Visitation Fiction

Applied anti-gravity in the nanorealm.

Here on this page is an origins story for the character Mary who began inserting herself into the Exode Saga back in 2016. At that time, I asked myself the question: what if Mary Godwin had actually written a science fiction story in 1816?

Yes, I'm blaming Mary because for many years I was satisfied to have Isaac Asimov appear in my stories and I had fun imagining how he had invented science fiction as a literary genre. Mary objected and insisted that she be allowed to invent science fiction...

In a previous Reality, Asimov created
the science fiction genre.
 Back cover of my copy of Gold

Previously, I've written about Mary's life in the Ekcolir Reality, but for this new story (called "Hierion Writers Club") I want to go further back in Deep Time and begin with the story of Mary's analogue in the Foundation Reality, at a time before Grean invaded Eternity.

R. Gohrlay and her tribe of positronic robots (probots) needed to prepare Humanity to defend itself against the alien Huaoshy. They recruited Mary to help inform Earthlings about the existence of aliens who had long been visiting Earth.

vision of Nanoville

Mary must adapt to her new life in the nanorealm. Having been taken off of Earth and now existing within the Hierion Domain, Mary's new artificial body is composed of hierions. Her new body is that of a replicoid, composed of nanoscopic femtobot components assembled into a form that duplicates that of a human body.

The original replicoids were made at a small size scale because so many of them were needed. Functioning as information storage and processing modules, the
replicoids of Eternity provided temporal momentum to Earth. Then R. Nyrtia began experimenting with the process by which human minds could be instantiated inside the artificial bodies of a new style replicoid made to live as an independent artificial lifeform. Mary's grandmother, Elizabeth, was one of the first Earthlings brought into Nanoville and instantiated as a replicoid.

  ⎯ Hierion Writers Club ؄

Artificial life in the nanorealm.

Part 1. In 1817. Origins of Telepathy.

Mary was struggling to write a story based on her own experience of knowing the thoughts and intentions of her pets. Nothing was going right. She could not stop thinking about size. She endlessly imagined being a small pet, cared for by a much larger owner. Mary obsessively agonized over the idea of being owned.

Rationally, Mary knew that her fascination with the subject of ownership had grown out her mother's campaigning for the Slave Trade Act, but there was something more driving her to write fantasy stories about the minds of pets. The harder Mary tried to explicitly state the source of her compulsion, the more its nature and source escaped her conscious mind.

 

One of the barn cats was in heat and Mary's pet cat, Alexander, only had one thing on his mind. He sat at the window yowling and wanting to go outside for a visit to the barn. It was a hot summer day and hoping to move some air through the house Mary had opened just a crack the two windows of the house that could be slid open.

 

Other than Alex's incessant complaining, the house was unusually quiet. Mary's mother had gone to visit her doctor and Ralph had gone along. For a moment Mary thought about her father (William) who six years previously had gone off to live with his young lover, Margaret. Mary tried to get her thoughts off of sex and back on her writing. However, she was now preparing dinner and her manuscript and pen sat untouched on the table.

 

There was a distant rumble of thunder. Mary began to worry that Ralph and her mother might get caught in a storm and not make it home. But then she heard the carriage arriving and she went outside to help Ralph tend to the horses. Alex tried to escape, but Mary took pains to spoil his fun and keep him in the house. She sensed his disappointment.

England, 1817.

Later, after dinner, Mary put the kitchen in order and went upstairs to her room. It was raining steadily outside, but the thunder had ceased. She was just settling in beside her lamp-lit manuscript and then her mother came into her room, closed the door behind her and said, "I need to tell you something." She set her candle down on the writing desk.

Mary had been quite pleased during dinner to hear her mother's account of the visit with her doctor. Two interns at the hospital had given her an exhaustive physical exam and turned up no abnormal growths anywhere in her body. Ralph had been satisfied that there was no remaining trace of cancer and had stated at dinner, "I'm not going to question good news even if the doctor called it a medical miracle."

