Today is another busy one. So I'm just going to throw a few things here I think you all might be interested in. I know I was, but that doesn't always translate!
So this morning I'm excited to see that Alton Brown is planning a new show, a follow-on to Good Eats. I loved that show, and I used it to teach my kids both cooking and science. I haven't been a fan of his latest project, so to see this... and then as I'm listening to the video, I realized that he's going Indie. Part of the reason he's not doing this new show with a network is that he wants to freedom to put whatever he wants on the show: weird meats, different cooking methods, dorm cooking, freezer meals (the mom in me squee'd quietly there). He's gone indie, to give his fans what they want. Seems like a lot of us are taking that road, and I applaud it.
So from that I segue into the flipside of feeding one's family...
But no crime novelist wrote about poison with such knowledge and enthusiasm as Christie, who once said: “Give me a decent bottle of poison and I’ll construct the perfect crime.” In fact, at the time that Christie began work on A Mysterious Affair at Styles, she had been working as a wartime nurse, had been employed in a hospital pharmacy ( then called a dispensary), and had studied for and passed a test to become a member of the Society of Apothecaries.
So she began her career with a subject she knew well. And the plot of this first novel involves the strychnine poisoning of Emily Inglethorp, a wealthy and dictatorial elderly woman living at Styles, a classic English country house. I was fascinated to learn that the reason Agatha Christie wrote so many poisoning deaths is that she knew a lot about poison.
And I've put one of the raw fractal flames I've rendered at the bottom here. This one was just noodling around, and eventually I'll use it as an element in a larger design. Or not, depending. But if you're interested in playing, you can find a ton of tutorials for Apophysis at DeviantArt, like this one.
One of my fractal pieces: You decide what it is!
And this is a variation on a 3D bloom. I like those a lot, but they are more time-consuming to set up. Once I set the flame where I want it - and mind you, I'm not doing the math. I'm using the graphic interfaces to create a visually pleasing piece of art - I run a render. I tend to render at high resolutions and I'm using 2 cores, so they take from 1-3 hours for each flame. Great for walking away and studying...
I do sometimes adjust them in photoshop after rendering: this one was signed, a black background added, and the colors adjusted a bit to make them pop.