In 1592 and 1597, Japan’s government sent warriors over to Korea and kidnapped their pottery experts in the “Pottery Wars.” The deadly warriors brought the Korean potters back to Japan to introduce the new fancy ceramic technologies–the kick-wheel and the…
On their albums, Calexico is a wonderful balance of different layers of music (the marimba, piano accordion, trumpets, double bass, pedal steel, maracas). But in live performance, it was surprising how their lead singer, Joey Burns, took the central stage.…
Here’s a list of upcoming chicago events I’m considering attending. Anyone interested in coming with, just lemme know. Art Institute Talk: “What’s New in Asian Art?,” Art Institute Gallery 100 Tue, Sep 14, noon Lester Fisher talk about his new…
A logo for my fantasy football league team, the Flying Onion Attack! Client: Me Fonts: Holiday Ranch from fontdiner.com Clip Art: Art Explosion 750,000 images
Yesterday someone told me something that I thought was quite poignant. To make sure I was spelling it correctly, I looked it up on dictionary.com and the meaning is a bit different than what I thought. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=poignant. Poignant was always…
Chicago’s Review Aug 30 – Sep5: Tranformers Transfigured at Rotofugi. Summary: Nice effort, but disappointment. Cool stuff, but there were like only a handful. And they weren’t even of the real Transformers. They were of some Japanese anime robots. Granted…
Hey, will this be another feature on spudart.org? Every monday or tuesday (yeah, i’m late today is thursday) a preview of what’s upcoming this week. And a review of what happened the past week. I try to make this blog…
I was in a brainstorm meeting for a brochure. What kinds of folds shall we use? Gatefold? Double Gatefold? Frenchfold? Mapfold? Accordianfold? Barrelfold? (examples) We are playing with all these different options of folds. Fold this. Fold that. la la…
I’m looking for a New King James Version bible with room to write notes in the margins. Any suggestions? It’d be great if it was like a slimline version. yeah yeah. i want a slim version, but with room for…
Here’s another style… well, not really a style, but an accessory. I don’t like having lots of things in my pockets, so the travel leg bag is quite helpful—and James Bondesque. WHAM BAM! Whip that cell phone out of your…
Here’s a new spudart feature: beat-up coins. We all get ’em and find them amusing. Just how much our currency goes through from person to person. Here’s three examples of beat-up coinage. The coin on the far left has no…
A friend recently purchased a Macintosh and made a post on her blog about how Mac users are very passionate. Which yeah, Mac users are among the most passionate consumer groups out there. Ranking with Jeep owners, VW owners, and…
Some simple observations about Red Bull… The tiny hole in the can makes it harder to chug. What’s up wid dat? Here is a comparison of a Coca-Cola can by a Red Bull can side-by-side. Hey now, let’s be fair—the…
Here’s another wrist idea. Got some old headphones that only one ear works? Or how about when you have to twist the plug around until the sound comes out? What a pain. Turn that headphone annoyance into some accessories!—a headphone…
During the summer the Levi’s storefront on Michigan Avenue in chicago had a mannequin with the leg part of a sock cut off and then worn as a wristband. So on a cold morning in august (in the 50s), I…
Zap2it and Yahoo have it listed as: “F‚Ñ¢tbol Soccer Femenil: Juegos por las Medallas de Oro y Bronce.” Uh. yeeeeah. It’s listed for August 26, 9:55am and 5:00pm on channel 44 (the spanish channel)… maybe.
The brilliant post by Erik Maldre about how badminton should have more TV time has inspired the formation of a new olympics. An olympics that is based on the sports that everyone can play. The sports that reside in our…
On the free wall at work there was a free movie pass to the Yu-Gi-Oh movie premeire. Surely I cannot pass this up. It was an interesting experience. Being in a dark movie theatre completely filled with kids. It was…
It would be interesting find abandoned bicycles in the city and to place signs on them saying something like, “Whom have you forgotten” The rusty, beat up, lonely bicycle would be used as a metaphor for those that we have…
Here’s eight posts that will be appearing on spudart.org soon. √Ø Sock wrist fashions √Ø Mayor Daley causes power outage at Tribune Tower √Ø Talking on cell phone performance √Ø Big red streak across buildings like a photo √Ø Yu-gi-oh…
Flying Whirly Hand Copter record This morning on the 14th floor of the Tribune Tower in Chicago, the world record was just set for the longest distance by a Whirly Flying Hand Copter plastic toy. Matt Maldre, sailed a Mini…
If you are using a new version of DropZip (i’ve been using 8.0)… Let’s say you compress a bunch of files with fonts in it. When you go to uncompress the files, the fonts will be zero k. But if…
New feature on spudart.org! On left hand side of the homepage at www.spudart.org is the growth progress of a sweet potato in my dining room. About every day or so I’ll take a photo of it and post it on…
The kind folks over at Eesti spordi lehek¬∏ljed sent me an excel document with all the events that Estonia is participating in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. √Ø Excel document: Estonia 2004 Olympics (36k) √Ø PDF document: Estonia…
Fluorite is the official state mineral of Illinois. Yipee! The General Assembly established Fluorite as the state mineral in 1965. Its competitors included galena, calcite, and quartz. Illinois is the largest producer of Fluorite in the United States. Fluorite is…
After many, many, many, many, many posts on anti-pigeons, maybe they aren’t all that bad. They are tough survivers and add a non-human element to urban areas. They do have nice different colors. And they do walk in a funky…
Yesterday was a very cold day in Chicago for the middle of August. People were out shopping for jackets and pullovers. Good thing the fall fashions were in. Even though August gets very hot (the hottest month of the year…
how many pennies can you send via 1st class mail (within USA)? (i have the answer, but am working on some fun graphs to illustrate the answer) The first person to guess correctly will get that amount of pennies mailed…
