If you’d like to get updates to this list via twitter, follow my @mattscomments Twitter account. @mattscomments is focused solely on the comments on that I leave on articles across the internet. blue period | digital_grid | Flickr Maybe Vincent the Mop knows Steve the Mop from Michelle Obama's show, "Waffles and Mochi". (there really is a character named Steve the Mop on that show) Stored on: October 17, 2022 License Plate Mona Lisa | Wonderful! Mona Lisa, out of licen… | Flickr Mona Lisa Plate! Stored on: October 10, 2022 Travel Plate #1 | Bic on Paper Plate - series of Souvenir Tr… | Flickr What a wonderful series. This is inspiring me to get paper napkins from my local fast food places, and draw the building on the napkin. Stored on: October 10, 2022 Little Man's house | Beside Lake Harriett, Minneapolis MN. I… | Flickr Oh I wish this Little Man's house had a mailbox. I want to write him a tiny letter. Stored on: October 10, 2022 Phthursday Musings: All-Star Life - by Phil Huckelberry Now I'm adding "A Drive into the Gap" onto my wish list with a priority of 'highest'. Your point about softball being a sport for people with strong hands and strong upper body resonates with me. I definitely have neither. In high school gym class there were guys who would smack the softball as far as one could see. I would be happy if I hit the softball out of the infield. To remedy for my lack of strength, I adapted my approach to softball to be a no-strikeout, run like crazy, and field like crazy. And that carries over to this day in how I select players for my personal Hall of Fame. Anyhow, it's so cool that the current and former media types continue to play softball. I somewhat regret never joining the Tribune team. But was there a Tribune softball team? I assume there was. Nobody in my group of Tribune was a part of it. But I never exactly asked around about it, because I knew I wasn't a good softball player. Now, if there was a croquet league, I'd be all over that. Not the proper all-white croquet, but backyard-style Xtreme croquet. (see my site from 2000-2002, backyardcroquet.com) There were times I'd talk about starting up some croquet games outside the Tribune Tower, but shoot. I never brought a set downtown. That would have been a lot of fun. Playing croquet during a lunch break on some small patch of grass. Stored on: October 6, 2022 I hope you were able to get a typewriter. Some days I feel like going to my library to see if they have a typewriter. Just to type up something fun. (I found your photo with my typewriter kick today. searched "typewriter" on Flickr, limiting it to people I follow.) Stored on: October 3, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Squeezing Nonsense from a Sugarcube One of the places where I get notifications of your new posts is in my RSS reader, Feedly. Today I got on a typewriter kick, and I searched my Feedly "people" folder for typewriter. This post came up. I remember that typewriter ending. The way he flicks the paper in the air is always so cool. I wish I could do that with my computer. Maybe I could print something on my inkjet, and flick it into the air. Stored on: October 3, 2022 Running Around Illinois: Brookfield Zoo Was any of the runners dressed up as an animal? "LOOK! THE BACTRIAN CAMEL GOT OUT AND IS RUNNING WITH US!" Stored on: September 11, 2022 Looking for books with wider margins for annotations and notes | Chris Aldrich I’m looking for baseball scorecards with wider margins. Of course, that’s an easy fix as I just print my own. But there’s something really cool about keeping score on the official scorecard bought at the ballpark. It would be fun to buy ads to run in the official scorecard, and just leave the ad space blank. Stored on: September 6, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Tower of Hanoi - by Phil Huckelberry The Tower of Hanoi and falling out of the front passenger seat in the same article ... a very loose connection: The car has two front seats, falling out of one of the seats, and onto the street is a bit like moving a ring from the center peg to the right peg. There's a transfer of a ring from position to another position. And then your father brought you back to the original center peg, but this time with a seat belt on top. The chicken pox connection to Tower of Hanoi. The Tower of Hanoi is about transfer of rings, strategically. Your parents were strategic about the chicken pox being specifically transferred to your sister (like a peg in Tower of Hanoi). And your teachers were