Looking into her mother's serious face, Mary's heart sank, fearing there was some problem so horrifying that her mother had not dared to tell Ralph, who, after all, was still just a boy. Mary could sense that her mother was thinking about her husband. "Did you see Bill today?"

"Yes, I..." Mary senior paused and then continued delicately, "...I met him... and Margaret... in town. They were very pleased to hear the good news. However, I don't want to talk about that since it is a topic that you do not know about." 

 

Mary could sense whenever her mother had recently made love and had experienced a pleasing orgasm. When she had figured out that her father was still one of her mother's lovers, Mary had promised to tell nobody. 

 

endosymbionts

Mary senior continued, "What you need to know is that both William and I have had multiple family members who died from cancers. I don't want to terrorize you, but you need to take precautions... according to doctor Norris, there is a high likelihood that you will develop cancer when you get older."

Mary put her arms around her mother and held on tight for a minute. "Thank you for telling me, mom. You've trained me to check my body for strange growths, but I'm not sure that I could ever face a surgeon." Mary had far too much imagination and the idea of a surgeon cutting away parts of her body was horrifying.

"Who knows what the future will bring?" Mary's mother picked up her candle and moved to the door. "I've seen railroads and steamships transform the country. Imagine what advances will come to medicine during your life." 

 

in the Hierion Domain

"I'll certainly consider all of my options if I ever face cancer. Maybe I will be lucky, like you."

 

Quietly muttering something about luck, Mary's mother slipped through the doorway. She went down to hallway to her own room.

Only 20 years old, Mary liked to think of herself as immortal. She set aside all thoughts of cancer and hospitals and diligently worked on her story for an hour. She kept trapping herself: trying to explain how her protagonist could know things that she had no way of knowing. When she found it hard to focus her eyes, she set down her pen and closed up her inks. She got into bed and thought about the possibility of discovering a physical basis for her sensitivity to the thoughts of animals. The storm was over and even Alexander had quieted down, although he was now demanding that his ears be scratched. 

 

Mary wondered: if risk of developing a disease could be inherited, then why not also sensitivity to the thoughts of others? She thought of the thrill she had felt the first time she had seen a train rushing past on the rails. What would medical science be capable of in the future? While she was drifting into sleep, Mary decided that she could shift her story and its protagonist into a future time, after it had been discovered that some people had a special part of their brain that allowed for sensitivity to the thoughts of other people... and animals.

When Mary awoke, she knew that something had changed. The air felt and smelled different. She felt different. There was a strange ruddy glow all around her and a stranger's voice said, "Hello, Mary. Welcome to the Hierion Domain."

Bimanoid Interface

Startled by the unfamiliar voice, which sounded tinged with something like a French Caribbean accent, Mary sat up quickly and turned her head towards the voice. She could see the outline of a human form in the dim light, standing near her bed. Imagining that she was still in her bedroom, she asked, "Who are you?" Yet, somehow, Mary already knew that she was speaking to Wendy the probot.

"You could call me Fengtol, but I rather like the name Wendy. Wendy is a name that I picked up only recently, during a mission on Earth." In Wendy's vast experience of dealing with Earthlings, she knew most of them struggled to pronounce her original name, which rendered in English was Phengh'toule and usually shortened to Fengtol for convenience. Through the years, Wendy had visited Mary several times on Earth and she had always mangled Wendy's Neanderthal name. Of course, while living on Earth, Mary had not been allowed to retain access to her memories of those visits.

Now, with nanites lifting the blocks on her memories, Mary was beginning to remember her previous meetings with Wendy. "I like many names, but I'm stuck with Mary."

"Yes, named after your mother." When told by a doctor that Mary's mother would die, William had decided to give the daughter of his dying wife her name: Mary. Then Mary senior had recovered and they were stuck with two Mary's in the house. "And like her, you developed cancer."

"What are you talking about?" Mary was fascinated by Wendy's clothing which seemed to glow of its own light and was alive and always moving.

