Tag: Tech

Go to images.google.com and search for: art. That’s it—just one word: art. What do you think you would get? Images of the Mona Lisa or other famous paintings? Google gave me images of splashy colorful art. What results did you…

When I look at my 63 art projects, it seems like a lot. Lots of art across a variety of things.  Yup, I just shared my complete list of art projects—both projects that are public, and the projects that are…

Every week Spotify makes a custom playlist of 30 songs just for you—based on what you listen to. It’s sort of like a close friend making a very personal playlist for you. In fact, it’s even more personal in a…

The screenshot tool is so incredibly handy tool. (also known as screen capture on Windows). With the Mac, if you hit command-shift-4, you get a crosshairs to click and drag the area you want to capture. Today I accidentally dragged…

Amusing to see “The Unicorn Song” in my Spotify “Discover Weekly”. This cute song starts with a little child saying “Unicorns da dumm. Unicorns da dumm”. It sounds like she is saying something about unicorns, but I can’t make it…

Remember those website visitor counters in the late 90s and early 2000s? Man those were so cool. They clearly demonstrated two things: Many, many people are looking at the same thing as you. It’s not the webpage you are visiting…

Imagine a typewriter where instead of letters and numbers, all the keys are emoji characters. Each key is its own emoji. The result would be a black and white line art emoji. That would mean someone would have to forge…

Almost all of Google Streetview’s images come from the daytime. Makes sense—that’s when you can see things the best. Today, I came across some nighttime shots on Google Streetview. The noise in the photos is fascinating. Almost like some sort…

Get a new painting every day as your browser’s homescreen. I love the Chrome add-on, Google Arts & Culture. They display quite a range of artwork from famous artists to lesser-known artists. And if you don’t like the particular artwork…

If you type your last name into Google, what auto-complete suggestions do you get? Here’s mine: maldred lord of allerdale is an interesting one. No relation. Also curious is the bottom of the list, mal dress. What is a mal…

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.…

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,…

Last night I was looking up guerilla art, specifically the wikipedia page. Looking through the history of changes to the page, someone recently removed an artist name, because they said the artist was a “non-notable”. Which is the wikipedia rule.…

If you take a photo while you are invisible with an invisible camera, what is recorded on your camera? To be clear, both you and your camera are invisible. Tech expert Sparxmind makes a great point: If the camera is…

Quantum computing for anyone! Every month you get 1 free minute of processing time on D-Wave’s quantum computer. What sort of things would you like to process with a Quantum computer? Cybersecurity stuff? Secure telecommunications? Transportation logistics? I might opt…

Today I realized something with my blog. I’m much more of a habit guy than a goal guy. Goals are actually destroying my blog. What helps my blog to thrive is habits. Do you find yourself tweeting much more than…

I love saving webpages. That’s the truth. Archive.org is such a fundamental service for the internet. It’s so awesome that everyone has the control to be able to specify webpages to archive onto their service. They even have a cool…

It’s great when you feel like you are accomplishing something. On spudart.org I’ve made 35 blog posts so far this year. That number surpasses what I did in 2017 (33), and in 2016 (also 33). I attribute this to my…

My photo of the tulips with a Harris Shutter is currently the “top post” for the Instagram hashtag #colurfultulips. Pretty neat. As much as I rail against Instagram, their “top post” feature is pretty nice. Search for a hashtag, and…

Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t let you search through your favorites. You can see a grid of your favorite photos. But there is no search. If there is a photo you fav’d a while ago, and you want to pull it back…

To be fair, it wasn’t my tulips that were banned. It was my self-promotion. Let me explain. Today I wrote a really nice positive post about how the tulips are blossoming in Chicago now. The vibe is totally happy and…

I can’t remember which account I use with Wikipedia: mattmaldre or spudart. mattmaldre has made 2 edits. spudart has 9 edits. mattmaldre’s first edit is in 2011 spudart’s first edit is 2008. Spudart seems the winner with more edits and…

You can download your Facebook data archive and look through all the various things that Facebook has collected about you. One of the items is a list of all the Facebook Pages you’ve liked and Facebook Groups you have joined.…

Youtube has a new rule to be able to make money off your videos. You must have 4,000 watch hours in the previous 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. Thus, I’m no longer in their Partner Program. I have 640 watch…

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…

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…

[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…

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…