I was going to use a Mandelbrot, but I thought I'd try something different and use a different sort of Julia Set (can't remember what it was). I was particularly lazy and didn't do anything to make it look nice, but oh well. btw: I look for avatars first also
My brother read that book. He said that there is very little story; most of the time, the main character person is just talking about whaling (quite boring).