 

"Gohrlay brought you here to cure your cancer and then she decided that it was safe to keep a copy of you." Wendy added, "I'm going to start brightening the room lights."

hierions

Mary was fascinated by the feel of her surroundings. The sheets of her bed somehow felt different... lighter and almost creamy. She wondered: am I dreaming? No dream was so detailed and realistic. "Who is Gohrlay? A doctor?" Mary watched the room grow brighter. She was in her familiar bed, but everything else around her was strange and different. "Hierion Domain?" Clearly she was no longer in her bedroom. Horrible thoughts of hospitals filled her mind. Have I been sick?

Wendy warned, "Don't get excited. You are perfectly fine... safe. The biological copy of you was returned to Earth, minus the tumor in her brain. However, you are now like me, an artificial lifeform. A copy of your original self."

Mary could remember having met Wendy previously. Those were almost dream-like memories of Wendy briefly visiting her to discuss telepathy and warn her that she would never be allowed to discuss her telepathic abilities with anyone else on Earth. 

 

Mary got out of bed and took a few awkward steps. It felt like she was walking through water. She looked at some of the strange machines in the room and was amazed by their fine workmanship. She returned towards Wendy, walking rather unsteadily and touched her own face which felt hot and moist. Wendy seemed like a perfectly normal girl, except for her unusually large eyes and her living clothing that crawled seductively over the curves of her body. "Artificial?"

"Before you ask too many..." Wendy handed Mary a small vial. "Gohrlay prepared this for you. It will provide answers to many of your questions."

Mary looked at the vial which felt cold and hard between her fingers. She watched in fascination as it vented a sparkling cloud of gas. The sparkles quickly slipped inside Mary's head and she began to notice that she had answers... suddenly she knew that the Hierion Domain was an alternative space-time region that existed beyond Earth. Gohrlay was an important probot, who made use of helpers like Wendy to change and improve human civilization on Earth. Gohrlay and Wendy were machines, like a steam engine, but vastly more complex and designed to replicate the form of the human body. "I'm no longer human?"

"You are no longer a biological organism." Wendy explained, "Your mind has been placed inside a synthetic body. You will slowly adjust to your new body and your cancer-causing genes will no longer bother you. In fact, here, in this realm, those genes will be fully expressed and allow you to make use of your cognitive abilities in new ways."

Mary stared intently at Wendy's face. The lights were now at a reasonable intensity and Mary could see every detail of the girl's skin and hair. Wendy seemed perfect. For a minute Mary searched unsuccessfully for some flaw in the probot's appearance. She asked, "Grean expects me to help..."

memory editing by infites

"You must help Mary... on Earth. You will guide her story writing." Wendy took the infite vial from Mary's limp fingers. "We need to select a new name for you. I suggest Yra." She said it like "Yira".

Mary knew that she would never return to Earth. Watching Wendy take away the vial, she said wonderingly, "So... this is how you can know things... without learning them..."

Wendy shrugged. "It is easy for us to use infites to slip new knowledge into people. We can precisely control human behavior with a combination of infites and our telepathic powers, but there are limits. Taking complete control of a human brain for too long can cause damage. To avoid such damage, you will gently guide Mary, provide her with ideas for her stories..."

The Bimanoid Interface

Mary knew that Wendy was a telepath and was at that moment inside her mind, watching her inner thoughts. "Me? I'm no telepath... not like you. I can only sense the emotions of other people... and animals."

Wendy explained, "You won't be restricted to using only your natural telepathy. You are correct; only we probots can fully utilize twitino-mediated telepathy. But you will be able to use technology-assisted telepathy to put ideas into Mary's head."

In her new infite-generated memories, there was a name for that technology. Mary/Yra whispered, "Bimanoid Interface."

"Yes. You are one of the rare Earthlings who can actively use the Interface. The same genes that made you prone to cancer allowed your brain cells to adapt successfully to your endosymbiont. Now you can help prepare the people of Earth for alien contact." Wendy handed a book to Yra.

