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In case you missed the other person (falzer) who posted the link, the search term is "unit life cell", but the only page with an worthwhile detail I have seen is http://www.radicaleye.com/lifepage/patterns/unitcell/ucdesc.html

However falzer's link of http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=P5760_unit_Life_cell because it links to other interesting things.

One of those is Deep Cell which is a version of the pattern that simulates two independant life universes with a period of only 7680.

Another is the OTCA megapixel, which is a unit life cell that is larger and slower, but makes it much easier to see the state of each cell. It can also be program to follow any life-like pattern of number of neighbors needed for birth and starvation, as well as programmed to igore any (or all) of the eight bordering cells in its determination. so you could have a pattern that ignored diagonals. Of course the OTCA megapixel itself only runs under the standard rules.

I have to admit, in reading the summary, Tomas Rokicki's name seemed very familiar....

And of course! He's the author of dvips! So we have him to thank not only for this cutting-edge breakthrough in mathematical solutions to Rubik's Cube, but also for turning our not-overly-portable DVI files into beautiful, beautiful Postscript.

You can generate pdf from Tex output by using dvips followed by ps2pdf and from groff output by using ps2pdf. OpenOffice.org Writer can export pdf directly.

It's a glider!

In view of ESR's 2'd amendment stance, I'm surprised he picked the glider over the Glider Gun!

The brain will never be able to understand the brain :)

Possibly, but nothing says that a group of brains could never understand the brain. Or a computer (advanced AI or something). Also, within Conway's "Game Of Life" there is a pattern out there that can simulate a Game of Life cell.