"Friday" Fractal XXVI

My apologies for getting the fractal out a day late, and for keeping it simple. Just as soon as I started to get caught up with things, I caught a nasty little cold. So, here are the basics-I'll get back to more detailed posts as soon as my head clears. Thanks for your patience!

i-d292bfb05f8baf7e91602455274f6cce-closesf.jpg For this fractal, I chose to forego the typical Mandelbrot or Julia sets, and stick with a pure fractal coloring algorithm. I use "fractal Brownian motion" to color the fractals rather often, as the stochastic patterns lend themselves well to fuzzy patterns in nature, from fog and clouds to ripples in the Great Sand Dunes. In each of these cases, nature seems to prefer the edge of chaos; patterns which are almost entirely random... but not quite. The patterns created by fBm, from a distance, seem no different than the random "snow" you see on an untuned TV set. Yet, when you look closer, or use a 3-D perspective, as I did here, the patterns seem to fall into familiar drifts:

i-0858ee7b3c944fdf73c96598af535399-snowyfractal.jpg

At that point, the fractal resembles a different sort of "snow"--like fresh powder, fallen on a hillside in Colorado:

i-e6e91466c93fd6a292a19f13252d06c1-snowy.jpg

Freshly fallen Colorado snow.

As soon as I'm feeling a little better, I'll post more of the photos I've taken of this week's snowstorm. We had several inches fall early in the week, and it is snowing again as of this morning. As long as you aren't driving in it, and have a place to stay warm, it's quite lovely.

All images created by the author, fractals made using ChaosPro.

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Note from your fractalist: Sorry, folks, this one is a day late. I discovered early yesterday that my old website had been hacked. It has been fixed, now, although I plan to eventually remove everything from there, and repost it here somewhere.
After questioning how easily we might create useful models of our environment the other day, I started to wonder if I could even mimic our planet with a fractal.
Today, you can create your own fractal. (Don't worry, I'll still include one of my artistic fractals at the end of this post.) You don't need to download any programs, or learn any new techniques.
Something about climate change makes people want to argue. Take Greenland, for instance.