In the Foundation Reality.

The book was like no book Yira had ever seen. She could well imagine that it was from the future, made using a manufacturing process that was, as yet, unknown on Earth. Yira asked, "Is that you? On Earth?"

Wendy nodded. "Yes, that is an artist's depiction, based on Mary's description of me. As soon as you have had a chance to prepare Mary for my arrival, I'll go and visit her again. This time, I'll allow her to remember me." Wendy added, "Mary must begin writing stories about artificial lifeforms."

"Probs?"

"That is the term she uses in her visitation account. Rather than use the term 'probot', Mary calls me a 'Prob'."

 

Observer Base

Yra was skimming through the pages of The Prob Visitation. Wendy was monitoring Yra's thought processes and although the Observer Base orientation infites were hard at work, Yra was reaching the point of being cognitively overwhelmed by her sudden shift from Earth to the Hierion Domain. In particular, Yra was dismayed that she would never again see her mother.

 

Wendy said, "You'll have a chance to read Mary's book and all her writings, but right now I want to take you out on the town for some relaxation and a chance to meet some of the locals. You'll be pleased to learn that a replicoid copy of your grandmother is here in Nanoville." 

 

Wendy quickly showed Yra how to use her clothing nanites, then she disposed of her Earthly clothing and the copy of Mary's bed that had been teleported into the workshop from Earth.

 

2. Nanoville.

In the nanorealm.

Nanoville was in a continual state of redesign and construction. Mary's grandmother was one of the residents who was involved in the design work. Watching Mary's inner turmoil grow as she learned more and more about the Hierion Domain, Wendy knew it would be useful to allow Mary the chance to meet her grandmother.

 

Wendy led Mary out of the workshop and to an aircar that was parked nearby. Soon they were flying towards the School of Design. Mary looked back at the workshop, but only the aircar landing platform distinguished its location from the surrounding... terrain? Certainly that word was not appropriate for the nanorealm.

Mary was dismayed by the odd appearance of the nanorealm which was composed of large structures seemingly floating in midair. She asked Wendy, "Where exactly are we?"

The orientation infites were actively providing Mary with an understanding of the basics of physics, but Wendy was trying to not overload Wendy with too many strange concepts. "Your artificial body is composed of hierions, not the type of matter that is found in human bodies. All that you see around you is made from hierions. We are inside the Hierion Domain... a kind of parallel world..."

Mary tried to enjoy the strange scenery of the Nanorealm while her mind processed and sifted through her infites, making sense of what Wendy had told her. By the time they had flown across Nanoville, Mary had a good understanding of where she was. She was struggling to accommodate herself to living her future life in a place that was so different from Earth.

 

Wendy was following along in Mary's thoughts. "Your grandmother, Elizabeth, is helping to create Nanoville."

 

Mary asked, "Why does everything look so strange." In the far distance, the "sky" seemed to fade into a misty dull green. "I find this all quite unsettling!"

 

"The on-going creation of Nanoville is a complex process, with continual discovery of what works and what is problematical. Gohrlay wants a stable human society in which not only do the residents have telepathic powers, but the entire environment merges with the people telepathically to become a kind of group mind." Now Wendy regretted saying anything about the ultimate purpose of Nanoville. Mary was reacting with dismay to the idea of a vast group mind. Wendy quickly sent memory editing infites into Mary and erased the past minute of her experiences.

 

Mary was almost hypnotized by the weird passing shapes that constituted the structure of Nanoville. She began to think about her earliest memories of her mother and grandmother. Mary told Wendy, "I just barely remember grandma. She died when I was five."

"We took pains to keep her alive that long, so you could know her." Wendy gestured ahead towards their destination. "A copy of Elizabeth has been living here for 35 years."

Mary looked around at the artificial "sky" and asked, "Does time pass normally here in this Domain?"

"Yes, time universally permeates all three Domains of the universe."

"Three?" The air car shook as they passed through a local environmental border. Now the "sky" looked like the normal sky of Earth.

