Tag Archive: annoyances


Ok, an announcement. I guess I’m back.

I’ve decided to return here for good. Some changes might happen though but they aren’t exacly definitive. I haven’t also explored what is new in terms of security and plugins to find if there is still interesting to be added to the site, but the basic that will happen from now on is;
1. Images won’t be added to galleries, unless I change my mood. They will posted individually, sometimes with a short description of anything relevant (where I got its name inspiration, how many time it took to render, etc), sometimes just with the name of the image. it’s too boring to add each image again, add a description, etc etc. Let the galleries for my old images. They might also be trimmed down at some point, removing images I don’t care much about them anymore. As I’ve said, there was a period of my “fractal life” where I was somehow compelled so to speak (by stupid group of users) to make a huge number of images in a short period of time (come on, you must be creative they said), and it became a job. with NO rewards. And 99% of the images didn’t satisfy ME. A couple (a dozen or more, actually) images that have been made in a year or so an posted in my FB page (that might or not have appeared here in the past) will be posted here as well. Actually, the FB page is… http://www.facebook/mundofractal/ (I guess), I’m not sure if you will be able to reach it from here.
2. The images won’t have a bookmark anymore most of the time, unless I find the image is a real “masterpiece”. If thieves want to steal it, they will. It’s quite easy and fast to add a watermark, but it’s even faster to cover it. The images won’t be posted anywhere else by me, I am not part of any digital community, forum or FB group. If they are posted without my usual internet nicknames (Mr. Mandelbrot, marcusbacus, fractallland, etc. etc….), they were probably stolen. Fuck that.
3. I have a Facebook page about it now as well just for posting images and a very small comment (a name or of the image and a line or so), but both here and FB have a giant annoyances to make you post stuff when you have made a few more images you like. Here I have a little more room to post and not care much if it is being sen or not (it is…), and the FB annoying “BOOST THIS IMAGE FOR JUST $5 TO GET MORE 10000 VIEWS in every single fucking post is really annoying, hence I’m trying to go back here. No, I don’t want to boost these posts neither make Mark more rich. Fractals is my hobby, not my income. Or his.
4. I might add an email account again  (I lost my account where I registered my UF account so I can’t even get updates or re-registering my copy when I need an instalattion of my old registered – expensive! -copy of the updates since version 5 so I’m still using the v. 4something) just for dealing with any subject that might appear here – questions, comments that don’t fit in the comments page, and other random things. If it goes to a spam list, it’s gone.
5. I still am hating Apophysis. I am in a very very “old school” phase, so it will be more just very common spirals, midgets and some other popular images that will be the core of the next posts, I suppose. Eventually there will be a bit more abstract stuff like in the past, but I need inspiration.

6. It’s very sad to hear about Paul N. Lee’s passing and all his major fractal archive of softwares, tutorials, formulas being gone.

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Again, issues

I know it’s been a while since the last post but oh well.

Dreamhost is making me crazy once again. I’ll have to figure what is wrong with “my” installation and plugins and fix it… and maybe even reuploading everything from scratch again, if the failure is in the gallery plugins (which I don’t think it is…). Maybe it’s a good way to filter out some more images I no longer like and add a couple new ones…

This is why I should keep going

Many thanks to the guys at Orbit Trap to have quoted my opinions, to slightly discuss them and more, to understood them perfectly. I’m more than anything learning to be honest with my own feelings (artistically and in everything else) so whatever I’ve said here about my disappointments with fractal stuff in general that was repercuted by Orbit Trap is absolutely true. Whenever I say I am hating Apophysis for example, I really do. But I’m hating the Deviant kind of Apophysis – the mass-produced, randomized thing.

I don’t have any personal or commercial links to any of these people (from the evil or the good side of the force) so I just said what happened to me and my creative process during all these years and how to following the self-similarity flock was making me a worse artist and making extremely bored. And I think I could only understand what was going on when I read these posts at Orbit trap pointing me to some obvious things that most people (comfortably) refuse to see, better still have your comment box filled with friends pats on the back than making something you’re enjoying.

