A deviant artist spontaneously manifests a dactyl fractal only to discover he is part of a larger Jungian archetype. He goes on to uncover and list many mutations of the Handlebrot set done by other deviants, as well as my own.

As dactyl fractal consciousness rises, it is only a matter of time before physical instances of true dactyl fractality emerge. Until then, society will just have to make do with lateral polydactyls, such as major league baseball pitcher Antonio "el Pulpo" Alfonseca.

A member of the orb weaver (Araneidae) family. I think it might be Uncle Earl.

A recent article on making a macro lens using a Pringles can led me to a fortunate discovery that may be of use, or at least give ideas, to someone else, so I'll pass it along...

It turns out that a lens hood accessory I had lying around from a circa-1960s Pentax SLR can be jury-rigged to allow the use of that camera's filters and lenses with my Sony Mavica CD500 digicam (which otherwise would need a $35 adaptor from Sony to accept accessories). The hood, intended to keep stray light out of lenses, is just a metal tube with threading on one end that screws into the filter threads on the lenses (not all hoods use threading, though -- I also have one from another camera that uses a compression fitting.)

By lining the inside with a 3cm wide strip of felt cut to the inner diameter, the hood can be slid, thread-end pointing out, snugly onto the telescoping-lens base of the Mavica. It's just the right length to allow clearance for the moving lens, which can now be enclosed and protected with a filter.

Besides filters, lenses can also be screwed onto the hood's threads, albeit backwards. What use is a backwards lens? Macro photography! Reversing a standard lens turns it into a serviceable macro lens. (For those with the same camera: Turn the macro mode on and zoom all the way in. Do not use the "Conversion Lens" mode.) Wide angle lenses give even better magnification, but will have greater vignetting. Oh, and try a telephoto lens if you feel burdened by too many megapixels.

Anyway, here's some pics taken with my newly-discovered macro lens:

Read more...

A loyal reader writes in with a link and suggestion:

I am not sure this is up your alley, but as a long-time fan of you and your website (I even bought the book), and also of the website mentioned below, I thought I'd send you the following address: www.oedilf.com. Ostensibly, it has nothing to do with the NWO, but then again, who can ever be certain?

Again, I don't know that limerick-writing is your thing, but for a man of your talents, I would not be surprised. Anyways, you can at least write one about AFDBs or black helicopters, to raise consciousness about these matters. (If it is rejected, we'll know for sure that the site is just another devious attempt by the NWO at controlling peoples' language, and hence, their minds.)

Yours,
Hollander

The site he links to is The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form, which, as the name implies, has limericks for every word submitted by people with too much time on their hands. Exactly my sort of thing!

Here's one I just wrote to raise consciousness about the importance of beanie camouflage:

Aluminum makes a nice hat;
All paranoids will tell you that.
But what most don't know
Is the shine will show
Up on the CIA's landsat.

Since there's a minor limerick war over the spelling of the name of lucky atomic element 13, here's a more historical take:

Sir Davy coined "alumium",
Then said it was "aluminum".
"The end's improper!
(Rather 'twere 'copper'...)
Hell! Call it 'aluminium'!"

I'll submit them and we'll see just how far the NWO's language control goes...

Update: I've been informed by Hollander that those two limericks just won't do. Here's a correction of the first using some suggestions of his:

Aluminum makes a nice hat.
All paranoids will tell you that.
But what most do not know
Is reflections will show
On the CIA's evil landsat.

The second one was a complete disaster, so I redid it:

"Alumium" Davy first picks,
Then thinks that "aluminum" clicks.
"But the end don't agree
With my K and Mg!
I hope 'aluminium' sticks."

The Black Helicopter TRUTH store contains shirts/calendar with the lifecycle diagram; buttons you can use to disguise yourself as a nanobiotechnician; and the brand-spanking new "DESTROY ALL BLACK HELICOPTERS!" propaganda poster which features an angry, red microcopterswatter being swung righteously by the hand of Paranoia at the nanobiotechnological menace of the New World Order -- an inspirational message for all paranoids.

(This is the newer version.)

This is almost a year old, but I just now discovered it: "Un pinguino comunista contro il sito di Forza Italia".

Last June, some naughty person defaced the website of Forza Italia, the political party of Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, using the original version of my Commie Linux wallpaper (or rather a screenshot of it being used as a Windowmaker desktop). The odd thing is, from what I can Babelfish together, the defacing was done anonymously (no 133+ bragging, political statements, or shout-outs to people with handles like Neo or Wintermute) and the site's server was running Linux, making the choice seem a non sequitur. Maybe the perpetrator just really liked my drawing and wanted to share it with all of Italy.

I don't know if they ever found who did it, but if they're still looking, it's not "Comrade Zapato".

Searching around, I also uncovered another appearance of lil' Trots the Commie Penguin in Italy: La Casa Del Popolo is a blog that's presumably anti-Berlusconi (given the entries I skimmed) and uses the screenshot version of the image for its masthead (complete with scaled down Windowmaker title bar at the top).

This is an updated version of a wallpaper that I made a long time ago. Someone named Mib emailed me a link to his improved version a while back, but I was having server probs at the time and lost the email. (So that's why I didn't email you back, Mib.) I've implemented his two ideas -- adding the RMS-compliant GNU prefix bisected with the flagpole and using И instead of N -- in the re-done versions, and have released the SVG source code.

Another SVG icon, this time of a red ant.

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.

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!