FOTD -- November 03, 2003 (Rating 8) Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: When I opened my e-mailbox this morning, the usual load of junk was there, which I immediately discarded. But I also found a letter from the Fractint list, in which Hal Lane shows a midget that he found near yesterday's FOTD. Though the scene resembles yesterday's, the midget is quite attractive, and worth being touched up a bit to become the FOTD for today. But before discussing the image, I would like to answer the questions asked in Hal's letter. First, I find my color maps by using the 'enter' and function keys generously. Then, when a potentially good color map appears, usually by accident, I fine- tune the registers by hand. This can easily be done with the 256 colors of the GIF format. It is a bit more difficult, at least for me, with the gradients that must be used with true- color formats. Second, Hal's spell-checker is mis-informed. ;-) My name is correctly spelled 'Muth'. It is a German name. In Germany, it is pronounced 'moot'. In english-speaking countries, it can be pronounced mooth, to rhyme with tooth. It is not pronounced 'mewth' as the fractal cats address me, nor is it pronounced 'muhth' as though the final 'st' of 'must' were changed to 'th'. These two mispronunciations tell me that the voice on the phone is most likely a telemarketer trying to sell me something. To get today's image, I took Hal's image, did a modest outzoom and rotated the midget to the 'normal' position, with the main stem facing west. Then I noticed that several spurious holes appeared in the image. This could be corrected by resetting the logmap to 1, but doing this changes the colors too much. I decided instead to raise the proximity value from 0.4 to 0.53, which just barely closes the holes. Then I noticed a few minor irregularities in the color map, which I adjusted to make the map a bit smoother. I did this by equalizing the increments between bands by hand. The effect is subtle and is most noticeable where the yellow blends into the red and green. To conclude my tweaking, I reduced the maxiter to 1000, which cut the render time notably without degrading the definition of the midget. Since the scene is basically a repeat of yester- day's, I gave it yesterday's rating of an 8. The image is basically a tweak of a tweak, so I named it "Retweaked Midget". The 1-1/2 minute render time of the parameter file is very fast. But the download from: <http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/FotD/FotD.html> or from: <http://sdboyd.dyndns.org/~sdboyd/fotd/index.html> might be a bit faster. The weather was absolutely perfect here at Fractal Central on Sunday. The sun shone brilliantly, the temperature reached 79F 26C, and the wind was light. True, in the afternoon, I was abducted and taken to one of the local antique emporiums, where we browsed for a couple hours, but with such a beautiful day surrounding me, even that was almost fun. The duo of fractal cats had a full morning and a late afternoon in the yard, so there were no complaints from them. The day ended peacefully, with everyone watching for more abductions on the sci-fi channel. The day is starting near perfectly once again. I have high hopes of it remaining so until evening. The next in the endless series of FOTD images will arrive in 24 hours, so until then, take care, and one good tweak is worth another. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com jimmuth@aol.com START 20.0 PAR-FORMULA FILE================================ Retweaked_Midget { ; Time=0:01:39.46--SF5 on a P200 reset=2002 type=formula formulafile=allinone.par formulaname=mandelbrotmix4 function=ident passes=1 center-mag=-2.03524527280745500/-0.010778095131324\ 12/941.8878/1/130/6.8422719449665e-006 params=1/2.\ 03/-0.2/2.97/0/0 float=y maxiter=1000 inside=0 proximity=0.53 outside=fmod periodicity=10 colors=000EKaGM`IO_KQZMSYOUWQWUSYSU_QWaOYcM_eKagIc\ iGekEilAlm1mm4ll6kj8khAjfDjdFibHi`JhZMhXOgVQgTSfRV\ fPXeNZeL`dJbdHdcFgcDibBkc9lb7ma5la3k`3j_4i_4hZ5gY6\ fX6eX7dW8cV8bV9aU9`TA_TBZSBYRCXQDWQDVPEUOFTOFSNGRM\ GQLHPLIOKINKIMJJMJJLNJOQIRUITXHW`HZcH`gGcjGfnGiqFk\ tFnwFptGmrGjoGhmGejHchH`eHZcHWaHTZHRWIOUIMRIJPIHMI\ EKJBHJ8FJ6CJ3AJ19J29I38I37H46H56G55G65G6CHDJIKQJRX\ KY_NabKc_HdWEeCBf38g58e78d98bA7`C7_E7YG7XI7VK7TM7S\ N6QP6OR6NT6LV6JX6IZ6G`6Fb6Dd6Bg10f6AeBJcGTbLaaQjZP\ iXOhUNgSNfQMeNLeLKdJKcGJbEIaCH`AH_8GZ6GZ3FY1EX6K_B\ QcFVfK`iPflTkoRhkQegOcdM``LYXJVTHSPGQLENHDKDBH9AF6\ AHBAJGAKLAMQANVAP_ARdASiAUmAVrDTqHQoKOnNLlRJjUGiXE\ g_Cf`CdaCcbBacB_eBZfBXgAVhAUiASjAQkAPlANnAMo9Kp9I`\ VGbUFaUF`VG_VGZWHYWHXXIWXIVYJUYJTYJSZKRZKQ_LP_LO`M\ N`MMaNLaNKaOJaOIbPHbPGcQFcQGbKFcPFeVEg_EieDkj5mmDo\ oMqgLshKphKnhJlhJjhIhhHfi } 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 20.0 PAR-FORMULA FILE==================================