Merry Christmas!

Busy Time

Haven't posted in a while...and haven't been doing fractals in a while either. Just been busy with work, travel, and now all the frenzy normally associated with the holidays.

Simple flame fractal, containing mostly linear variation transforms.

In Memory

Michael, the troubles and tears of this world are behind you. Look not at what was, but ahead of you, what will be. May your journey be of quiet peacefulness. You will be missed.

In memory of Michael Pintoff

Nov 1955 - Oct 2007

Mahalo to my friends

Well thankfully Hurricane Flossie decided to spare the islands from a potentially messy situation, and afforded me nothing but beautiful weather during my entire visit. I had a wonderful time! Being back home, and seeing my friends again, is one of my favorite things. It's funny...no matter how long I'm away from the islands, when I'm back it's like I've never left! When I meet up with up with my friends, we always have a great time...lots of fun, reminiscing, and of course lots of laughing. The spirit of Aloha really does go much deeper than just the greeting itself. It is the very essence of the islands, it's in the people. I am so looking forward to the next time I can visit! Mahalo to Cyn, Mariellen and Andrew, Jess, and Patty! I miss you guys already!

wavy flame

Started in Gimp, imported to Apophysis, and tweaked and re-colored. One of my favorites...

Vacation in paradise?

Look out Hawaii, here I come!! I've been counting down the days until my trip back home, for the past six months or so! Now it's almost here, yay!!








what the...






...guess I'd better pack my raincoat

Satellite radio

I have decided to finally hop onto the satellite radio bandwagon. We have one at work, thanks to a generous co-worker, and I am liking the idea of less commercials and more music. So, I've been doing some research and shopping around. Looks like I will go with XM service, but still looking for a radio...mainly for my car, and of course I will probably use the online radio as well. There are lots of radios to choose from, but not an overwhelming choice. Hopefully I will have one by next post.

Strands

More catching up, as work gets in the way. Going on a day-trip in a couple of days...taking my friend Patty to Portland for a trip to our favorite asian grocery "superstore", Uwajimaya...then to a nearby Trader Joe's! Shopping bliss here we come!

Classic Spiral

I've always had an affinity for the classic spiral fractal, and flame spirals are no exception. I find them to be light, refreshing, and comforting. This flame was the result of some transform and gradient tweaking from Liz's Perfect Spiral script.

Gimp Import

Another flame created in Gimp, thanks to Scott Drave's plug-in and Mark Townsend's import feature.

Summer is here...

107 degrees in the shade on the 5th. Glad I didn't have to be outside for work. Meanwhile, it was a little "warm" down at my old stomping grounds, Phoenix...checking in at 116. But it's a dry heat. Saw Transformers the other day, and though it has gotten mixed reviews, I found it to be a lot of fun. CG animation rocked, and so did the soundtrack.

Catching up on some flames. New version out, 2.06...actually now 2.06c. Things change quickly, don't blink like I did, otherwise you'll be pulling your hair out trying to figure what went wrong.

Another one

Using a script which combines mods from several fractal artists, and tweaking it a bit.

Fractals for desktops?

I've been into windows customization for a while now...since around 2000. I have always been the one at work that had to be different. I still am today, making and using my own icons, and using whatever limited software is allowed. One of the easiest, and most acceptable, ways to customize one's desktop is through wallpapers. I have gone through many, both at work and at home. My wallpaper folders are crammed with so many interesting and beautiful images. About half are photographs, some of mine, and most from caedes.net. The rest constitutes a mixture of screenshots from Myst/Uru, works from some great artists like vlad and David Lanham, as well as the great new selections from Windows Vista.

As much as I love fractals, I don't have very many of them in my wallpaper directory. Not sure why. I suppose most fractal art can be too busy for my taste, at least to have glaring at me when I don't have a window or program open. I have used my own renders as wallpaper at work, and have actually received some nice feedback from co-workers. Now, when working through Apophysis, and choosing flames to tweak and render, I keep the desktop in mind. Some flames are meant to be displayed in such a manner, some not. The search continues...

Who Goes There?

My first combination of Apophysis and Uru. The flame came first. It sat on my hard drive for well over a year before I did anything with it. When I saw it amongst the random batch, I just knew it was something special, just wasn't sure how. One day, while looking through some Uru screenshots, it suddenly hit me. Took some tweaking in PSP, and a re-render of the original flame (higher res), but I'm happy with the outcome. :) The title is from one of my favorite books, which later became one of my favorite horror movies, "The Thing".

Merging two art mediums

Two things I love to do the most, on my off-time, are making flame fractals and playing Myst Online:Uru Live. Creating flames is therapeutic, almost meditational, helping me to focus on an object or space. It helps me to move away from the stress, structure, and chaos of daily life...to a more open, slower-moving, almost fluidic thought process.

Uru Live parallels fractal art in many ways. It is not the typical FPS MMORPG. It can be intense though, and it does have its technological foobar moments. But, like fractals, it is a mostly relaxing and enjoyable escape from real life, especially when meeting friends online. I enjoy the beautiful, exotic and vast landscapes that Cyan feeds us every other week. It is a good experience to exercise one's senses, with wonderful sites and sound, and the familiar brain-crunching puzzles. I have all of the soundtracks from the Myst series, and have taken gigabytes of screenshots.

