Himself

Conway’s Life as noise

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To the ever-growing list of names of people that have been so familiar (almost as if we actually knew them) but are now no more we must add John Conway. Many who dabbled with programming on old computers will have implemented a version of Conway’s Game of Life which determined if a cell should live or die by following a set of rules:

  1. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours survives.
  2. Any dead cell with three live neighbours becomes a live cell.
  3. All other live cells die in the next generation. Similarly, all other dead cells stay dead.

There is a version implemented within the wonderful Xynthesizr which allows for some random generative noise. We add a few cells, which live or die by the rules, and then let it evolve by itself – never quite reaching a stable state.

It uses a Messiaen scale. There was a nice tribute by XKCD too…

Why we stay at home

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Most graphs mapping the spread of the coronavirus measure against time giving an exponential curve upwards.

By removing the time element the growth becomes a straight line. It is then easy to see when the spread drops away from the growth line, as in China, and where the spread is rocketing off into the unknown as can be seen in Aatish Bhatia’s graphs.

So we stay at home avoiding contact with other people to stop the virus from spreading and break away from that line of growth as quickly as possible.

Update:  And this…

 

 

This is what home education should be like…

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Having become increasingly alarmed by people trying to replicate school at home and all that nonsense it is reassuring to see someone doing it right.

Think of all the lessons learnt while doing this.

Yet more Google crap

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While it is fairly easy to drop the likes of Facebook Google presents a more insidious challenge….

And will need to remove players such as the SoundCloud one which links out to ScoreCard Research 🙁