Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Linear speaking fractally

Many years ago I wrote a line fractal application in C that uncovered a never-found bug in the GDI layer of WindowsNT.
It was a fun app to write and I have since redone it in C#.  I originally created an MSN Group to distribute it but as much of Microsoft's cloud support - feature one year, bug the next - it was dropped.

So here is a post just to expose it to anyone wanting to try it out: http://thebattmanhome.com/Sandy/LineFrac.rar

Just download the .rar file (use WinRAR.exe to unpack) and run the .exe.
You will need some .Net runtime support - I believe it runs on .Net 3.0.
No certificate but I can vouch that its not a virus.

The idea of a line fractal is that of creating an alternative path between two points.  Then each sub-part of the alternative path is itself altered to use the alternative path scaled to fit the two new points.  After some recursion, you have a cool looking design.
Add some color, the option of drawing a line or not in the subpath and you have almost a work of art.

Enjoy!