Notice of reactivation.

This blog has had no new posts in a long time: I've been creating fractals, but hadn't been posting them. A recent upsurge in interest in the blog--I've gotten more comments in a week than in the previous five months--made me kick myself into gear and post up part of the backlog. Enjoy.

Para Tocar

How can the mind ever know empathy, when all it sees as another is its own reflection in an impenetrable mirror?

Nocturnal Flight of the Fractal Dragon

It soars overhead, long tail slicing spirals out of the air, ghostly wings beating the insubstantial sky.

NGC Infinity

If the Milky Way took a Rorschach test, what would it see?

Accretion Disk

Around this black hole the gaseous remnants of a devoured star whirl to their doom, screaming white-hot anguish into interstellar space.

The Fractal Dragon in Repose

After a long decade romping through the mathematical imagination, even the dynamic joyful dragons of Julia legend have to rest.

Spun Sugar Eyespots

What a stare in these sightless eyes!

Double Construction Spiral

Built up from lines and circles. Is it really as organic as it seems?

Sparkshaft

Light and dark, matter and void. The universe is full of dualities.

Engraved Claw

It takes an incredibly steady hand to etch these fine lines into the ready bone.

Pass the Torch

Where's the next in line? Don't let the flame dwindle!

Gossamer Gowns

Ah, the delicacy of ladies' fashion!

Tarnished Glory

What's this? the relic of a past civilization?

The Network

Endless streams of data, the backbone of our cyber-society.

Jack Frost

Old Jack Frost, playing his tricks on the windowpane again. In the morning darkness his art mocks the ferns and weighs down their delicate leaves.

Yin and Yang

Bringing balance to a universe near you.

Conch Comb

Skeletal shells, etched by sun and sand and waves. The ghost of a lost childhood.

Green Dragon

Sinuous and weaving, with all the spiny grace of an Eastern dragon. No wings on this one, but it soars nonetheless.

Old Wood

"New wood has art locked in it. Old wood is art personified."

Windrider

A bizarre yet strangely graceful sort of cross between a wind spirit and the starship Enterprise. Maybe Captain Kirk took lessons from Mandelbrot.

The Gearbox

They're somewhere between gears and diamond saws. Don't get your hand caught in this mechanism.

Quaternia!

Today I have discovered a fascinating new kind of fractal. Quaternion Julia sets--three-dimensional slices of four-dimensional fractals, really, but it's pretty gorgeous nonetheless. Quat 1.20 is my tool of choice; the results look as three-dimensional as they actually would be if they existed outside my computer.

Coral

Reefs wave in the ocean currents like tree branches swaying in the breeze.

Longaway

Rings within rings within rings...

Mondo Nuovo

A new world opens its multilayered self into the primordial blackness. Witness the beginning of history!

Summers by the Sea

A conglomerate of every piece of flotsam ever washed up and inviting on the sandy shore.

Ghostly Shells

Looks like a day on the beach when I was a little kid--we used to scoop up handfuls of tiny shells and let the colorful minature clams work their way into our wet sandcastles. My memories seem to have made it into the fractal set. 

Topiary

Somebody's been busy with the pruning shears... 

Eye

The eye of a storm, swirling with lightning and blue thunder. 

Dragon Swirl Three

The third and most interesting of my dragon swirls so far. This one is both convex and concave, with considerably more inward pull than the other two. 

Centurion Crabwalker

It's a horseshoe crab! It's a fiery bear! It's Kokopelli in a spiky suit! It's... well, what is it? 

Tri

Are those wings? Perhaps a bird, a dinosaur, a spaceship... perhaps something altogether stranger. 

Le Vert Vivant

A spray of living green, the wings of a forest pixie, a fresh grassland breeze. 

Golden Vial

A magical perfume bottle, ghostly, effervescent, releasing subtle vapors to cloud the minds of men. 

Devourer

A hungry maw, sweeping in all the universe. Are those little golden things treble clefs? 

Whirlpool

A dragon swirl, perchance, but with a tornadic umbilicus. Perhaps I should have called it "Waterspout." 

Cat's Eye

My current desktop background. All I can say is wow. 

Dragon Swirl

A recent discovery, and one I'm very glad I made. Simple yet elegant.