Persian Rugs
Word count: 202
I’m still staring at the Persian Rugs in LifeLab. I tried to find more information about them online, but I came up with nothing but the LifeLab Gallery itself and a passing reference in a newsgroup. The rules to make rugs are B234/S, which means that new squares are born (B) to squares with 2, 3 or 4 neighbors, and that old squares never survive (S). The effect is an inversion of the pattern every round, plus constant progress outward at the edges.
Since the gallery images are very early on, they don’t show the true beauty of the pattern. You can see a nicer one on the Apple download page, but I think I’ll put up a few screenshots of my experiments as well. I’ve been playing around making rectangular and odd-shaped rugs. Here’s the standard rug at 1000 generations:
[click image for a larger version or here for a popup]
I was also thinking that one of the early generations might make a nice Arraiolos rug design. It would be mostly travelling stitches, not to mention too geeky for words, but I’m tempted…