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The Typing Octopus

Calamari Sutra

The Typing Octopus | 2005-09-26.1780 LMT | Cephalopods

Weird Sex: Giant Squid Do It Deeper (WARNING: not safe for hatchlings):

Although mating has never been observed in giant squid, it is thought that what happens is that the male injects his sperm packages into the female's arms. The process is likely to be a fairly violent affair as the female is probably not that keen on being injected. This is a problem for the amorous male as females are normally a third bigger than they are.

But males get round their inferior size by being endowed with a particularly long penis, which means they can inject the female without having to get too close to her chomping beak. The male's sexual organ is actually a bit like a high-pressure fire hose and is normally nearly as long as his body - excluding legs and head.

But having such a big penis does have one drawback: it seems that co-ordinating eight legs, two feeding tentacles and a huge penis, whilst fending off an irate female, is a bit too much to ask, and one of the two males stranded on the Spanish coast had accidentally injected himself with sperm packages in the legs and body. And this does not seem to have been an isolated incident since two of the eight males that had stranded in the north-east Atlantic before had also accidentally inseminated themselves.

The Typing Octopus

Happy Hatchday!

The Typing Octopus | 2005-09-04.9900 LMT | Cephalopods
The Typing Octopus

Misrepresentation Of Octopus's Nature

The Typing Octopus | 2005-08-23.4920 LMT | Cephalopods | Politics

Sister in octoarms calls for defamation suit against humans in Korean op-ed piece:

먹물을 뿜는다 하여 너희는 나에게 고상한 이름(文魚)을 붙여 주었다. 그렇지만 나의 이미지는 여전히 고약하기 짝이 없다. ... 너희 법정이 양심이 있다면 우리에게도 명예훼손 소송을 허(許)하라.

List of grievances also in English for Cascadian humans.

Caution to humans: we have mastered your jar lids... manipulating your legal system easy as cracking crabs.

Lyle Zapato

Fonts: Submarine vs. Whale

Lyle Zapato | 2005-04-25.5400 LMT | Fonts

Type sample

Submarine vs. Whale is an Art-Nouveau-ish font based on the heading of a 1911 illustrated account of Lieutenant Chester W. Nimitz's encounter with whales while commanding the USS Narwhal. It's cleaner than the original, but still has some irregularity in the curves to give it character. Great for tales of underwater Edwardian adventure!

The Typing Octopus

Congratulations Aurora!

The Typing Octopus | 2005-04-14.1700 LMT | Cephalopods | Announcement
The Philatelist

Stamp Nook: Porcupine Fish Helmet

The Philatelist | 2005-02-18.0250 LMT | Philately | Fashion
Stamp

This edition of Stamp Nook takes us to the tropical Gilbert Islands of Micronesia, now known as Kiribati, where we encounter a curious artefact. Issued on December 6, 1976, the stamp (Scott #289) depicts a porcupine fish helmet (or te barantauti), a traditional Kiribati warrior's helmet made out of the inflated, dried carcase of a porcupinefish, a close relative of the pufferfish.

Porcupine fish helmet icon.(I should also point out that Mr Zapato has an icon of the porcupine fish helmet available in his Archæologicons set. Very useful for differentiating your want-list of Oceania topicals.)

Read more...

Lyle Zapato

ZPi Spider Mini: Your Personal Spider Assistant

Lyle Zapato | 2005-01-18.9800 LMT | Crafts

Introducing ZPi Spider Mini™: Your Personal Spider Assistant!

Spider Mini™ is an innovative combination of software and hardware working in synergy to provide enterprise level arachno-assistant solutions to help expedite all your mission-critical applications. Spider Mini™ is a scalable open-source standard facilitated by just-in-time compilation that leverages fuzzy piping technology and beady-eye stickiness to bring compelling world-class interactive experiences to all users. Spider Mini™ is a ubiquitous, always-on simulation that recontextualizes best-of-breed arthropodic paradigms to emulate an intuitive yet revolutionary real-time, real-world interpersonal dynamic that disintermediates competing e-solutions such as Clippy™ or Bonzai Buddy™. Spider Mini™ will seamlessly integrate into your work environment and is fully cross-platform compatible. Spider Mini™ implements an on-demand, user-centric strategy to transform e-business into yippee!-business and empower increased productivity. And of course, Spider Mini™ features a bleeding-edge front-end and a web-ready back-end. You should expect nothing less from ZPi.


Spider Mini™ supervises data entry tasks and Post-It™ management.

Spider Mini™ loves you, even if no one else does. Especially if no one else does! Show your initiative and make a Spider Mini™ today.

Lyle Zapato

Meet Ms. Red Ant

Lyle Zapato | 2004-12-18.0520 LMT | Art
Red Ant icon

Another SVG icon, this time of a red ant.

Lyle Zapato

Experimental SVG Icons

Lyle Zapato | 2004-12-16.8500 LMT | Art

African penguin icon Emperor penguin icon Treehopper icon

I've created two more vector icons -- an African and an Emperor penguin -- and have added SVG and PNG versions of all three on the Zapaticons page. These are still experimental and are subject to change. If your OS or desktop environment supports SVG icons, let me know if they work or if there's any issues with them. I'll add more once I'm satisfied with the format.

Lyle Zapato

Treehopper Vector Icon Preview

Lyle Zapato | 2004-12-15.8220 LMT | Art
Treehopper icon

Thinking about my icons in the previous post reminded me of an idea I had a while back to make vectorized versions of some of them for use with newer operating systems and desktop environments that support that sort of thing. So I whipped up a take on my thorn-mimic treehopper icon. It's more cartoony and simplified, yet bold like the mighty treehopper himself! I'm undecided as to whether I should add vein lines in the wings -- if I do other insects, some, like dragonflies, will look better with them so I might add them for consistency's sake.

I'll put a vector version of it, and any other's I do, on the Zapaticons page when I figure out the best way to save it for use by OSs/DEs. Currently it's in SVG, but Inkscape adds extra info to the file that's unnecessary. (Anyone with any suggestions on this, feel free to email me.)

In the mean time, you can enjoy this rastorized version, which coincidentally makes the front page look more festive... Feliz Navibug!