Wendy hesitated, but then briefly explained, "In addition to the Hadronic Domain and the Hierion Domain there is also a Sedron Domain."

Mention of sedrons started another cascade of information flowing from Mary's stored infites into her mind. The aircar landed beside a strange looking building. This building had unusual architecture by Earth standards, but it was also the most Earthly object that Mary had so far seen in Nanoville. 

 

Wendy commented, "There is no weather here, so the homes tend to be open and airy." She waved to a figure that could be seen inside the house. "There's Elizabeth. I've warned her to be expecting you."

For a moment, Mary had glimpsed a young woman gazing out at them from a second floor room. "That girl is my grandmother?"

"Remember, Yra, you now have an artificial body. You can retain your current appearance indefinitely or even modify it and improve it. Most people enjoy having a youthful appearance."

Wendy led the way inside Elizabeth's home. The furnishings were unlike any of Mary's experience. Elizabeth came floating down from the second floor. Mary exclaimed, "You fly?"

Elizabeth giggled and put her arms around Mary. They hugged briefly and then she explained, "I've been experimenting with anti-gravity. About ten years ago, Nyrtia gave us access to negative mass hierions... that has changed our entire design strategy."

 

designing Nanoville

Wendy introduced Mary as "Yra".

 

Elizabeth complained. "What an ugly name!"

 

Mary shrugged, "I don't mind being called Yira."

 

Elizabeth was philosophical. "I suppose it will prevent confusion. If you truly don't mind then I will try to remember to call you Yira." She scowled at Wendy and told Mary, "Back when I came here, we did not have to change our names."

Mary reached out and touched Elizabeth's face. "You are so young and pretty, grandma."

"Yes, please excuse my vanity. Sometimes when I think how old I really am, I feel silly pretending to be young. But nobody ages here... it is fashionable to appear to be young and sexy."

Mary asked, "Is grandpa here with you?"

"No, a copy of him was never brought here from Earth."

"I thought I saw someone with you, upstairs."

"Yes, that is my current lover, Sam. If you accept my offer that you live here with me then you two will meet and get to know each-other." Elizabeth took Mary outside and they sat next to the pool. "Now tell me, how is your mother?"

"She had a horrible tumor, but now it is gone. It seemed like a miracle, but now I suspect her recovery was made possible by Wendy's use of technology."

the power of Nyrtia

Wendy nodded. "We teleported her into the Hierion Domain, treated her and then returned her to Earth. The treatment was to provide your mother with some medical nanites. Those nanoscopic devices cut off the blood flow to the tumor."

 

 Mary asked, "But you sent her back to Earth, with the nanites?"

Wendy sighed. "No. We don't like to deploy nanites on Earth. There is too much danger that they might escape. Imagine a world were suddenly cancer disappeared. Our teleportation equipment can screen out all nanites, so we could safely return your mother to Earth."

"It would be wonderful if you ended cancer on Earth!"

"No, it would be a disaster. In order for Earth to attain an acceptable future, medical nanites cannot be used in the Primitive Era for anything more than occasional miracles."

Elizabeth told Mary, "It is infuriating to work with robots. They could put an end to so much suffering on Earth, but they refuse to do so."

Wendy tried to justify the limited interventionism being practiced by the positronic robots who watched over Earth's Primitive Era. "Science and technology are advancing on Earth at a quick pace. Trust me; anything causing more rapid change creates its own problems."

 

Seeing that Wendy and Elizabeth could have continued arguing over the proper pace of scientific advance on Earth, Yira launched into a description of her family life. Elizabeth seemed to know the general outlines of recent events on Earth, but she was eager to hear details about her descendants, particularly concerning Mary's writing. Yira now regretted having left the copy of The Prob Visitation in Wendy's aircar. She told Elizabeth about the story she had been working on just before being teleported to Nanoville. "I think my story will have to be set in the future. The topics in the story such as identifying which particular brain region mediates telepathy are simply too unimaginable for conditions on Earth."

