Archives?

[calcyman]

Do there exist any archives of the forums (e.g. an annual dump of the contents of all forum posts from that year)?

In particular, that would allow one to search for things such as 'all glider eaters that have been submitted as an RLE on the forums' (there are some interesting long-lived ones, but I forget where they are), so that they can be included in Golly's eater collection.

[otismo]

how about collated curated pattern archives ?

that is something I would want for myself; so, given enough free time...

[dvgrn]

Do there exist any archives of the forums (e.g. an annual dump of the contents of all forum posts from that year)?

Coincidentally, I asked for a backup dump of the forums, and got one from Nathaniel, exactly two years ago today. It was just text CSV format with some associated binary junk mixed in, and I never did any scripting work to clean it up and make it more searchable.

Two years seems long enough to go between backups -- I'll ask for another one and see what happens.

Alternatively, the scripts I wrote to find all the @RULE files on the forums, for Chris Rowett's rule table support project, could easily be adapted to build a collection of all RLE chunks posted in forum messages, along with a comment with a link to the message. Or the comments could include the entire message, I suppose.

In fact, it turns out that I did a first draft of that script already and forgot about it -- now I remember sending Chris a big pile of pattern files to test LifeViewer against.

I wish people didn't have quoted RLE chunks in their signatures, but we can work around that. I forget if I already handled that case.

It would probably be better if fifty people didn't all get that script running and collect their own copies of the Great Forum Pattern Collection. Anyone want to volunteer to be a curator, and make a ZIP file available?

[Sokwe]

how about collated curated pattern archives ?

There are a few linked from this wiki page. I also keep a few collections here. There really needs to be more work done on pattern collections. We especially need an updated oscillator collection.

[Naszvadi]

how about collated curated pattern archives ?

There are a few linked from this wiki page. I also keep a few collections here. There really needs to be more work done on pattern collections. We especially need an updated oscillator collection.

My 2cents on an anniversary: there also a qnx2 demonstration floppy image floating around released 31 years ago, which is really a demo compared to the well-known qnx4. Fast comparison:

• qnx2 demofloppy: based on qnx2, 360kb 5.25" format, can run on stock XT, no usable applications except a game of life simulator
• qnx4 demofloppy: based on qnx4, 1.44MB 3.5" format, requires 80386+ or better CPU w/8MB ram, has a javascript-capable web browser, dynamic web server, games etc. addon capabilities etc. but no CGoL

As QNX2 had a life application, that can run on stock harddisk configuration as a regular application. Running it from command line without specifying options will show a brief help, which decloaks that it even has custom pattern file support, not just the random pattern demonstration mode. Quickly created an unoptimized animated .gif from automatic screen captures of a virtual machine session running a 80x23 oscillator stamp collection. See the link for the "video" here: ../forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20&start=50#p94693