{"id":12963,"date":"2014-12-28T20:48:15","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T01:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/?p=12963"},"modified":"2014-12-28T20:55:48","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T01:55:48","slug":"zooming-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/zooming-along\/","title":{"rendered":"Zooming along"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sFK9N1nfMhw?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Back in the 1980s, it took immense amounts of computer time to generate fractal images. If you wanted to see pretty pictures of recursively-generated figures, you borrowed books such as <i><b><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Beauty_of_Fractals\" target=\"_blank\">The Beauty of Fractals<\/a><\/b><\/i>, or watched <i><b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1sBdfZTl8Bg\" target=\"_blank\">Nothing But Zooms<\/a><\/b><\/i> if you knew someone with the video. Computers and software have come a long way since then, and nowadays you can easily create your own fractal images on your laptop. I experimented with a couple of applications for Macs this weekend, Xaos and UltraFractal.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/matek.hu\/xaos\/doku.php\" target=\"_blank\">Xaos<\/a> is freeware, and it comes in Windows and Linux versions as well. It&#8217;s fairly easy to use, though you might want to bookmark the online <a href=\"http:\/\/xaos.sourceforge.net\/doc-trunk\/\" target=\"_blank\">documentation<\/a>. It&#8217;s what I used to make the video above. It doesn&#8217;t actually make movies. Instead, it outputs a series of .png files, which you can import into Final Cut or something similar. (Be aware that at 30 frames per second, there are 1800 images per minute. You&#8217;re going to be working with a <i>lot<\/i> of files.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ultrafractal.com\" target=\"_blank\">Ultra Fractal<\/a> has some Photoshop-style image manipulation features. It&#8217;s more complicated than Xaos but not really difficult to figure out. However, it&#8217;s a bit pricey; if you want to do animations, it will cost you $130. I think I&#8217;ll make do with Xaos for now.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/julia-01.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/julia-01-640x360.jpg\" alt=\"Julia set in Ultra Fractal\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12966\" srcset=\"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/julia-01-640x360.jpg 640w, http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/julia-01-1024x577.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/julia-01.jpg 1282w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 984px) 61vw, (max-width: 1362px) 45vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in the 1980s, it took immense amounts of computer time to generate fractal images. If you wanted to see pretty pictures of recursively-generated figures, you borrowed books such as The Beauty of Fractals, or watched Nothing But Zooms if you knew someone with the video. Computers and software have come a long way since &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/zooming-along\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Zooming along&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-3n5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12963"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14863,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12963\/revisions\/14863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}