Jul 11
Here goes another rant.
As I’ve been a little away from the fractal world for the past years, I am doing some updatings on my pretty old fractal links and lists of resources and I’m trying to find new stuff like tutorials, galleries, etc. that might be appearing here sometime as most of my old links like that seem to be dead. So I went to look for “UF tutorials”. “OK. Here are some. Let’s try this one at DA” I said.
Jul 6
I am using this WP plugin called “Font Burner” that can let you customize fonts in headlines, etc.. Then I started to use a font that for some reason reminded me of Prince’s Purple Rain – I just noticed it yesterday or something. It wasn’t intentional, the font looked OK, so I tried it and it lasted 2 days. After reading the last statements from mr. Symbol about the internet, I don’t want to be misrecognized as his fan (what if he thinks I’m using his trademark font and sends me a cease and desist? No thanks). I never was, I never will be. Back to a more traditional font for the post titles and menus. Prince can kiss my sorry ass.
Jul 1
If you’ve got bored with my long rant about how I was tired of fractals, how disappointed with the new stuff I was making then, disappointed with the new stuff other people were making… I think I can make a short resume on all that.
I just found about 25 images that were kind of lost in my notebook, stuff that I did a bit recently (mid-2009, actually) and comparing them to the stuff I did – most of them at least, and I have seen them all again to make these new galleries – I must say that these new ones seem to have been made by a different person. And they look much better even when they are “simple” or “common” images, let alone when they look a bit more “complicated” than usual. They are not using any of the “what’s-cool-today” techniques, they are still recognizable by me as mine, I haven’t spent years mastering anything, it’s all the same, done with the same tools and skills I ever had.
All I can say about it is… if you seem to feel like I was when I quit making fractals (and this applies for any kind of creative stuff) – take a break. Let it be as longer as you need. Get some fresh air. Try to keep away from that stuff, yours and by others. You’ll see how you will come back very refreshed and much more “talented” than usual. No I’m kidding, the talent has been there all the time, it was just tired of being mistreated.
Still somehow inspired by the previous post about the misunderstanding of what a fractal is and the wrong use of the word fractal and some stuff I read at Orbit Trap, I remembered another thing that bothers me (here comes another long rant).
Also while checking for Google links, I noticed that a lot of the current examples of fractals seem to be now related to Apophysis and its own kind of fractal, the “flame” fractals. OK, they are still fractals, but what happened to the “classic” images of Mandelbrots and Julias (or Newtons or IFs, and so many others)?
Jun 28
I was searching for some fractal related words in Google to check if Mundo Fractal was already being listed (it is!), and it surprised me the amount of sites, blogs, image galleries, personal sites and everything else that has the word “fractal” attached to their names and brands when their main subjects, products or goods they sell etc. have absolutely NOTHING do to with fractals. Of course most are somehow related, but there are a few sites ranked quite high at Google that are absolute garbage, but the worst is that they aren’t about fractals at all. Not Google’s fault though, it’s the same as in the past, pre-Google days, when people used to disguise a bunch of “hot keywords” in their pages (mostly using text in the same colour as the background of the page), with a huge list of porn-related words. This used to work for some time, until they started ignoring keywords and started indexing actual content instead.
Some people like to use the most modern and technical words they can find (meaning? who cares) to sound “hip” and “cool” or as their main “brands” or just to place these words here and there in their “about me” pages to look smarter, if you look or sound outdated on the interwebs you’re doomed. But calling your pet shop (or something so distant from fractals as that) “The Fractal Dog” or something like that is just stupid. It might sound nice as a band name, but as a brand or a serious magazine about something absolutely different from fractals? Not really.
Some (most) people don’t have any idea about what a fractal might be (let alone a more or less accurate description – it’s not required that everyone knows exactly what it is though), but it sounds nice and smart and “scientifical” to name my blog The Fractal Porn, so let’s use it. I just found for example about a psychology magazine in Portuguese that is called just that – Fractal. As I’ve mentioned before, you have the right to name your kids anything you want, and it applies to your creations as well – they’re your kids too, in a sense. WTF, whomever came up with that magazine name even knows how to use Apophysis, their banner has a flame fractal. Why can’t they call it Fractal? They can, that’s for sure. But it’s like calling a McDonald’s “Vegan’s Place” just because “Vegan” is a nice and healthy word.
I wouldn’t like to be diagnosed with a “fractal” personality, mostly by a shrink that is a subscriber of this Fractal magazine. I’m still not that crazy or stupid. Oh and BTW they would love to test this software at that magazine.
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