Year: 2020

A great Christmas surprise this year? Christmas ninjas! With these fun little guys around the house, you’ll find everyone asking, “Hey, what happened to the Christmas cookies?” Ninjas. These little guys bearing peppermint weapons will surely bring a fresh breath…

When a parking lot has circles painted on the surface, how can you not do donuts on them? Mysterious circles in parking lot On birthday I went on a little bike ride. Along the way home is a YMCA with…

Are you ever looking for a font that is super-duper condensed? A font so tall, that you can barely read it? A skyscraper of a font—even more than a skyscraper—I want a font that is a 1,450-foot tall stick. Is…

This is one of my favorite things on the internet. The past 24 hours of the Eiffel Tower in a one-minute time lapse animation. This one-minute video file is constantly updated throughout the day to reflect the past 24 hours…

The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius writes on how to begin each day for optimal sanity and the key to living fully. Brainpickings.org hand-picked out some of Aurelius’ quotes. (They do such a great job quoting and summarizing…

As we stand on Election Day, let’s look back 12 years ago when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. The excitement at Chicago’s Grant Park was electric! I updated all the photos on my original 2008 blog post to…

I love the garbage truck. Every week, it comes and takes away my trash. All I have to do is put the trash can on the curb. Such a great service. I don’t have to bury my trash in my…

[Disclaimer: First let me say that cow tipping is not a nice thing to do. It’s pretty much impossible to tip a cow. They are very squarely built.] In the virtual world of the world wide web, a page exists…

The Jawa Sandcrawler kinda looks a bit like ancient pan pipes from Peru. The angled shape. The worn surface. The rusty color. These two objects from completely different worlds have an odd affinity for each other. Did the this Peruvian…

When brainstorming, you often start with one word, and then come up with related concepts to that word. A thesaurus is often nice, because it gives you synonyms for the word. If you use thesaurus.com, you’d get: detonation, explosion, roar,…

Fireworks captured in 1782. Very cool to see artwork capturing fireworks from so long ago. The Art Institute of Chicago’s “Art Tab” Chrome extension always displays interesting random artworks. Check out how crazy these fireworks look. The lines streaking across…

I’m trying a new scavenger hunt game, Munzee. From the iOS/Android app description: Are you looking for adventure? Play Munzee! Millions of munzees are hidden around the world in plain sight… just waiting for you to discover. Unlike other location-based…

Whenever you say something awesome over instant message, share this Spotify playlist with the recipient of your incredible words: Trumpet Fanfares. HEY WHY STOP THERE? CAN THE APPLE WATCH HAVE A DEDICATED PLAY A SPECIFIC SONG BUTTON? When you say…

Podcasting is a huge business these days, weighing in at $11.07 billion market value in 2020. Expected to grow to $60.50 billion in 2027. WOW! Long before podcasting became huge, back in 2006, I helped to start the Chicago Podcast…

To get your point across, do you ever type in 72-point red type in your email? Try it sometime, it’s fun for both sides. The recipient will (hopefully) love getting such unusually large text. You, as the sender, typing out…

When you hear the phrase, “Mah Nà Mah Nà”, do you think about the Muppets? That’s what I thought when this song by Piero Umiliani came up on my Spotify Discover Weekly. I thought this was another cover of the…

Do you love stamps? And do you love Christmas? Then you might enjoy how the Canadian Stamp News nabbed one of my photos for an article about the Christmas Philatelic Club. Normally, I’m not a huge fan when websites just…

An airport parking garage in Cologne, Germany is transformed into a drive-through art gallery. 300 artworks are on display on luggage carts, which gives just the right viewing height for people in cars to see the artwork while slowly driving…

Want a free graphic design magazine mailed to you six times a year? Here is a funny story about how my free subscription was accidentally mailed to someone else for five years. Graphic Design USA has been the trends magazine…

Seeing these two posts next to each other on my blog draws a connection between the shape of Antarctica and the shape of a lotus flower. If these two images look rather similar, what would a reverse image search for…

The Hindu name Pankaj has a wonderful meaning. The word is a compound of paṅka ‘mud‘ and the suffix -ja ‘born from, growing in‘. The associated symbolism is of the lotus that is born in mud and blossoms after arising…

Bing has a very interesting interpretation for what “guerilla art” is. Do an image search on Bing for “guerilla art” and you’ll get a listing dominated by vintage labels. Most of these results come from a blog post, “20 vintage…

Every year for my niece’s and nephew’s birthday, I make custom wrapping paper. This year I did a Star Wars theme and a Minecraft theme. When making custom wrapping paper, it’s often nice to work in the recipient’s name to…

Dr. Lightning Chrome Gremlin Fireball Hero Those are some of the auto-generated usernames when you sign up for an account at play.hotwheels.com. You can’t type in your own username. Instead, click the “Surprise Me” button. Hot Wheels will show a…

When you think of a paper bag mask, what image comes to mind? I think of an embarrassed sports fan sitting in the stands. His team losing so bad, that he took a paper bag and put it over his…

I had the greatest map Antarctica hanging in my dining room when I lived in Lincoln Square. I got it at the Rand McNally closing sale on Michigan Avenue for $6. Some of the lines were printed in silver ink.…

I’m going back to my old method of scheduling blog posts. The beginning part of this year, I was doing great! Making about 20-30 blog posts per month. I wasn’t scheduling blog posts. As soon as I wrote the post,…

When I want to see artworks by a famous artist (e.g. Wassily Kandinsky), one of the sites I head over to is artsy.net. This site does a great job displaying and organizing the work. Not any regular artist can be…

This serval wild cat’s coat is like a work of art in of itself. Maybe an abstract work of art. Connect the dots! It’s just amazing how many open access images are available. Like this leopard by the same artist:…

I was trying to move over 11,000 family photos from a group of folders into one main folder. Something must have slipped while I was dragging the photos over, because all 11,848 images appeared on my desktop! Here’s how it…

I always enjoyed my 24-minute stereo recording of walking through downtown Chicago. But now I really appreciate this recording of how Chicago used to sound before stay-at-home orders. Plus, after two months of not being downtown, I miss these everyday…