Thread for basic questions

[dvgrn]

I'm uh unable to download the pdf from Book, read it online, buy it or open Lulu.com. Does anyone have a PDF?

The file is too large to attach to a forum post, even in ZIP format.

You really can't download from this link? What exactly happens when you try? It seems as if the same thing (whatever it is) would be likely to happen no matter how someone tries to get a copy to you, short of shipping it on a USB key.

[dl-rs]

I'm uh unable to download the pdf from Book, read it online, buy it or open Lulu.com. Does anyone have a PDF?

The file is too large to attach to a forum post, even in ZIP format.

You really can't download from this link? What exactly happens when you try? It seems as if the same thing (whatever it is) would be likely to happen no matter how someone tries to get a copy to you, short of shipping it on a USB key.

The screen goes grey. And I can't buy it either, which is unfortunate.

[dvgrn]

The screen goes grey. And I can't buy it either, which is unfortunate.

What is your OS, and what browser are you trying to use? What does it look like on your system when you download any large PDF file, like let's say this PDF by Nick Gotts?

If you have a very slow Internet connection maybe the above download will work fine -- in which case, maybe you just need to be prepared to wait about sixty times as long as it takes to download that, for the book PDF download to complete.

However, I'd strongly advise not doing what you're currently doing, which is clicking directly on the link. This is (probably) resulting in your system trying to download the PDF in the background and then display it, without putting a copy in any permanent location on your computer.

Instead, right-click the link and choose "Save As...", and choose a location on your hard drive. That way you can usually see a progress bar for how long the file will take to download, and you'll have a copy that you can open whenever you want without having to download it again.

[dl-rs]

The screen goes grey. And I can't buy it either, which is unfortunate.

What is your OS, and what browser are you trying to use? What does it look like on your system when you download any large PDF file, like let's say this PDF by Nick Gotts?

If you have a very slow Internet connection maybe the above download will work fine -- in which case, maybe you just need to be prepared to wait about sixty times as long as it takes to download that, for the book PDF download to complete.

However, I'd strongly advise not doing what you're currently doing, which is clicking directly on the link. This is (probably) resulting in your system trying to download the PDF in the background and then display it, without putting a copy in any permanent location on your computer.

Instead, right-click the link and choose "Save As...", and choose a location on your hard drive. That way you can usually see a progress bar for how long the file will take to download, and you'll have a copy that you can open whenever you want without having to download it again.

Thanks. I'm using a Mac, and a downloaded file is stored in a special zip. I down loaded it successfully.

[ihatecorderships]

2022 oscillator stamp collection, as of June 15:

Code: Select all

very long rle

Why are there numbers in base 2 and base 6 below the period numbers?

[Entity Valkyrie 2]

2022 oscillator stamp collection, as of June 15:

Code: Select all

very long rle

Why are there numbers in base 2 and base 6 below the period numbers?

kind of a personal flair, to be honest;
the base 2 is a reference to technology
the base 6 is a reference to jan Misali

[Macbi]

What is the doubled signal toolkit, and what is it good for?

[dvgrn]

What is the doubled signal toolkit, and what is it good for?

The current version of the DST can be found in this thread.

Its basic purpose is to start with one glider and create N synchronized gliders, by building a simple "spine" that's a Herschel-based glider emitter (so we can get as many gliders out as we want). Then the actual toolkit is a set of 16 attachments to the spine that produce each of the sixteen possible colors and mod-8 phases of gliders. Each attachment includes a trombone slide to handle +/-8N timing adjustments.

The goal is to find a toolkit that allows all 16 attachments to take up the smallest possible space. A pretty good way of doing this is to send the initial signal through an H-to-G0 (two gliders one after another, with different mod-8 timings) and then use semi-Snarks and semi-cenarks in the trombone slides, which would choose one or the other of those two gliders, and get different timings that way.

Somewhere back there was a quadruple-signal toolkit, which could use either a Snark and a quadri-Snark, or various combinations semi-Snarks and semi-cenarks. But since the Bandersnatch came along, it started to look more efficient to just use double signals -- and certainly the repeat time was a lot better!

