Ahouxt.180 net.misc utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!npois!houxi!houxt!4341jhf Thu Feb 18 19:39:14 1982 Me and the Cellular Automata Here's how I got interested... Several years ago, while in Grad School (UVA Materials Science), a friend told me (with great fervor) about an article in Sci Am which dealt with Conway's game of LIFE. He went on to describe some of the fascinating patterns and properties of the "game", and told me about all the cpu cycles people were burning in playing LIFE. He even showed me a rudimentary program he wrote to play it. My curiosity was aroused. Sometime later, I wrote my own "LIFE" program in (ug) BASIC. Trouble was, I didn't exactly remember the rule set. It turned out that I specified a rule set which I now call "parity", it wasn't LIFE but it was interesting in it's own right! I later got the Sci Am articles and corrected the program. I found that LIFE was fascinating, but excruciatingly slooooowwwwww over a 300 baud line to my home brew terminal. (This was around 1973.) I had already built my own homebrew terminal, and had previously fooled around with video pattern displays, and was looking for something else to build. Besides, who wants to wait for ever for output. So I decided to build hardware into my homebrew terminal so that it could play LIFE as well as the "parity" game I inadvertently discovered. I built the hardware. It was GREAT.... gliders zipping about, simple patterns duplicating, ..... a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of patterns! I was hooked. It was some time later that I learned that I had built a simple cellular automata. Over the next two years the hardware evolved into my present machine: 64 by 64 bi-state space of cells which can be either: warped (wrap-around across the edges) or flat (border of fixed zero "cells") 1 to 8 nearest-neighbor cell neighborhood (switch selectable) 1 of 8 transitions selectable for each neighborhood "state" or count - turn cell off - turn cell on - invert state of cell - retain state of cell and - 1 of 4 adjustable random values 30 generations per second displayed on a CRT I am currently using this machine for the following: -entertainment of a sort -investigation of rule sets and effects of starting patterns -search for new oscillators and stable patterns -playing with "nucleation like phenomena" using random rules -search for aesthetic patterns (an artist friend borrowed the machine and got hooked for almost two weeks) -output device for cellular automata software simulator I am developing in C I don't have too much time to build hardware these days, but I still dream about building a great mother machine with a 128x128 cell space in full color, etc... that runs at 30-60 generations per second. These days I'm learning C by writing programs which simulate more complex cellular automata, and to see if it would be worth building the BIG machine. I've already learned a number of new things without burning many cpu cycles. I'd love to hear from anyone with a similar (related?) interest, and in particular if you have any interesting hardware, programs, patterns, or references on the subject. (I already have Burke's Essays on Cellular Automata, and all Sci Am and BTYE articles.) O O O O O O O O O O O OO OO OO OO John Fikus (houxt!4341jhf) O O BTL FJ 1F105 x5222 OO OO OO OO O O O O O O O O O O O ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.