FOTD -- February 25, 2003 (Rating 5) Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: Today's image is one of the grainiest of all time. The parent fractal is nothing more than a symmetrical pair of fragmented arcs, with little that appears to hold promise. The arcs do contain midgets however, and some of them are shaped most unusually. But for today's FOTD I have chosen a perfectly normal quadratic midget. I named the picture "Candy Ring". The ring of brightly colored spots surrounding the midget reminds me of a dish of candy that a child would love to dive into. The pattern around the midget is quite ephemeral, and quite dependent on the chosen palette of colors. Without a carefully chosen palette, the entire image deteriorates to a featureless expanse of fractal sand. The rating of 5 is nondescript. The image is neither good nor lacking. It simply exists, a mathematical abstraction that has never before been seen and never again will be seen. But this might not be totally true. If the universe is infinite, there are an infinity of fractalists sitting at an infinity of computers viewing this same image at this very moment. Of course, there is no such thing as this very moment throughout the universe, but that's relative, and therefore another story. I am getting letters asking the status of the FOTD-CD, and when it will be ready for distribution. The disk is basically finished. The material is gathered into one huge directory and ready to be copied onto a CD. The problem is that my artistic nature is exerting itself. I am not yet satisfied with the disk. I want it to be better -- as good as possible. I originally had planned to include on the disk the short stories I have written over the past 20 years or so. The stories are still ready to go onto the CD, but I have developed grave doubts about their worth. I would rather be known as a good fractalist than a marginal want-to-be writer. I also had originally planned to include on the disk the heated philosophical debates that I have had over the years with both believers and skeptics. These are also ready to go, but the more I think about this, the less I like the idea. The CD should be a fun thing, not a forum for fruitless and sometimes angry debate over things such as religion. Another hold-up is that I have been unable to locate a group of my earliest images, dating from way back in the late 1980's. They are not great, and their lack will have little impact on the CD as a whole, but they show how I got started on my insatiable quest for fractals. Another problem is the names of the GIF images, which are currently cryptic 8-letter DOS abbreviations of the longer full names of the images. The people who have tested the disk format have had trouble connecting the images with the corresponding discussions. (Would you know, while scanning a list of 30 GIF files, that the 'tmeandva.gif' image goes with the 'Theme and Variations' discussion?) I could solve this confusion by renaming the images so that the names correspond to the dates of their discussions, or by breaking down the current large monthly directories into 30 smaller daily ones, with one discussion and one image in each sub-directory. Either option would be a sizable task. Since Fractint is a DOS program, I want to keep the disk in DOS format, like the great disk that came with the second edition of "Fractal Creations". With all the other work that I have to do, it might be necessary to put the ongoing FOTD on hiatus while I wrap up the CD. Hopefully it will not be necessary. . . . but we'll see . . . On my machine, today's image requires almost 1/2 hour to render from the parameter file. Much time can be saved by downloading the completed image from: <http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/FotD/FotD.html> or from: <http://sdboyd.dyndns.org/~sdboyd/fotd/index.html> The fractal weather was quite pleasant here at Fractal Central on Monday, with quite a bit of sun and a temperature of 44F 7C. Only the remaining snowpack prevented the duo from enjoying a romp in the yard. As for myself, I have a pile of graphic work to do, a leak to get patched, a basement to get dried, a fallen porch roof to get replaced, a FOTD-CD to wrap up, tomorrow's FOTD to find, and a pair of cats to keep happy. In addition, the central heat is acting up, probably because of the wet basement. All in all, it is just another normal day at Fractal Central, so until next time, take care, and when things are as bad as they could possibly be, barring the appearance of Murphy's law, they can only get better. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com jimmuth@aol.com START 20.0 PAR-FORMULA FILE================================ Candy_Ring { ; time=0:28:49.35--SF5 on a P200 reset=2002 type=formula formulafile=allinone.frm formulaname=MandelbrotMix4 function=recip passes=1 center-mag=+0.18015306714052880/+0.742625388281597\ 70/1.983779e+007/1/-140/-1.00973908755130903e-007 params=2/-1/-0.3/1/0/0 float=y maxiter=12000 inside=0 logmap=414 periodicity=10 colors=000QVOPVPNVQMVQLVRKVSIVSHVTGVUEWVFVUFUThhhF\ TSFTSFSRmK0FRQFRQGcPGQOGPOGPNGONGOMGNgGNLGMLHMKHLJ\ HLJHKIHKIHJHHUzHIGHIGKJJMKLOKNQLQwMzUMUXNWZOZ`O`bP\ bdPdfQgiRikRkmSmoTpqTrsUtwVxuUvsTuqTtoSsmSrlRqjQoh\ QnfPmdPlcOkaOj_NhYMgWMfVLeTLdRKcPJaNJ`MI_KIZIHYGHW\ HIUIKSJMQKOOLQMMSKNUIOWGPYEQ_CRaASc8Te6Ue4Vd1Ub1T`\ 0RZ0PY0NW0MU0KT0IR0GP0FO0HQ2JR3LT4MU5OV7QX8SY9T_AV\ `CXaDZcE_dFaeGcgIdhJfjKhkLjlNknOmoPoqQqrSrsTtuUvvV\ wwWvtUvqSvoQvlOvjMugKudIubGu_EuYDsWCqVCoUCmTCkSCiR\ CgQCePCcNBaMB_LBYKBXJBVIBTHBRGBPFBNDALCAJBAHAAF9AD\ 8AB7A96A85AA7DB9FCBHDDKEFMGGOHIRIKTJMVKOYMP_NRaOTd\ PVfQXhSYkT_mUaoVcrWetZexXfvVgtThsRhqPipOjnMjmKkkIl\ jGmhEmgDneBod9ob7pa5q_4qZ5rY6sX7tW8uV9vUAwTBxSBySC\ zTDzUEzVFzWFzXGzYHzZIz_Jz`JzaKzbLzcMzdNzeNzfOzgPzh\ QziRzjRzjTzjUziVzhWzgYzfZzf_zeazdbzcczbdzbfzagz`hz\ _hz`iz_izZjzYjzXjzWkzVkzU } frm:MandelbrotMix4 {; Jim Muth a=real(p1), b=imag(p1), d=real(p2), f=imag(p2), g=1/f, h=1/d, j=1/(f-b), z=(-a*b*g*h)^j, k=real(p3)+1, l=imag(p3)+100, c=fn1(pixel): z=k*((a*(z^b))+(d*(z^f)))+c, |z| < l } END 20.0 PAR-FORMULA FILE==================================