I'm no Chatty Cathy! My wife says I'm a man of few words, and even the ones I speak, I use improperly. Think she's trying to tell me something? My point being I felt like I should do a new journal entry even if I didn't have a lot to say.

Joke of the week: I got this in e-mail the other day: A Santa at the mall asked this little girl what she wanted for Christmas. She told him she didn't want anything for herself but hoped he could bring all the woman she saw on her father's computer cloths to wear...

Apo Tip: Disclaimer! I still consider myself a beginner or casual fractal artist. I rarely start a fractal from scratch. I try to achieve unusual fractals in my own simple way, forever afraid of getting bogged down in the sometimes overly complex technical aspects of creating fractal art, or any type of art for that matter. I'm a potter as well and never saw the need to learn clay and glaze formulas and yet was still able to be successful in shows I entered.

I certainly commend all those who have mastered the technical aspects of fractal art. Without all of the generous help they provide by making tutorials, scripts, templates and batch files, I (along with many others) would be lost. Over time, I'm sure I'll pick up some more of the tech stuff, as I have already. But for now I just want to enjoy fractal art without feeling like I'm back in school where you either learn or fail.

So, having said all that, and even though I have admitted I feel like a beginner, I have a simple Apo tip to share!

On many occasions I have either been in the final stages of creating a fractal, or simply been unable to decide what to try next. Now I'm sure this tips effectiveness will vary depending on the transform (triangle) you are manipulating and the variations (plugins) you are using. If you move the transform around slowly, and it has a great effect on the fractal, then the tip will be valid. If there is very little change while manipulating (rotating, resizing or skewing) your transform, then this tip won't help.

So here's the deal. I found that sometimes even teeny, teeny tiny movements of your transform can have a massive effect on your fractal. Sometimes even to the extent that a minuscule teeny tiny movement or twitch of your hand on the mouse will make a fractal disappear. Or the said movement will alter the fractal in such a way that you can't even find your way back to where you had it before manipulating. Of course that's what the undo button is for. However, if you are slowly rotating a transform with the mouse movement and stumble upon an amazing looking fractal, but go past it before your stupid hand can stop the mouse from proceeding on it's endless search for just the right 'look', then you may never find your way back to the 'Daily Deviant' you just missed. (I know, for one with so little to say, I can sure be long winded, can't I?)

I was working on a fractal today where a tiny movement of the transform created massive changes. I kept 'going past' where I wanted to be with the manipulation. So I enlarged the editor like I mentioned in a previous Journal's Apo tip, but still had trouble. Then while rotating a transform I decided if I zoomed in on the triangle it would obviously help. Think about it. Rotating a small triangle, a small movement will alter it a lot. Rotating a large triangle, a small movement will alter it a little. I also found that while rotating the triangle, moving the cursor further away from the triangle gives you even a more refined rotation. In other words, the closer your cursor is to the 0 axis, the greater the effect of your movement. The farther away from the 0 axis, the more refined your manipulation will become. You can even slide your cursor right off the editor window (while still holding your mouse button down obviously). The further away from the 0 axis, the better for more refined movement.

But that's not even the tip. The real tip is to stop using your mouse at all. Granted, this is slower, but if you are very close to the perfect look you want, but can't quite manage the manipulation by hand, then use the Triangle tab in the Transform Editor. You can do all the same manipulations there. I was only 'rotating' a particular transform. Instead of picking a built in degrees setting such as 5, 15 or 30 degrees, I entered .05. That's 5 hundredths of a degree! I also tried .01 as well and that is teeny, teeny, teeny tiny amounts of rotation! So there you have it. If you are really close to where you want to be, but can't quite manage to get there by hand manipulation, then kill the mouse and use your keyboard!

Below are two screen shots of a fractal with only a five hundredths of a degree rotation difference. You couldn't even see the triangle move but boy what a change it made! Now you should be able to sneak up on that DD that got away!