Fractals

I’ve been researching the Julia and Mandelbrot sets for school, and I’ve found a few interesting and useful sites:

• Julia and Mandelbrot Sets, including a Julia and Mandelbrot set explorer and an Mandelbrot set applet, by David E. Joyce, Professor of
  Mathematics and Computer Science at Clark University
• Sven Hellbach‘s Julia set applet which lets you zoom into the Julia set
• a simple Mandelbrot explorer by Mike Bursell
• the Black Saturn Mandelbrot Explorer
• XaoS “is a fast portable real-time interactive fractal zoomer. It displays the Mandelbrot set (among other escape time fractals) and allows you zoom smoothly into the fractal. Various coloring modes are provided for both the points inside and outside the selected set. In addition, switching between Julia and Mandelbrot fractal types and on-the-fly plane switching is provided.” Versions for Mac, Windows, Linux and other systems are available for download. I downloaded the Mac version and already had a lot of fun with it.

André Update

The day after he came home from the hospital, André got a smaller cast on his right arm (Sam, he got a purple one, not pink like Abby suggested). His arm movement is improving slowly but steadily, and he will start getting physiotherapy next week.

André Update

He’s home! André just came home from the hospital. His left arm is no longer in a cast, just in a bandage. However, the arm is still swollen and he can’t really move it much because of the surgery. But it will get better, slowly.

Thanks again to everyone who posted on their weblog, sent email or called. Your sympathy is much appreciated.

André Update

I spent much of today at the hospital again. It’s terribly hot in Bonn at the moment, around 35°C (95°F), so casts are not the most comfortable thing to wear at the moment. But at least André felt fit enough today to go for a little walk around the hospital.

The left cast has an extra part at the end which was used to hang the arm after the surgery. He will probably get plastic casts next week – or maybe just one cast. They said that the bone which was screwed back together (left arm) only needed a cast for one week.

And for comparison, I dug through my photo albums and found this:

Me in October 1988. I had the casts for four weeks. My casts ended below the elbows, so I could use my arms better than André can now. After some practising I was able to eat, dress myself and even play the piano a little bit.

Update

André was in good spirits when I visited him in the hospital yesterday. He still can’t use his arms for much, but he can manoeuvre them more easily. He’s allowed to get up and walk a few steps (as long as he can carry the heavy casts). He also managed to read a newspaper yesterday. The doctor told him he would have to spend another week at the hospital, so lets hope he will be released next Friday. Incidentally, that is also the last day of school before the summer holidays, so I’ll be able to take care of him then.

I’m planning on spending much of today in the hospital so I can help him with eating and so on. Garret, thanks for your idea! In the hospital, he’s getting bottles of water. They put a straw in and tape it to the top of the bottle so the bubbles won’t push it out. It works quite well.

Hal, thank you for posting the photo of us in he kiva at Pecos. And thanks to others who have sent email!

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read this (or scroll down).

Two broken arms at the same time

Yesterday, André managed to trip over something and to fall in such a way that he broke both his arms. Yes, you read that right. He got up after the fall and thought he was fine, but fainted a few minutes later and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. The x-rayed his arms and discovered a crack in the right forearm bone (I don’t know which of the two) and that a piece of the left forearm bone had snapped off. He got casts on both arms right up to the shoulders, and he also got a bed in the hospital. This morning, the left arm was operated on. The doctors screwed the bone back together, and everything went alright. He will have to stay at the hospital until at least Monday, but at least he’ll lose the cast on his left arm in about a week because the screw will hold the bone together. The other arm will probably have to stay in the cast for two weeks.

I spent yesterday evening and much of this afternoon in the hospital. His surgery was around 8 am and went fine, and André was in good spirits when I arrived at the hospital at 2 pm. I think the biggest problem is that he can’t use his arms, so someone needs to help him with everything, or almost everything. It’s going to be fun when he gets to come home next week…

And by the way, I sort of know what he is going through at the moment – because I managed to break both my arms at the same time as well. It happened at school, when I was 13, and it was not funny. I had casts from my hands to just under the elbows for four weeks, and it took me about a week to learn how to eat and dress myself. But I was lucky because my casts left my elbows free so I was able to move my arms quite well. I guess that when André tries to eat something, he’s going to miss his mouth because he can’t bend the arm at the elbow.

But even if I have to feed him, it will be good to have him back home.

P.S.: If you want to reach him, please send email to my address. He won’t be able to check his accounts anytime soon.