Makerfaire Ottawa: Rule 110 (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Makerfaire Ottawa: Rule 110 (2015)

blog.tahnok.me

37 pointspncnmnp5 comments

I built something similar that I called LowBoard. It was a 12x16 array of addressable color LEDs that was originally for low-rez halloween pictures (so good timing!) and we displayed it in the window as part of our display. Then I built a web app and hooked it up to the internet to let anyone draw and display an image for 20 seconds, kind of a physical snapchat. Then an hour or so later and ~100 12x16 dick-picks I disassembled it. Several lessons learned!

lol as I was reading this I thought this won't end well... sure enough

I built something very similar called Failboard FS (filesystem). As a scientific experiment I took an old video card and wired it to the wall power socket. The chips on it blew with a stinky smoke and a whistling explosion sound and everything and my circuit breaker threw a switch. After getting power back on line, I broke open an old hard drive and superglued that drive platter the to the burn out old video card. TADA! Failboard FS. Great stuff. Advanced. Innovative. Useful. Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope to present Failboard FS at various conferences and events since it is marginally more practical and sophisticated than the projects most people cook up.

I just found out about Wesley's blog from the "Colmi R02" post on the front page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41833200). I think his blog is an absolute gem. Check out:

* Pictures from Space: a n00b's guide to receiving images from NOAA weather satellites (https://tahnok.github.io/post/pics-from-space-n00bs-guide-to...)

* BLUEBRIM: RGB lights on a hat with bonus bluetooth (https://tahnok.github.io/post/bluebrim-rgb-lights-on-a-hat-w...)

* Chameleon Scarf (https://tahnok.github.io/post/chameleon-scarf.html)

* How to propose to an engineer (https://tahnok.github.io/post/how-to-propose-to-an-engineer....)

Really fun stuff!

The timing of this is kind of funny, as I've been working on my own version of this for the last few weeks. It's still very much a work in progress so don't judge the repository too harshly.

https://github.com/tedivm/robs_wall_clock/

My project includes-

1. Wolfram's 2, 3, and 4 state automata (including Rule 110) 2. Langton's ants 3. Conway's Game of Life, Highlife, and Immigrant games (immigrant is named after another game, but it's basically life with colors). 4. A clock. This just tells time.

Every few minutes the device will change modes. With the Wolfram rules I include both single starting cells and multiple starting cells, and with Langton's Ant I've managed to great some really interesting patterns by placing multiple ants on the display.

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