adamant about the rules of transfer that the chicken pox could not be transferred to specific children (like another peg). Stored on: August 25, 2022 Running Around Illinois: White Sox Edition I like to call it "Down Arrow Park". The parking lots are not interesting? What about the parking lot just north the stadium where Old Comiskey used to stand. Don't they have a spot designated where the old home plate used to be? So you can stand there and pretend you are in Old Comiskey, on top of concrete. Stored on: August 23, 2022 Creative Endeavors: By the Chicago River When you took this photo in 2012, I used to walk by this bridge all the time. This is a unique angle to photograph the relief/sculpture. I believe this one is the southwest tower named Defense by Henry Hering Stored on: August 23, 2022 Clerical Workers Staple Reports in the Death Star Library | Flickr Your image is one of the top results in Google when searching for: "Death Star Library". Stored on: August 23, 2022 Phthursday Musings: I'm Thinking About My Doorbell Is Substack's "like" button like a doorbell? Pushing the "like" button announces one's presence on the page. Stored on: August 20, 2022 I wonder if that trivia about Happ is about a player's first six years with the Cubs having 10+ HR, then we can include Andre Dawson and Hank Sauer on that list. Hank Sauer: 27, 32, 30, 37, 19, 41, 12 Andre Dawson: 49, 24, 21, 27, 31, 22 Of course, Dawson started his career with the Expos. Sauer with the Reds. Stored on: August 14, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Dance to the Radio On discovering and sharing new music, it's fun to make a playlist every year dedicated to the songs you discover. I have a "discovered" playlist for every year dating back to 2009. Going back to the previous years are a bit like listening to an old mixtape of songs recorded off the radio. This year I've been keeping loose track of how I discover songs by tweeting about them in this thread https://twitter.com/Spudtunes/status/1478431903107665925 Stored on: August 2, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Notes from Michigan I've been on that chain ferry in Saugatuck a few times. Part of the delight is how rickety the boat is. The tips the college crankers get aren't all that bad. Hopefully, they get to keep the tips. It runs only Memorial Day through Labor Day. What happens during the offseason when someone wants to cross the river? I guess they drive over to the other side. Now about that notebook on a table in Holland, Michigan. How does the notebook not get wet in the rain? One of my favorite thing about smaller art galleries is that they often have a guest notebook to sign. Couple that with the art exhibit as the context, you can write some contemplative expressions in the notebook. Stored on: July 16, 2022 A giant pumpkin could be featured on the Illinois state quarter - Spudart It would be nice if there was a public submissions process for state quarter suggestions. I’d be curious how a professional engraver would translate the pumpkin into the 3d relief for a coin surface. Stored on: July 13, 2022 Beckett Sports Card Hot / Cold - June 10, 2022 What a crazy card for Kris Bryant! Cyan and purple leopard skin border. Does anyone know what series this card comes from? Stored on: June 12, 2022 The Black Swans of Dawlish, Devon and their three gorgeous cygnets. | devon2mother Thank you for sharing these wonderful photos of the black swans. Recently I discovered the webcam for the black swans of Dawlish. Today I thought I'd search for "black swans of Dawlish" on Google. Your post here is one of the top results. It's so wonderful how we can discover wonderful things like this on the other side of the world through the internet. Stored on: June 6, 2022 New Partnership Announcement - Croquet New Zealand I'm looking forward to Croquet New Zealand's new threads. Stored on: May 27, 2022 Brick-built Toa Mata Onua, Pohatu and Kopaka | Inspired by t… | Flickr These mini Bionicles are great! It's fun trying to build figures with a minimal amount of pieces. You did a great job capturing their features. Stored on: May 17, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Make Way For Goslings Speaking of lists, I have a screen on my iPhone dedicated to apps to try. They usually end up sitting there untouched. Years later I look at that screen and wonder what all these apps do, and why I downloaded them in the first place. Sidenote on the duck sculpture. Wikipedia says: A replica installed in Moscow was a gift