J()by Bednar

I've become completely obsessed with Tiki pop culture.  None of that historical polynesian crap... no, I'm talking Tiki Americana from the 50s revived in all of its swank glory.  Southern California was the central point of the Tiki empire in its hayday, and it turns out it's still a pretty happening place now.  There are quite a few tiki bars, artists, bands and swinging cats like me who love a good cocktail.  Artistically inspired, I created some of my own tiki art:

"Groovy Moai"

"Martiki"

"The TikiGeeki Fez"

(BTW - The above is a little more funny if you know my name on Tiki related messageboards is TikiGeeki... and the below image is my avatar)

As luck would have it, I found the point of repetition in Universe 3/03.  You can find a full write up (DigTrig) on the topology of a cellular automaton using rule set 3/03 on a field that starts empty and is 20 x 20 in size.  In short, 335,225 unique patterns with that final unique pattern looping back into iteration #243,830.  Far less than the 36 quadrillion possible patterns, but 1/3 of a million iterations is nothing to sneeze at... about 35 Megs of text files!  One note of interest: the number of unique iterations before the point of repetition, I called them "Prime Iterations", is 243,829... which by sheer chance... is a prime number!  I guess "Prime Iterations" is a good term after all.  ;)

Such a nice feeling to have defined the Universe of 3/03 and to know it's entire timeline and topology.  I'm feeling a little omniscient.  :D

As previously mentioned, I'm mapping out the topology/topography of cellular automaton rule set 3/03 in a 20x20 universe.  I've modified my DigTrig demo (my own personal duplicate... the live one is as it always was) to be a lot faster and log the data.  I copy the info into a text file and parse it using a small script written in Ruby.  The script looks for duplicates and will output the iteration numbers if it finds any.  So far, I have logged 250,000 iterations... yes, 1/4 million iterations... 1/4 million snap shots of the 20x20 universe... and still have no duplicates.  Curiously, I tested my script and put in a duplicate just to make sure my script was working.  It was.  There are 250,000 unique iterations for this cellular automaton and more to be discovered.  I'm hoping it doesn't contain ALL possible combinations, otherwise this may take a while.

Then again... it might give me a good reason to get into quantum computing... hmm...