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Honestly one of the most touching tributes for John Conway - and of course it's by xkcd https://xkcd.com/2293/
There are two beautiful details - when the Glider went towards the edge, I naturally glanced to the lower left waiting to see it reappear. This would be a 'closed universe' Game of Life and the Glider would keep wrapping around this finite sized Universe. But instead... 1/n
...it disappears, implying that the grid is infinite! The second detail is that Randal made sure the border lies in the middle of a pixel, with the the next few frames of the animation implying the Glider is continuing on into a grid with the same rules... 2/n
...ensuring the reader can get the implied infinite Life grid. I realised that it's far better that the Glider travels on into an unknown Life grid, rather than in a finite edge wrapped grid. It seems more satisfying that way. Like many computer nerds, I coded up Conway's ...3/n
..Game of Life on my ZX Spectrum in the 1980's after reading about it in an old issue of Scientific American ( https://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/october1970.html). It was my first glimpse of complexity from very simple rules, and I spent some time trying out random grids to see what worked.... 4/n
..and what did not. I moved on, but many other people developed logic gates in Life and ultimately computers that ran Life in Life, and many other wondrous creations that I wish I had the patience to explore myself. It's a beautiful 'aha!' moment for many coders. And as for.. 5/n
...John Conway, the amazing Numberphile by @BradyHaran talked to him about it. He gives the impression of a pop star tired of being referred to by his One Hit Wonder - but WOW what a hit :) 6/n
..go watch it for the quotes: "Over about 18 months of coffee times..."
"From my point of view though, it wasn't real mathematics..."
Thank you John Conway.
"From my point of view though, it wasn't real mathematics..."
Thank you John Conway.
Postscript: And there's a @numberphile podcast on him with more interviews:
