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Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 21st, 2019, 5:10 pm
by mniemiec
"Very", "extra", etc. are adverb that modify "long" (and each other), and can't directly modify "boat". They can only be used directly as adjectives in phrases like "This collision makes the object I want, plus an extra boat" or "That glider eliminated the very boat that was causing problems!"
Small Life patterns were originally assigned arbitrary mnemonic names, which were adequately unique and descriptive for small patterns, but that nomeclature gets more and more strained, the larger and more complicated that patterns get. It also becomes more and more futile as patterns get larger, as there are exponentially more of them at each given size. In Life's early days, there were unique names for all still-lifes up to 7 bits, about half of the 8-bit ones, and only one 9-bit one. In my pattern collections, I've tried to extrapolate meaningful names for small lists of objects (up to around a hundred objects or so), with mixed results, but after a point, using long chains of adjectives to describe a feature becomes tedious. Contractions like "long^5 boat" or "15-bit boat" or "length-10 snake" make much more sense after a point.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 21st, 2019, 7:51 pm
by Hdjensofjfnen
mniemiec wrote:Contractions like "long^5 boat" or "15-bit boat" or "length-10 snake" make much more sense after a point.
I would prefer "long^5 boat" to "very very very very long boat", personally.
EDIT: Also, Catagolue puts this in PATHOLOGICAL:
Code: Select all
x = 4, y = 8, rule = B3/S2-i34q
2bo$bobo2$b3o3$bo$3o!
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 21st, 2019, 7:57 pm
by 77topaz
That's a good point. Who decided that the LifeWiki should get rid of the long^5 format names and replace them with the less adaptable adjectival names like "terribly long boat", anyway?
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 22nd, 2019, 4:07 am
by Apple Bottom
77topaz wrote:That's a good point. Who decided that the LifeWiki should get rid of the long^5 format names and replace them with the less adaptable adjectival names like "terribly long boat", anyway?
Well, guess who... yup,
you're right.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 22nd, 2019, 12:17 pm
by dani
I remember a discussion before that, though.
In any case I am not a fan, I think that the exponent notation is far more concise. Can you offhand remember which one is called 'amazingly long boat'? Guess what, it's none of them, but nobody reading this knew that.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 22nd, 2019, 12:55 pm
by dvgrn
danny wrote:I remember a discussion before that, though.
In any case I am not a fan, I think that the exponent notation is far more concise. Can you offhand remember which one is called 'amazingly long boat'? Guess what, it's none of them, but nobody reading this knew that.
On the contrary, "amazingly long boat" is
long^37, if you follow the footnotes for
Long on the LifeWiki... which I definitely hope nobody does, since that thread has all the hallmarks of a "naming frenzy". People inevitably seem to get into naming frenzies every so often, and then hopefully come to regret them later.
Me, I was just really happy to be able to go in and delete all the over-long pattern names in the LifeWiki collection that were messing up columnar lists, like
Very_very_very_very_very_very_very_long_boat... so I didn't worry too much about whether the replacement names were really a good idea. They were a huge improvement if nothing else.
I believe muzik added those very very very long names also, but it was some time before the most recent cleanup project. And just by the way, that 12-bit still life project was a whole heck of a lot of work on muzik's part, and it did definitely succeed in cleaning up a lot of things... though sometimes just by drawing attention to the problems, so Ian07's follow-up work also definitely deserves a good round of applause.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 22nd, 2019, 3:53 pm
by mniemiec
I remember from the very old days, there were a small number of patterns that had qualifer names (e.g. long boat, long snake=python) but there was no real consistent nomenclature beyond that. Other than a few notable still-lifes (like paperclip), there generally wasn't even a standard nomenclature for still-lifes above 8 bits.
When I started to systematically categorize pseudo-objects, it was much easier to use symbolic names (rather than empirical ones like 14.123 or 14P1.123), so I needed a way to concisely name the pieces involved. This meant coming up with ad-hoc names for objects up to 12 bits. I knew that the system would not hold up well much beyond that point, but it was never intended to.
Also, as history tends to show, whenever anyone comes up with a name (regardless of how inappropriate it might turn out to be), with the lack of any better nomenclature, that name tends to stick.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 22nd, 2019, 5:43 pm
by 77topaz
I think "long^3 boat" would be the best naming scheme/format for these pages. What do others think?
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 23rd, 2019, 2:26 am
by dani
mniemiec wrote:whenever anyone comes up with a name (regardless of how inappropriate it might turn out to be)
coughjolsoncoughrunnynosecough
77topaz wrote:I think "long^3 boat" would be the best naming scheme/format for these pages. What do others think?
Hard agree.
Another somewhat controversial opinion I have is that everything above a certain number doesn't really deserve a page, but let's go one step at a time.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 23rd, 2019, 10:45 am
by dvgrn
77topaz wrote:I think "long^3 boat" would be the best naming scheme/format for these pages. What do others think?
Fine by me. Along with this, the LifeWiki needs standard pnames -- lowercase alphanumeric-only names for the RLE and plaintext pattern files. The one good thing about the Arbitrary Adjective naming system was that it avoided the whole '"long<sup>10</sup> boat" / "Long%5E10_boat" mess and produced decent-looking pnames.
