History of Catagolue

The following is an overview of the history of Adam P. Goucher's Catagolue.

2015

• February 20: Catagolue becomes operative.
• April 24: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of one trillion objects.
• September 2: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of ten trillion objects.
• September 16: the pony express, the first natural infinite-growth pattern other than the block-laying switch engine and glider-producing switch engine is found in a soup. After being initially rejected by Catagolue, the containing haul is recomputed and manually committed on September 28.
• September 24: Catagolue supports the generation of backups, including daily backups for the C1 symmetry of Conway's Game of Life.
• October 5: the first instance of Phoenix 1, the last remaining unseen 12-bit object, is found.
• October 21: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of twenty trillion objects.

2016

• January 25: Aidan F. Pierce releases a hacked version of apgsearch v0.54 which can search isotropic non-totalistic Life-like cellular automata rules and upload the results to Catagolue.
• February 20: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 50 trillion objects exactly one year after Catagolue was launched.
• June 20: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 100 trillion objects.
• July 5: a new period-16 oscillator, Rich's p16, is discovered in the ash of a D2_+1 soup.
• July 6: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 5 trillion soups.
• August 22: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 100,000 distinct objects.
• September 4: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 150 trillion objects.
• September 20: D2_+2 becomes the first B3/S23 symmetry other than C1 to reach 1 trillion objects.

2017

• January 13: Catagolue starts collecting slow salvo data using the SS pseudo-symmetry.
• March 15: B38/S23/C1 (Pedestrian Life) becomes the first rule/symmetry other than B3/S23/C1 to reach 10 trillion objects.
• May 16: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 200 trillion objects.
• August 19: Catagolue gains the ability to census Generations and B0 rules, fed by apgsearch 4.0.
• August 21: Catagolue gains the ability to census Larger than Life rules, fed by apgsearch 4.1.
• September 10: Catagolue gains official support for isotropic non-totalistic rules, fed by apgsearch 4.2. Previously, these rules required a hacked version of the original apgsearch Golly script.

2018

• June 3: Catagolue gains the ability to census Generations variants of Larger than Life and isotropic non-totalistic rules, fed by apgsearch 4.3.
• October 28: Catagolue starts collecting data on long-lived patterns, fed by apgsearch 4.54.
• October 29: Catagolue gains the ability to census BSFKL rules, fed by apgsearch 4.56.
• November 7: Catagolue gains the ability to census higher-range totalistic Life-like cellular automata, fed by apgsearch 4.63.
• November 29: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 250 trillion objects.
• December 1: Catagolue gains the ability to census isotropic hexagonal neighborhood rules, fed by apgsearch 4.66; only C1, 1x256, 2x128, 4x64 and 8x32 are supported, not higher symmetries, as these are currently incompatible with the hexagonal neighbourhood.
• December 11: the first instance of the heptapole, the last remaining unseen 13-bit object, is found.
• December 11: Catagolue starts collecting data on diehards, fed by apgsearch 4.69.
• December 12: Catagolue supports gzip compression of certain tabulations.
• December 26: The source code for Catagolue is released under an MIT licence.

2019

• January 3: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 300 trillion objects.
• January 9: Catagolue gains the ability to census Golly rule tables and rule trees, fed by apgsearch 4.8.
• January 15: Catagolue gains native support for Deficient and Extended Generations rules, fed by apgsearch 4.83.
• February 12: a Schick engine first appears naturally in an asymmetric soup.
• March 3: a figure eight on pentadecathlon first appears in an asymmetric soup, making it the highest period oscillator to have occurred naturally.
• March 24: Catagolue starts collecting data on soups with large final populations, fed by apgsearch 5.03.
• March 27: the first instance of long⁴ melusine, the last remaining unseen 14-bit still life, is found.
• March 31: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of one million submitted hauls.
• April 12: Catagolue starts collecting data about glider syntheses from Shinjuku.
• April 14: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 400 trillion objects.
• May 12: a GPU-powered apgsearch instance finds a natural sidecar in an asymmetric 16x16 soup.
• September 9: the 17-in-17 glider synthesis project is completed, using Catagolue's synthesis tabulations for bookkeeping.
• October 9: the 18-bit still life synthesis project is completed, using Catagolue's synthesis tabulations for bookkeeping.
• December 18: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 500 trillion objects.
• December 27: X3VI becomes the first isotropic non-totalistic rule to officially reach 1 trillion objects.

2020

• February 9: Rob's p16 appears in the B3/S23/G1 census, marking Catagolue's first discovery of a new oscillator rotor from asymmetric soup as well as the first period 16 oscillator arising from asymmetry.
• February 11: the B3/S23/C1 census reaches a total of 600 trillion objects.