FOTD -- August 25, 2005 (Rating 7) Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: Today's rather soothing blue-and-lavender image resulted when I combined negative Z^(-0.5) and negative Z^(-5.5), then added (1/C). The parent fractal consists of a large sprawling, shapeless, apparently non-critical ocean, filled with countless islands, surrounded by a large disturbed area of tiny lakes and interconnected rivers. Some distance to the west lies a small but obvious, distorted Mandeloid, which most definitely is critical. Today's scene is located on a filament rather deep in the east valley of this Mandeloid. The image was generated with the MandelbrotMix4 formula, which is not perfect. It does not find all the critical points of the entered expressions, which I suspect have many critical points, but it usually finds one critical point, which is enough to reveal some intact midgets. Actually, for me, finding these critical areas is much of the fun of working with this formula. I named the image "A Nice One". The word 'nice' is what a person uses when they want to please someone but have little appreciation of the thing about which they are commenting. The word 'one' can refer to almost anything. In this case it can refer to anything about the image that the viewer desires -- the generating formula, the color palette, the picture as a whole, the midget itself, or the intricate pattern around the midget. For me, the word relates to the whole image. I rated the image at a 7 because of the coloring, which to me makes the fractal appear unusually soothing. (Since when have fractals been soothing?) With a lesser color palette, the image would rate no higher than a 5. The render time of just under 11 minutes is true on my 10-year- old P200 machine, which, with its 16mb of memory, is good for little other than old DOS programs such as ChessMaster-2001, WordPerfect-5.1 and Fractint. On any machine made in the 21st Century, today's image will render in under 5 minutes. But some present day machines are over-qualified. They have forgotten how to handle DOS programs and balk when the user attempts to boot Fractint. But these machines are very capable of surfing the web, and can easily access today's image, which is posted on the FOTD web site at: <http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/FotD/FotD.html> ready to be downloaded. Today's cat report is non-eventful. The weather remained near perfect here at Fractal Central on Wednesday, as did the fractal cats. A perfectly uneventful day might be boring to read about, but it is a pleasure to experience. Today is starting the same. Things again look good for the fractal cats. For me, there's the usual work to do and fractals to find. The next fractal will appear in 24 hours. Until then, take care, and speak with your fractals, but don't get caught doing it. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com jimmuth@aol.com START PARAMETER FILE======================================= A_Nice_One { ; time=0:10:55.59--SF5 on a P200 reset=2004 type=formula formulafile=allinone.frm formulaname=MandelbrotMix4 function=recip passes=1 center-mag=-4.97179544927615300/-0.829189165720995\ 50/1087798/1/-160/-2.63797364230544673e-008 params=-1/-0.5/-1/-5.5/0/0 float=y maxiter=1500 inside=0 logmap=202 periodicity=10 colors=000EPTDQTCRTAST9TT8UTAUUCVVEWXFXYHYZJZ`K_aM\ `bOadQbeRcfTdhVeiWfjSegPddLcaIcZFbWBaT8`Q5`N6fT6lZ\ 6rd6xj9ugBrdDoaGlZIiWKgUMdRPaORZLTWIVUGQWIMYJIZKE`\ MAbN6cOEYRMTUUOWaJZiE`q9cy4exAcwFavK`uPZtUXsZWrcUq\ hSpmRorPnwObuTRtYzsaOHFzxzGB5xrzOJHvozidjtkyqjwogu\ mdskaqiZogWmeTkcQj`NhZKfXHdVEbTB`R8ZP5XN2WXEV0SZBR\ XnX_qXZh_T_bORdJIgD9j80l34h28e2Cb2GZ2KW2NT2RP1VM1Z\ J1bF1fC1i91jE5kI9kNDlRHlWLm_OndSnhWom_oqcpvgpzjjzm\ dzoZzrTztOzvMysLxpKxmJwjIwgHvdGvaFuZEtWjzTjzQjzNew\ K`wHXqETqC6mI5jN5fT4cY3`b3Xh2Um2Rr4Rh6R_7RRCPPHNOM\ LMRKLWIJ`GIeFHXACO57G02L53QA4VF5_K6dP7iU7`_ISeSJka\ BqkGhdK_ZORTSINWAHUBNSBTQBZOBcLFzJImHLYEOWCRUAUS8X\ QCUTGRWJPZNM`_JczHfYEi`CkVOjP_jJkiEviGqjImkJikLelM\ amOYmPUnRQoSMoOLqJKsEJv9Ix5HzCjVGkVKlVOmVSmVWmV_mV\ cmVemOgmPimQkmRmmSomTqmUsmVumWvmawmgxmmymszmyzmzzm\ zzmzzmzzmzzmzzmzzmzzmzzmz } 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 PARAMETER FILE=========================================