Software

Art / Software — 2 Comments
21
Feb 09

JAME Fractal Graphics Platform

While browsing Apple’s website for various openly available math related downloads, I came across JAME, the Java Real-Time Multi-Threaded Fractal Platform. It’s awesome. The JAME website provides the following description:

JAME is a Java real-time, multi-threaded fractal graphics platform which supports images and animations. The core of JAME is the graphics engine which supports layers, filters, effects and alpha composition. JAME creates Mandelbrot and Julia fractals and supports zoom, rotation and colours shifting.

The software is entirely free (under GPL3) and is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux as long as you have met some minimum memory requirements and have an up-to-date version of the Java Runtime Environment installed. The website for the project contains some wonderful tutorials to help get you started, and your creations are exportable to various photo and movie extensions. I created the following clip entirely with JAME:

Now, the rendering of this clip took a while on my Macbook Pro, so if you start playing around keep in mind that the rendering of various movie clips could take a significant amount of time, especially if you increase the frame rate, etc. But the clip above took about 5 minutes to create minus the rendering time. That’s pretty awesome for out of the box capability, let alone all of the customizations that are possible once you learn more about the environment.

There’s a gallery of photos on the site to give you an idea of what’s possible to create more a more advanced user, and some awesome photos have been bundled together into a book that can be purchased here. I’ve seen various movies online that show fractal exploration, but it’s a whole other thing entirely to be in control of the exploration. If you have any interest at all in fractals or mathematical art, I highly suggest checking out the software.

Software — 1 Comment
9
Jan 09

Tag Cloud in 3D (WP Cumulus)

I’ve come  across Roy Tanck’s weblog several different times, and in several different ways. And I must say, it’s just about the most stylish use of Wordpress I’ve ever seen. Amongst other skills, Roy has developed several plugins, including WP-Cumulus, which is shown below. I’m thinking about making this a permanent part of my sidebar, but at the very least I wanted to include it into this post just to show you one of the many amazing things that’s easily possible to include within a Wordpress blog. This plugin, which is visually fantastic, took me about 5 minutes to install at max. Its also been ported to various other blogging platforms as well. There’s really good stuff to find over at Roy’s blog. Check it out.

Software — 2 Comments
12
Sep 08

iPhone Math Application: Mandelbrot

mbsetFor those of you interested in the iPhone, a developer named alpheccar has released an application for the device named Mandelbrot, which is a fractal generation tool of the famous Mandelbrot set. It’s a fantastic little free application that allows the user to zoom in on various pieces of the fractal using the typical touch screen commands of the iPhone. Users are also able to discover Julia sets within the fractal, and to switch back and forth between the Mandelbrot and Julia sets.

Many color palettes are included, and the most recent version (1.3.3) allows for palette animation, which creates a great visual effect. The animation is relatively fast, and can be either automatically or manually set. By selecting manual animation, users have the option of setting a slide bar that controls both the speed and accuracy of animation. It’s also possible to save animations to the photo book on the phone.

It’s a great for education and visual entertainment. I really appreciate that this developer took the time to develop such an application and then to distribute it freely. That’s a great gesture. For those of you with an iPhone, a direct link to the application can be found here.

FYI, the photo from this post was taken within the Mandelbrot application and later exported to my computer. Good stuff. Good job, alpheccar!

LaTeX / Software — 1 Comment
10
Jul 08

LaTeX Render

I spent some time today reinstalling the LaTex Render plugin for Wordpress. I’ll now be able to put some wonderful looking \LaTeX graphics into the blog. I’d like to thank Steve for spending time both writing and debugging the code. So for the time being here is your mathematical moment of zen, for which I also need to thank Steve:

\pi = \sum _{k=0} ^{\infty} \dfrac{1}{16^k} \left[\dfrac{4}{8k+1}-\dfrac{2}{8k+4}-\dfrac{1}{8k+5}-\dfrac{1}{8k+6}\right]

Feel free to also check out the LaTeX in Wordpress post that I wrote a while ago. It should still be mostly up to date. It’s also possible to leave comments using LaTeX syntax as long as they are wrapped in [ tex ] [ / tex ] tags.

Software / Technology — 121 Comments
17
Apr 07

Windows XP Login Logout Loop (Virus)

skeletonI’m writing this post with the hope that it will be helpful to people who face the same computer predicament that I did a few days ago. Here’s a little bit of background information: Last Tuesday I met John Chol Daau, who is from Sudan. He grew up as one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, forced to leave his home and wander hundreds of miles through Africa to survive. If you don’t know much about this particular humanitarian issue, I suggest spending a small amount of time reading up on it. Anyway, John told me that his PC was experiencing a debilitating virus, and asked if I would look at it. I said that I would. After spending quite a bit of time reading through various website forums, here’s a short description of the problem and its solution:

Problem: The PC (which runs Windows XP with SP2) starts normally. The Windows splash screen appears correctly and then the login prompt correctly loads. You can then enter your user name and password like normal, but as soon as you try to login you are IMMEDIATELY logged back out again. The desktop doesn’t even load. It moves immediately back to the login window where you can then enter your user name and password again. No matter how many times you try to login you always experience this immediate logout. Even if you try to login to the computer in safe mode you still experience the same problem. This problem is documented on Microsoft’s website here.

Solution: I’m sure this behavior can be caused by many different problems, but the most common cause is a virus. If you’re familiar with the Windows registry, this virus changes a few registry key values that makes it impossible to login to your computer. If you’re not familiar with the registry, don’t panic. I’ll post links to a few articles that very clearly explain how to fix this problem. Basically, the virus makes two very simple changes to your computer that render it useless. In order to fix the problem, you have to change these two things back to the way they were while your computer was working.

Easy Fix: The “easy” solution to this problem can be found here. In order to use this fix you have to have your Windows XP install CD. This is the CD that contains the files necessary to install the operating system on your computer. You probably have this disk stashed in a drawer somewhere. You should note that there’s a difference between the Windows XP install CD and the recovery CD that may have shipped with your computer. It’s actually possible that when you bought your computer that it didn’t actually come with a Windows XP install CD. Sometimes computer manufacturers will only ship you a recovery disk, which is altogether different. You need your Windows XP install CD so that you can run an application called the Recovery Console. The link above should provide documentation on how to use the Recovery Console. Unfortunately, this fix didn’t work for John’s computer, but it may work for yours.

Slightly Harder Fix: This fix is the one that ended up working to fix John’s computer. A detailed explanation of this fix can be found here. It requires you to have access to another Windows PC with a CD burner (even if it’s a friend’s computer). You have to download a program called BartPE, which is one of the greatest recovery tools that exists. For this particular problem, BartPE will enable you to quickly change the two settings that the virus messed up. You may need a Windows XP install CD for this method as well. But it may be possible for the program to find what it needs from your friend’s computer without having to have access to this disk.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. The above links should give you the tutorials you need to fix the problem. And if you use a PC you should use a virus protection program! If you don’t, you’re asking for trouble! Good luck!