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.
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.
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
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:
Computerized Linguistics and Machine Translation
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography
Just some fun pages about cryptograms, codes and ciphers.
Number Theory
Some Really Stupid Old Cartoons
Cellular Automata
| Random Explorations in Automata Theory Gary J. Shannon Created: Mar. 2, 2003 Last updated: Mar. 25, 2003 |
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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:
Interactive Fiction
Some of my Drawings and Paintings
Link coming soon