Year: 2020

Check out the visitor we had on our porch windowsill. A baby bird! It was still drizzling outside, and I thought Amazon delivered a package, so I checked the front porch. Lo and behold outside on one of our windowsills…

How do you defeat the Asian Murder Hornet? Beekeepers in Asia use tennis rackets to defeat the Murder Hornet. Scientific American takes a look at how Asia handles this monstrous hornet: Beekeepers can help by installing entrance traps over the…

Whip cream and Coca-Cola sounds pretty good, right? The quarantine trick is to not use a glass for the Coca-Cola. Just spray the whip cream directly into the can. Fitting the whip cream nozzle into an aluminum can is so…

The photo printing service Snapfish sent me an email saying that if I don’t order any prints, they will delete my photos. Which is completely fair. They shouldn’t have to host my photos if I’m not ordering any prints. To…

For 40 years, my twin brother and I didn’t know if we were fraternal or identical twins. We looked close enough to perhaps be identical. But we had enough differences between us that people could easily tell us apart. Whenever…

Whenever snow falls in April, it always is a bit of a surprise. We tend to think of April as a spring month. The temperatures start warming up. And then boom. Snow. Snow? Really? When there isn’t a global pandemic…

Lately everyone has been sharing creative projects to do at home. Usually they are cute like putting a teddy bear in your front window. But how about a quirky project? Photograph all the doorknobs in your residence. Ever pay attention…

Can a photo captured with a 2-megapixel camera from 2002 still be popular today? Well, of course it can—if the subject matter works. Photos taken in the early 00s are in a weird in-between time The early digital photography years…

People are setting teddy bears in their front window, so people can walk around on a #teddybearhunt making your neighborhood friendlier. Here’s our little purple bear. Put a bear in your window. More teddy bears people have put in their…

Looking for a completely different way to make a drawing? How about making your drawing directly on public art? (video) Let’s start with one of the most famous public artworks in Chicago. The Picasso. This hefty icon stands 50-feet tall,…

When I bought my first digital camera in 2001, I never realized how good the specs were. I just bought it based on reviews people gave at the time. The Canon PowerShot S110 could go down to a ƒ/2.8 with…

It is my greatest desire that some video game midi music play in the background while this is displayed. Are there other examples of 16th century Switzerland textiles with bitmap art? I’m googling: Switzerland 16th century textile Google is not…

What is the toilet paper like from various art museums? In 2018, I wrote a draft about making art with toilet paper. I never published it, because, well, this is a weird project. Now that toilet paper has surfaced as…

The selections for “Popular topics” in Google Arts and Culture is quite curious Paul Gauguin — 372 items Oil paint — 5,870 items Shark Bay — 8 items Wassily Kandinsky — 39 items Renaissance — 12,200 items Post-Impressionism — 2,620…

Google Photos is a lot of fun. Upload all your photos, and Google will use artificial intelligence to identify what’s in your photos. Since everyone has been talking about toilet paper for the past week, I searched for the in-demand…

What is time? Shortly before his death, Albert Einstein wrote: “The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” What is the context of this quote? I accidentally came across a discussion about this quote…

What better thing to do when a pandemic virus is spreading than to go to a public place to vote? Despite COVID-19, I voted today! Everyone politely stood six feet apart in the line. With rubber gloves on my hands,…

Do you use a knife to spread the jelly on your sandwich? The jelly slides off the knife. The jelly in your jar is left with deep trenches. The serrated blade from the knife makes an awful texture sound when…

My three-year-old daughter made a dance floor with our Picasso magnet tiles. Then she took all her Little People figures; and put them onto the dance floor. I love her creativity. “But wait!” I warned, “they are not practicing social…

Need a moment to quiet your busy life and meditate on your mortality? Meditate on some skulls. Do you love skulls? Then you’ll love the El Greco exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. Do you find skulls creepy? You’ll…

There’s a lot of talk about whether the media is overhyping coronavirus (COVID-19). I was wondering how many people I know will be infected and possibly die from COVID-19, so I did the math. People who will die from COVID-19…

Ever notice the ID number in a tweet’s URL? Take a look at the URL structure for a tweet. Here’s a tweet I made today: https://twitter.com/spudart/status/1237129038994575360 Every tweet is assigned a unique ID number. Over time, this ID number increases…

Is this trash or transformation? This discarded packaging took on the form of a bird mid-flight. An unintentional sculpture, crafted by the city itself. Discover the story behind this urban origami.

Origami scattered about on the bathroom floor at work. Overflowing from the wastebasket little unintentional creations lie strewn about. Crumbled paper towels lying on the floor look just like origami creations. What if someone actually folded a bunch of paper…

Here are 28 of my favorite artworks displayed in February 2020 from the Art Tab Chrome extension. Every time you open a new browser tab, you get a different work of art from the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection. Tribune…

A funny tweet from my friend Marco: How often do people say these phrases? Let’s do a Google search for each phrase, and mark down the number of results. “Everybody said it couldn’t be done.” » 18,300 results “Nobody thought…

Possibly our last accumulating snow of the season, Chicago was freshly covered in a light blanket of snow. Wonderful white canvases became available once again across the city. This morning I made sure to walk above ground to enjoy the…

When scrolling through Spotify, many remixes of songs aren’t all that great. I’m sorry, but in many cases I like the original more. Remixes often tend to be flat, lacking depth. But that’s because I’m listening to the remixes in…

I love how the art museums have collections of loosely-drawn sketches. Makes me wish they would collect sketchbooks from artists today. I know, I know. You have to be “historically significant” to become part of their collection. The sketch featured…

Just in case you were wondering, if you tried to make an emoji really big in Outlook, the maximum size is 466 point. If you set the emoji at 467 point, it will disappear. Almost like it explodes from being…

A couple weeks ago I started a project where on my lunch break, I go the Art Institute of Chicago, stand in front of an artwork, and sketch it. I set out with this project to help improve my drawing…