[MD] The Game of Life

[Case]

Ok, these exercise arises from the Probability thread. This should be a fun
thing to do but please DO it before you comment here. You can get a detailed
explanation of what this is doing from the Wiki link. The Wiki also has some
simple patterns that you can construct and see how they work.

But please follow these instructions first. No peeking ahead. We can talk
about the significance of this at length but even if you are familiar with
the Game of Life do the three exercises below so that everyone commenting
here will have a common point of reference.

I know there are anarchists in the crowd but please for once restrain
yourself and follow the directions.

Go to:
http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

This is a web version of The Game of Life.

Exercise 1:
1. In the drop down box that says "Clear" in it click the downy arrow and
select "Gosper Glider Gun."

2. From the drop down that says "Slow" pick "Hyper"

3. In the drop down that says "Big: pick "Small".

4. click Start and see what happens

The options listed in that first drop down as a selection of the zoology of
the Game of Life. They are just a few repeated patterns that people have
observed by messing with this.

Exercise 2:

1. Click stop 

2. Pick some of the other presets like "Tumbler", "lightweight space ship"
and "10 cell row". 

3. Click Start

4. Repeat to look as many of these patterns as you find interesting.

Exercise 3:

1. Click stop 

2. Click your mouse inside the grey area. Hold it down to draw in some
yellow cells. Draw them in haphazardly until you have a yellow area about
the size of a quarter. Just so you have a patch of color it doesn't have to
be solid. 

3. Click Start. 

4. Once it settles down just click and hold the mouse button down and move
it around in the stable cells and patterns and see what happens. Click stop
and drawn a larger or small patch of yellow and click Start to watch it go.

5. Just play around with this. Experiment with the controls. If you actually
want to draw some of the patterns from the Wiki, try shifting from small
cells to Big cells to draw and then back to small to watch it go. You can
make is go slow as well. Seeing the effect of altered time scales is pretty
interesting. Making it advance one recursion at a time by clicking the next
button instead of start will let you see what changes occur from one
iteration to the next.

Ok, tell us what you saw?