Year: 2016

John Kerry recently tweeted a pic from negotiations about Yemen. Doesn’t it look like a room in the Star Wars prequels? Dramatic ceiling. Very odd centerpiece table. Range of cultures. Funky patterned walls. I expect to see Senator Jar Jar…

Do you know someone who loves hot chocolate? Then you can give the Ultimate Hot Chocolate Package! The ultimate hot chocolate package is a collection of all the various hot chocolates you can find! In 2007, I gave my mom…

What’s up with dudes and hot chocolate? write Mary Fons. “Dudes like hot chocolate. It’s a thing.” She gives four examples of guys liking hot chocolate in her Choco Case Studies. Well, make me the 5th!–actually the first–since 2008 I…

  If the moon appears so big near the horizon, why does the moon seem so small up in the sky? Answer: the sky. We take our sky for granted, but it’s actually really huge. All that space around the…

When did you first discover the webcomic xkcd? If you don’t know about this webcomic, you need to read it NOW. A search through my hard drive resulted in a couple archived instant messages. Earliest reference I have to xkcd is on November…

I put my 1997 geocities site back up! (Click HERE to visit) All in its animated gif, ugly design glory, this is my first website I made. It wouldn’t be a Geocities site if there wasn’t a “under construction” icon…

A bizarre trading card from 1936 appeared in my search for arctic cards on checkoutmycards.com. 1936 G-Men & Heroes of the Law R60 #72 – Justice Within The Arctic Circle [Good to VG‑EX] The back of the card reads: “Official”…

Crystal Pepsi is back! To celebrate the popular 90s drink, Pepsi made a retake on the classic DOS game Oregon Trail. You can play “The Crystal Pepsi Trail” online. Ride along in your wood-panel station wagon collecting fifteen different 90s…

What if our culture had a custom where everyone wore a flower every day–including to work and on the weekends. People would wear the flower(s) on their shirt, in their hair, or maybe around the waist. (Men, too). We might…

What is the German word for spam? I was hoping it would be something awesome like, Schmerzlichmail. However, it’s simply “Spam.” But the article makes it fun… in the German languages there are three different ways of saying “the”: der,…

Ever work on a spreadsheet in Google Drive to do some quick sorting or calculation, but then never name the spreadsheet? I’ve done that so many times where I forget to delete the draft spreadsheet. Find all your untitled spreadsheets…

Today Chicago could have been hosting the Olympics. Back in 2007 when Chicago was making the Olympic bid, the city was covered in posters promoting the Chicago bid. I went around the city photographing the posters. Ask any Chicagoan today…

Do you ever feel like creating personas for your favorite buildings? In this podcast, I explore a couple art project ideas to give fun identities to architecture. I have 18 podcasts recorded in 2009. Every week, I will post one…

The giant magenta mural stood out in the corner of my eye while crossing the street. I thought, “isn’t that László Moholy-Nagy?” I had been walking away from the mural, but I re-crossed the street to get a closer look.…

Facebook must be playing games with me. In my timeline is a video of a baby’s reaction to wearing glasses for the first time. Very cute, adorable. The round spectacles are pulled over the baby’s face; and he smiles a big…

The most expensive ACEO artworks sold on eBay reveals a wonderful fantasy world. (ACEO stands for Artists Cards Editions and Originals, which are baseball card sized artist cards). Star Filled Sky, aka Bridget Voth, is one of the top artists. In the…

Who are the first ten people to follow you on Twitter? How many of those accounts are now inactive? Five of the first ten accounts to follow @spudart haven’t tweeted since 2010. Whoa! Over six years! The dates of their last tweets:…

The jewelry world got rocked as the Oppenheimer Blue became the world’s most expensive diamond ever auctioned. A telephone bidder won the Christie’s auction with a sparking $57.7 million dollar bid. But what about replicas? There are no Oppenheimer Blue…

With a dollar bill you are one-millionth on the way to becoming a millionaire. I came across a photo I took a couple years ago of a dollar bill with this message. This photo prompted me to write another message…

Northeast bridgetower at sunset A fog crawls over the Chicago River. Fog can create amazing scenes. Get close enough to the subject, and it really pops as the background is covered in a blanket of fog. Couple that with a…

While walking along the Chicago Riverwalk with my wife, the river had just been dyed green hours earlier for the annual St. Patrick’s Day festival. The river has a surreal green glow that could be seen in the metal under…

What would you rather get when you finish voting? A sticker or a little sheet of paper? Today was the first time I got a sticker today for voting, but I rather miss the scrap of paper from Chicago. As…

The sun sets on Monday, two days after the Chicago River was dyed green for the St. Patrick’s Day festival. The Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower, and Equitable Building admire how bright green the river is. You can’t quite tell, but…

Stepping outside the Tribune Tower with my new Nikon D610 around my neck. Lo and behold the tulips are starting to come out of the ground! Photographing the budding tulips on the median of Michigan Avenue has become a semi-annual…

An annual tradition my wife and I partake every year since we first started dating is to watch the Oscar nominees for “Best Animated Short Film” at the Century Theatre in Chicago. Each film usually ranges from five minutes to…

Endless fun A photo posted by Shannon Finnegan (@shanfinnegan) on Jun 24, 2015 at 11:59pm PDT (This artwork on Instagram is created by pattern artist, Shannon Finnegan) Such a simple small cross-stitch, but it works on many various levels. From…

When you are shooting a panoramic with your camera, do you ever wonder when you should stop sweeping across? When I was photographing this scene of the Chicago River, Initially, I was drawn to frozen Chicago River, and how part…

If you are in the market for a DSLR camera, here’s the best combination to get. I did two months of research looking at all the various DSLR cameras. My 7-year-old Nikon D80 died after 32,000 cycles. It was time…

  [button link=”http://spudart.deviantart.com/art/Science-fiction-is-totally-cool-589672191?purchase=print” size=”large” color=”orange”]» Art prints and canvas available[/button] Giant alien robots invade Chicago! Death rays shoot out of their eyes. The campy setup makes for a great B-movie sci-fi thriller poster. What could be more fun? Swap out…

  [button link=”http://spudart.deviantart.com/art/Science-fiction-is-Knowledge-invention-589673191?purchase=print” size=”large” color=”orange”]» Art prints and canvas available[/button] A worm dressed in an astronaut uniform watches a rocket blast off into outer space. Totally crazy. This is the final poster in this series of three illustrating the etymology of…

  [button link=”http://spudart.deviantart.com/art/Science-fiction-is-Knowledge-fiction-589672726?purchase=print” size=”large” color=”orange”]» Art prints and canvas available[/button] Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy is always one of the top results when googling for vintage sci-fi posters. The design of this poster fit exactly what I needed for my…