 

"I'm so glad you followed after your mother as a writer." Her curiosity somewhat sated, Elizabeth asked Yira, "And now, having seen Nanoville, you are going to provide new story ideas to yourself on Earth?"

Yira looked at Wendy, "That is what I have been told."

"Then I'm sure that is how it will be." Elizabeth nodded towards the robot. "It takes some getting used to, but Wendy can see into the future."

in the nanorealm

"Gohrlay and Nyrtia carefully monitor the future, but I am aware of the general pattern of future events. For example, Elizabeth, I must take Yra away from you now, before you start filling her mind with thoughts of living here with you and helping with..." Wendy paused briefly and seemed to leave something unsaid. "...the design and construction of Nanoville." Wendy told Yra, "I want to take you to meet Charlotte Burke."

 

Charlotte was Yira's favorite writer. Yira asked excitedly, "Charlotte is here?"

"A copy of her has been living here for fifty years."

 

Yira and Elizabeth said their goodbyes. Yira promised to return for regular visits, but she was eager to meet Charlotte. Wendy led the way back to the aircar. As they walked, Yira wondered: What has Charlotte been doing all this time... 50 years...

Wendy knew what was on Yira's mind. "Charlotte has been learning about the future. I've asked her to prepare a plan for helping Earthlings adjust to the rapid technological change that will soon bring Humanity into the space age, but she has become busy with other interests..."

 

Yira looked back over her shoulder and saw a mysterious figure gazing out from the second floor window. Wendy said, "I brought Samuel Butler here from the future to help get Elizabeth thinking about robots and artificial intelligence. They have become close friends."

"Who is Mr. Butler?"

 

"He will be born about 20 years in your future." Wendy and Yira were standing close to the aircar. "Nanoville is a good place for Sam..." Wendy explained, "With his leaping imagination, he will be too constricted on Earth. I think it will be best if you not move in with Elizabeth, but I do encourage you to become friends with Sam. He'll be able to help you with your work."

 

Next: Conversion

Wendy continued, "In addition to rocketry and space travel, we will also bring robotics technology to Earth. But it is you, Yra, who will begin the process of introducing futuristic ideas such as artificial life to Earth..." Wendy grinned mischievously, "...well, with your help, Mary will do it..." 

 

Wendy and Yira boarded the aircar and went flying off across Nanoville towards the home of Charlotte Burke.  

 

Related Reading: nanoscale teleportation

Continued: part 3 of "Hierion Writers Club".

Visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

We Interrupt...

Figure 1. The "legacy" text format is no
longer the default functionality.

During the past 4 months I have been avoiding "the new Blogger". In June, I briefly used "the new Blogger" then continued using the old legacy interface until I was forced to switch in September.

 

Return

One of the first annoyances that I discovered while using "the new Blogger" was that the default behavior of my "return" key had been changed. Among the text format options the default is now "Paragraph", but I am able to return to the "Normal" (legacy) linefeed.

White Space

One of the "features" of "the new Blogger" that I complained about in June was all of the white space on my screen. For example, rather than show multiple labels for blog posts, only one was displayed, even when there was a huge white space running across the page where more labels could have been displayed. Since June, this had been changed. However, "the new Blogger" each label must now be shown as a KLUNKY button rather than as a non-intrusive link:

 

Fig. 2. Wasted screen space around the CHUNKY images and label buttons, but now there are more labels.

What is most annoying is how "the new Blogger" wastes my precious screen space while I am editing blog posts. I have a nice large display, but rather than allow me to use all that screen space for creating my next blog post, much of the screen space is wasted:

Fig. 3. While editing a blog post, only about 37% of the screen space is available for the edited blog post.

Preset Image Sizes

Figure 4. Presets.

Back in June, I could not see a way to get "the new Blogger" to insert images at their original size. The new interface for inserting and formatting images is still annoying, but now there is a pop-out menu that includes the old "legacy" image size presets including "original" size. The default image size is still "medium".