I think "long3boat" is fine for a pname, though. I think the only Arbitrary Adjectival pname that I'm personally responsible for is "abominably long boat", which I pretty much made up in desperation to get rid of an even more abominable "very very very very..." name. I've now removed
abominablylongboat.cells and
abominablylongboat.rle from the server, uploaded
long10boat.cells and
long10boat.rle instead, and fixed the pname in the article.
If other pnames can be patched up to be consistent with this, and if someone can keep a list of all the RLE:arbitraryadjectivelongsomething pages that get moved to RLE:veryNlongsomething, then I can go through at some point and delete all the
arbitraryadjectivelongsomething.cells/.rle pattern files from the server, and the auto-upload script will take care of the rest. Maybe put the list, and any further discussion on this topic, on the Tiki Bar or someone's LifeWiki user page?
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 23rd, 2019, 11:40 am
by Moosey
I feel that the arbitrary adjective name should be kept as an alternative name, as in:
Long^103 doorjamb (or uselessly long doorjamb) is the long^103 equivalent of the doorjamb.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 24th, 2019, 7:21 pm
by AforAmpere
Minor, but
prodigal is lowercase on Catagolue.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: February 25th, 2019, 10:56 pm
by praosylen
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 1st, 2019, 9:04 am
by Hunting
Sometimes when I tried to view not-yet-searched censuses, it says "No one has investigated this, investigate it yourself". But sometimes I just get an empty symmetry list.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 1st, 2019, 9:22 am
by Saka
Hunting wrote:Sometimes when I tried to view not-yet-searched censuses, it says "No one has investigated this, investigate it yourself". But sometimes I just get an empty symmetry list.
As far as I can tell, the "It appears that no-one has yet investigated this combination of rule and symmetry options.™" only appears if you also specify a symmetry. If you dont specify a symmetry (Only a rule), you will get said empty symmetry list.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 2nd, 2019, 11:37 am
by Moosey
Here’s an oddity:
https://catagolue.appspot.com/object/xs ... jns23-ckqy
It seems to use a different lifeviewer theme... the “inverse” theme.
EDIT:
Holy cow, it’s EVERYWHERE on Catagolue!
EDIT:
Oh.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 2nd, 2019, 6:11 pm
by Hdjensofjfnen
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 3rd, 2019, 1:13 am
by mniemiec
What's odd about that? It's a perfectly legitimate P2 oscillator.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 3rd, 2019, 4:49 am
by Hunting
mniemiec wrote:
What's odd about that? It's a perfectly legitimate P2 oscillator.
But it is called ":D".
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 3rd, 2019, 12:25 pm
by Ian07
Figure eight on pentadecathlon does not appear in the large objects section of the
statistics page despite having a maximum population of 66. I'm guessing this is because its period is too high for Catagolue to calculate it.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 3rd, 2019, 10:24 pm
by wildmyron
Ian07 wrote:Figure eight on pentadecathlon does not appear in the large objects section of the
statistics page despite having a maximum population of 66. I'm guessing this is because its period is too high for Catagolue to calculate it.
It's there now, perhaps the page hadn't been updated yet?
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 3rd, 2019, 10:35 pm
by Ian07
wildmyron wrote:
It's there now, perhaps the page hadn't been updated yet?
I still don't see it. Are you sure you're looking at the "Large objects" section rather than the "Naturally-occurring high-period oscillators" section?
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 4th, 2019, 12:43 am
by wildmyron
Ian07 wrote:I still don't see it. Are you sure you're looking at the "Large objects" section rather than the "Naturally-occurring high-period oscillators" section?
Don't mind me, can't read properly. Sorry.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 4th, 2019, 2:03 am
by Hdjensofjfnen
wildmyron wrote:Ian07 wrote:I still don't see it. Are you sure you're looking at the "Large objects" section rather than the "Naturally-occurring high-period oscillators" section?
Don't mind me, can't read properly. Sorry.
I'm confirming this odd bug. Maybe Catagolue just needs some time for Adam P. Goucher to add xp120 to the list of objects that Catagolue considers "large". (e.g. the count doesn't consider still-life bins below cloverleaf interchange, since that would waste time)
EDIT: This looks fishy. Very fishy.
http://catagolue.appspot.com/census/b345s4567/iC1
EDIT: By the way, the extremely high period of the new xp120 makes it the first object other than linear-growth patterns to break the preview.
Re: Catagolue Oddities
Posted: March 4th, 2019, 5:28 am
by 77topaz
Ian07 wrote:Figure eight on pentadecathlon does not appear in the large objects section of the
statistics page despite having a maximum population of 66. I'm guessing this is because its period is too high for Catagolue to calculate it.
I'm fairly certain this explanation is correct - Catagolue only displays population statistics (or, @Hdjen, animated GIFs) for objects of period <100 (or sometimes ≤100 - I think the threshold isn't always consistent across functions). So, the system doesn't
know the xp120 belongs in that section.