Editing Talk:2293: RIP John Conway
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This is really very impressive. The design of the stick figure to allow it to release a glider that ascends upwards (the "soul" rising to "heaven" or whatever) with the body decaying - that's a hard thing to get right using just the Game of Life rules. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.175|172.69.68.175]] 17:49, 13 April 2020 (UTC) | This is really very impressive. The design of the stick figure to allow it to release a glider that ascends upwards (the "soul" rising to "heaven" or whatever) with the body decaying - that's a hard thing to get right using just the Game of Life rules. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.175|172.69.68.175]] 17:49, 13 April 2020 (UTC) | ||
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:::::He probably started with the floater, and adjusted the rest so it wouldn't interfere. Most figures decay in the game of life (I learned when playing with it, decades ago) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.79|162.158.111.79]] 10:45, 14 April 2020 (UTC) | :::::He probably started with the floater, and adjusted the rest so it wouldn't interfere. Most figures decay in the game of life (I learned when playing with it, decades ago) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.79|162.158.111.79]] 10:45, 14 April 2020 (UTC) | ||
:::::The Game of Life has been researched a lot. One sub-problem is finding an arrangement of cells that cannot be produced by a prior arrangement of cells. They are called Garden of Eden patterns, and the known ones are not small. Glider generators are rather common, so it is most likely that the initial pattern was created by working backward from an existing glider generator.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.125|173.245.54.125]] 17:33, 14 April 2020 (UTC) | :::::The Game of Life has been researched a lot. One sub-problem is finding an arrangement of cells that cannot be produced by a prior arrangement of cells. They are called Garden of Eden patterns, and the known ones are not small. Glider generators are rather common, so it is most likely that the initial pattern was created by working backward from an existing glider generator.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.125|173.245.54.125]] 17:33, 14 April 2020 (UTC) | ||
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was there a placeholder comic posted before the gif went live? | was there a placeholder comic posted before the gif went live? | ||
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The game's popularization "to the general public" in Windows 3.1 really depends on your definition of popular - how many members of the general public had PCs then? I mention this to point out that it was really Martin Gardner's article in SciAm in October 1970 that showed the game to a pretty wide public, although admittedly few people were in a position to program it at the time. As I maintained the University of Cambridge's version on the PDP-7 (then their only computer with a graphics display) in 1971-72 I'm still astonished at how early this publication was. Gardner then did the same for the Mandelbrot Set (which originated in the Other Cambridge...) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.74|162.158.78.74]] 04:23, 16 April 2020 (UTC) | The game's popularization "to the general public" in Windows 3.1 really depends on your definition of popular - how many members of the general public had PCs then? I mention this to point out that it was really Martin Gardner's article in SciAm in October 1970 that showed the game to a pretty wide public, although admittedly few people were in a position to program it at the time. As I maintained the University of Cambridge's version on the PDP-7 (then their only computer with a graphics display) in 1971-72 I'm still astonished at how early this publication was. Gardner then did the same for the Mandelbrot Set (which originated in the Other Cambridge...) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.74|162.158.78.74]] 04:23, 16 April 2020 (UTC) | ||
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== Leaving the grid == | == Leaving the grid == | ||
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The thing I remember Conway for (in addition to Game of Life) is discovering the Doomsday rule/algorithm for determining days of the week (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule). Of course, I'm nowhere near anywhere as fast as he is (I'm happy if I can do it without making a mistake in 10 seconds, more if I'm calculating under the influence). I find it fitting that Conway died on a Doomsday (Saturday for 2020).[[User:Tovodeverett|Tovodeverett]] ([[User talk:Tovodeverett|talk]]) 05:41, 17 April 2020 (UTC) | The thing I remember Conway for (in addition to Game of Life) is discovering the Doomsday rule/algorithm for determining days of the week (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule). Of course, I'm nowhere near anywhere as fast as he is (I'm happy if I can do it without making a mistake in 10 seconds, more if I'm calculating under the influence). I find it fitting that Conway died on a Doomsday (Saturday for 2020).[[User:Tovodeverett|Tovodeverett]] ([[User talk:Tovodeverett|talk]]) 05:41, 17 April 2020 (UTC) | ||
:Trivia: I was introduced to Conway's Game of Life through the book "The Magic of Lewis Carroll", by John Fischer (1973). One of the Life patterns was the "Cheshire Cat", which was a cat-like face that became a smile, then a paw-print (2x2 stable block). Conway developed the Doomsday algorithm from Lewis Carroll's initial formula, primarily by noting the even month pattern (4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12) and the 9 to 5 at 7-11 mnemonic.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.191|172.69.63.191]] 13:17, 17 April 2020 (UTC) | :Trivia: I was introduced to Conway's Game of Life through the book "The Magic of Lewis Carroll", by John Fischer (1973). One of the Life patterns was the "Cheshire Cat", which was a cat-like face that became a smile, then a paw-print (2x2 stable block). Conway developed the Doomsday algorithm from Lewis Carroll's initial formula, primarily by noting the even month pattern (4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12) and the 9 to 5 at 7-11 mnemonic.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.191|172.69.63.191]] 13:17, 17 April 2020 (UTC) | ||
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