I like to this this website will have a dual public purposes.
Firstly being a sci-fi style creative space to collate and document works I’ve produced, like stories and art.
Secondly to showcase some technically interesting concepts on a website to improve my website and software development skills, and document technical interests.
This site is WordPress, hosted in AWS Lightsail, with a custom theme and a very basic setup.
Conway’s Game of Life
On the home page (and currently every page on desktop) there’s a canvas of flickering stars. Running your mouse along the canvas will spawn life. This was created by using Conway’s game of life algorithm.
Every pixel on the canvas interacts with its eight neighbouring pixels, which are the pixels horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. A pixel can be considered alive (white) or dead (black). On each frame calculation, the following transitions occur:
- Any live pixel with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if by underpopulation.
- Any live pixel with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
- Any live pixel with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
- Any dead pixel with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live pixel, as if by reproduction.
I’ve tried to make it performant on low end PCs. If the framerate looks low, the site is trying to ensure it’s not putting more load on your computer if it is in dire straights.
SVG animation
The computer in the site’s footer is an SVG animation, it will turn off and on.
Over time, additional features will be added. I hope they will be fun. Next concept I want to implement is penrose tiling. I’m hoping they can look like little houses or a city, keeping with the planet view styled theme.
