Genuary 2026.19: 16x16

2026-01-19 in Programming

I’m… not really sure where I was going with this one. 😄

Basically, 16x16 tiny sketches that slide around like a sliding block puzzle. Although with how chaotic some of the simulations are, it’s not always easy to see.

Genuary 2026.18: Unexpected paths

2026-01-18 in Programming

I feel like the most unexpected of paths is Langton’s Ant!.

Okay, it’s fairly expected. And I’ve even done it before. Been a while though.

Anyways, here we go!

In a nutshell, you have a grid with N possible values (the length of the rule string). For each pattern, when the ‘ant’ walks on that cell, the value in incremented by one and you will turn according to these rules:

R turn right (90° or 60° in hex)
L turn left (same)
S turn right 120° in hex mode (nothing in square)
M turn left 120° in hex mode
U turn 180° in hex mode
anything else (N above), do nothing/go straight

This ends up with some really interesting behavior for such a short ruleset. Langton’s Ant (LR, the default) is definitely an interesting one. For 10,000 ticks, you get chaotic behavior… and then suddenly it stabilizes!

Here are some interesting patterns:

You can also do some interesting things with multiple ants (they’ll spawn in a circle):

circular

The modes are:

pauseMode controls when the simulation will stop (note: will always pause at width * height * 100 tiles)
- n-tiles will pause when the tile count is width * height (no matter where they are)
- one-at-edge will stop when each cell is 1 pixel and any ant reaches the edge of the image
- all-at-edge will only stop when all ants reach the edge
- no-pause will never pause (this can get really laggy eventually)
centerMode is how the displayed part of the simulation will be centered
- origin will stay centered at 0,0
- bounds will center on the middle of the current overall bounds
- ants will average the x,y of all ants
- tiles will average the x,y of all tiles
- mouse will allow some mouse control; left click and drag to move, right click (in theory) to reset

Genuary 2026.17: Wallpaper Groups

2026-01-17 in Programming

Wallpaper group. There are only 17 ways to cover a plane with a repeating pattern, choose your favourite on this page: Wallpaper group
This is a great article about Classifying Symmetries that says there are actually 35 tiling patterns!
List of planar symmetry groups is another Wikipedia page with a good summary of the wallpaper group.

I spent waaaaay too long on this one.

group is the 17 groups mentioned
subGroup is horizontal or vertical for some of the above
cellType is the shape of each cell
cellStyle is what to fill them with
debugDrawOne shows what one tile looks like
debugDisplay prints what random values were selected
pauseBuffer is useful for pausing the generation (although if any of the others are random they will keep changing)

Not all of the groups and cell types are perfectly compatible. In fact, probably half or more aren’t. But they still produce something, and I think that’s pretty cool!

Genuary 2026.16: Order vs Disorder

2026-01-16 in Programming

Order vs Disorder

So I have two kinds of agents: Order, which always moves in straight lines and Chaos which… doesn’t!

Settings:

updateRate is how fast it runs
minAgentCount will spawn agents until you reach this number
maxAgentCount will kill off agents until you’re under this number
dieOfOldAge will kill off old agents
maxAge is the longest an agent can last
agentRatio of 0 is all order and 1 is all chaos
spawnRate is how often an agent will spawn a new agent (of the same kind)
resetPercent is how much of the screen can be full before resetting
pauseOnReset will pause on a reset to allow downloading! (change any setting include this one to unpause)

Genuary 2026.15: Invisible Object

2026-01-15 in Programming

Create an invisible object where only the shadows can be seen.

Noise that pushes a bunch of particles around on the screen. There is 1 (or more) ‘shadows’ on the screen that push the dust away.

If the shadow runs off the screen it will come back in a bit from the opposite edge.

Settings:

dustCount is how much dust
dustSpeed is a multiplier for how fast the dust goes per frame
dustDieOff is how much dust disappears each frame
onlyEdgeDust sets dust to only spawn on the edges, rather than anywhere (has some weird visual artifacts when the dust is a nearly horizontal / vertical)
rainbowDust makes the dust far more colorful
windScale is the scale of the noise, 1 will wiggle a lot more, 5 is closer to straight lines and slow changes
fade will leave trails by fading the screen; turning this off is interesting since the shadow will be much more subtle
shadowCount is how many shadows there are
shadowForce is how strongly they repel dust
shadowWindIndependent means the shadow doesn’t always move with the particles
shadowEdge will show where the shadow shape actually is
shadowsMove will allow the shadows to move / stop them

Genuary 2026.14: Fits Perfectly

2026-01-14 in Programming

14) Fits Perfectly

Basically, we’ll pack as many circles in as we can!

retriesPerFrame is how many circles it will try to place before giving up and drawing the frame
minDiameter is the smallest a circle can be (this should be 1 for a ‘perfect fit’)
maxDiameter is the largest one can be
spacing is how much space to leave between circles (this should be 0 a ‘perfect fit’)
borders will draw a black border on each circle
fillInside will place circles inside of each other as well as outside, so long as there is still enough spacing
blackPercent is how many of the circles will be black rather than bright colors

Genuary 2026.13: Self Portrait

2026-01-13 in Programming

13) Self Portrait

That was surprisingly fun.

