fun items for computer graphics

Some nice pictures of the moon . You can also get a history of lunar exploration .

the GIMP (general image processing routines) http://www.nuclecu.unam.mx/~federico/gimp/el-the-gimp.html GIMP is on the SOD machines.

Persistence Of Vision(POV-Ray)Trace, create really NICE images http://www.povray.org/

Visualization and showing data with a computer

The following two books show some nice graphics based on mathematical models (such as fractals).

Peterson, Ivans, The Mathematical Tourist: snapshots of modern mathematics, W.H.Freeman and Company, New York, 1988.

Pickover, Clifford A., Computers, Pattern, Chaos and Beauty: graphics from an unseen world, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1990. ISBN 0-312-06179-X
This book also gives a number of techniques to visualize data so you can see hidden patterns in the data.

If you are interested in Visualization Read the Following.
If you do Visualization, get the Books

Tufte, Edward, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, Cheshire Connecticut.

Tufte, Edward, Envisioning Information, Graphics Press, Cheshire Connecticut, 1990.