About

About Me

I'm Kevin Ripper. I make software as a profession and for fun. When I'm not programming, I enjoy reading, learning languages, and Magic: The Gathering. Right now I am:

• CREATING: Bartleby, a reading scheduler
• READING: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and Ulysses
• LEARNING: French and Latin
• PLAYING: A bad Jace brew in Standard

About this website

Built with Astro and TypeScript. The animated background are various cellular automata (Yes various! Check out the gear icon in the bottom right.) implemented with WebGL2. It runs locally in your browser. No backend!

About the automata

The animated backgrounds consit of the following cellular automata:

• Cyclic Domination: Like rock-paper-scissors. Colors compete to take over neighboring cells. Even numbers will typically lead to the extinction of one of the colors, while odd numbers tend to maintain a dynamic balance.
• Conway's Game of Life: Cells live, die, or are born based on their neighbors. This is by far the most famous cellular automaton and numerous YouTube videos explain this in depth. This one has Conway himself explaining it!
• Brian's Brain: Cells fire, rest, and switch off. This creates a cool trail effect.
• Greenberg–Hastings: Cells light up their neighbors and then fade. This creates a spreading wave effect.
• Lenia: Soft shapes move and change like tiny living creatures. Created by Bert Chan.