 

Re-positioning images on the page is not easy. Theoretically you can drag an image to where you want it, but the software often messes things up and sometimes it refuses to put an image where you want it to be on the page. I use many images, so I checked if positioning images works better in Chrome (see the discussion below).

Figure 5. It was impossible to position the image where I wanted it on the page. At first, it was too high on the page (see above). Then it was too low on the page (see below).

Figure 6. With Firefox, I could not position the image correctly. Using Chrome, I could move it up one line (see below).

Deleting Images

Blogger removed the space between
the words 'new' and ' Blogger'.

There is no obvious way to quickly and gracefully delete an image from a blog post. The default  text format for image captions is center alignment. When I deleted an image and its caption, the center alignment was transferred over to the adjacent main text. When I corrected the alignment of that text, I found that  Blogger software had removed a space from between two words in my blog post. 

Preview

in Preview (bolded caption)

in edit window (no bold)

Unlike the situation in June, the default for Preview is now to open the preview of a blog post inside a new browser tab. Apparently there is a bug that can insert formatting from the main text into an adjacent caption. As shown to the left, caption text picked up bold formatting from the adjacent main text.

inexplicable line space (?)

The default for "the new Blogger" seems to be leaving no space between the main text and an image, which I think is crazy. Back in June, dealing with images in "the new Blogger" was even more pathological than it is now, with captions breaking away from images. Firefox seems to have fixed that issue. The new Preview gives results that are not seen in the editing window, a shown above for the bolding of text in captions. 

 

I was able to partially fix the image positioning problem that is shown above (see Figure 6) using Chrome browser (I could move the image up one line, but not two). However, in Chrome there is still the bug that rips captions off of images. Like Firefox, Chrome's webpage search function also does not work with "the new Blogger" HTML edit page. Ug!

Conclusion: some of the bugs in "the new Blogger" that were present 3 months ago have been fixed. Some bugs still remain. 😞

Next: the origins of Mary

________________________________

insert link tool

UPDATE 9/20/2020

There are still problems with the "new" Blogger handles images. I like to make numerous hypertext links in my blog posts, so one of the most annoying "features" of "the new Blogger" is the tool for inserting links. In the legacy version of the software, you could insert a link with command + k and then paste the link URL with command + v then hit the return key and you were done, no mouse clicks required. Now I must first click in the "Paste" field (I have no idea why it is called "Paste or search") then do the URL paste then click the "Open link in new window" option (I almost always use this) and then click a third time on "APPLY". In the legacy Blogger, it could remember your preference for making links open in the same window or not, but that functionality was lost in "the new Blogger".

UPDATE 9/22/2020

image source

Here is an example of the kind of thing that can go wrong with images when using "the new Blogger". See the small rectangle that is visible near the center of the image to the right. When I moved the image (click-and-drag, which worked well in the legacy version of Blogger), the image caption was detached from the image. I deleted the text from that "floating" caption, but the code for a table remained, as shown below:

code for an empty "ghost" table

Code for a normal figure shown below:

some image caption bugs have been fixed

October 1st update 

An annoying feature of "the new Blogger" is that you can compose a new blog post using the "compose view" only to have the  Blogger interface suddenly shift you into the "HTML view" and tell you that your blog post's HTML markup code has an error.

The good news is that some of the major bugs described above on this page seem to have been fixed or partially fixed during September.

Most annoying is that if I insert code such as that shown below for making an internal link between two parts of a blog post, then Blogger edits that code out of my blog post.

HTML code from this blog post.

November 20th Update

feedback

Jimmy the intern had a bad week at Blogger. Some days during the past week, Blogger has been nearly unusable. Long ago it used to be easy to loose text while creating a new blog post with Blogger. Then the programmers at Blogger finally figured out how to insert an auto-save feature into the software. For many years that worked fine. During this past week, they changed that auto-save feature so that the Blogger user interface would spend most of the time in some prolonged save process, continually interrupting my ability to keep working on a new blog post. Why any software company would subject its users to such horrible bugs is mystifying.

