Ever since I saw my first picture of the Mandelbrot set (The background image to this page is that of the Mandelbrot Set) I've been fascinated by fractals. One of my prized possessions is a copy of Peitgen and Richter's 'The Beauty of Fractals', signed by Benoit B. Mandelbrot himself after I attended a lecture of his in London a few years ago. Naturally, also being interested in computers I felt the need to combine the two. In fact fractal images have really only been quite so popular and accessible *because* of the advent of computers. My first attempts to draw and zoom into the Mandelbrot set were some 15 years ago now. These few pages detail some of my work with fractals, and of course there are some pictures along the way.

Firstly, in case you haven't come across the subject before, you may be wondering - "what are fractals?". The short answer - A fractal shape is a shape, rough or geometric, which when subdivided into parts is found to have it's own shape within itself, independently of scale. For example the branches of a tree, as you move away from the trunk of a tree, towards the extremities if each twig, you move through boughs and branches and twigs, and yet all are similar in shape and structure, differing only in size.

How can you make a fractal? Well - you don't need a computer at all to make a simple fractal. Take a strip of paper about 30 cm long and 1 cm wide. Hold it between left and right hands and fold left end to right end, and repeat this, say five times. Then carefully unfold the strip so that every fold is a 90 degree fold and look edge on at the strip of paper. What you see is a simple fractal. Imagine if there was no limit to the number of folds you could make in the strip of paper - the resulting shape would be enormously complex, and yet is created by such a simple method - the recursive fold in the centre of your strip.

How can you find out more about fractals? Although these pages discuss some matters to do with fractals (see links above and below), there are many resources on the web discussing different aspects of fractals - I'm not about to repeat it all here, so I'd recommend following this link to the sci.fractals FAQ.