Hello

[professorchaos]

From Arizona in the USA, been fractal exploring for about a decade, mostly of the Mandelbrot Set, starting with freeware PC fractal software. Then around 2004, I got the demo version of Fractal Extreme, which does deepzooms that the other programs couldn't, and I went crazy with it.

I'm now rendering or re-rendering my old deepzoom Mandelbrot Set images on my quad-core Core-i5 PC fullscreen (1680x1050) in 4x anti-aliasing, so I'm keeping the CPU busy 24x7 for several days per image sometimes. The deepest zoom fractal I've done with a complex pattern is 3770 zooms. For long renders, I've taken to using a virtual machine that I can save the vm's state, to protect the render in progress from power outages and frequent Windows security patch reboots.

I've got a huge stash of renders collected over the years, so hopefully I've some knowledge of Mandelbrot Set exploring to share (once you know how, you can construct some cool deepzoom patterns instead of just randomly browsing the set).

I'm not really an artist. I see myself as more of a photographer where I choose the subject, the framing & composition, etc., and take a "picture." Fractal exploring has given me a new appreciation for the concept of infinity and brings up questions in me about it and the nature of the real world. I've got a book on Photoshop Elements, so I might be able to enhance my old images in a more artistic way.