Some of my Assorted Hobbies and Interests

In Case You're Interested...

... which you are probably not, My name is Gary Shannon. I'm a retired video game programmer. You probably haven't heard of any of the video games I worked on: Astro Blaster (Coin-Op game manufactured by Sega). Cyberstorm I and II. Trophy Bass 3D, and Pro Pilot, to name a few.

Music Composition

From time to time I like to dabble in composing music, usually in a classical style, or contemporary soundtrack music style. In fact, Here is a soundtrack I'm working on for a movie that doesn't even exist, because I'm writing the script as I write the music.

Cartoon Animation

I have just recently taken up learning animation. It occured to me that if I really want to write a soundtrack score for a movie, I will have to create my own movie! So animation seems like the way to go.

Programming Projects

• Glyph Design A pair of programs for designing alphabets and pictographs or hieroglyphics.

Linguistics and Constructed Languages

Some people enjoy building model railroads, model cars, or model airplanes. I enjoy constructing model languages. Not only is it interesting in its own right, but it is also a good way to learn more about lingusitics in general, and my native English language in particular.

By way of background, I am a retired software engineer with no formal training in linguistics. My first constructed language (or conlang) project was around 1954 or 1955 when I invented something I called Igpaya Ussianruski, which worked like Pig Latin except that there were several different word endings instead of just the "-ay" of Pig Latin. Somewhere around 1957 or 1958 I began learning Esperanto, but while I was excited about the idea behind it, I was never very happy with the language itself.

In high school, circa 1960-1963, I took two semesters of Latin followed by 4 semesters of German. Circa 1980 or so I took two semesters of American Sign Language at the local community college. While taking that class I also drew a pictographic glyph for each new ASL word I learned and developed, thereby, a written pictographic language in which I became very fluent. I lost my documents for that language in an apartment building fire and have never gotten around to reconstructing the language.

My currently active conlang projects include these:

• ai Basata an atempt to build a language complete enough to use for everyday conversation and writing or translating simple stories. Project started April, 2009.
• Graded Sentence for Analysis A collection of 1200 graded sentences compiled by Mary B. Rossman and Mary W. Mills, first published in 1922. A translation of all 1200 of these sentences would constitute a fairly complete documentation of the grammar of any language, constructed or natural.
• Section One - 285 sentences
• Section Two - 267 sentences
• Section Three - 258 sentences plus a poem
• Section Four - 178 sentences
• Section Five - 108 sentences
• Sections Six and Seven - coming soon
• Cumulative Lexicon - 2109 words
• A collection of sentences designed to exercise the syntax of a conlang.
• McGuffeys Eclectic Reader. - An interesting corpus of simple sentences for translation into any conlang.
• Glyphs and Writing Systems
  • Neo-Cuneiform a writing system designed to be pressed or stamped into wet clay or stamped on metal sheets. Possibly as a means of communicating with the distant future when no trace reamains of English.
  • How to design pictographs, glyphs and alphabets
  • Fragmentz A font for creating pictographic symbols
  • Tinker Font multi-purpose font for displaying and printing any kind of writing system
  • A Writing System for a Silent Language - a partial attempt to reconstruct my lost pictographic language.
• Tazhu Corpus Project - Another of my invented languages
  • The Project
  • McGuffey's First Reader in Tazhu
  • Tazhu McGuffey translation with design notes
  • Tazhu Cumulative Grammer
  • Tazhu Cummulative Lexicon
• SoaLoa - A conlang with a very peculiar grammar
  • A detailed look at Soaloa grammar
• Miscellaneous
  • Ersever - A Language you can learn in a few minutes
  • Rupin, a constructed language using the smallest possible grammar. First created in 1999.
  • Anglosic Create your own language in fifteen minutes and add it to this family of languages.
  • An Instant Conlang in Two Easy Steps
  • An Experiment in Language Mutation
  • Mutlak - Another mutation of English
  • Madjal - A failed experiment in conlang anarchy
  • Systematic compilation of the ways two words can be related
  • A boring meeting lead to this conlang designed in less than an hour
  • Parsing by Search and Replace

Computerized Linguistics and Machine Translation

• Chomp - A machine translation interlingua
• Parsing by Search and Replace

Artificial Intelligence

• Dec 2008 Ignorant Chunking or How noun and verb phrase chunking can be done without reference to parts of speech.
• Nov 2008 How a chatbot might learn specific facts and general patterns from its conversations.
• Oct 2008 Fusion Grammar Another new way to parse natural language sentences.
• Sep 2008 Progamming a chat bot to understand a sentence.
• Jul 2006 A different approach to conjunctions in Link Grammar Parsing
• Jul 2006 Random notes on parsing for meaning
• Dec 2006 Some random notes on fusion parsing
• Dec 2006 Some more random notes on fusion parsing
• Dec 2005 Parsing by Search and Replace
• Apr 2003 Philip - A conversational Chatter Bot program.File missing.

Cryptography

Just some fun pages about cryptograms, codes and ciphers.

• Build Captain Gary's Secret Decoder Rule
• The Skiptogram - an easy mechanical encoding device
• Build a working WWII Enigma Cipher Machine
• The Game Tile Cipher Using Scrabble(tm) Tiles
• Using coincidence to attack polyalphabetic ciphers
• How I cracked the "Bored Guru" Cipher Challenge
• Pattern Word Dictionary
• Elbonian A cipher that looks like a language.

Number Theory

• Factor tables for a class of interesting number

• Attempting to Evolve a Better Factorization Method

Some Really Stupid Old Cartoons

• Stupid Cartoons

Cellular Automata

Random Explorations in Automata Theory Gary J. Shannon Created: Mar. 2, 2003 Last updated: Mar. 25, 2003

Random Explorations in Automata Theory

This set of pages represents my informal and decidely non-academic explorations with cellular automata and matrix automata over a number of years.  These pages are perpetually under construction so check back frequently for new additions.

There is no particular order in which to view the pages.  Each one stands alone, more or less, and clickable links are provided that will launch you into related topics as well as providing definitions and more detailed examples.

Please feel free to email me with any comments, criticisms or suggestions.

Where to begin?

Since all the pages are linked together no matter where you start you will be able to reach every other page eventually so you might just start with the definitions and go from there.

Or if you already know what you're looking for here's a list of the pages that have been completed so far:

• Prioritized Predicate Rules: A Novel Way to Specify Rules
• Bug Wars: Using PPR rules to simulate bug colonies at war
• Exploring Self Organization and Autocatalysis in a Cellular Automaton
• Clocks: Synchronous, Asynchronous, Phase-Synchronous, Sequential and More
• Spin States: A Generalization of the Margolus Neighborhood
• Matrix Automata: Exploring Alternate Spaces
• Building Logic Gates with a Pipline CA
• Bead Runner: Building Logic Gates
• Logic Gates: Adding a Dimension
• Reversibility, Absolute and Functional
• Some Assorted Pipeline Logic Gates
• Some Definitions
• Tubular and Tubular Toroidal Automata
• Space Filling Grids

Interactive Fiction

• Dwenodon - An Interactive Fiction adventure game that I wrote in 2002. My first attempt at I.F.

Some of my Drawings and Paintings

Link coming soon