Playing around with an HTML5 implementation of Conway’s Game of Life I drew a swastika out of interest in what might happen. And what happened was, I think, pretty excellent – I recommend you have a look at it yourself. I drew it like this:

Just in case you quite reasonably can’t be bothered, below are a few images of some of my favourite patterns that emerged. The overall experience was of the symbol kind of expanding or blooming, and it ended up with four symmetric little “swimmers” moving diagonally away from the center, with four other stable “flippers” alternating between horizonal and vertical positions. The swimmers would go on forever on an infinite game board.

Watching the swastika behave in the way was really quite neat.

We’re going to Paris for a few days, returning on Sunday. Regular posting resumes on Monday, presumably. Though who knows, right?