Fractal… reminds me of a conference I attended in 1990. Chaos: The New Science.

I distinctly remember listening to Benoit Mandelbrot and James Gleick. James’ book, “Chaos: Making a New Science” is a great read. I was fascinated with Mandelbrot and Julia Sets and promptly went home to write a program that drew one on my Apple.

For any SQL geeks out there, here’s a SQL Mandelbrot Set.

I remember they had a Mac IIfx there as well (this was a ~$10,000 machine at the time) that rendered sets and then would tip from a 2-d (overhead) image to a 3-d image that looked like mountain ranges. The math behind it all is really cool.