The Designspace

Mandelbulb 3D Parameter: Metallic Fountains

For the Mandelbulb 3D enthusiasts out there, I'm putting up some of my best images along with their formulas. Click here to see the complete list. Parameters for this one are below the fold.

Mandelbulb3Dv17{
X.....S....K0...kR/..2M....KJg1FfXYrzefpDx87rw6E.mDKSm/91zncDvJn4fP2./4rcIU3ehvj
................................3F6Neetzf.2........Y./..................I/2.....
.................Q.04....6k/....D/....E4.....ATeDoeHFHnD/QETi8sDV1r34dkpXm1....U
z.EnAngD12../2UaNaNaN4xxz642MZ1h6UvjBnAnAnAPkz9..........Y.u1....y1...sD...../..
.w1...oDLSBXO5G8mwn7ma4pE9W/zSCE1S.5KCmjIiD.OPfeXw9IMh3ABkx6z42/HzX.QvmjOsVI.vcx
2wf8YTzUOMVAz6buAlvLkDmj.....ynE....F.........kD/I....sD.6E.0...................
.............ckpXm1...sD....z./St4.gsZP.EZLi/.TSt4.YuZP.kgLi/.xSt4ETi8sD7....k1.
.....orDZz1.....y/kz.w/5K.UL.w1.0/...k2...ED....N/....1....5....u....YX6...UOt5A
..EfisQlayldde95om8ZKk3NhpB62c..TxpL..EbG7eFT5wj/.cXcESLfz9...........kA8.UI0a8.
.s41pmERLz1.ilEhAIrxz0...........6X0.MHDz...R8Zc4xRkz.kuvBTuCfxD............0c..
yR7c...Fbf24LNvj.MJOyyyDuz9..........IV.86kzzzD...bHEkwNxy1.0qK3QGDsz0ED7HVT2Ryj
IEn1/QwXG/..tvrJdY9/z0EcgQmMoEyj.I3tpP.HNz9..M1AZ..U.06.w2mOW/3..1Ak.ACGKNpG.cgm
81./ThIGx.UaOe7.ACa9c6/..06U.ktNIt2B..6U.0E9hl07I.UaOe7.B35JCF1..06U.YWRdAW3..6U
.0EQvdIFj.UdaO8...UDp6..ee0Pex2.IJZJKh2.szbDp6..Z7bBsIa9e/rN..rN.sWOkR4.........
E.../A....E/....2....A....EEh3aSdtqNU6oPs/.IjR5.......................k/9.......
.................UNwz0......U8yDaNaNaNahkz1.....................................
................................................................................
.....................2.....3..../....AoPnZaPZ/pPrV1.gJ4BY/......................
.....................QaNaNaNatvj........Uz1........wz...................kz1.....
................................................................................
................................Y/...M....k.....4x4PYZaPb/GGiF56ExqR............
..........U0.U...................................EnF.1......kg0E................
................................................................................
............................................}

TinCan API Sparks: Matters of Authority

One thing a Learning Management System does very well is convey an implicit, if perhaps unearned, sense of authority to the learning activities it contains. To those of us who tend to do our learning informally, it may seem a bit quaint, but in the TinCan era, as the corporate LMS becomes a side-show to the main act of "all that other content out there," issues surrounding authoritativeness and quality will have to be addressed.

In the healthcare domain I work in, worries about quality of information, compliance, risk, consistency, and up-to-date-ness are very real. They don't prevent anyone from searching the web for whatever they need, but they may be barriers to the spread of good ideas, perhaps using some type of chain or cascade of authoritative approval. Whose judgement do you trust, and whose judgement do they trust, and what are they using? And is there any data anywhere that supports it?

As the LMS's walled garden of content become less important, we'll need to consider using all the tools at our disposal that could represent the value of content or activities. Besides peer review, numbers of citations, user evaluations and reviews, there are all the sharing and content collection tools used on the web to curate and "float" things to the top: "Like" and "+1" buttons, favorites, sharing, stacking, ordering, ranking, reviewing, annotating, etc. We may even need to find some way to assert that an official document has not been tampered with.

I'm wondering if some of these functions should be incorporated into the TinCan spec at some point, either as extensions or as verbs.

On a larger scale, search engines have had to think about quality for quite a while now, and something akin to the Google Page Rank algorithm may also have some application here.

IIS not recognizing .aspx extension (404 error)

While trying to install a .NET application on a Windows Server 2003 box, I ran into a problem where the .aspx extension was not being recognized. Browsing .NET pages resulted in 404 ("page not found") errors. Since the same set of application files had been installed on several other servers without incident, it seemed likely that there was something different about this server. The same version of .NET had been installed on all the servers, but never used.

I had assigned .NET 2.0.50727 to the application using the drop-down menu in the Application properties window in IIS Manager. But apparently, sometimes the .NET installer doesn't register .NET to IIS, and it has to be done manually.

You can tell that this is the problem, if you have assigned .NET to the application, but when looking in IIS Manager > Web Service Extensions, it does not show up in the list.

At a command prompt, run the command below, with the path and .NET version altered to match your setup:

C:\path_to\Microsoft.NET\Framework\.NET_version_no\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

Examples:

C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

After running this command, if the path was correct, you should now see ASP.NET in the list of web service extensions. Make sure the correct one is set to "Allowed."

TinCan API sparks: Bite-sized Learning

Like many corporate learning departments, ours spends a substantial amount of effort creating and delivering mandatory learning programs. Fire Safety, Infection Control, and Corporate Compliance are just a few of the required activities taken by thousands of people every year. Because they affect so many people, it would be nice if they were as relevant, interesting and responsive to changing institutional priorities as they are ubiquitous.

One idea that came up in a recent brainstorming session on the problem, was to allow learners to choose between a variety of new methods of taking their yearly requirements, methods that TinCan might make possible.

One of those new delivery modes might be a weekly email containing just one highly relevant, "drawn from the headlines" story and question. That question could be answered right there in their email, in about the time it would take to post to Twitter.

The learner would receive immediate, useful feedback, be shown their current standing (how many left to do), and would also be offered related learning opportunities, in similar bite-sized fashion, somewhat like YouTube offers related videos.

The "mini-mandatory" doesn't have to be an email: it could also be an SMS, a robocall survey, a startup item that appears when they log in, or maybe even something on a touchscreen in a public place.

Learners wouldn't have to respond to every one of these questions to fulfill their yearly quota - just a percentage, and mixing and matching between modes would be allowed.

At any given time, the content could be changed rapidly as new priorities or initiatives come up, and perhaps we could even design them to be adaptive.