transit (source: prorebulica.org) I’d rather see the highway and transit numbers flipped. We don’t need more…

C-SPAN asked 65 presidential historians to rank the former 42 former occupants of the White House on ten attributes of leadership. My favorite leader–the croquet president–ended up being the 10th worst president ever. Hey, at least George W Bush is…

======================== February 14 a thankful homeless person It√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s gotta be really hard to be homeless and have to constantly ask for money or food all day long, only to have people reject you all the time. That√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s one of the…

When you read “cc” what do you think of? (other than carbon copy). I like to think it says “cool cool,” as in, “I’m gonna cool cool you”

Matt is wondering how the mysterious cut got on the top of his head. Brain growing too big? Aliens inserting special chip? That was a status update on my facebook profile last year. The responses were funny, so I saved…

Yesterday I rode six different buses, so I thought it would be fun to shoot one photo for each bus. To church: –49 Western southbound –66 Chicago eastbound To my sister’s: –8 Halsted northbound –22 Clarck northbound To my apartment:…

My first answer is: None. and the location is nowhere. Actually my answer is: a doodle, inked onto the inside of my hand from a pen. Stays for less than one day. The doodle would be a smiley face. Actually,…

A friend over at Rule29 recommended Chris Botti a jazz musician (reference: Something New For Your Music Radar). I’m digging on Chris Botti now. It’s funny how when someone recommends music to you, it sounds much better than it just…

Funny combinations result in the dock of the Mac’s newest operating system, 10.5. When a folder is put into the dock on a Mac, it will layer all the icons in the folder. Here is the Adium icon on top…

photo courtesy reallyboring via creative commons license I’m not sure if I agree entirely with Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic Blair Kamin when he says, “You let go of the past if you can build something better.” Specifically he was talking…