Renaissance man

For any reasonably competent DIYer this would be counted as amateurish and laughable, especially with the time it took to make.  But here it is.

After 9 months of try outs with various types of wood.  Learning their characteristics and opting finally for simple plywood.  I finally have a pinhole camera that accepts 5*7 darkslides.  This now enables me to take several pictures without running back home to load new paper.  It was worth the effort.

Yes, the intention was to dovetail the joints, but I am no carpenter (plywood just splinters and oak is very brittle) and I finally decided the priority was 'make the camera' not make it look beautiful.  It turns out that it is strong enough as is, since I have dropped it a couple of time with no breakages.

I think the age of childhood motivations has gone.  With the advent of television, there is no longer 'I want to fly because when I was a child....', 'I want to do this or that because .....'  

Its sad but I think its the truth and it started with my generation.  The 60's and later have a lot to answer for.

However I do wonder if its just a case of rose glasses and belief in old timer's stories about their motivations.

On my childhood bedroom wall hung a map of the world with small cartoon drawings describing famous parts of the world: the pyramids, camels, whales, Empire state building and the rest.  I like to think that maybe, just maybe, that was my motivation for travelling.  It was a magical map and I have sinced visited many of these areas I used to dream about.  I still have it rolled up somewhere.  Difficult to scan but I will take a photo of it soon and include it here.

I am of the age now that I find that when someone mentions a place I cannot remember if I actually visited it or not.  Does it matter, you may ask.  Yes, it does to me and this is a little reminder for myself so that I do not lose the memory in some unused part of my grey matter nor in some chkdsk'ed hard disk that refuses to let go of it's secrets.

I suppose I could write all of it down, but then as I said the 60's and later have a lot to answer for :D  A pen, whats that?

To be continued....

Introduction

Fascinating view of how chaos can organise itself into patterns.

Perhaps it is the basis of the universe, a self organising system cancelling out the inevitable second law of thermodynamics. 

Starting off with the clumping of gases in the primordial soup that was our universe, into galaxies, stars and planets, to the self organising clumping of clays in the primordial earth that was our planet and ending with the self organising organic molecules that created life.  

Now these self organising clumps that is life can catalyse new lumps and in this way counteract even more the inevitable entropy of matter.

This project is simply a look at Conway's Game of LIfe and some modifications on the theme in order to better understand Chaos and Complexity.

Conway's Rules :

    1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.
    2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
    3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
    4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

 Tests using 2 or less counters.

 Counters disappear on first move

 Tests using 3 counters :

 Tests using 4 counters :

The 4 basic Conway rules (see above) as applied to a randomly seeded 40 x 40 board :