Author: Matt Maldre

Seeing tiny snowflakes embedded in ice makes me wish I still carried my iPhone macro lens with me. This photo is a bit blurry, but you kinda get the point. The macro lens would have really zoomed in on a…

People freak out about Google following you around and making creepy suggestions. But here is a story about a very nice suggestion from Google. My wife and I have been limiting my 22-month-old daughter’s screentime to Sesame Street songs on…

Since 2010, I’ve photographed the budding tulips across from the Tribune Tower. A quick trip across the street to Walgreens and I get the pleasant surprise of seeing the tulips. Or sometimes I would discover the budding flowers in the…

Which Olympic athletes that play the violin? Six athletes from the 2018 Winter Olympics list playing the violin as one of their hobbies. Spanning countries of Estonia, USA, Canada, France, and Kazakhstan, they include a flag bearer and a bronze…

Every book should have its own hashtag, so we can follow conversations about the book on Twitter. I’m looking to tweet quotes from an awesome new book “Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain“. However, there is no hashtag for the book. The…

I love how the results for Mona Lisa on Google Images first start off with all serious, normal images. And then as you scroll down, the images get more and more ridiculous with all the spoofs. And then after the…

A Google search for 19 consecutive equal signs yields zero results. Maybe 19 is too many. Let’s try a lower number. Googling ten equal signs also gives you nothing. Ok, let’s try five. Nothing. Four? Nope. Four equal signs has…

Instead of being called Wal-Mart, it’s now Walmart. No more dash—but wait—that’s not a dash! It’s a hyphen. Grammarly explains: A hyphen (-) is a punctuation mark that’s used to join words or parts of words. It’s not interchangeable with…

The design of the State of the Union ticket has gone through several evolutions through the years. Most recently a typo appeared on the 2018 State of the Union ticket. Oops! Ok, the typo is pretty bad, but many other…

When one alternative Chicago newspaper pokes fun at another alternative Chicago newspaper, you get some fun (and I ended up finding a really cool book). January 23, 2018: the Chicago Reader retweeted an very old tweet from the Onion. April…

My four years as an art major at Illinois Wesleyan University were some of the best years of my life. The students and professors taught me how to think critically as an artist. We weren’t just technical drones producing work,…

The reality of space. Real objects. Real textures. Thousands of miles away, images brought back to Earth. To our computer screens. I love the caption for this photo. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft obtained this unprocessed image on Dec. 12, 2011. The…

Philadelphia is retiring their transit tokens. I urge people to go and buy as many tokens as you can. They will be worth the investment 20 years from now. How? Let’s use Chicago as an example. In 1999 Chicago phased…

I’m not sure why, but I’m finding it fascinating doing a Google image search for: stair non-slip stickers.  I work at landmark Tribune Tower building in Chicago, and they have these stickers on their stairs. (Pic coming soon) Why do…

What do you do with negative criticism? Our first reaction might be to dismiss words that tear us down. Instead of ignoring the negative criticism, I want to absorb those words. Consider them, know the rationale and source behind the…

[Update: Apple has explained they do have a heated roof. Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune reports: “The roof has a warming system that’s built into it,” Apple spokesman Nick Leahy said. “It needed some fine-tuning and it got re-programmed…

Instead of ribbon, I use yarn. Every single gift I’ve given the past five years has been decorated with this same yarn. Today our supply ran out, so I biked to Hobby Lobby to buy a new bundle of yarn…

ART ASCII art bitmap art ceramics felt found objects HDR photography LEGO mosaics mail art modern dance oil pastels origami pencil rubbings printmaking public art sculptures Artists Alexander Calder Anselm Kiefer Bruce Nauman Camille Pissarro Christo and Jeanne-Claude Christopher Richard…

I love having several fictional Twitter accounts–the Death Star librarian, an Ewok, a baby Ewok, extreme croquet player, and so on. These fun accounts can work in tandem for some pretty silly responses to tweets. The Chicago Tribune digital editor…

Velcro. Wouldn’t that be a great name for your child? Velcro, I’m stuck on you! I like to joke around with my wife that our 18-month-old daughter’s name is Velcro. Sometimes I’ll tell my daughter we almost named her Velcro.…

Most of us are familiar with Google’s reverse image search. Pick any photo online, and Google can find a photo that is similar (or identical). It’s a very fun tool to play around with. I’ve used it to: Search for…

Type a search into Google for “Where is the next…” and it will auto-complete your search with three suggestions: Solar eclipse World Cup Olympics All three are global events. Large global events. Although aren’t solar eclipses more of a local…

Do you have a modem that is really slow? Then you have pigeon! If it takes a long time to load a webpage, you might as well load that page via a carrier pigeon. Thus, your modem is like a…

The most important command given to Neil Armstrong was to make sure he collected moon rocks as soon as he landed on the Moon. Just moments after stepping onto the moon and saying, “one small step for man, one giant…

The Pluto flyby is incredible! NEW! Enjoy this #Pluto flyby video, made with data from our historic #PlutoFlyby. pic.twitter.com/viHjvnfXw6 — NASA New Horizons (@NASANewHorizons) July 14, 2017 I WANT TO LIVE ON PLANET PLUTO. Yes, I am calling it a…

All the 4×6 prints you can imagine for free! All you have to do is order your prints through the Shutterfly app. Sounds great, right? Almost unbelievable. What would you do with unlimited prints? Here’s a few ideas: Mural: Take…

A message I sent to a vending machine company: We have a vending machine on the 3rd floor of the Tribune Tower in Chicago (435 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611). Almost every day I get a Pay Day bar.…

Every time you join a group on meetup.com, you get asked a set of questions for your profile. The Glen Ellyn Clay meetup has some fun questions, so I had fun answering them. What are the top 3 things you would…

Of the 18,4888 photos archived in the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection, are there any you’d like to see displayed in the museum? This one by Jeff Mermelstein would be a good one: “Book in Mouth, New York City” Photographed in…

Tucked away in the Art Institute’s archives are thousands of wonderful photos. 18,488 to be exact. Whoa! You can explore these 18,488 photos on the Art Institute’s online collection. Are there any photos you’d like to see displayed at the…

Amazon discounted a bunch of Comixology comics on the Amazon storefront! Wait… Amazon, Comixology? Amazon owns the online comic store and app, Comixology. Any comics you buy on Amazon, you read with the Comixology app. What is Comixology? Comixology is…