Upgrading & Distractions

I've just about completed the upgrade from 32-bit Win 7 to 64-bit Win 7 on my laptop. The upgrade was pretty straight forward, and I only forgot to back up one thing... the files that hold the layer and other presets in Ultra Fractal. I also use UF on my desktop, so at least some of the presets are there and now moved to the laptop. Alas, I am missing the the preset folder layers I created on the laptop. I've been doing a lot of stuff on my laptop in anticipation of upgrading the workstation whose backup would entail far more intensive scrutiny. Too many distractions over the past few months to even consider tackling that job.

What distractions? Well, there was leaving Yale, permanently, taking a month-long road trip, buying a house in Florida, moving to said house in Florida and then unpacking and setting up that house for living.

I've come to realize that we seem to buy houses where the former owner liked to plant and the outdoors has been left to run wild. That is one thing in Connecticut, bad but not impossible, then there is Florida where it's a jungle out there.

I've got a container garden going in the back now. Containers contain things, and in Florida, plant containment is a good thing. It does entail watering said garden daily but the result is worth it.

Another distraction to the upgrade process is Ultra Fractal itself. Once I installed the Ultra Fractal software, I felt compelled to try it out. You know, had to make sure it worked, and all that. Well I hadn't done anything with imported images for a while, so I had to edit an image I downloaded from the Dover samplers website and see what I could do.

461394-051---Butterflies.png

To download the image, click on the image to open it full size, then right-click on that image and save. I mention this because I want to send the upr to the UF mailing list.

The above image resulted in

I thought this was a little on the dark side, so I kept on going. I realized that the new image needed a central detail, so I went back to my Butterflies image and found just the detail I needed.

461394-051-Butterfly-Detail.png

Again, to download the image, click to open full size, then right-click and save.

The lighter result is

So you see, there are lots of distractions all around me.