I’m touching some sensitive fields now I guess trying the Mandelbulb images (and I’m starting to like them despite hating it at first), as they seem to be the latest hit of the moment, but as there isn’t much of a community or group dedicated to that (not that I have seen) except the few posts at the Fractal Forums neither too many tutorials in the common corporate fractal galleries, which I try as much as possible not to read unless i’m looking for a fix for a problem, I am a bit “isolated” from whatever kind of “style trend” in Mandelbulbs that might be en vogue (sorry for the french) so far and I’m very pleased with the images I’m making even though I can make only an image a week or something. I see a lot of posts mentioning “whipped cream”, “cathedrals” etc. etc. but I have no idea how to do that neither I want to do that kind of thing. I’m using Mandelbulb 3D just like when I first started Fractint: using my instinct. I liked what I did? OK, I’ll save and post. I didn’t like? Let’s start again.

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Insanity laughs underpressure we’re cracking!

A nice quote from my favourite band to demonstrate h0w pressure and all the other annoyances in life can have a productive side. I remember back in 2002, taking many painkillers, without a solution in sight and making probably some of my best fractals. Seems that it’s happening again, for a different reason.

can I beat it?

The Menace

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My thoughts on a certain calendar

I hope this post doesn’t bring any negativity or haters. I’ve seen this happen when the subject was so delicate (to some people) like this. But here we go.

I had read in another blog – which I won’t mention here which one  it is just because of these fights and haters, but it has been mentioned here a couple times and I do share many of their thoughts about how and where the fractal art is going – about how the Fractal Calendar was becoming sort of a… how to put it lightly… commercial product supposedly open to the fractal artists community to participate, but a project where just a few people had the chance to participate. And it’s always been the same people over and over, year after year. This is what I had read, remember. As I’m not involved with these groups, I just know the names of some of these artists and saw that there was really some sort of repetitive list of fractal artists that seemed to appear quite often. Then, it was also commented that the images chosen to appear in such calendar were getting more and more boring and common and were not displaying the “good” fractal art (whatever that is), but just the eye-candy, with the same style that is typical of that specific group of “chosen ones”.

Today, when I was going to the Fractal Forums website to get the latest Mandelbulb version for my other computer, I typed a wrong address that took me apparently to the official site for the Fractal Calendar. And they had 3 galleries for the 2009, 2010 and 2011 editions with the images. And now I could see with my own eyes that this was very much true, the images are indeed boring and repetitive. They aren’t ugly, though. But 12 images of common spirals and Doodads? I can do that too. Sometimes better. Many others can do that as well.

I think that the last time I had checked for the images in that calendar was around 2003, when I even submitted some images (silly me…). The same group of people seemed to dominate the choices of approved images back then, but the images were much more better and diverse. Now, they’re just as I’ve said, common spirals and Doodads. Sad, really.

Not that these artists aren’t talented and can’t make good images, the problem I see – IMHO – is that the images are far from being fresh, creative and daunting or even “updated”, they are just something that seem to have been done to fit a certain commitment, “we must do the calendar, you are the chosen artists, just send me anything in time and that’s fine”.

With the huge ammount of fractal softwares – and fractal kinds  so to speak – now available, it’s sad to see that they have chosen just common spirals done in Ultra Fractal. No Apophysis, no old-school Fractint images, no new styles like the Mandelbulbs. And just spirals. While the time in the calendar goes on for all of us, the quality of its images seem to be going back in time. Or the clock seems to have stopped in 2002 for the people that are responsible to choose the images.

A small disclaimer: I don’t know any of the artists involved in the making of the images chosen for the calendar in any way other than occasionally viewing fractal galleries where their images are displayed, in their own websites or in other galleries in other websites. I don’t have any particular “hate” for any of these neither had any personal fights with any of these artists and this wasn’t a personal attack on anyone (before any of these haters that like to keep starting flame wars in the aforementioned blog find an excuse in this post to start some more of these wars), this was just my personal opinion on the Fractal Calendar (to which you are entitled to disagree) and my comments are mostly made about the way it’s made and conceived and how its images are chosen, not about the talent or the quality of any of these fractal artists involved.

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