Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts:  

Today's image is named "Butterfly Cookies".  The obvious reason is that it reminds me of butterfly cookies.  In fact, it reminds me so much of the cookies that, when I saw the image, I ran to the local store to pick up a box.

The recipe behind the cookies combines a measly 0.1 part of Z^2 with a full part of Z^(-3) then adds C on each iteration.  The resulting parent fractal is an oversized thing closely resembling some of those created by the parallel-resistance formula posted on the list a week or so ago.  Its Mandelbrot shape is apparent, but the normally empty inside parts are filled with all kinds of superfluous decorations.  Today's scene lies on the X-axis just beyond a large minibrot on the skeletal negative spike.

The rating of a 7 is an improvement over yesterday's, but still leaves lots of room for improvement.  Hopefully, tomorrow's image will rate an 8, but there is no guarantee that it will not check in at a rating of an embarrassing 6.

One thing not in dispute is the speed of today's image.  On my far from SOTA machine it finishes in 20 seconds.  Some of the current units will finish it in far less time, that is if they can run the old Fractint DOS program at all.  Regardless, the image is available on the FOTD web sites.

The weather was near perfect here at Fractal Central today, with photoshop (old-kodachrome) blue skies and white cotton-puff cumulus clouds.  The only thing not perfect was the temperature, which at a high of 57F 14C was notably chilly for late April.  The fractal cat would have preferred more sun on his shelf.  But now that the sun is at a much higher angle it strikes only the edge of the shelf closest to the window.  The humans, not very concerned with sun angles, had an average day.

The next FOTD will be posted in a number of hours.  Until that mysterious number of hours passes, take care, and thanks to science we have life better today than at any time in the past.  Why then are so many people dis-satisfied with their lives?

Jim Muth
jimmuth@earthlink.net

A WOMAN'S RESPONSE TO YESTERDAY'S POST: Female hormones sometimes cause women to fall for handsome, screwed-up men. Male hormones sometimes cause men to commit acts of senseless carnage. Which gender should we REALLY be worried about? 

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has a haunting face which seems specially designed to touch female hearts. My heart has led me to try to learn more about him. It seems plain that in his confused mind (as in the minds of other terrorists) he really believes he is a soldier defending his Islamic brothers and sisters. To me, he is as tragic as his victims.

START PARAMETER FILE=======================================

Butterfly_Cookies  { ; time=0:00:20.00 SF5 at 2000MHZ
  reset=2004 type=formula formulafile=basicer.frm
  formulaname=MandAutoCritInZ function=ident
  center-mag=-14.05247665674564/0/1.18392e+009
  params=0.1/2/1/-3/0/800/0/0 float=y maxiter=750
  inside=0 logmap=88 symmetry=xaxis periodicity=6
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  ZKzOTzDWzHZzKazOdzRgzU`zT }

frm:MandAutoCritInZ {; 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 PARAMETER FILE=========================================