FOTD -- February 01, 2003 (Rating 8) Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: I tried not to see the entrance of a cave in today's image, it appeared so trite, but there it is, clear as can be, a view from inside a cave, looking out toward an unearthly scene and the alien blue sky beyond. There are even puddles of liquid nitrogen on the cave floor, reflecting bits of the scene beyond. With all this evidence, I had no choice but to name the image "The Cave Entrance". I rated the image at an 8 because of its unusually strong resemblance to an actual 3-D scene. The colors are a bit surreal, but this doesn't detract from the impression of a real scene. The puddles of nitrogen on the cave floor are actually small, foreshortened spiral areas where the iteration count of the surface features becomes greater than the count of the features beneath, and the normally hidden features show through. These areas resemble reflections because the features showing through are extensions of the features directly above. To create today's image, I once again used the C4G almost- triternion formula. While searching the East Valley area of a square Mandeloid, I noticed today's curious feature in the pattern around a sub-midget. A zoom-in, a bit of stretching, a bit of rotation and a bit of skewing produced today's image. Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the image is the criss- crossing elements that appear to go on indefinitely, almost invisibly, in the distant blue of the sky. When enlarged and re-colored, this distant sky area changes and becomes another cave entrance. We literally have a cave whose entrance goes on forever. Luckily, the parameter file runs in far less time than forever. In fact, even on my worn-out machine with the balky fan it runs in 8 minutes, and draws an image well worth the short wait. And even that short wait can be avoided if the completed GIF file of the image is downloaded from: <http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/FotD/FotD.html> or from: <http://sdboyd.dyndns.org/~sdboyd/fotd/index.html> Friday remained cold, damp and dreary all day, with the tempera- ture hovering just above freezing and occasional drizzle. The cats remained gloomy all day, and needed a treat of tuna in the evening to make them fit to live around. Today looks like another repeat. I have no idea how the duo will take three indoor days in a row. With most of the work caught up and not much else to do, I'm going to take today as easy as possible. I'll probably spend a good part of the day somewhere in Fractal Land, searching for tomorrow's FOTD. Until then, take care, and prepare for the imminent release of the long-awaited FOTD CD, which will contain every FOTD image from April 1997 through December 2002, plus every FOTD discussion and a lot of spurious blather. It will also contain a number of my earlier fractal images, some of them created (blasphemy) by programs other than Fractint. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com jimmuth@aol.com START 20.0 PAR-FORMULA FILE================================ The_Cave_Entrance { ; time=0:08:07.30--SF5 on a P200 reset=2002 type=formula formulafile=c4gsave.frm formulaname=C4G passes=1 center-mag=-1.74974156125\ 1203/+0.00000002376090472/1.527103e+008/1/128.9/1\ 7.7763268937502694 params=-0.72/-0.53 float=y maxiter=1600 inside=0 logmap=246 periodicity=10 colors=000UJXTJZSJ`QKaPKcNKbMKaKL`JL_ILZGMYFMXDMWC\ NVANU9NTANSBLRCKQDJPEIOFHOGHOHIOIJOJJOKKOLLOMLONNQ\ NPSMRTMTVLVXLXYLY_K_aKabJcdJeeIggIhiIjjHllHnnGpoGr\ qGsrJpsLmtNkuQhuSevUcwW`xZYx`WybTzdRzkYurcpcUkukhc\ Uemobiq_esXauUYwSZrQ_mO_iM`dKa_JaWHbRFLMDNICLJBKJA\ KJAMJAOJAQKARKASLATMAUMAVNAWOAXOAYPAZPA_RA`TAaVCaW\ DbYFc_Gc`IdbJedLeeMfgNgiPgjQhlSinTioVjqWksYktZlv`m\ xamybhwXduR`tLXrFTq9UmDVjGVgJWcMX`PXYSYUVYRYZOa_Kd\ _Hg`EjaAma7pb4sb1va4t`6s_9rZBqYDpYGoXInWLmVNlUPkUS\ jTUiSWhRZgQ`fQcePedOgcNjbMlaMn`PjYSgVVcSX`P_XMbUKe\ QHgNEjJBmG8oD6lH9iLCfOFdSHaWKZZNWbQUeS_oxZnwZnvZnu\ ZmuZmtZmsZlsZlrYlqYkqYkpYkoYjoYjnYjmYjmXfjXcgW`dWY\ aVj_ViXVOUULRUIOTEMTBJS8GS5DS2BTQRTOLTMGVOIXPKZRM`\ SNbTPdVRfWThXUjZWl_Yna_pb`rcbtedvffwggtcaq_XnWRlTM\ iPHfLBcH6aE1bG2bH3bI3cJ4cL5cM5dN6dO7dQ7eR8eS9eT9fV\ AfWBfXBgYCg_Dg`DhaEhbFhcF } frm:C4G {; p1 is (plus or minus) 1 or i x=real(pixel), y=imag(pixel)*p1 a=b=0: a1 = a^2-p1^2*b^2 b1 = 2*a*b a=a1+x, b=b1+y z = sqrt(a^2 + b^2) z < 4 } END 20.0 PAR-FORMULA FILE==================================