Explanation:
This applet creates a (fractal?) pretty design by means
of lots of random walks. First it creates one point in the center of the display
area. Then it creates lots more points, one by one. It chooses a random starting
location for each point, then randomly "walks" the point around until it touches
a previously stuck point, at which point the new point sticks, and the program
moves on to another. In this way an attractive pattern is created. In the first
version of this, I displayed the walk, but after I sped it up a fair amount the walks were no
longer visible anyway, and there was a display bug around them, so I took that out.
This program was almost directly lifted off an idea explained to me by
Dominique Thiebaut of Smith College in the Assembly class I took from him.
Slideshow:
It takes a while to get a really complex image. So I let it run
for varying periods of time (in various incarnations of the applet) and took
screenshots. Go here to look at them.