Fractal flame rendered in Apophysis
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. |
I think it was a mistake for me to begin learning fractal software on Windows in February. The weather is great and I should be outside doing all sorts of stuff. But here I am playing fractals. I saw a reference to using a fractal trace filter on GIMP so of course I immediately had to sit down and play with it. Above is a photograph of jewelweed (also called spotted touch-me-not) taken on our Butterfield Pond hike in August. I used the map filter fractal trace and obtained the image below. I like the self-similar frame created by the filter.
I then chose another jewelweed photo and used the filter again:
Clicking on any of these images will open a new browser window and display a large photograph.
And finally I chose one of my favorite sunflower photographs:
I accepted the default settings for the filter on each of these photographs. There is a snowstorm coming next week (hopefully) so I will spend the snow day playing with the filter and other fractals some more. I find these GIMP and Photoshop filters to be a good way to enhance poor quality photographs (the second original jewelweed photo is not my best) and turn them into something interesting.
Winter weather in New Hampshire is so different than the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. We don't have endless long days of snow that keep you inside. No days of -20° (-29°C). There is even more daylight here. My plans of spending the dark winter days playing with fractal software never materialized. So early this morning, I finally knuckled down and began to learn the XaoS software package for fractals. I came up with this fractal in 3 different palettes. I see jagged edges and seams and I'm having problems controlling the fractal on the screen. I also seriously need to figure out how to manipulate Julia set images.
XaoS is a gnu project. I like the documentation with that comes with it and its mathematical descriptions are more accessible than other packages. Animation is also available, but I haven't figured out yet how to convert the movie to QuickTime. XaoS is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD and even DOS, BeOS, and OS/2.
These images that I created today are, to me, black holes. Or worm holes.Visit Mary's Friday Fractal posts here, and here. She has created some wonderful images.
_/\_/\_
Now that I have the Internet again, I have a lot of blogging to do. That's why there are two Friday Fractal posts tonight. Hunting the Hidden Dimension is the perfect introduction to fractals. You can watch this PBS video online now by clicking the link on the title. There is another PBS site, the Hunting the Hidden Dimension homepage, where you can explore fractals with an interactive applet and even create your own (as I did, above).
I found this article at smashits.com. There are many other references to this that you should browse Google. It's a fascinating and new topic.
Gambling teacher cheats parents at elite Hong Kong school
Friday Fractal