Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998 16:17:46 -0500 (EST) From: Jamie Howard <howardjp@dragon.ham.muohio.edu> To: Joel Ray Holveck <joelh@gnu.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: From NTK... Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.981107161447.6345A-100000@dragon.ham.muohio.edu> In-Reply-To: <86vhkrqkyo.fsf@detlev.UUCP>
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On 7 Nov 1998, Joel Ray Holveck wrote: > What are vants? >From http://alife.santafe.edu/alife/topics/cas/ca-faq/types/types.html The Vant rule, by Chris Langton, describes the path of an ant who starts pointing in a certain direction. If the ant is on a non-white square it turns the square red, rotates 90 degrees clockwise and moves one pixel in the direction it is pointing. If it is on a red square it turns the square white, rotates 90 degrees counterclockwise and moves one pixel in the direction it is pointing. A generalization of Lanton's Ant can be found in Rudy Rucker, ARTIFICIAL LIFE LAB, Waite Group Press. There were also some articles about Lanton's Ant in Dewdney's magazine Algorithm, and I believe there was an article in The Mathematical Intelligencer. Langton's original article in the reference cited by Dewdney is well worth looking up. They totally rule and are really fun to watch when set up with random configurations. I wanted to implement an LKM screen-saver using them, but never got around to it. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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