Author: Matt Maldre

You will be fined between $25 and $200 every time you use the Chicago seal! If you sell 10 tshirts with the Chicago seal, you could get fined from $250 to $2,000. Yeee-ouch! Chicago takes our seal VERY seal-riously. 1-8-100…

Nabaztag (Armenian for “rabbit”) is a Wi-Fi enabled toy rabbit sold by violet in France. The Nabaztag grabs the weather and news headlines off the internet and speaks it out loud. It’s also an alarm clock. It can alert you…

Do you identify yourself more with your country, state, or city? I’d say I’m more of a Chicagoan than an American. I can’t exactly say why, but perhaps it has to do with that I don’t completely agree with our…

Next time you make tea in the kitchen at work, make every movement of your body be like a robot. Focus on doing only one movement at a time and exaggerate the motion by doing the robot dance sort of…

A week ago I told an AT&T repairman to cancel my service. He wrote it on his paper form, and I thought it was done. I call their customer service line to see if my service was cancelled. AT&T did…

From the list of my friends’ blogs, I looked up everyone’s first blog post. Here they are sorted by oldest to newest: 12/15/98: Hamblog 09/15/00: Supah 04/25/01: Jotsheet 09/28/01: spudart.org 05/13/02: Deep Fun 06/19/02: Confessions of a Foodie 01/07/03: Hello,…

Why does one build a supercomputer with over 600 processors? Funnyhub looked at the world’s top seven supercomputers, and I’ll summarize the findings here: Four of the seven do weapons testing. Simulations of nuclear attacks. Which is bizarre, cuz if…

Please people! Do not put periods in your phone number. I know you are trying to be cool, but phone numbers have DASHES, not dots. It’s not an IP address. I know you want to look all cool, but it’s…

Mac OS X users, put your frequently-used folders in your dock where they are very handy. The only problem is that you get a dock full of identical folder icons. How to tell the difference? Transformers to the rescue! Customize…

It’s so much fun to have people come by my desk and enjoy a treat. Everyone should have a treat dish at their desk/cubicle/office. The costs are minimal (a couple bucks a week) and the gain is priceless. Seven reasons…

*BOOOOM!* Lightning strikes literally right outside my living room window. The edges of my computer monitor change colors. Landline phone is dead. A couple days later the phone is still dead, so I called AT&T to set up a service…

You bump into someone you know, “Hey, what’s up?” Or you might even be a bit alternative and say, “What’s going down?” and do a little hip-hop fingering pointing down action with your elbows up in the air. But here’s…

You too can immediately have a cool last name! Just add “ko” to the end of your last name, and POW, you are now cool. Try it now. “Hi, I’m Matt Maldreko.” I’m gonna start writing in “ko” after my…

In one corner we have the new worldwide sensation, the Internet! In the other corner we have the tried and true champion, the Weatherrrrrr! Last night the weather came out on top as it threw a lightning bolt that fried…

I like to pay for things with only two-dollar bills. It this a work of art? It’s like a performance piece, and it certainly creates a range of reactions from joy to intrigue to confusion. Read more about this adventure…

A wallet full of two-dollar bills is like carrying around a wallet of joy. People get excited with unexpected encounters of two-dollar bills, and for some people it’s just the regular course. The two-dollar adventure unfolds many personality traits. Getting…

Gross sales in the last quarter: +20%: Hot Wheels (worldwide) +12%: Fisher-Price pre-school toys (worldwide) +6%: Barbie (worldwide) -1% Mattels girl division (worldwide) -5%: Barbie (in just USA) -10%: American Girl (worldwide) No word yet on Hasbro with Transformers Source:…

There is a Spider-Man Slip ‘N’ Slide (with a hilarious review by Chris Kalani), but there should totally be an Incredible Hulk Slip ‘N’ Slide. Challenge: Can you think of a better superhero to have a Slip ‘n’ Slide? I…

Q: What did they say about the bad rapper? A: He puts the “rap” in “crap.”

The friends’ blogs list on the left column of the homepage has been updated. Here’s a little explanation about each blog. Angie O’Neal Fellow designer’s blog with neat links, ideas, rants and life. Updated every week or so. California, formerly…

I added six teams to the list. Now there are 21 teams listed. Now you can easily see who plays when. Just visit the calendar over at: Professional Independent and Minor League Sports in Chicago. Which are the busiest months…

Flickr.com, the wildly popular photo website, created a group called 07_07_07 where 7,777 photographers are each submitting seven photos taken on 07/07/07. The moderator of the group mentioned, “We are going to attempt to get a publisher to produce a…

On July 8, 2007 Estonia continued their strong-hold dominance of the greatest international competition–the wife carrying competition! This is the tenth year in a row an Estonian has won the competition. I am so proud to have Estonian blood flowing…

Take one baseball. One pen. Every person you know signs the same ball, for your entire life. Everyone you know would leave their mark, it’s like a compilation of everyone on one object. It would be interesting to see how…

Go to the bank, and exchange all the money in your wallet for two-dollar bills. Everyone loves getting a two-dollar bill. Why not make that your default bill of exchange? I’m gonna do this (it’s now on my 43things).

Here is a dollar bill that was found in Chicago and posted to foundmagazine.com. It’s amazing how someone spills her heart onto a dollar bill. A public item. But then at some point you have to actually hand your heart’s…

You can now measure the number of watts particular computers or appliances use. The P3 International Kill-a-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor just plugs right into your outlet and the unit’s large LCD display counts consumption by the kilowatt-hour, the same as…

Try to break this world record. With one hand, grab the most pennies you can hold. Your hand must remain palm-side down the entire time. And you have to hold the pennies for 3 seconds. Here’s a video of me…

Yesterday’s post was the 1,500th post on spudart.org. Whoa. That’s a lot of posts. I try to make one post every weekday, and I’ve been doing this for almost six years now, so I guess it makes sense I’m up…

America’s Funniest Home Videos becomes A LOT more funny once you own your own video camera. (hint, watch the show with the sound OFF, their stupid commentary ruins the videos). Whenever there is a Cubs or Sox game during work,…

I’m looking for a simple cheap camcorder to put videos up on YouTube. Of the 16 camcorders on amazon under $100, there are two groups to compare. The big and the small. The small: There are four camcorders between 3…