from United States First Lady Barbara Bush to Soviet First Lady Raisa Gorbachev. Stored on: May 10, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Believe In Things You Don't Understand My brain started to explode trying to imagine a Moholy-Nagy inspired artwork that looks like Gina Ekiss' "Jazz" Solo cup. Stored on: April 22, 2022 Warhawk Almanac: Opening of the Library | The Andersen Library Blog The students formed an assembly line to move all the books in one day? That's incredible! Stored on: April 10, 2022 Contextualizing Cornell Notes in the Note Taking Traditions | Chris Aldrich Hmmm, this is an idea I need to explore—the waste book. To admit that many of my notes are just not worth going through would be freeing. Stored on: March 24, 2022 I play as the Atour Riten character on Twitter (@atourriten). I just tweeted that line about Beings holozine. Then, curious how many other people have quoted it online, I googled Beings holozine. Your blog post here is one of the few results. I love that this post is from 2007, and I'm now finding it 14 years later. I truly feel like Atour Riten uncovering the corners of the galaxy. Stored on: March 24, 2022 Cubs Minor League Signings: Kyle Johnson and Eric Stout Eric Stout is the only MLB player ever to be born in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Stored on: March 19, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Yo lo he perdido - by Phil Huckelberry Speaking of "Since I was on the radio at least weekly, I’d be playing bands I was going to see, and then playing bands I’d just seen."... You'd think these days with podcasts that technology would find a way of people being able to host their own "radio show" online. With podcasts, you can't include the songs in the podcast episode because of copyright and artist royalties. But what about making a Spotify playlist? But then the playlist wouldn't include the personality of the radio host making comments between songs. It would be so cool if Spotify let people upload audio segments. And then put those audio segments as tracks in a playlist. I suppose, one *could* put a podcast on Spotify with all the audio segments. But then that podcast by itself would be REALLY weird. All the audio segments would be talking about songs that are about to be played (or have already played). But the podcast itself would not have the songs in it. You'd be relying on people listening via the playlist instead of the podcast. Yeah, confusing. But it would be SO cool to make a "radio show" playlist with comments between songs. Or it could be branded a the "mixtape" playlist. Just like in the days of making mixtapes where you could record yourself talking between each song. It makes me sad to see how many college radio stations don't have enough students signing up for shows. It actually blows my mind that kids these days don't sign up to be DJs on radio. (Did I comment about this on meta-spiel recently? Feels like I was talking about this recently with someone online). Kids these days have so many other ways of listening to music, like, of course, Spotify. But what if having a radio show as as easy as making a Spotify playlist. And then doing a little audio recording between some of the songs? This whole process would lose the "live" aspect of hosting a radio show. There's something about sitting in a radio station room, playing music, then doing the comments live. Then picking the next song, live. There's a certain flow and creativity to hosting a radio show. Or does that freak kids out? Do they like how digital media lets them edit and choose? To have a curated thinking process of how you produce things? And that's another point. Everyone talks about how the internet is like a stream. It's constant and now. But the internet has allowed us to be less live. To be more curated. To have the moments of thought in a message conversation. (instead of the live, thinking on your feet conversation style with a person). Ok, where was I going with all this? Oh, the radio show hosting on Spotify with audio commentary between tracks. Yeah. I think that might actually work pretty well. People can listen to the week's playlist whenever they like (for our on-demand generation). Radio shows are so tied to a time schedule. People aren't as used to the regiment of consuming a particular piece of media at a particular time, because that's when it's on tv, or on the radio. I'm rambling. Time to hit the post button on this comment. Stored on: March 18, 2022 Phthursday Musings: From Cruising