All the Pages Are My Days - the first 12 years
the (archived) online world of Mike Rodriquez 2002-2012
I thought this beautiful picture of comet Bradfield deserved a wider viewing. It is one of 3 comets visible to the naked eye during April and May of 2004; a fairly unusual occurence. More information on these naked eye comets is available in this National Geographic article. Oh, why not? Here’s another one: Click on … Read more
Fracture is a fractal screensaver for Mac OS X that creates some of the most fantastic, richly detailed fractal images I have ever seen. I don’t normally configure a screensaver; preferring instead to simply allow the energy-savings mode to kick in. Fracture creates such lovely images that I not only spent the $10 dollars to … Read more
Speaking of fractals, here’s something new, the Bhuddhabrot Set. Fractal images rendered using this technique are ethereal, with a whispery, cloudlike appearance. The complexity and infinite variations represented by fractals strongly hint to me that some sort of fractal based storage/compression system may be practical in the future. Via MeFi.
Yesterday, in honor of his birthday, Google paid homage to Gaston Julia with the following banner image: Julia was a French mathematician who studied the iteration of polynomials and rational functions in the first third of the twentieth century. He is better known in modern times for his contributions to the science of fractal geometry … Read more
Just why is it that so many attempts to study Mars up close and personal result in apparent failure? Everyone has their own pet theories, many of them involving martians of some sort. Well, maybe not. In any case, “they” don’t always win (Viking, 1975; Pathfinder, 1997) and now we’ve completed the initial phase of … Read more
While I’m not a big fan of year-end best of lists, the top 10 astro photos of 2003 web site is worth a visit. I don’t agree with all of their choices, but found many of the images to be stunning. Two of my favorites are the photo of earth from mars and the unexplained … Read more
I recently discovered Martian Soil, a neat site, and one that seems to be updated quite regularly. In their own words: Martian Soil is a daily blog dedicated to Mars, bringing the exploration of the Red Planet closer to enthusiasts and little green men alike. Within the next two weeks, Mars will make its closest … Read more
Here’s a fascinating photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that shows many thousands of galaxies, including two that are apparently close to colliding, and many others that are almost as old as the known age of the universe. You can click on the image for more details and a link to an even larger … Read more
just spinning, spinnin free, Dizzy with eternity. Yeah, I know, I was burned out on that song myself. Still, Throwing Stones is a powerful, still relevant song, and the imagery conveyed by the title of this post reflects one of its more hopeful messages. To me, this picture of the earth and the moon, as … Read more
Just the thing for Monday: an exploration of The Principles of Artistic Illusions. This site, enriched with many illustrative examples, reviews a few classic Escher works as well as exploring the general topic by describing a wide variety of visual illusions. The review is continued on a second page which focuses a bit more on … Read more