Author: Matt Maldre

Facebook must be playing games with me. In my timeline is a video of a baby’s reaction to wearing glasses for the first time. Very cute, adorable. The round spectacles are pulled over the baby’s face; and he smiles a big…

The most expensive ACEO artworks sold on eBay reveals a wonderful fantasy world. (ACEO stands for Artists Cards Editions and Originals, which are baseball card sized artist cards). Star Filled Sky, aka Bridget Voth, is one of the top artists. In the…

Who are the first ten people to follow you on Twitter? How many of those accounts are now inactive? Five of the first ten accounts to follow @spudart haven’t tweeted since 2010. Whoa! Over six years! The dates of their last tweets:…

The jewelry world got rocked as the Oppenheimer Blue became the world’s most expensive diamond ever auctioned. A telephone bidder won the Christie’s auction with a sparking $57.7 million dollar bid. But what about replicas? There are no Oppenheimer Blue…

With a dollar bill you are one-millionth on the way to becoming a millionaire. I came across a photo I took a couple years ago of a dollar bill with this message. This photo prompted me to write another message…

Northeast bridgetower at sunset A fog crawls over the Chicago River. Fog can create amazing scenes. Get close enough to the subject, and it really pops as the background is covered in a blanket of fog. Couple that with a…

While walking along the Chicago Riverwalk with my wife, the river had just been dyed green hours earlier for the annual St. Patrick’s Day festival. The river has a surreal green glow that could be seen in the metal under…

What would you rather get when you finish voting? A sticker or a little sheet of paper? Today was the first time I got a sticker today for voting, but I rather miss the scrap of paper from Chicago. As…

The sun sets on Monday, two days after the Chicago River was dyed green for the St. Patrick’s Day festival. The Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower, and Equitable Building admire how bright green the river is. You can’t quite tell, but…

Stepping outside the Tribune Tower with my new Nikon D610 around my neck. Lo and behold the tulips are starting to come out of the ground! Photographing the budding tulips on the median of Michigan Avenue has become a semi-annual…

An annual tradition my wife and I partake every year since we first started dating is to watch the Oscar nominees for “Best Animated Short Film” at the Century Theatre in Chicago. Each film usually ranges from five minutes to…

Endless fun A photo posted by Shannon Finnegan (@shanfinnegan) on Jun 24, 2015 at 11:59pm PDT (This artwork on Instagram is created by pattern artist, Shannon Finnegan) Such a simple small cross-stitch, but it works on many various levels. From…

When you are shooting a panoramic with your camera, do you ever wonder when you should stop sweeping across? When I was photographing this scene of the Chicago River, Initially, I was drawn to frozen Chicago River, and how part…

If you are in the market for a DSLR camera, here’s the best combination to get. I did two months of research looking at all the various DSLR cameras. My 7-year-old Nikon D80 died after 32,000 cycles. It was time…

  [button link=”http://spudart.deviantart.com/art/Science-fiction-is-totally-cool-589672191?purchase=print” size=”large” color=”orange”]» Art prints and canvas available[/button] Giant alien robots invade Chicago! Death rays shoot out of their eyes. The campy setup makes for a great B-movie sci-fi thriller poster. What could be more fun? Swap out…

  [button link=”http://spudart.deviantart.com/art/Science-fiction-is-Knowledge-invention-589673191?purchase=print” size=”large” color=”orange”]» Art prints and canvas available[/button] A worm dressed in an astronaut uniform watches a rocket blast off into outer space. Totally crazy. This is the final poster in this series of three illustrating the etymology of…

  [button link=”http://spudart.deviantart.com/art/Science-fiction-is-Knowledge-fiction-589672726?purchase=print” size=”large” color=”orange”]» Art prints and canvas available[/button] Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy is always one of the top results when googling for vintage sci-fi posters. The design of this poster fit exactly what I needed for my…

Amazing the stuff you’ll find online. While looking at NASA documents for a friend’s birthday, I came across this spiky ball contraption used by NASA in 1968. Any guess what this could be? Oversized foot massager? Giant mace-ball weapon? Colossal doggie…

Since 2010, the Super Bowl didn’t use any color in their logo. For 2017, the Super Bowl 51 logo will use red. Why red? A few thoughts why red is being used in the Super Bowl 51 logo: The colors of…

Is there a health website where I can enter all my cholesterol levels? Then the website would give me recommendations based on the various levels of HDL, LDL, and triglycerides. Actually, it would be super great if this website would…

For all the creative projects you make on your computer, you certainly want to have a good storage system. You want your storage system to be simple and easy. Not overly technical where you have to be a geek to…

40 years ago today on January 2, 1976, NASA released a 60-page Graphics Standards Guide. It’s awesome to see the design of the worm logo standing the test of time (despite the fact that NASA retired the worm logo in…

I am proud to say that one of my blog posts is a citation on the 2 Legit 2 Quit wikipedia page. Now the question is: can you take the 2 Legit 2 Quit challenge? Can you watch the entire…

What did you think of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens? This blog post is meant to be a place where my friends and family can talk about Episode VII. SPOILERS, VERY DEFINITE SPOILERS, LIE AHEAD To be clear on which…

Two monumental cultural events are about to happen in the same week: Star Wars is releasing episode VII: The Force Awakens The Art Institute is about to exhibit their largest donation of artwork ever. 44 monumental modern artworks were donated…

Where do you go to find inspiration online? Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? Flickr? Websites? Possibly a combination of some of those? I’m going through all the artwork and artists that I’ve faved the past year. That means re-looking at all my…

How many photos did you like on Instagram this year? I liked 945 Instagram photos in 2015. How do I know? I built this collage and counted the number of photos. How do you make a collage like this? Sign…

Take all the articles you’ve read the past year. Imagine if you could automatically build a list the author names who wrote most of those articles? Would you find that sort of service helpful? On my content strategy blog, I…

The Tate Museum published an interesting 17-page report, “Tate Website Audience Segmentation” (PDF file) Number of people that use the Tate website before, after, and during a museum visit: 38% of visits to the Tate’s website are to plan a…

What facts and figures would you like the Museum of Contemporary Art to share with the public? The museum has a webpage with various facts and figures. Data points like: 21% of the words in their collection are named “Untitled.”…

The @museumhack Instagram account liked my recent ewok photo, so I checked out their account. It’s a lot of entertaining cheesy spoofs on modern artwork. Things like Spider-Man sitting inside a Norman Rockwell painting. A photo posted by Museum Hack…