Author: Matt Maldre

Ripping open a Cutie nylon bag makes you feel good. Not just for the nutritional punch of an orange, but also the satisfaction of ripping open a bag with your bare hands.

Years ago, I loved Mike Caulfield’s explanation of how many internet platforms today are streams, not gardens. This concept re-emerged in this tweet today. This is inspiring me to make my own digital garden. As I said in my twitter…

What if we read lyrics before hearing the song? You have no idea what the music will sound like. Or even the genre. All you have are the lyrics in words. Some songs might sound more poetic than their audio/music…

If I had a Peeps costume for my one-year-old toddler, I'd be walking her around the block all day long, sipping on the sweet sweet nectar of Pepsi Peeps soda.

Crop an image to have a new vision on the world.

INCREDIBLENESS

Arcade fun and simultaneous turn based strategy in the 2000s

Photoshopping a tight rope walker onto a cloud in a Paris webcam

Quidd’s new marketplace looks like it could be a place to make some money. So far what seems to really sell for high prices on Quidd are cards serialized as #1. Makes sense, the count #1 card is always the…

Evidence that the Art Institute of Chicago really loves guardian statues.

For about six months I actively collected digital cards on the Quidd iOS app. I spent a couple dollars inside the app. I eventually gave it up, because the app was getting more and more geared leveraged for people who…

Leave a browser window open with an entry from thesaurus.com. After about 30 seconds, this giant ad will automatically appear. I’m working on two monitors, so one of my monitors all of the sudden made me feel like I was…

Strava’s GPS tracking feature is so much fun—especially when you forget that it’s on.

Would you like to own the same vest that Matthew Broderick wore in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off?" Many online sellers offer imitation vests that come pretty close. Others, not so close.

So bizarre when my “Discover Weekly” playlist from Spotify has the song from the end of the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. “March of the Swivel Heads” by The English Beat is the song that plays when Bueller is racing…

Next time you want to reward one of your coworkers, here’s a fun customizable trophy for only $12. What a fun trophy! A superhero that looks kinda like the Incredible Hulk ripping his shirt off. ROOOOOAR! Award this to someone…

I paid $1.88 for a 2 Krooni from Estonia. The Kroon is—was—Estonian’s form of currency. The word “kroon” translates to “crown”. (Kroon is singular, Krooni is plural. Please excuse me if I use the wrong form in this post.) Paying…

We have a porch light that we used to keep on all the time. We would just forget to turn it off. Now that I have a smart bulb in there, it’s running a schedule (5pm to 5am), so I’m…

Would you like a nice chart showing your monthly electricity usage? I'll show you how to build it.

Every week ComEd, my electricity company, sends me a report on how much electricity I’ve used in the past week. This report is very helpful, because it compares this week to last week. If I changed any of my electricity…

Little People has sets for The Office, Masters of the Universe, and WWE! The princess castle will never be the same again.

How would you reimagine an art museum? The Art Institute of Chicago called on teens to reinvent and vamp up the museum experience. The competition, Re:Imagine, asked for ideas to make the museum more engaging and multi-sensory, using any creative…

Google Arts & Culture is such an incredible resource. You can virtually explore through the galleries of art museums, view artwork up close, make your own collections, search through topics, explore by color. There’s so many things you can do.…

Today I was looking at the categories on spudart.org. A handy list appears in the footer. I recently added the “notepad” category. Seeing that “1” next to “notepad” is rather nice. It’s like the start of something. 1. One post.…

Today I ordered a rubber stamp with Edvard Munch’s “painted by a madman” phrase. When he painted “The Scream”, the original artwork wasn’t received very well by a critique of local artists. One of the folks at the critique questioned…

The problem of special characters appearing as horizontal lines or blank boxes Sometimes people will use cute unicode characters as their Twitter name or Linkedin name. But then the text appears as a bunch of horizontal lines. Here’s a Linkedin…

I saw on National Day Calendar that today is National Mario Day. Now I know why it’s on March 10. Funny how National Day Calendar’s page doesn’t mention anything about how MAR 10 looks like MARIO. I love little word…

Under five minutes:• Biz in 60 seconds• WSJ minute briefing• LensWork• Little Happier• 60-second science• 2-minute jazz Conversational style:• The BeanCast (marketing)• Circulating Ideas (librarians)• Happier with Gretchen Rubin (life hacks)• MBMBaM (comedy)• ReCode Media (tech/business)• Something You Should Know• Hidden Brain• Hidden…

The “.acb” file is actually an xml file. If you open the .acb file inside a text editor, you’ll see something like this: You’ll see the color values are stored in RGB format. We want them in hex. Steps to…

Every day I check the Eiffel Tower webcam. Many days the colors are pretty nice. I’d like to grab a quick color palette to tweet with my @EiffelLive Twitter account. Today’s Eiffel Tower view is peaceful. Gray and white tones.…

A new section on Spudart.org for ideas I’m building a place on spudart.org for my quick thoughts and beginning ideas. This will be public place on the site for anyone to see. I have so many unpublished ideas that never…