FOTD -- January 24, 2003 (Rating 7) Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: Having checked the Fractal Central e-mail box and actually read 3 of 53 pieces of junk, I wonder why so many spammers waste their time telling me that I am receiving the information I requested, when I have requested nothing, or pretending that they are secret admirers, or that I have been approved for something I do not want, or that I have signed up to receive such junk, when only a fool would sign up to receive spam. And if I have requested information or signed up to receive spam, why don't I remember doing it? Why must the spammers tell me something I should already know? But it is not all bad. Those computerized pseudo-personalized letters are particularly amusing. I always get a chuckle when I read something like, "hey jamth, you have been specially selected to receive a free password." Maybe I should create a new e-mail address with a particularly offensive name such as "stupidpigeon@******.com". Then the subject lines would read, "hey stupidpigeon, you can get rich quick." Why can't e-mailers just be honest and say something such as, "you are receiving this e-mail because your address was on a list of addresses we purchased"? If someone were to say this, and the product was worthwhile, I might actually consider doing business. But now, having sounded off about the spam, I have fractal business to attend to. I named today's image "Without Reason", though I can give no logical reason why I did it. It is another of my 'evaporated' images, showing the ghost of a fractal that once was there. I put a bit of extra energy into the coloring, which earns the image a rating of 7. Why do images evaporate when their generating formulae contain negative powers of Z? They do it because no points will reach infinity when the exponent of Z is negative. But the points will still jump around quite a bit within a limited range, and when the value of the bailout radius is reasonably low, they will temporarily pass beyond it, giving the program the signal that they have escaped permanently, and stopping calculation. When the bailout is excessive, no points will ever reach it in their travels, and will therefore be seen as trapped. The screen will appear flat, consisting entirely of trapped 'inside' points. The bof61 active inside fill option works quite well in today's image. It colors the trapped points according to which iteration comes closest to the origin, and therefore displays the wanderings of the trapped points. The resulting images can be quite impressive. The other active inside fills can also produce interesting images from a normally flat blank inside. The bof60 option colors trapped points according to how close they come to the origin, and produces bubble-like images. Many of the active inside fills have quirks that limit their usefulness, but they are all worth a try. Setting the logmap can be tricky with images that consist totally of inside points. One method is to bypass the problem by setting the logmap option to zero. Another method that works fairly well is to set the logmap to 1, create a totally black palette and give the 001 register a brilliant color. Then rotate the palette forward until the color first appears on the screen. When it does, note the number of the position where the colored register is located and set the logmap to this value. Unfortunately, this method fails when the colored register passes beyond position 128. The rating of 7 for today's image seems logical. It is above average, at least in my opinion. The render time of 12 minutes borders on the excessive. The download from: <http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/FotD/FotD.html> or from: <http://sdboyd.dyndns.org/~sdboyd/fotd/index.html> is far more reasonable. Thursday was the coldest day in 5 years here at Fractal Central. And the snow showers and high winds didn't help at all. When the 14F -10C air touched the noses of the fractal cats, they turned around and headed straight for the warmest radiator they could find. They slept peacefully until the time arrived for their evening meal. There is not much cat action around F.C. in this kind of weather. It's a little warmer this morning, but still well below freezing. I suppose the duo will be housebound again today. Being housebound is my normal situation, but it most certainly does not mean idleness. Since the time for work has arrived, the time for the FOTD has come to an end. In 24 hours, the next FOTD will appear. Until then, take care, and be faithful to your fractals. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com jimmuth@aol.com START 20.0 PAR-FORMULA FILE================================ Without_Reason { ; time=0:12:16.44--SF5 on a P200 reset=2002 type=formula formulafile=allinone.frm formulaname=MandelbrotMix4 function=recip passes=1 center-mag=+1.686817713361516/-0.6536317292615328/\ 9.601575e+009/1/-132.5/-5.15785767828125241e-006 params=11/-1.2/4.3/-6/0/1e+100 float=y maxiter=1200 inside=bof61 logmap=128 periodicity=10 colors=000OGRUGWMGNJGJHFLGEMFEODDPCEQBGSAIT8JU7LW6\ MX4MY3M_4N`6Oa8PbAObCN`EM`GLYIKVJJSKIPLHMMGKNFKOEK\ PDKQCKRCKSDHUFHWHHYJH_KHaMHcOHeQHhRHmTHrVHwXHyYHz_\ HzaHzcHzdHzbKyaNx_PxZSxYUyWXyV_yTaySdyRfzPizOlzMnz\ LqzKsxNqvQptTorVnpYmn`llcjjeihhhfkgdlfcmeXo_RmVKkQ\ EiLHgJKeHNcFPaDS_BVY9YW7_W6RUCIUI9TNDSQGRSJQUNOWQP\ YTQ`WRb_TdbUfeVhhWjaYdWZ_Q_UJaPDbJ7cEFcFNcFVcGbcGe\ cKgcNicQkcUmcXoc_pcaqcbrccscdtbeuZfuVgvRhwNixJjyFk\ zBlz7mwBkuEirHgpKfnNdkRbiU`fX_d_YbbW_fUYeTVdRTcPRc\ OQcRQcUPcXPc_OcbObeN`hNYkMUnMSqLPtLMwLKzKMvJNsJOoI\ PlIRhHSeHTaGUZFVVFXSEYOEZLD_HD`EEXKEZ69X0DW4GV8JUB\ MUFQTITSMWSPZRTaQXeP_hPckOfnNjqNmoMlmLlkKljJlhIlfH\ leGlcFlaEk`DkZCkXBkWAkU9kS8kR7kS8eS9`SAVSAQSBKSCFS\ D9SD4XE7`E9eFBiFDmGFrGHvHJzHLrQKjZKbfKefJhgHkhFniD\ qjBsjAtgLudWubfsdcrf`qgYpiWojTnlQmmOloLkpIjrGisDhu\ Agv8doJahU_bdXWoeGfaGbYGZ } 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==================================