Altitude To You That "100th birthday" White Castle logo is pretty fun—especially how the zeros of 100 are the sliders. The candles coming out of the logo are a nice celebration. At first I thought the candles were in relation to the birthday cake. But I think those candles are for the 100th birthday.... OH WAIT. IS THIS SPECIAL BIRTHDAY CAKE IN CELEBRATION OF THE 100 YEARS OF WHITE CASTLE? Oh maybe. It would have been really cool if they removed the white outline that separates the candles from the White Castle building. Then it would literally look like the candles are part of the architecture. Stored on: March 10, 2022 Tribune Tower | The Tribune Tower is a neo-Gothic skyscraper… | Flickr I love how I can still see the paper I put up in my window. I had a desk facing the river from 2001-2005. I put up a yellow sheet of paper in the corner of the window to help me identify it from the street. Eventually, that sheet got faded to white. And then from 2008 to 2016, I had another window desk with that same view. On the same floor. Right next to the other window. I put up a red sheet of paper (slightly larger than the yellow sheet). That turned to white as well. Both windows were on the 14th floor. In your photo, it would be the fifth window from the bottom. (the 9th & 10th windows counting from left to right) Stored on: March 8, 2022 2022 Topps Opening Day Baseball Checklist, Team Sets, Box Info, Odds I loved the lenticular cards from the 2012, 2013, and 2014 Opening Day sets. Stored on: March 7, 2022 If only the post office canceled stamps with swaths of colorful paint! Stored on: March 4, 2022 celebrating two years @ gonoodle – Chris Thilk Oh wow! You are the Director, Content Programming at GoNoodle! My daughter loves these videos in her kindergarten class. Stored on: March 3, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Connection - by Phil Huckelberry "Worse, parents of kindergartners and first graders but not also older kids, they’re starting off with no familiarity with the community norms." Yeah, that would be me. My oldest started kindergarten this school year. I have no idea how parents normally interact with each other. Regarding the dophin-window idea: That's really cool! In March 2020, I participated in the "Teddy Bear Hunt" where people put a teddy bear in their front window. From what I recall, the campaign didn't get a ton of tweets. I monitored #teddybearhunt for a few days just to see anything interesting. We didn't see any teddy bears in windows around our neighborhood. I'm glad your dophin window project got participation. Stored on: March 3, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Here She Comes, That Rainy Day Sun I'm looking forward to your thoughts on baseball. Right now I'm disappointed in both sides—owners and players. Also, I didn't even know that you organize his posts by "musings" and full posts. Now that I look at your archives, I see some have "Phthursday Musings" and others just the title. Huh. I should have noticed that earlier! Stored on: March 3, 2022 The 2022 Winter Olympics was the least-watched winter games in US TV history | Diverse Tech Geek I’m curious how this Winter Olympics did on Twitter/Facebook compared to previous games. I’m not sure what metric would be used. Tweets/retweets? Likes on Facebook posts? Just curious if people talked more or less about these games as compared to the past. Stored on: March 3, 2022 Where to buy DRM-free digital comics | Diverse Tech Geek Nuts. I think I missed the timeframe to download my comics from Amazon/Comixology. I'm in: Your account > Comixology settings > View your Comixology books; but I don't see a "download" or "backup" option. Stored on: February 28, 2022 Welcome back to halfway up the mountain! Mediocre: from medius "middle" + ocris "jagged mountain". Stored on: February 23, 2022 Phthursday Musings: Scam Likely - by Phil Huckelberry More Thad Bosley, please. Check out the trivia on the back of his 1985 Topps card. For those who do not have access to this card (even though you have internet, you have access, but whatever, I'll type it out here) Who holds the N.L. record for most consecutive games played (1207)? ➤ Steve Garvey Yes. On the back of a 1985 Topps card for a CUBS player is a trivia fact about Steve Garvey. These same cards which are the cards featuring the 1984 players and teams. Thus, Topps made the choice to put the Cub-killer Steve Garvey's trivia on the back of a Cub's card. Now, that sounds like some sort of scam! Stored on: February 22, 2022