Attracted to Code (Rubykon)

Here's some more ruby-processing code I have been dabbling with. Its future purpose shall be an automation, or mechanism therefore, for decision finding processes. Whereas right now it's just a funny little app that let's you generate boids being attracted to a number of neighboring boids.

The name "Rubykon" is derived from the Italian river Rubicon, where G. I. Caesar uttered his rather famous phrase "alea iacta est" (lat. "the die is cast") when he crossed it in 49 BC as a point of no return - hence the idiom of "Crossing the Rubicon" for making a final decision. Also, since the code's all Ruby, and the -con (-kon in German) part translates to "together", I thought it's a great name for the project.

The boids are all spawned into single threads, as their decision-making should happen autonomously in a swarm-like manner anyway, and the application itself should just render the "outside world" instead.

As always at this stage, it's all far from any use at all (it only generates clumping crowds of boids, really), but to me it's a starting point for something that might be a good, or at the very least, interesting idea: generating decisions bearing swarm intelligence.

Attracted to Things (Goreshovel)

Follow the White Pixel

Here's the processing code I used to count the white pixels:

And here's a ruby-processing version, albeit it lacks performance compared to the native code:

There's a lot to be desired, but posting the gists might prevent it from getting abandoned, like all of the other lines that got burried in the tomb of the unknown code.

Chtlulhu

On Self-Descriptiveness

To express either a picture's contained information or it's abstract description from within the picture itself, the picture must be altered from the original state. Thus a picture cannot be truly self-descriptive.

Explanation

A void picture containing a number n of black pixels would contain n bits of information "black pixel", or zero bits of "white pixel". This cannot be expressed from within the picture, as it would mean either adding or changing a minimum of at least one bit of information. From within the picture's context, both the arbitrarily coded expressions "This picture contains n black pixels" and "This picture contains 0 white pixels" yield either false statements, or alter the picture, respectively.

In other words: A truly self-descriptive picture would necessarily contain a description of it's own already, rendering any self-descriptiveness pointless.

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xkcd.com/688

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