[confocaloid]

What are known objects with two or more distinct minimum single-phase bounding boxes? For example, if there is an oscillator that has bounding box 6x10 in one phase and has bounding box 5x12 in another phase, and also does not have a smaller bounding box in any other phase, it would qualify.

[wirehead]

I was looking through the Golly codebase today and I found this --

Code: Select all

// These default cell colors were generated by continuously finding the
// color furthest in rgb space from the closest of the already selected
// colors, black, and white.

static unsigned char default_colors[] = {
    48,48,48, // better if state 0 is dark gray (was 255,127,0)
    0,255,127,127,0,255,148,148,148,128,255,0,255,0,128,
    0,128,255,1,159,0,159,0,1,255,254,96,0,1,159,96,255,254,
    254,96,255,126,125,21,21,126,125,125,21,126,255,116,116,116,255,116,
    116,116,255,228,227,0,28,255,27,255,27,28,0,228,227,227,0,228,
    27,28,255,59,59,59,234,195,176,175,196,255,171,194,68,194,68,171, [truncated for brevity]

-- specifically, in gui-common/algos.cpp or gui-wx/wxalgos.cpp (they're almost entirely the same).

Where is the code that produced these colors??? I mean, I really don't think that was all done by hand.

[Book]

Does anyone know the origin of the name Krake (the still life)? I know that's German for octopus but...

[Ian07]

Does anyone know the origin of the name Krake (the still life)? I know that's German for octopus but...

Not exactly, but the name does appear in Achim's original 1992 census.

[Book]

Does anyone know the origin of the name Krake (the still life)? I know that's German for octopus but...

Not exactly, but the name does appear in Achim's original 1992 census.

I guess it sorta looks like an octopus.

[Book]

I would like to complete the wiki Density article still life table with rle examples for max density n=12-18. Managed to fill in a few others by constructing rles from images but cannot find even an image for any of n=12-18. It would be great to complete this table for posterity.

[pzq_alex]

I would like to complete the wiki Density article still life table with rle examples for max density n=12-18. Managed to fill in a few others by constructing rles from images but cannot find even an image for any of n=12-18. It would be great to complete this table for posterity.

See http://www.csse.unimelb.edu.au/~pjs/still-life/.

[dvgrn]

I would like to complete the wiki Density article still life table with rle examples for max density n=12-18. Managed to fill in a few others by constructing rles from images but cannot find even an image for any of n=12-18. It would be great to complete this table for posterity.

See http://www.csse.unimelb.edu.au/~pjs/still-life/.

That link doesn't work for me -- I had to dig something up on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090722111 ... till-life/
https://web.archive.org/web/20091020091 ... p09-sl.pdf

But that paper and link only seem to give results for n>=20. Are there n=12..18 results hidden there somewhere too?

[pzq_alex]

That link doesn't work for me -- I had to dig something up on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090722111 ... till-life/
https://web.archive.org/web/20091020091 ... p09-sl.pdf

But that paper and link only seem to give results for n>=20. Are there n=12..18 results hidden there somewhere too?

The original paper (available at here) gives some MiniZinc code. If only someone can set up the software and run them…?

[Book]

The original paper (available at here) gives some MiniZinc code. If only someone can set up the software and run them…?

Yes, I, too, was hoping for some working code (if not pattern files).

I had already scoured references and such. And a link to that paper was already in the wiki article (ref 1).

(edit) scraped up 14,15 (and 21,22,23 for good measure) from images

(edit) we now have an rle for n through 25 displayed on the wiki Density page except 12,13,16,17,18. I also dug up a couple of hundred binary text patterns that I converted to plaintext and have added the external link to them in a zip file. So we have memorialized a lot of max density square still lifes. But those missing five bug me...

[atavoidirc]

Is it possible to create a clean super string with speed nc/n with arbitrary n?

[Gustone]

Is this CP or CC?

Code: Select all

x = 37, y = 21, rule = B3/S23
2o$b2o9b2o$2o10b2o21b2o$o34b2o11$17bob2o8b2o$15b3ob2o8bo$14bo15b3o$15b
3ob2o11bo$17bobo$17bobo$18bo!

[dvgrn]

Is this CP or CC?

