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beginners 'discoveries' help

burno55 wrote:

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x = 9, y = 7, rule = B3/S23
$b2o$b2o3bo$5bo$b2o2b3o$b2o!

This reaction has been long known. What exactly do you need help with?

What exactly do you need help with?

Can you tell what would be a still life, spaceship or oscillator before you see it?

burno55 wrote:

What exactly do you need help with?

Can you tell what would be a still life, spaceship or oscillator before you see it? what makes a still life a still life?

A still-life is an object that remains just as it is, and never changes - i.e. it has no births and no deaths.
An oscillator is an object that changes (i.e. it has births and deaths), but after several cycles, it returns back to its original form, repeating forever.
A spaceship is like an oscillator, except that when it reforms, it is translated from its original location, so over time, it moves continuously in one direction.

These are very basic Life terms. You can look them up (as well as any other terms you find whose meaning you don't know), on the LifeWiki, whose link is at the top of this page.

burno55 wrote:

What exactly do you need help with?

Can you tell what would be a still life, spaceship or oscillator before you see it? what makes a still life a still life?

You can't tell if an object will be a still life before you see it, of course, but you can tell by looking at it, without running it in LifeViewer or Golly. In B3/S23, if an object has no neighbor cells that have exactly three ON neighbors, and none of its internal cells have more than four or less than two ON neighbors, then it's a still life.

Small oscillators and spaceships are emergent features of the rule. So above period 2 or 3, you pretty much have to run the pattern to find out what it does. There aren't any shortcuts, unless you're unusually good at tracking lots of cell states in your head.

With enough practice you might start to be able to guess again, about what very large oscillators and spaceships will do (e.g., Herschel loops, Gemini) without running them. But if a component is subtly out of place, you might be terribly wrong...!

burno55 wrote:

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x = 24, y = 10, rule = B3/S23
3$3bo16bo$4bo14bo$2b3o14b3o$11b2o$11b2o!

Err... Yeah, that's known to: What do you need help with?
(By the way the above oscillator is p246