Movie

I find that I am not much for verbiage right now. I am going to exercise class tonight.

Inspired by Tim, I have been making low res(to speed up the rendering), wide-angle fractals. Just ideas in color or black and white. Here is an old black and white movie of snowfall.

Tired Eye

After wedding planning, curriculum design, crazy school days, and now taxes, my eyes are tired!

Woot Competition

I have recently been pulled into the time-limited, oddly-creative world of Woot competitions. Each week there is a challenge to create an image around a theme involving one of their daily products. This one revolved around the use of a paper shredder as a main character in an action film. While I don't have anywhere near the chop skills of many of the contest entrants, I do enjoy playing with the ideas. Perhaps I'll win a flying monkey. Here are my two entries for this contest. I even had someone reference one of my entries which is as much as I could hope for.

Hello Sunshine

Spring is here, the sun has returned, soon warmth will follow. This image reminds me of the surface of the sun.

Impermanence

It is funny how things are absolute and then without looking become fluid. A while back, there was a fractal that would not render regardless of the many things I tried. I did all the highly technical things like restarting the program and computer, and then devolved into the less technical including sticking out my tongue, cursing, and singing silly songs about obstinate fractals. Nothing seemed to work. Out of sheer perverseness I tried again last night. Low and behold, it rendered. Here is the recalcitrant dancing light.

What's in a Group?

In searching for the name for this new fractal, I looked up collective nouns to find what a group of butterflies is called. My instinct was swarm, but that did not sound poetic or reflective of this image. Instead, flight of butterflies sounds much better. Other choices include rabble, roost and flutter. We humans take on collectives of other animals when congregating. A posse is a group of turkeys which accurately describes many groups of people who self describe as a posse. This was a particularly obnoxious group of guys in my highschool who had rather inflated egos. I thought I had escaped them by going to college far away, but one member also went to the same college a year before I did. When I arrived, there was the same arrogant group of guys claiming to be the "posse." I only just found out that they were turkeys.

What other collective nouns describe groups of humans? Do we need new ones to accurately describe our collective actions when in a group? Cattle, kangaroos, and emu gather in a mob; elk, weasels, bison, buffalo, dogs, and turkeys (they keep coming up) are also known in groups as gangs. Shouldn't our gangs really be prides, ambushes, aeries, or batteries? I just get this picture of wanna-be toughs with their in-fashion falling-down pants strutting around like turkeys.

Here is my flight of butterflies. They are fluttering through sunbeams and something that looks like webs in the background, but I did not see this as sinister. Just a more gentle and beautiful image than I normally go for.

Five or Two

This recent fractal reminds me of a sand dollar. I remember reading something about a significant correlation between starfish (another animal with fivefold [pentalateral?] symmetry) and human DNA. There are many weird articles on the Internet relating to this. What if we evolved with five or ten eyes, arms, legs, etc? Would our problems be seen as a balance between five possibilities instead of right/wrong or good/bad? Would our lack of bilateral symmetry (yes Sand Dollars do have bilateral symmetry) change the idea that there are two sides to every problem? This is interestingly similar to the design of Magic the Gathering card game with its five colors.

Oh, I'll take number 4490

I just made the number up after laughing myself silly.

Order your own...

Here is my latest, a sea monster plowing through the currents of an ancient ocean:

A Week of Fish and Fish

This week seemed to pass by so quickly and yet take forever. In school, my students probably remember this week as the week that the placid algae eater (see picture of a the pleco's cousin at right) attacked and killed one of its new tank-mates. This was during a read-aloud that was promptly cut short for the nature show. I am not sure that tank is moving with the rest of my classroom materials to the new building next year. I never kept fish as a child, and while I enjoy a nice fishtank in someone else's house or business, I do not like the maintenance and upkeep they require.

And now to fish today. It is a rainy day in Philly, and we are going to the food tasting for the wedding meal. There will be several fish courses as well as some chicken. I imagine I will be stuffed after that. Along the way there is another photographer. Much to be done this weekend, and I still have not even touched my grading.

Why do people misuse apostrophes so regularly? Isn't it another keystroke to put one it? I find they are added incorrectly more often than left out, and this happens most often with plural's. (See that sneaky example of what I am talking about, hmm?)

Woot! There it is

My first post to Woot was in their just finished challenge to create the worst movie of a TV show that has not been made yet. Scroll down this linked page for my Arsenio Hall entry.

My school is having a fundraising auction, so I contributed some items from my store and will donate all proceeds from April 8-23 as well. Here is the business card I created for the event.

Welcome Speedsnail!

Here is Speedsnail. Is it a fractal constellation racing in a blaze of greens, yellows, and oranges across the mathematical firmament? I have taken details from its heart and from its orbits in the upper left corner. Click on them to really see the detail.