I ended up a loner

Well, I finally got around to doing a video of sorts. It happens to be a math video but the computed images in it are really nice. The Mandelbrot Set is actually the black area. I found a BBC Basic program in D. G. Drazin's Nonlinear Systems which is a volume in the Campridge Texts in Applied Mathematics series which I adapted to generate the zoom and stills. It took 9 hours to compute the 480 images and since the animation subroutine which captured the images had a limited palette I decided to include the still images to show more detail.

I really wish I could but I won't be able to go to the London YouTube Gathering at the Phoenix this weekend. I had a wisdom tooth pulled Friday and I have some family business to get out of the way. If I was more involved in YouTube I would definitely have considered going. My parents spent 5 months traveling through Europe in 1988 visiting relatives and doing geneology research. They went to the Runnymede Air Forces Memorial near London looking for my uncle's name but could not find it then. Just after Christmas I contacted a photographer in the UK who was kind enough to send me some pictures of the panel 102 near the West Lookout which contains my uncle's name. He was part of the crew of a Lancaster bomber which was lost during the "lull" in October, 1942 when the Battle of Stalingrad the fight over North Africa were taking place. He left a journal which reads more like a travel log at times. He was stationed near the Lakes District for a time and mentions that he was rather fond of a Scottish girl that he met. He grumbled a bit about being assigned to the Pathfinders. All my parents ever told me about what happened to him was that his plane was seen to go down over the North Sea.

Anyway, I do have an excuse to go to London and visit the PRO at Kew to see what I can find out about his fate. And if I ever get around to doing so perhaps we could get together for a pint of beer at a pub in London sometime. Doing some sightseeing in Europe might be fun too.

I saw Kwai Chi's video and the Phoenix looks like a nice place. I would have liked to meet you in person. I have a few childhood scars that I could show you if you ever decided to do another book. And I was poisoned once when I was a kid and ended up in a coma for a week. I think my parents were a bit overprotective after those incidents and I ended up a loner as a result. My parents both grew up on farms and were rather family oriented so they didn't socialize much either. After my father retired from television they started a family business which I helped them out with. Now that they have passed on I need to find new interests to pursue.

Let me know how the gathering goes. I hope everyone has a nice time there.