> > 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 have done many of those Geek Slips mentioned before, and I often will try to point to an object on the wall behind the moniter using the mouse, wondering why the object in question isn't being pointed at.

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...

...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.

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.

For those of you who have never heard of fractals before, I suggest you follow the link (and begin to look in the world in a totally different light). This is just one of many, many programs out there that will generate fractals, but is sort of my favorite (even tho the Windows version of this program hasn't been updated since I was in the sixth grade [to the best of my knowledge], I still use it today... but the DOS version is _much_ more powerful and robust, so you definitely want to check it out, too.)

Not only can you see how many formulas actually generate things found in nature, but you can save the _formulas_ for the images, as well as their parameters, in an ity-bitty .PAR file, which takes up HD space measured in bytes, send that via e-mail, and let somebody else use Fractint to re-generate the image and see that interesting snail or leaf or sunset or whirlpool or whatever it is you found (always generated at an appropriate screen-size and resolution for the friend).

Or, if you're just bored, you can color-cycle the image, where it slowly rotates the color pallet with a very hypnotic effect (a concept which has become popular among some screen savers). And if you rotate the topological color pallet on a plasma fractal, you can see the water rise on a map, overtake the mountains, followed by an ice-age, where the waters recede, the mountains rise, islands form, and so on. Watch the effects of trillions of years of erosion on a continent at the convenience of your home PC.

Sorry 'bout the length of this, but just one more thing: Check out:
http://people.delphi.com/ehy/index.html
and you can use JAVA to create fractaline planets... earth-type planets, that look so realistic, you'd almost expect to see a NASA logo at the bottom...