I am starting to experiment with combining fractals and Uru art. I tend to not create just for the sake of combining images, but instead wait to be presented with a compelling flame image, or a scene in Uru that needs the magic of an orb or flame.

Long days, and even loger nights

Just starting hour three...of a 13-hour shift. Sometimes I feel like I live in this office. :-/ If I can make it through this evening, and one more on sunday...I'll be home free. Well, at least for my mini-vacation.

quick note

Working on getting some new flames rendered, now that Vista has been installed and is working great. I will try to get some new images added to the flame gallery. :o)

Upgrading

I've been a little behind on this...been busy getting things installed, one program at a time. I took out both of my old drives, the original 20 gig that came with the Gateway, and my 120 gig master. I put in a 300 gig SATA, then installed Vista HP-32. Waiting for the external enclosure to arrive, so I can transfer some files and apps from the 120.

It certainly wasn't a smooth and headache-free experience so far. My mobo apparently sucks rocks...or at least parts of it, as I had a hell of a time getting the new drive installed. Installing the new SATA in conjunction with the new OS probably wasn't *the* smartest thing I've done in a long time, but oh well. So it's done, and this next phase is long and grueling...almost like beta testing. Through this, though, I'm finding some good apps and some pretty crappy ones. I'm just glad that I can finally say I am Symantec-Free. No more AV bloat-ware...no more bringing my poor system to its knees. It feels lighter and happier (same goes with my laptop).

Unfortunately, for every smart move I make, I invariably make another move or decision that sets me back a little. I've used Nero (5 and 6) with XP for a few years, and actually like it a lot. It's easy to use, and is NOT bloatware. I especially like the backup utility...to the point where I actually was backing up my data on a semi-regular basis. Okay, so Nero 5 or 6 does not support Vista, which bites, as I really didn't want to have to upgrade. Nero 7 was "made for Vista", in fact it is certified, so it can't be that bad can it? Ugh. I installed it using Custom install, explicitly directing it to only install 5 of the dozen "modules", and definitely NOT install any toolbars, be it Google, Ask.com, or whatever. Anyway, couple days later BitDefender finds a baddy in Nero's directory, something from ask.com. I hope that is a one-time thing.

So, not all of my XP programs will be reinstalled, but I'm finding that a lot of the old ones actually do install and work just fine. I had a small problem with Apophysis when first installed. It would not run most of the included scripts. I finally uninstalled it, then reinstalled it, but to a different directory. I have been reading that some programs have problems running from the Program Files directory in Vista...so I installed it in my user directory. Cool, now it works, and so do the scripts and the hack versions (JF's and Zeuk's). Hopefully, I'll have a few new ones to post here....soon.

Coincidence

Last night, while at work, bits and pieces of a very old song kept going through my head. I have no idea how it started, and I didn't even know the name of the song or who the singer was. It was a tune I remember hearing when I was very little, something my dad used to play on his reel-to-reel stereo. Funny thing, I don't remember the whole song, just a few lines and melodies from it. It brings back good memories from way back.

What little I knew of the lyrics, I decided to try to Google. After about three tries, I came up with the proper title and several names of artists. By chance, Diann had XM radio playing on the 60s station. I asked if she knew of the song. Yes! Search results yielded quite a number of artists that sang the tune, and I have no idea which one my dad used to listen to. However, one of the artists, Hank Snow, an old country singer, might be the one. My dad liked to listen to the older country western music, such as Hank Williams Sr.

The odd thing...while I was checking the results, and looking for any samples to listen to, I started to hear the tune again...only not running through my head, but on the radio! It was not a vocal version, but an instrumental, but there was no doubt that was the same tune! Wow, I think dad had something to do with this. Anyway, the song "White Silver Sands" was originally sung by someone named Don Rondo (never heard of him either). Diann seems to thing there was another version done by Pat Boone. Don't know if I'll ever get to actually hear it again...for now, I'll just settle with my version. :)

Scripting

Scripts are fun to use, as long as it's done in moderation. I have yet to learn to create scripts. For now, I rely on those that have grasped the fundamentals of script-writing. I just got this one from Liz's site (thank you!) and I'm liking it already. :)

The Gimp

The Gimp has a plug-in that generates flame fractals. This plug-in was written by Scott Draves, although I don't think it's been updated in a long time. The flame "editor" is somewhat limited, but it's best to use Apophysis to import the Gimp flame, and make edits there.

err...let's try this again

Nothing like experimenting with a new blog...then forgetting about it. I suppose I wasn't in the right mindset when I started this...but, now that I've rescued this from the depths of Blogger, I'll try to be better. I promise. I hope.

My life isn't exciting or interesting enough to warrant filling these pages with readable material, at least nothing fit for the average joe's consumption. However, fractals have always been one of my favorite forms of expression. Each one is different, unique unto itself, like fragments of thoughts and ideas. Fractals appear in many forms in our daily lives, and in nature itself. They are classified by various types such as Mandelbrot, Julia, and Iterated Function System (IFS).

I find flames, and their creation, to be unpredictable, but in a pleasant way. Math has never been my forte, however working with the program Apophysis helps me to appreciate its capabilities. There seems to be an almost therapeutic value to flame creation...a Zen of mathematics, art, and nature. Anyone can do it, given the proper tools and an open mind. It is, after all, what you make of it.