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Re: Computer Geek Slips
Posted By: Shelley, on host 12.16.212.150
Date: Monday, November 16, 1998, at 16:54:43
In Reply To: Re: Computer Geek Slips posted by John W. on Saturday, November 14, 1998, at 09:40:33:

> > > LOLOL.
> >
> > Laughing Out Loud Out Loud?
> > Laughing Out Loud Overly Long?
> > Laughing Out Loud On Lollipops?
> > Laughing Onward Lackadaiscally Over Lillies?
> > Laughing On Lime Orange Lipstick?
>
> Lengthy Ontological Lapses Of Laughter?

I like all these, take your pick. Personally I was thinking of Laughing Out Lungs Over Lips...

> But the biggest Computer Geekdom story I have deals with after I got into fractals--in the sixth grade. I didn't understand the math behind them (still don't know more than the general gist of why they work), but I find myself walking around outside, naming the types of formulas that will generate clouds, trees, mountains, and other chaotic things like wind. For example, I might see a river, and note how it could really be a "plasma" fractal using the "topo" color pallet (sp?), or how that cloud really looks like a "Julia" set generated with a grey color pallet...

I do this with the Donald Duck geometry movie. You know, the one that looks at the Greek's use of geometry to make a beautiful building, or looking at angles to shoot pool. I superimpose mathematical patterns over almost everything that fits in my brain. Only really started getting into fractals later in life after I read Piers Anthony's Fractal Mode and had to look up what they were. I love looking up at tree leaves and seeing if I can get them to look like fractals, sort of by doing the 3-D picture thing (letting my eyes blur). Ok, now I feel really geeky.

> ...Somehow, doing this didn't detract from the beauty in the least, but rather made it all the more beautiful seeing a glimpse of how everything works together in unity.

I would have to agree with that whole-heartedly.

> The thing is, tho, that habit hasn't ceased since the sixth grade... I still do it to this day (and I'm in college). Not only that, but I begin to see patterns in the way that things happen, and have begun to get a very fractaline philosophical world-view... that there are no such things as insignificant details, but at the same time you can only understand the small stuff once you've taken a look at the whole picture, and then you see _that_ repeated in every smallest detail down to the deepest, sub-atomic-like levels of life itself.

Wow, very cool.


Shelley