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Lyle Zapato

Tree Octopus Pathtag

Lyle Zapato | 2013-05-10.6450 LMT | Cephalopods

Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus Pathtag, sent to me by Shop99er and TTUMS. What's a Pathtag? you ask...

Pathtags are personal trading items. Used most often in Geocaching, they are also very handy for Scouting, Military and Promotional use. ... Pathtags are not typically traveling items such as Geocoins or Travel Bugs. They are generally used as personal "signature items" for Geocaching or other trade item. If found, simply log it and the tag's profile will display for you to view. Unless the profile says otherwise, you are welcome to add it into your permanent collection.

You can find more info on the Pathtags site. They're about the size of a US quarter and the reverse has a unique ID number that you can enter into the site to log it and tell the maker where or how you found it.

The Tree Octopus ones are not for sale. If you want one, you'll either have to find it in a Geocache or trade with someone who has one (like Shop99er and TTUMS on the Pathtags site, who had them made with my permission).

Lyle Zapato

Paradigm Shift Clock Mk. II & Black Helicopter Hood Mural

Lyle Zapato | 2013-05-10.4610 LMT | Technology | Art | Crafts | Black Helicopters

Bob Blick, creator of the Pocket Paradigm-Shift Awareness Clock, has upgraded the tech with revised firmware and an additional button:

The front panel button switches the display to show paradigm confidence levels in real time -- caution when it lingers near zero. Reset is inside if you need manual override -- during reset you can preload values with the real time button.


95% Paradigm Confidence. Looking good!

Read more...

Lyle Zapato

Pocket Paradigm-Shift Awareness Clock

Lyle Zapato | 2010-07-08.7210 LMT | Technology | Crafts

Inspired by the Paradigm Shift Awareness Clock pictured on the ZPi Research Labs page, Bob Blick has created a pocket-sized version for on-the-go paradigm shifting. He has graciously sent me one of his two prototypes:

'Days Since Last Paradigm Shift'

Unlike more complicated and expensive paradigm allagimeters you can buy from obscure dealers in esoteritronics, this one is simple enough that any budding revolutionary can use it to monitor their paradigm shifting prowess. Granted it won't let one know in advance of imminent paradigm shifts -- much less shift direction, velocity, or sociocultural mass -- but the point here is not precise paradigmology. As with my original, the point is to motivate shift-inducing activity by making one aware of the lack of them.

No instructions were included, but none were needed. Oscillating dots on the display show it's sensing* the dominant paradigm. If there's no shift within a day, the number will be advanced by one. Any detected shift will reset the number to zero. Simple and to the point.

While indeed pocket-sized, its square shape also makes it a wonderful desk clock for lazy pencil-pushing revolutioneers in need of motivation. I would make one recommendation for improvement, though: the addition of a mount for an optional wrist band can turn it into a stylishly functional Paradigm Shift Awareness Watch:

'Days Since Last Paradigm Shift' wristwatch

No word yet on whether Blick plans to bring this exciting product to market. If he does, I'm ordering one for every Sasquatch in my employ. They've been slacking off lately.

* I only briefly peeked inside the device, so I can't say exactly how it works. I assume its paradigm-sensing abilities are based on paradigm-resonant crystals of some sort. That's what I would use, anyway.

UPDATE 2013-05-10: The Paradigm-Shift Awareness Clock has been updated.

Lyle Zapato

A Quantum Of Polydactylism

Lyle Zapato | 2008-11-14.8608 LMT | Polydactylism | Entertainment | Site

The manifested Jungian archetype of polydactylism pokes its many fingers further into the doughy belly of popular culture.

Gemma Arterton's hands

Gemma Arterton, the new "Bond Girl" in the latest 007 film, A Quantum of Solace, was born with 12 fingers. Unfortunately, her two extra digits were removed shortly after birth by the Medical Establishment -- dogmatic proponents of physiological uniformity who would rather butcher healthy mutants than have to spend valuable golf-time learning the names of new body parts. But try as they might, Establishment doctors are on the losing side our evolutionary destiny:

"My dad had them [extra fingers], and my granddad," Arterton told Esquire magazine. "I feel like we're one step ahead -- a sign of things to come. ... We could do more stuff if we had extra fingers -- faster texting, faster emailing, better guitar-playing."

Also of note in the entertainment world, the new FOX series Fringe features a six-fingered hand-print both on its marketing posters and on bumpers before the commercials:

Fringe hand

Besides documenting the mysterious Observers and the menace of giant floating place-names, Fringe follows investigators searching for the truth about "the Pattern" -- an emergence of strange scientific phenomena and experiments that may signal a tipping point in Humanity's patience with J.J. Abrams. But could the show actually be on to something? Could there be a "the Pattern" in real life? And if so, is it not logical to surmise that "the Pattern" is the Handlebrot set -- a single, yet infinitely complicated, unifying pattern of our existence that has been for eons guiding our development into the polydactyl super-beings that Gemma Arterton foresees?

dactyl fractal

Undoubtedly, yes.

On a less momentous note, a while back I moved my Dactyl Fractal Zoom toy from the wallpaper subdirectory (where I haphazardly put it after I originally created it) to a proper subdirectory of its own. This broke the link from Stumble Upon, a popular random-link site which was the source for most of the traffic to the toy. Well, now some Stumble Upon user has found the new location and re-stumbled it, which has resulted in the Dactyl Fractal Zoom getting around 40,000 hits just today. Egads! Anyway, I added a few links to the containing page, so hopefully all those people won't just stumble past the rest of my site. My apologies to those who preferred the starker, link-free version.

Lyle Zapato

Dactyl Fractal Mesmerizes Masses

Lyle Zapato | 2005-08-01.5850 LMT | Polydactylism

Apparently the Dactyl Fractal Zoomer Doodad has been making the rounds -- and accounting for the majority of recent traffic -- but I didn't notice since I forgot to put a webbug on the container page for the Flash.

Anyway, I bring this up only to note that some Swede came up with an all-too-clever alternative name for it:

Handelbrot.

...

Dammit.

Lyle Zapato

Infinite Dactyl Fractal

Lyle Zapato | 2004-12-06.6260 LMT | Art | Polydactylism