FOTD -- May 12, 2002 (Rating 7) Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: With today's image we embark on a trip to interstellar space. It's enjoyable to be able to do this on a computer, since the way man is going, no one will ever be able to do it in person. (We won't lack the know-how; we'll lack the resources.) Our trip takes us to an arm of the local galaxy -- let's call it the Orion arm -- from where we see ourselves surrounded by clouds of nebular gas and nascent stars. All around us is a vast emptiness. Yet the emptiness is not the nothingness that it first appears to be, (vacuum energy?), for on this trip we have been given additional senses. We have the senses to perceive magnetic fields as well as gravitational fields. Since these new perceptions would likely appear to us in a manner we cannot now imagine, I have translated them into vision, which we can imagine. So, in my fancy, today's image, dark and somber as it is, shows the star-lanes and energy fields of a very densely populated area of our Milky-Way Galaxy. With this in mind, I named the picture "Galactic Arm". The rating of a 7 is optional. Actually, the image is one of an 'evaporated' midget, which has ceased to exist, but whose ghost has been revealed by illumina- ting it with the ghost-busting <bof60> inside fill. (A <fmod> fill would also have worked.) The very simple fractal formula Z-(1/Z)+(1/C) created the original midget, which I killed when I raised the escape radius to one-googol plus one-hundred. (The one-hundred is built into the M-Mix2 formula, though it has no effect on the final result.) The bad feature of images such as today's, which consist totally of trapped inside points, is their slowness. Today's image requires over an hour to render on my tired old P200 machine. It will render faster on a state-of-the-art screamer, but the easiest way to see the image is to let Paul and Scott do the rendering and download the completed image from either of their web sites. Paul's site is at: <http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/FotD/FotD.html> Scott's is at: <http://sdboyd.dyndns.org/~sdboyd/fotd/index.html> The fractal weather, (Is there any other kind?), Saturday here at fractal central was ideal. What could be better than a temp- erature of 73F, unless it was a temperature of 22.75C? The cats spent the entire afternoon in the sun of the yard, frolicking like tired kittens. And no, Tippy did not catch any more sparrows. As for myself, it's Sunday, it's Mother's day, and I'm going to treat myself to a well-deserved rest from work on both the CD and the stuff that I expect to bring profit. But I still might sneak in a fractal or two when the obligatory social activity has been accomplished. Regardless, until next time, take care, and try to decide whether fractals are really real or are real merely because we decide they are. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com START 20.0 PAR-FORMULA FILE================================ Galactic_Arm { ; time=1:10:15.64--SF5 on a P200 reset=2002 type=formula formulafile=allinone.frm formulaname=MandelbrotMix2 function=recip passes=1 center-mag=-1.65751903104643300/+1.790625615929802\ 00/100087.5/1/-152.5/-3.13505964244509272e-009 params=1/1/-1/-1/0/1e+100/0/0 float=y maxiter=1500 inside=bof60 logmap=yes periodicity=10 sound=off colors=000uiqrhoogmlfliekfdiccgabeZacX`aV__SZYQYWO\ WULUTJSSGQSEORJAMJ9K00800B00D00G00J00L00O00R00T00W\ 00Z00`00a00b00c00d00e00e00f00g00h00i00j00j00k00k00\ k00k00l00l00l00l00l00m00m00m00m00m00h00c00_00V00Q0\ 0M00W00e00o00l00i00f00c00`00Y00V00S00P00M00P00R00T\ 00V00X00Z00T00O00I00D00800C00G00J00N00R00U00Y00a00\ d00h00l00o00m00k00i00g00e00c00a00_00Z00X00W00V00U0\ 0S00R00Q00P00O00N00M00L00K00J00I00H00G00F00E00D00C\ 00B00A00C00E00F00H00I00K00L00Q00V00_00d00i00n00s00\ w00r00n00j00f00b00Y00U00Q00M00I00E00m00o00q00g00Y0\ 0Z00_00_00`00a00a00b00b00i00g00e00c00a00_00Y00X00Z\ 00_00`00a00b00c00d00f00g00h00i00j00k00l00k00k00k00\ k00k00k00k00k00k00f00a00X00T00O00J00F00A0050010070\ 0C00H00M00R00W00a00f00k00p00u00z00t00o00j00e00_00V\ 00Q00L00G00F00F00F00E00E00E00I00L00O00R00V00Y00`00\ c00g00j00m00p00s00`00J00M } frm:MandelbrotMix2 {; 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)+(p4)), 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==================================