So while everyone was having fun developing websites, writing poems and in general talking about their life, the world and everything in blogs, what was Aaron doing?

Playing a mathematical game of course!

I was introduced to Golly by my 21 year old cousin, 7 years older than me. It takes logic to work out how on earth it works but seriously all you need is the ability to click.

In Golly, you draw what you want. There's a bunch of pixelated stuff that you click and it changes color and it's pretty neat-o.

But, er, what does it do?

Golly is nicknamed "the game of life" because of a unique system it uses. Say, you draw a 3x3 pixel square.

Now the rules of Golly are fairly simple. Each pixel MUST have 2 or 3 neighbors to survive. If it has only 1 neighbor, BOOM! You and that poor helpless pixel are dead.

But another rule is that pixels can die from overcrowding. If a pixel is surrounded by more then 3 other pixels, it will die too.

By die I mean this: Live pixels are white and Dead pixel are black. No racism intended. That's just how it works.

So, say you have the 3x3 square. When you click play, the middle pixel will die straight away from overcrowding. But the other pixels begin to spread out and generate more live pixels.

It's hard to explain, but take it this way: Try not to think about it at all actually, just draw something and see the pretty pattern it makes.

For the record, I'll show you what I mean by drawing 6 3x3 squares in a row.



So what happens when we press the play button? A lot of pixels die, yet new ones are generated and...



So how does that work? I'm not telling you: Download for yourself and try it out! If you like maths or just want to draw some patterns and see how life affects them, go ahead and download from golly.sourceforge.net !