Author: Matt Maldre

The leaves on the trees outside my work window have been orange for a very long time. I believe they will continue to stay orange and will never fall off the trees. It’s like a painting created by nature. Thank…

The curly thing at the end of a staircase handrail is called a volute. Any architecture ornament that is a spiral is also called a volute. Today volute is dictionary.com’s Word of the Day. Volute. Why are curly, spiral things…

Today I was thinking about how I love photographing panoramic photos. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could make origami with these panoramic images? But origami is mostly done with square-shaped paper. Not long sheets of paper. Bummer—but wait! There…

When your company syndicates Dick Tracy, you often get to have some fun at work. Four months ago we moved out of the Tribune Tower, and into our new office space in One Prudential Plaza. In the recreational part of…

Is it possible to be both cute AND unappetizing? Peeps accomplished that with their Gingerbread Men Peeps. They are quite possibly the most dramatic possible combination of cute and unappetizing. So cute, but so unappetizing! The Daily Meal has a…

According to my math, 31% of Flickr’s free accounts have over 1000 photos. Flickr’s CEO Don MacAskill says it’s only 3%. How did I get 31%? Here’s the math: First let me put a disclaimer. I love Flickr. I want to…

Flickr is imposing a 1,000-photo limit, and drops 1TB storage for free accounts, reports the cnet. SmugMug ends Yahoo’s old policy of a terabyte of free storage. Any free account with over 1,000 photos will have their oldest photos deleted.…

When applying for the cj.com affiliate program, the application asks for a site description. They specifically ask: “Make a great first impression: state your strengths, your business goals, and relevant statistics about traffic or demographics.” Here’s what I wrote for…

I love listening to the WFMT concert every Wednesday. They broadcast it live from the Chicago Cultural Center. One of my favorite places in Chicago, it’s also now right across the street from where I work! I go to the…

Linkedin says about a HYLA Mobile report: Americans are waiting an average of 2.83 years before upgrading their smartphones, says HYLA Mobile. That’s compared to 2.39 years between upgrades in 2016. Sounds fairly reasonable. I’m on a bit more of…

Apple finally updated their Mac Mini model today, after four years of neglect. I love the Mac Mini. I have an old model that I use as a hard drive server. I couldn’t remember the model number of my Mini,…

Ever want to photograph something REALLY close with your phone? Your phone’s lens has a limit on how close you can get. But slide one of this little macro lens onto your phone, and now you can get up super…

Want to visit the Art Institute of Chicago?—but wait—you are out of yogurt. That’s the dilemma I found myself in this afternoon. I wanted to visit some fine art, but I was out of fine yogurt. Perhaps one can survive…

Last night I was looking up guerilla art, specifically the wikipedia page. Looking through the history of changes to the page, someone recently removed an artist name, because they said the artist was a “non-notable”. Which is the wikipedia rule.…

Rather surprising there are only eight total guerilla art videos on Youtube in the past year. A few of them are about guerilla art, but most aren’t even really about guerilla art—that is, installation art. As author Keri Smith defines…

I had fun faving 70 photos on Flickr tonight. I was searching street installation, pavement installation, and site specific. You can’t really make a screenshot of your favs like this on Instagram. Flickr is better than Instagram! To make this screenshot,…

A Banksy painting was shredded immediately after its auction ended. Apparently, the auction house Sotheby’s didn’t know this was going to happen—or did they? Blogger Jason Bailey wrote a detailed analysis behind the Banksy shredder: Myth Busting Banksy. Was it a…

The artist known for his own shade of blue. Yves Klein patented International Klein Blue in 1961. He passed away one year later at age 34. During that brief time, he painted all sorts of things blue—human bodies, monochrome paintings,…

What are the art world’s most popular artists? One method is to look at the most-followed artists on Artsy.net. If an artist is in a museum, gallery, or auction house, then they are most likely going to have a presence…

When something has a cool photogram/Bauhaus look, it’s “Moholy-Nagy-esque.” That is, something that looks like László Moholy-Nagy’s work. My brother Erik created this really cool image that is “Moholy-Nagy-esque”. As of right now, there are only five results on Google for this…

If you take a photo while you are invisible with an invisible camera, what is recorded on your camera? To be clear, both you and your camera are invisible. Tech expert Sparxmind makes a great point: If the camera is…

Quantum computing for anyone! Every month you get 1 free minute of processing time on D-Wave’s quantum computer. What sort of things would you like to process with a Quantum computer? Cybersecurity stuff? Secure telecommunications? Transportation logistics? I might opt…

Today I realized something with my blog. I’m much more of a habit guy than a goal guy. Goals are actually destroying my blog. What helps my blog to thrive is habits. Do you find yourself tweeting much more than…

The genetic service 23andMe has DNA samples from over 3,000,000 individuals, including myself. They ask these people to fill out surveys to help uncover genetic connections to allergies, psychiatric disorders, and diseases. I love filling out the surveys to help…

Amidst the hectic tourists of Chicago’s Millennium Park lies a number of peaceful sections. A line of eight Sycamore trees is reminiscent of the Gardens of Versailles in France. This gallery of tress is one of my favorite quiet areas…

The roundness of this Gamorrean Guard illustration reminds me of the Chicago Bean. EVERYTHING reminds me of the Chicago Bean these days. Glenn Savage has done other sketch cards for Star Wars. The Gamorrean Guard is my favorite. This is…

The John Singer Sargent exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago is closing this weekend. Thankfully my brother informed me of that this morning. Now that I work within walking distance of the Art Institute, I wanted to take full…

“Dude, that’s so sick!” What does that mean? Well, let me tell you. Sick is an acronym. S.I.C.K. stands for: Sentences Involving Compositional Knowledge. Next time you want to say “that is so sick”, you can instead say, “That is…

Google translates “Puns are illegal in Germany” into “Wortspiele sind in Deutschland illegal” The word “puns” in German is “Wortspiele” That is so much FUN! Word fun! Clearly, puns are NOT illegal in Germany. The very word for pun is…

Rotis Semi Serif not a serif. It’s not a sans serif. It’s an in-betweener with hinted serifs. Your body text does not want hinted serifs. Your body text wants either full serifs or none. But good news! Rotis does come…

I love saving webpages. That’s the truth. Archive.org is such a fundamental service for the internet. It’s so awesome that everyone has the control to be able to specify webpages to archive onto their service. They even have a cool…