Related Reading: more fun with Blogger in 2021

Mandelbulber Animation

Nanoworld: a Mandelbulb fractal and a sphere primitive

I finally tried the animation feature of the Madelbulber2 fractal surfaces software. From the "View" menu, if you select "Show animation dock" then you are provided with the following controls:

animation controls

For my first animation I set the lower drop-down menu (speed control) to "constant".

"primitives" settings

To create a fractal surface for the animation, I started with a "primitive", a sphere, in the default position (0,0,0) and with the default radius (1). See the "primitives" controls shown to the left. When combined using the union(or) function, this sphere "covered up" part of the default-sized Mandelbulb fractal surface so only the "high altitude" parts of the fractal surface were visible. See the "Nanoworld" image above.

First Humanoid

I used the default material, but selected the image shown to the right for use as a "color texture". You can see that humanoid face "looking out" from the surface of Nanoworld.

In order to make a fractal surface with some interesting features such as tunnels, I combined the following four fractal surfaces (using the "union(or)" method) with the sphere primitive:

I decided to zoom in on the archway (upper left)

1) Mandelbulb
2) Reimann - Sphere Msltoe
3) Box Fold Bulb Pow 2 V2
4 Msltoe - Toroidal Bulb

To render this fractal surface, I used the "Delta DE" method for estimating distances from the camera to the fractal surface.

As a starting point for my animation, I zoomed in on the surface of Nanoworld, just in front to the arched entryway that can be seen "from above" in the image to the left. Some of the images that I show here have been modified in Photoshop so as to include characters from the Grean's Hack series.

Looking through the first archway,
another archway is seen beyond.

For creating the path that would be followed by the moving camera in order to create the animation, I used a low image resolution (half of the smallest preset resolution: 360 x 240 pixels) and a value of 1.0 for the "raymarching" render quality parameter. I clicked on the "record flight path" button and used the mouse cursor to guide the camera through the archway. Each frame for the animation took just a few seconds to render on these low-resolution settings. Then I switched to a larger image size (720 x 480) and 0.1 for the raymarching parameter before clicking "render flight animation". I generally make still renderings at my computer's screen resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels).

The video above shows a raw animation made with Mandelbulber2 and the default Mandelbulb fractal only. Shown below is a longer video, made by combining several animation sequences into tunnels present in the more complex fractal surface described above. The second video (below) was made with iMovie and includes some transition scenes that were made with Photoshop. This second video has an audio track supplied by YouTube: "The Quantum  Realm". For some of the animation sequences, there were 180 degree turns. The default animation settings in Mandelbulber2 for camera momentum and maximum rate of camera movement make it hard to turn the camera quick enough, so I changed those settings at the risk of making the camera a little wobbly as I went through the series of tunnels.

Shown below is a single rendered frame close to the second archway and processed with Photoshop to insert Artep into the scene.

The second archway is cluttered with "alien lifeforms". Artep was added to the scene with Photoshop.

looking back towards the first archway

According to the instructions for Mandelbulber2, I thought that holding down the "shift" key would stop the camera from advancing forward and allow me to turn the camera. However, I could not get that to work.

The image to the right shows the view looking back towards the first archway from the second archway. This image was modified in Photoshop to add some lighting and to add in the two story characters. Without the added lighting, the inside of the archway was rather dark.

Sadly, the instruction manual for Mandelbulber2 does not have a section describing how to use the keyframes feature for animations. At six hours of rendering for a 5 second animation I'm afraid that I'm reaching the limits of this old computer.

 

image source

The video above is an example where I could rotate the camera ('z' and 'x' keys) and control speed of the "flight" with left and right mouse buttons.

Related Reading: other posts in this series about using Mandelbulber2 to make fractal surfaces
- 7 Fractal Surfaces
- Hybridize 7
- 7 Alternate Iterations -

Next: the origins of Mary

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