Basically, it will take recursively divide the picture over time. Each time, it will find the node with the largest error (real image color compared to the current random color) and split it in 4, assigning each to the nearest random color from our palette.

colors controls how many maximum (random) colors will be chosen
edges will draw the boxes of the tree
minimumBlock is the size at which it won’t split any more
resetAfter will generate new colors even this many frames
evenSplit will split each box into exactly 4; if this is off, each axis will randomly be 25-75%
weightErrorBySize will split small boxes earlier; with this off, larger boxes have more error because they are larger

If you don’t want to look at me any more, turning off selfPortraitMode will load an image from picsum.dev.

Genuary 2026.12: Boxes

2026-01-12 in Programming

12) Boxes

It’s like draw a box. But somehow even more. And automatic.

If you let it run for a while, you get some crazy abstract art!

Boxes after running for a long time

Genuary 2026.11: Quine

2026-01-11 in Programming

11) Quine

Making a genart quine? That’s… certainly a thing!

So basically I made a very simple stack based virtual machine. You can check the source code below for what commands it can actually run. It will then run until it outputs enough code to match the input length (or times out). If it happens to output a quine? Woot!

If not, it will randomly mutate and try again.

cellSize - Change how big the program is (default is 10, theoretically with semi quines size shouldn’t matter)
ticksPerFrame - How fast the simulation will run
asFastAsPossible - Ignore the above and run an entire simulation per frame (it could technically go even faster 😄)
pauseAfter - Pause to see what happened after output is done or a break
stopAfter - When a single program has run, stop the main loop (mostly useful for debugging)
randomizePercent - How much of the input to randomly change for the next iteration
runOutput - Run the output as the next program (otherwise, randomize the input)
highlightActive - Highlight the parts of the program that actually ran (brighter colors)
allowSemiQuine - Ignore non-active parts of the program when considering a quine (if you copied the output to the program in these parts, they’d be a quine, so I think it counts)
allowReadingCode - Allow (new) commands that allow reading our own source code
allowWritingCode - Allow (new) commands that can modify the code you were originally running
debugPrint - Print each command run/output to console.log for debugging
debugSlow - Drops the framerate to 1 fps for debugging
debugStepButton - Add a ‘step’ button that runs one step at a time (noLoop) for debugging (reload the page)

In addition, you can put in code in the box and ’load’ it to run. This will be helpful to verify quines! I have some interesting code below (including a hand written quine! That uses the self reading instructions).

If you manage to find a quine organically (or write one), I’d love to hear what it was!

Lost: Season 5

2026-01-11 in Reviews

What lies in the shadow of the statue?

Season 5 is where it really started to get obvious that the writers of the first few seasons did not have a plan for where all of this was going to go. It manages to hold together relatively well–and we do get a few answers, mixed in with all those questions–but man, there are a few moments which just don’t line up with what we already thought we knew.

I suppose that’s what you get any time a show introduces time travel .

Faraday: I studied relativistic physics my entire life. One thing emerged over and over–can’t change the past. Can’t do it. Whatever happened, happened. All right? But then I finally realized… I had been spending so much time focused on the constants, I forgot about the variables. Do you know what the variables in these equations are, Jack?
Jack: No.
Faraday: Us. We’re the variables. People. We think. We reason. We make choices. We have free will. We can change our destiny.

We have, at first, a combination of ‘what is going on here’ on the Island, along with a ‘we have to go back!’ off it. And man, despite the fact that there are only the ‘Oceanic Six’, there are some pretty complicated shifting alliances going on here.

Frank Lapidus: In my experience, the people who go out of their way to tell you that they’re good guys are the bad guys.

And then, in the latter half, once the Island stabilizes a bit? Well, that’s where all the real trouble starts. Because the might just have made it back where they were trying to go. But not quite *when* .

Jack: If we can do what Faraday said… our plane never crashes… Flight 815 lands in Los Angeles. And everyone we lost since we got here… they’d all be alive. Kate: And what about us? We just… go on living our life because we’ve never met? Jack: All the misery that we’ve been through… we’d just wipe it clean. Never happened. Kate: It was not all misery. Jack: Enough of it was.

Oh, that’s quite the set up for season 6.

One more to go!

The Bear and the Nightingale

2026-01-11 in Reviews

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”

The Bear and the Nightingale.