Code: Select all

x = 37, y = 21, rule = B3/S23
2o$b2o9b2o$2o10b2o21b2o$o34b2o11$17bob2o8b2o$15b3ob2o8bo$14bo15b3o$15b
3ob2o11bo$17bobo$17bobo$18bo!

No, it's not... or at least, not in any particularly useful sense. You have to start with a glider and end with a glider to get a meaningful color-change or color-preservation. If you start with a B-heptomino it also isn't a complete conduit (because of the leftover block) and doesn't really belong in the H-to-G thread even if the block could be suppressed.

If you prepend a syringe, you get one of the most common uses of this mechanism:

Code: Select all

x = 58, y = 32, rule = LifeHistory
4.A$3.2BA49.2A$3.3AB47.ABA$4.4B10.A34.3BA$5.4B7.3A33.4B$6.4B5.A21.B
13.4B$7.4B4.2A19.3B11.4B$2A6.9B17.6B8.5B$.A7.6B13.4B2.7B3.8B$.A.2A5.
6B3.B2.2B2.26B$2.A2.A4.19BD22B$3.2AB3.6BD13BDBD21B.3B$4.9BDBD2B2A9B3D
B2A22B$5.9B2D2B2A11BDB2A21B2A$6.48B.B2A$6.17B.B5.23B3.B$7.15B10.B2.
18B$7.15B13.17B$8.13B14.17B$10.13B12.19B$9.8B4.2A.A11.18B$9.6B6.2AB3A
9.4B2.12B$9.5B8.B4.A14.11B$9.B.B9.2A.3A15.8B$10.3B9.A.A17.10B$9.B2AB
9.A.A13.A.2AB.4B2.2A$10.2A11.A12.3AB2AB7.A$35.A4.B10.3A$36.3A.2A11.A$
38.A.A$38.A.A$39.A!

That's CP, because it reflects the same way a Snark does -- pick corresponding cells on the input and output gliders, and you'll find that the sums of the coordinates have the same parity: X+Y is odd for the center cell, or the nose cell, of the glider, for both the input and output, thus "preserving".

[AlbertArmStain]

What is the smallest right-turning 0 Degree snark recipe that works with the Scorbie Splitter, basically what i'm saying is that I need a Scorbie Splitter friendly Snarkmaker.

[dvgrn]

What is the smallest right-turning 0 Degree snark recipe that works with the Scorbie Splitter, basically what i'm saying is that I need a Scorbie Splitter friendly Snarkmaker.

Without an RLE picture this question is a little bit too vague. For example, "right-turning" only means something if you provide a reference orientation for a Scorbie Splitter (and maybe mark which output of the splitter you want to hang the Snark off of, though that seems easy to guess.)

To my knowledge the only 0-degree slow-salvo Snark recipe that has been compiled to date is the Snarkmaker. The other orientations probably shouldn't be called "Snarkmakers", because they won't accept a single-channel stream from the same source as the recipe, once construction is done.

The slow-salvo recipes for all Snark orientations can be found here -- they just need to be compiled into 0-degree single-channel form.

[Macbi]

Would it be possible to build a universal constructor based spaceship that travelled at exactly c/2?

The way I'm imagining it working is to have a small c/2 puffer laying a fuse. Then the universal constructor builds a very complicated tagalong ('flame'?) that burns up the fuse at 2c/3. When the tagalong catches up with the puffer it collapses in such a way as to reconstruct the original universal constructor. But the small puffer is never interrupted and just starts laying its fuse again.

[pzq_alex]

Would it be possible to build a universal constructor based spaceship that travelled at exactly c/2?

The way I'm imagining it working is to have a small c/2 puffer laying a fuse. Then the universal constructor builds a very complicated tagalong ('flame'?) that burns up the fuse at 2c/3. When the tagalong catches up with the puffer it collapses in such a way as to reconstruct the original universal constructor. But the small puffer is never interrupted and just starts laying its fuse again.

I think it’s possible, but you’d need a mechanism to delay an arbitrarily long time before re-igniting the fuse.

Edit: i wonder how much is this idea applicable to the every-speed-ship-in-nonrelativistic-rule project.