How to summarize a long video so you can absorb it in one glance?

Back in HP Labs I patented this "One Glance Video" method for displaying lots of little moving thumbnails that together show the whole video

After the patent expired I re-implemented it as videogestalt

github.com/eobrain/vide...

I wondered if you could generalize cellular automata like Conway's Game of Life to use real numbers

I found an update function that is like an analog version of the digital update rule of the Game of Life, and it does indeed look a bit like the kind of life you would find in a Petri dish

I originally wanted to simulate General Relativity, but after diving deep into the math I realized how fiendishly complex it is

So in the end I just built a simulator for Newtonian gravity

Still I find it endlessly entertaining to watch how these little universes evolve

eobrain.github.io/warp/

I saw a version of this at an art museum in Houston a few years ago, and I wondered if I could reproduce it

I think this version does capture what I remember of the experience

Try it here (It needs to give camera permission, but no camera data leaves your browser)

eobrain.github.io/videotimewarp/

The Mandelbrot set has fascinated me since I first saw an exhibit of the images from early computer visualization at an exhibition in London in the 1980's

During Covid, as a break from working on providing reliable Covid info, I did find some time to build the Almond Bread tool:

mandelbrot.dev