FOTD -- February 06, 2005 (Rating 2) Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: Today's fractal is far from great. In fact, with its low-as- they-go rating of 2, it is far from being even average. Maybe I'm getting too interested in philosophy. Maybe I have put so much energy into fractals that I'm beginning to burn out. Why else would I search where I have searched hundreds of times and rarely found anything of even average interest? I don't know why I keep looking along the filaments of very low order Mandeloid fractals for interesting midgets. The midgets are there, but they are so broken by the unavoidable discontinui- ties that they look like they have just gone through a paper shredder. Today's image shows a totally shredded midget that fully deserves its abysmal rating of 2 as well as its name -- "Totally Shredded". The parent fractal is the default Z^1.26+C Mandeloid. I hoped that the cube root of 3 would do something unusual when used as the exponent of Z, but as far as I could tell, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Maybe if I had checked other levels of the logarithmic hyper-spiral, I would have found something more interesting, but somehow I doubt it. I could also have done better with the coloring, but today's earthy palette seems to perfectly capture the futility I felt when working with the image. The parameter file included at the end of this message runs in 7 minutes on my 10-year-old machine with the exhaust fan that needs to be started by hand. But much of that render time may be saved by downloading the fully pre- rendered GIF image from the FOTD web site maintained by Paul at: <http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/FotD/FotD.html> The sun was warm, the wind was light, and the temperature reached 54F 12C. It was absolutely perfect here at Fractal Central on Saturday, and the cats made the most of the perfect conditions. They went into the yard before 11am and did not return inside until after 4pm. For some reason they wanted extra tuna for supper, which I gave them. Then they ended the day with one of their rare spells of playfully chasing each other up and down the stairs. Today is starting much the same. Hopefully, the aging duo is not all played out. I have little to do today but watch the big game. If the game is dull, I'll enjoy the over-priced ads. The next fractal will appear in 24 hours, the next philosophy, most likely in 48. Until tomorrow, when the fractal of the day is guaranteed to be an improvement over today's, take care, and there will never be another 2-rated fractal until spammers learn to spell correctly. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com jimmuth@aol.com START PARAMETER FILE======================================= Totally_Shredded { ; time=0:07:04.25--SF5 on a P200 reset=2004 type=formula formulafile=allinone.frm formulaname=MandelbrotBC2 passes=1 center-mag=+0.87536385207072350/+0.898575036268718\ 70/3507503 params=1.26/0/0/0 float=y maxiter=10000 inside=0 periodicity=10 colors=000htNepLblK_hJXeHUaGRYFOUBPVDPVEQVGQVHRVJR\ VKSVLSVNTVOTVQUVRNYYRWVUVSXTQ_SNcQLfPIiNGlMDuO5rM8\ oLBlKDiIGfHJdGLaEOZDRWCTTAWQ9Zer9K3_O8`SD`WIa_MacR\ agWbk`bv`drbcndbjfadlbfgagb`hY_iTZjOYyGckJYYLTKNN6\ PI8NLAMNCLQEKSGJUIHXKGZMFaOEcMGpOEjPDeRC`SAVU9QV8L\ U5HW7GX8GYAF_BF`DEaEEcGDdHDeJCgKChMBiNBkPAlQAmS9nT\ 9mWClYFl`HkbKkeMjgPjjRilUinWjlYkjZli_mganebndcobdp\ `fq_grYhtVkrXiqYgpZfo_dn`cmaakb_jcZidXheWgfUVPpfgT\ heVicXjbZk``l_bnYdoXfpVhqUjrSltRnuPpvOrwMtxLurOlmQ\ chTVcVMZYDU_5WY6YW6_U7`S7bQ8dO8eM9gK9iIAg2DiABjHAl\ P9mW8oc6pj5rr4sy3rx3qw3pw3ov3nu3mu3lt3ks3js3ir3hq3\ gq3fp3eo3do3ep9fpFgpLgpRhpWipaipgjpmkpsquznrykpxhn\ xekwbiw_gvXevUbuR`uOZtMXtpt`hn_ah_Vb_OXZHRZ7ef9WbA\ MZBCVA1TC3SD5RF7QG9PIBOJCNLEMMGLOIKPKJRMIRMJSNISOI\ SPHSQHSRHSSGTTGTUFTVFTWFTXETYETZEWgCDJfGLcIN`LPYNR\ VQTSSVQVXNXZK_`HabEddBsw8 } frm:MandelbrotBC2 { ; by several Fractint users e=p1, a=imag(p2)+100 p=real(p2)+PI q=2*PI*floor(p/(2*PI)) r=real(p2)-q Z=C=Pixel: Z=log(Z) IF(imag(Z)>r) Z=Z+flip(2*PI) ENDIF Z=exp(e*(Z+flip(q)))+C |Z|<a } END PARAMETER FILE=========================================