FOTD -- November 29, 2003 (Rating 7) Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: It's 8:30am and all is well here at Fractal Central. My 18-day tour of the Mandelbrot set is coming to a close. Starting December 1st we will move on to other formulas (MandelbrotMix4 perhaps) and other fractals. Was the tour of the M-set a success? Its purpose was to find new things in the well- explored areas of the Set. Did we find anything new? We certainly found some midgets that have never before been seen, but could these midgets actually be considered new? Like so many other things in the land of fractals, and in the world itself, it is up to the individual fractalist to decide. My own opinion is that I fell a little short of my original intent. I found nothing in the M-set that is truly new and has never been seen, but then I have an artistic temperament, and artists are never satisfied with the things they create. So I guess we'll call it a stand-off and look forward to better things to come during December. Today's image takes us to the star of the period-8 bud on the northeast shore of the main bay of the Mandelbrot set. Zooming in toward the center of the star, we suddenly stop and turn onto a side branch. We find a small spiral and stop to search for a midget. Since midgets are everywhere in the Set, our search soon uncovers a rather interesting little fellow -- the one that now appears at the center of today's image. It's not a bad image. In fact, it rates an above-average 7. True, this type of fractal has often been seen before, but I am rather pleased with the coloring, and because of that, decided to rate the image a 7 rather than a 6. Perhaps its best feature is its speed. With a render time on my machine of 11 seconds, it is the fastest FOTD image in many months. But despite the speed, the task of saving and renaming this letter is about equal to the task of downloading the completed GIF image from: <http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/FotD/FotD.html> or from: <http://sdboyd.dyndns.org/~sdboyd/fotd/index.html> The rain continued most all day Friday here at Fractal Central, and the temperature topped out at 59F 15C. The fractal cats, disliking wet ears and paws, decided to remain indoors and sulk, hoping the sulk would bring a treat of tuna. They were right. The tuna appeared. My day was reasonably pleasant. There was lots of left-over turkey, and as today's image shows, my luck in fractal-land was reasonably good. Now if we can only have three or four good days in a row . . . Until next FOTD, take care, and become one with your fractals. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com jimmuth@aol.com START PARAMETER FILE======================================= Mandelbrot-17 { ; time=0:00:11.48--SF5 on a P200 reset=2002 type=mandel mathtolerance=/1 center-mag=+0.37256619253914140/+0.090896004196444\ 92/2.650479e+010/1/-169.999987105916603/-7.4772394\ 485271565e-005 params=0/0 float=y maxiter=2400 bailout=9 inside=0 logmap=318 periodicity=10 colors=000ICHJDIKEJLFKMGLNHMOINPJOQKPRLQSMSTNUUNWV\ NYWM_XLaYKcZJe_Ig`HiaGkbFmcEodDqeCsfBugAwjDqlFknId\ pKZrNTtPMvSGxUAwRBvPCuMDtKEtHFsFGrCHqAIq8IFUtRYub`\ vncwzfwrgvjhvcivWjuPkuHluAluBmrBnoComCpjDqhDreEscE\ t`FuYFvWGwTGxRHyOHyMGxOFxPFwQEwREwSDvTDvUCvVCuWBuX\ BuYImSOeNUZI_RDeJ8kC3gD9dEEaFKZFPWGVTH_QIeNIjeWRxi\ 7vkDumItoNrqTqsYptbotgjscfq_anWYlSUjOPgKLeGHcCC`88\ Z44X0BV2IT3PS5WQ6bP7eR8gT9iV9kXAmZBo_Blb9jd8hg7ei5\ cl4an3_p2bn4dl5fj6hi7jg8meAocBqbCs`DuZEwYFeMLOBQND\ SMEULGWKHXJJZJK`IMbHNcGPeFQgESiETjJRcOQXTPQYOJbNCf\ M6XSJOYVFbfHcgIdgJehKfhLhiMjiNljOnjPokQqkSpiTnhVlg\ WjeYhdZfc`dbac`bb_baZc`Xc_WdZVdYUZ_SYaQXcOWeMUgKSi\ IOkGLmEIoCFqACs89t6Bo9DkCFgFHbIJZLLVONQRPMURIXTD_V\ 9bXCeZFh_Ij`Lk`OlaRmbUnbXoc_pdbqderehsfktfnugqvgtw\ awqWzkRzfLz`FzVAzQEzTHzWKzZNzaQzcTzfWziZzlaznazgaz\ `azVazOazIczJdzKTz2Qz1Nz1 } END PARAMETER FILE=========================================