Grfle.

[hummingwolf]

As the amazing megthelegend pointed out in a recent post, I haven't been posting for a few days. While I've been a ridiculously verbal person ever since learning to talk, the last few days have seen me very much in visual mode, spending most of my time playing with fractal pigments in POV-Ray. Heck, half the e-mails I've sent today have had pictures in them. I have to laugh about this a bit--most of the advice I've been giving to people who've asked for it recently (and a few people who haven't asked) has consisted of "Communicate, communicate, communicate!" And yet words just aren't flowing for me right now.

Anybody out there want fractals in your e-mail?

Comments

[aint2nuts.livejournal.com]

Okay, I will take a ... what is a fractal?

I am so outta things. It surprises me that I can even work a computer sometimes. I mean, I know what the word means, but I have no clue what you are talking about. Vociferate please.

[hummingwolf.livejournal.com]

From a library book called The Beauty of Fractals: "The mathematical concept of a fractal characterizes objects with structures on various scales, large as well as small, and thus reflects a hierarchical principle of organization. There is one important idealization involved: fractal objects are self-similar, i.e. they do not change their appearance significantly when viewed under a microscope of arbitrary magnifying power."

Erm, basically fractals are mathematical constructs which contain smaller copies of themselves. Computers are used to make pictures of them by having the computer use the same mathematical formula over and over again for different numbers. Lots of things in nature have fractal patterns--a tree might have limbs that have a shape similar to the tree, with smaller branches whose shape is also similar to the tree's shape, and then twigs whose shape is also similar to the tree's shape. The icon used on this comment is part of a fractal which I colored in a way to make it look like fire. If you look at it closely, you can see little wavy shapes which all look kinda similar with some small distortions; the Julia fractal this is taken from was the same basic wavy shape.

I don't know (or frankly care) much about the math, but I do enjoy looking at the pictures. One site where you can play with fractal images online is the Mandelbrot and Julia Set Explorer, which also has links to some places where you can learn about the math if you actually care. :-)