This year both NFL conference championship games ended with controversies. The New Orleans Saints lost to the Los Angeles Rams in overtime. Some say the Saints should have won due to some officiating mistake. The Kansas City Chiefs lost to…
Those goofy cardboard sleeves around takeout coffee cups. What are they called? Today I learned they are called a Zarf. What an wonderful word. Zarf. How in the world is it such a cool word? Is that for real? Yes,…
Ever want to have the unrelentless energy of a hyper Ewok? Those little creatures on the Moon of Endor constantly hop around chitter-chattering a million words per minute. Now you can wield the power of the Ewok! Drink the rare…
I nearly made the post office worker cry (tears of joy) Do you have a favorite Post Office? I bet many people can list their least favorite post offices. We’ve all waited in long lines at understaffed post offices. Let…
“Jewelry for Gentlemen” is a book recently published by Thames & Hudson. “A dazzling overview of the overlooked art of male jewelry, an increasingly popular requisite of the well-dressed man.” This book features some bad-ass jewelry. A skull with…
How to fit 100 columnists, 15 comic strips, and 50 employees into one holiday invite. This year I was asked to design the invite to our company holiday party this year. Normally, this would be finding some nice holiday stock…
I have a penchant for creating really complicated Christmas cards. This year I decided to print fifty photos onto strips of paper. Then slide those strips into a clear plastic ornament. Kinda crazy. But also kinda fun. Here’s a preview…
Your local grocery store is a discovery-land, full of many hidden treasures. Today I found such a gold mine. My wife Sarah has a Secret Santa at work that likes yoga. She asked me to go to Jewel to see…
At first glance, this thumbnail of a Moon rock looks like chocolate chip cookie batter. Oh yumm! Can you imagine? The moon is made entirely of chocolate chip cookie batter Can the Moon really be made of chocolate chip cookie…
Do you know those projection Christmas lights? I can’t decide if they are incredibly awesome, or incredibly lazy. I suppose it depends on how you implement the projection lights alongside other decorations. Pair it up nicely with other decorations, and…
Anytime you see something wrapped in public, it’s like the artist Christo has attacked. In fact, that should be the official hashtag for photos of wrapped things in public: #ChristoAttacks! Take this statue of Thomas Jefferson (photographed by Steve Tanner).…
The fact that I like this guy’s plastic bag collection must mean I have hoarding inclinations. I’ve always wanted to start a paper napkin collection. The various embossed patterns, the range of thickness of the paper, the designs of the…
I have two baseball players that are my Epoch Evil Twin. Cameron Drew and Joe Bitker. What is an Epoch Evil Twin? And how do you find yours? Let me explain. What is Epoch? Programmers needed to assign a unique…
Today I turn 43 years old. Then I find out that a retirement home chain tweeted my quote six times! A little ironic. Since it’s my birthday, I’m feeling older. And now retirement homes are plastering my name all over…
The candy pile is the first artwork the Art Institute acquired in 1999. It has the reference number of 1.1999. I googled all the other years from 1879 to 2018. Yup, that’s 139 Google searches. Google totally DID NOT like…
I regularly follow the #candypile hashtag on Instagram. Mostly to see people’s photos of Félix González-Torres’ candy pile installations at various museums. photo by oriane_trnat Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris photo by sfknycat The Met Breuer in New York photo by…
The Chicago Cultural Center is home to the world’s largest Tiffany glass dome. It’s beautiful. I love the Cultural Center. Now that I work across the street from this wonderful landmark, I’ve been eating my lunches in the room on…
Yesterday for work, I made a fun ping pong bracket with Dick Tracy holding a ping pong paddle. One of my friends suggested that all the participants sign up as Dick Tracy rogues. What a great idea! To determine our…
First snow! Hooray! Snow normally arrives in Chicago on November 17th. Mother Nature Chicago tweeted a great graphic by the Chicago Tribune: This year, on November 11th, the snow as a tad early. I woke up a bit surprised to…
The Word of the Day by dictionary.com is wonderful. Every day features a different, interesting word. Recent words include: dissemble, dopester, bewhiskered, fillip, grumphie, and univocal. The graphics are nice and brief. A very simple digestable explanation is featured on the graphic.…
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,…
