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Fractal of the Day
by Jim Muth
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Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: Today's FOTD is nothing much -- so that's what I named it. How can it be much, when it's nothing more than a scene deep in the Seahorse Valley area of the classic Mandelbrot set. The scene is not even deep enough to require arbitrary precision math. It's the kind of fractal we were impressed by 10 years ago, but most of us have long since outgrown. Oh, it's a little bit unusual. At 3,000,000, the maxiter is quite high, and most of the features in the picture are well over the 100,000 iteration range, but with our modern high-speed computers such an image can be calculated in an hour or less. On an aging Pentium 200mhz it takes 1-1/2 hours to render. I have rated the picture a somewhat above average 6 on my scale of fractal worth. I gave it this rating because of the coloring, which in my opinion is just good enough to raise the image the 1 point to a little above average. Basically, the picture features a lurid inner area, hinting at violence and evil, surrounded by a celestial blue background, suggesting peace and serenity. The midget in the picture lies deep in one of those triple spirals that are located at the mouths of the secondary buds deep in Seahorse Valley. The triple spiral effect is quite noticeable at the edge of the dark red disk surrounding the midget. The hour or two render time is quite a long while to wait to see such an unimportant fractal. The far more efficient way to view the scene is to download the pre-rendered image file in GIF format from the Usenet binary group: The fractal weather today was once again perfect, with deep blue skies streaked with angel-hair cirrus, and a temperature of 81F (27C), which pleased the cats, who showed their pleasure by sleeping most of the day. I was not as pleased, since I had no excuse to postpone trimming the fractal lawn. But all was not lost, for while pushing the mower, I pondered the mysteries of the fourth dimension, which of course are not mysteries at all. The metaphysical (Isn't the fourth dimension also metaphysical?) philosophy didn't even stir today, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on whether or not one agrees with the philosophy. There's no debate that the time has come to shut down the fractal shoppe, feed the fractal cats, and settle into my laziest chair to watch the usual Saturday evening junky movie thriller. Until next time, when some 4-D talk is a good bet, take care, and mid-summer (or mid-winter) is but a few weeks away. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com |
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