FOTD October 29, 2003 Fractal image from January 08, 1989 Today's image is another blast from the past. In fact, when the time scale of personal fractal programs is considered, it is from ancient times. I found and saved the original PCX format image (now GIF) in January of 1989, at a time when I was still fascinated with the ghost-like remnants of buds that exist in the high-iteration background of many perturbed Mandelbrot sets. The name of the original image file is 'mndlscap', which I assume stood for "Mandelbrot Landscape". If I were naming the image today, I might choose something more like "Celestial Skyscape", but we'll stick with the original name. As was the case with yesterday's ancient image, the parameters of today's image were not included in the old image file, and have long since been lost. This means that the only way to see the image is to visit one of the FOTD web sites at: <http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/FotD/FotD.html> and at: <http://sdboyd.dyndns.org/~sdboyd/fotd/index.html> and download the scene from there. Like yesterday's image, today's exceeds the limitations of its meager 16 colors. When I started working with fractals, I had only 16 colors to work with. This might be why I am little disturbed by the 256-color limit of the present Fractint GIF format. If millions of colors were available however, I of course would use them. While admiring today's image from the past, I was struck by the fact that it is better than some of my present day images. If I had to rate it, I would rate it around a 7. As a final note, I wonder what would happen to images like today's if the program were told not to draw to the screen until a certain number of iterations had been reached. Additional blank 'inside' areas would certainly appear, but what would they be shaped like? Today here at Fractal Central is starting rainy, but despite the rain, things are going well. (Unfortunately, they are not going so well in dried-out southern California, but then California does not get hurricanes, violent thunder and lightning storms, or blizzards.) The work backlog is down to one job that arrived yesterday morning. If nothing large comes in today, I will be caught up by the time the late news comes on TV at 11 this eve- ning. Turning to my left, I see Thomas on his shelf, looking wistfully out the window. Tippy is sleeping peacefully on a blanket by the radiator. The rain is due to end by noon, so if the fractal cats do not mind getting their paws wet, they will have a half- pleasant afternoon in the yard. I'll be back in 24 hours with another fractal, quite possibly another one from long ago. And in 3 days, the present-day FOTD will resume its daily schedule. Until tomorrow, take care, and don't lose your cool. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com jimmuth@aol.com