Posts: 141
Threads: 37
Joined: Jul 2009
I did. I have a few Hofstadter books in my bookshelves.
Posts: 107
Threads: 13
Joined: Sep 2009
I am just finishing a program for the 42s that I got from his book Metamagical Themas called CopyCat. You enter a string of 6 characters and the calc picks a method and "changes" the string in a certain way, then displays the result. You get three test strings to figure out what the calc is doing, then the calc gives you a string and it's up to you to figure out what it should change to, following the pattern.
Example: ABCDEF to ABCDEG - This could be that the last character is shifted one to the right, or the last character is always 'G'. You can confirm that with more test strings.
Of course, the more interesting ones are much more complicated. Switching and rotating letters around, doing changes depending on what letters are present, etc.
I'll have it done and posted in the next week or so.
Dave