{"id":595,"date":"2004-07-01T09:09:52","date_gmt":"2004-07-01T12:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=595"},"modified":"2004-07-01T09:09:52","modified_gmt":"2004-07-01T12:09:52","slug":"my-eighties-included","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=595","title":{"rendered":"My Eighties included:"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=dropcap>F<\/span>ractals. <a href=\"http:\/\/hoogervorst.dyndns.org\/~arthur\/weblog\/pics\/misc\/fractal.html\" onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/hoogervorst.dyndns.org\/~arthur\/weblog\/pics\/misc\/fractal.html','popup','width=640,height=480,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"float:right;margin:5px\" alt=\"sm_fractal.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/hoogervorst.dyndns.org\/~arthur\/weblog\/pics\/fractal\/sm_fractal.jpg\" width=\"100\" height=\"75\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a> You know, those images drawn from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mandelbrot_set\">&#8216;recursive functions or algorithms&#8217;<\/a>. Nowadays nobody understands why it boomed, and quite frankly <em>that&#8217;s<\/em> understandable. It&#8217;s that long ago, when the first homecomputer marched into the livingroom, sporting 16 to 256 colours in a low resolution.\n<\/p>\n<p>I remember the first articles appearing in a popular Dutch science magazine (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kijk.nl\/\">Kijk<\/a>). When the first home computer entered our <a href=\"http:\/\/hoogervorst.dyndns.org\/~arthur\/weblog\/archives\/000040.html\">parental house<\/a>, mid to late Eighties, fractals became part of that experiment too. Creating a fractal could take days.\n<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Eventually we moved to DOS and PCs (which happened to be the next big revolution in computing) and discovered <a href=\"http:\/\/spanky.triumf.ca\/www\/fractint\/fractint.html\">Fractint<\/a>.  (Note that Fractint is never mentioned in the Wikipedia article on <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mandelbrot_set\">Mandelbrot<\/a>). It could still take hours to generate a good detailed image on an 286 AT  (8MHz) PC. At least not days.\n<\/p>\n<p>With today&#8217;s computing power, even <a href=\"http:\/\/aleph0.clarku.edu\/~djoyce\/julia\/explorer.html\">Java applications<\/a> create fractals faster than the Fractint executable on that poor 286. Not to mention the fractal creator on the 8 bit MSX computer. Take the Windows version of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deleeuw.com.au\/\">ManP<\/a> (nowadays slightly based on Fractint): it takes seconds to create a fully coloured Mandelbrot or Julia fractal. That&#8217;s on an average 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 class processor and an obnoxious Intel graphics processor.\n<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s the relevance of those computer drawn images? Believe it or not: In all those years, the routines have slipped into the software we use today. From compression to games. Sometimes even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.downloadsoftware.org\/audio\/midi\/artsong.asp\">music<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fractals. You know, those images drawn from &#8216;recursive functions or algorithms&#8217;. Nowadays nobody understands why it boomed, and quite frankly that&#8217;s understandable. It&#8217;s that long ago, when the first homecomputer marched into the livingroom, sporting 16 to 256 colours in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=595\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}