Basically, what happens if you take a Russian fairy tale and expand it to the full length of a novel while still managing to keep both the whimsical magical aspects… and all the dark bits as well.

We go through years, watching as our main character Vasya is born (and her mother dies), up through when she’s a teenager on the cusp of being married off–or sent to a monastery. She never quite fits in and makes for a wonderful point of view into this wordl.

In the meantime, we see Russia ‘growing up’ as well, abandoning the old gods and spirits of the forest in favor of the Church. It’s not the only conflict of the story (or, I’d argue, even the main one), but it does underlie the whole thing.

“Nothing changes, Vasya. Things are, or they are not. Magic is forgetting that something ever was other than as you willed it.”

This was a delightful, haunting sort of story.

Side note: I did not realize this was a trilogy until writing this review! More to read!

Genuary 2026.10: Polar coordinates

2026-01-10 in Programming

10) Polar coordinates

CIrcles within circles within circles.

Brian's Hunt

2026-01-09 in Reviews

Basically, this is Brian’s Return part 2. Where he actually finishes the trip he set off on–and somehow by far the most tragic of the five books. It’s a major tonal shift and there isn’t really any time to recover from it before the book is over.

I get it, nature is rough sometimes. People die. But these books always had the sense of ’no matter how bad it gets, you know (because it’s a book), nothing truly terrible will happen to Brian’. If that sounds great to you, consider skipping this book.

Other than that, we have the first hint of Brian as teenage boy with teenage boy thoughts–but there just isn’t time to get into it.

And we have more hunting–again, little enough time to get into it.

Honestly, you can stop after book 1 or 3, in my opinion. So it goes.

If there ever happened to be a sixth book, I’d be interested to see the story finished, but apparently (on looking it up), Gary Paulsen passed away in 2021. Such is life. I do wonder about his other works though.

Onward!

Genuary 2026.09: Cellular automata

2026-01-09 in Programming

9) Cellular automata

Just a bunch of random rules, with the ability (if you put this in p5js at least) to add them pretty easily.

This one can do some wacky things if you randomize it. But also, it might crash your browser tab on some of these settings. Sorry. 😄

Try:

Perlin, Max, fuzz, diffuse

The Gate of the Feral Gods

2026-01-09 in Reviews

Ever since that first monkey looked up into the sky and saw something twinkling up there, you meat puppets have tried to force twenty pounds of existential meaning into a ten pound sack of chaos.

Holy crap things just keep escalating.

We have another single level this time. Bubbles in space, each populated by a subset of crawlers that can’t (initially) interact, and each of which separated into air/earth/water/underground sections with their own puzzles.

Of course by the end Carl has done an excellent job of not being broken (more or less), saved people, killed even more people, and managed to summon and/or fight entirely too many (feral) gods.

“You know what, Carl? I’ve decided something,” Donut said, finally speaking. She released Mongo, who squawked and started investigating this strange, new world. “Yeah, Donut?” “I think they’re right about you. I think you’re crazy. Like, not a little weird crazy. Not guy who eats cereal without milk crazy. But crazy, crazy. Straitjacket crazy.” I took the cat into my lap, and then I pulled her to my chest. She purred heavily into my ear.

Man that ending hits hard.

And now… based on the afterward, we’re really going to have some complications next book.

I’m looking forward to it!

Brian's Return

2026-01-08 in Reviews

Brian sat quietly, taken by a peace he had not known for a long time, and let the canoe drift forward along the lily pads. To his right was the shoreline of a small lake he had flown into an hour earlier. Around him was the lake itself, an almost circular body of water of approximately eighty acres surrounded by northern forest–pine, spruce, popular, and birch–and thick brush.

Brian is back.

Again.

After a couple years, Brian doesn’t seem to be doing overly well adapting back to ‘regular life’. So he ends up going back to the wilderness, this time at least with a few more supplies. It’s another trip on a river (this time with a canoe) with a bunch more hunting and arrow building.

Honestly, it ends before it really starts and I’m not entirely sure what the point of this one is compared to the two. We don’t really get into Brian’s headspace going back. So it goes.

It is amusing that he takes Shakespeare with him this time around though.

Author’s Note
This is the final book about Brian, though someday I may do a nonfiction book about those parts of my life that were like Brian’s.

doubt

Genuary 2026.08: A city

2026-01-08 in Programming

8) A city

Simple parallax graphics and (slowly) blinking windows. I enjoyed this one.

Genuary 2026.07: Boolean algebra

2026-01-07 in Programming

5) Boolean algebra

So the basic idea here is to recursively divide the space. The black squares are the randomly chosen values. Then, for each level of the tree, combine the children using one of the selected functions (and/or/xor/etc), drawing a border if the result of that combination is true.

Try various combinations of settings!