added 12days' contents

12DaysAlife.py

@@ -22,6 +22,9 @@ def make_12days(day: int):
         - day_12.md
       - 90_something.md
       - ...
+
+    for testing:
+    read comment in `if __name__ == "__main__":` scope
     """
 
     root_directory_name = "12_days_alife_2023"
@@ -97,23 +100,26 @@ def read_markdownfile(filepath: str):
     print("generating {} done.".format(root_directory_name))
 
 
-def get_day(testing_padding_date=0) -> int:
+def get_day() -> int:
     now = datetime.now()
     if now.year != 2023:
         raise RuntimeError("out of range")
     if now.month != 12:
         raise RuntimeError("out of range")
 
-    day = (now.day + testing_padding_date) - 13 # Dec 14th is the 1st day
+    day = now.day - 13 # Dec 14th is the 1st day
     if day <= 0 or day > 14:
         raise RuntimeError("out of range")
 
     return day
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
     try:
-        # day = get_day(testing_padding_date=3) # for testing
-        day = get_day()
+        """
+        if you want to test locally, put an arbitary integer value to `day` (example: `day = 3`)
+        and call this script by `$ python3 12DaysAlife.py`
+        """
+        day = 12 #get_day()
         print(f"today is {day}th day!")
         make_12days(day)
     except:

12_days_alife_2023/00_General.md

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+**The ALife Newsletter’s 2023 Advent Calendar**
+
+# General:
+
+The “Twelve Days of ALife Xmas” is a special event by the Artificial Life Newsletter. Every day, between December 13th and December 25th, we bring you a tiny bite of cool ALife Links for you to enjoy. Webpages, Videos, Papers, Images - we bet there will be something here, probably many somethings, that you might not have seen before, and will be quite pleased to find out! I know I did! The links themselves will be only lightly described, to give you the pleasure of surprise and discovery -- kinda like opening a gift, or reading the log of that simulation that ran for an entire week!
+
+Without further ado:

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_1.md

@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
-## Day1
-this is Day1
+## One Creative Community
+
+On the first day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: One creative community! The ALife community is several hundreds of researchers from various fields, all brought together by a fascination for the processes behind Life as we know it, and a desire to create Life as we don’t yet know it. The ALife community is our first gift: join us, connect through [https://alife.org/](https://alife.org/) and subscribe to this very newsletter at [https://forms.gle/tXKTzx8SmKhD8j167](https://forms.gle/tXKTzx8SmKhD8j167) !

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_10.md

@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+## Ten Scintillating Simulations
+
+On the tenth day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Ten Scintillating Simulations of living systems doing their thing in silicon. You probably heard of some of them, but we are sure there is something in these links which will surprise you! Simulation of an environment? Yes. Language? Sure. Evolution? Of course. Something more abstract? We got that too. GPU Acceleration? Oh yeah! If you are going to make a new ALife simulation, make sure to check these ones out first!
+
+- [Lenia - Game of Life in the continuous space](https://github.com/Chakazul/Lenia)
+- [alien - Artificial LIfe ENvironment - GPU accelerated Artificial Life Simulation](https://alien-project.org)
+- [Tierra - One of the earliest ALife simulations](https://web.stanford.edu/class/sts129/Alife/html/Tierra.htm)
+- [ApeSDK - Multi-Agent Simulation System](https://gitlab.com/apesdk/apesdk)
+- [Swarm Chemistry - Artificial Chemistry Simulation](https://bingdev.binghamton.edu/sayama/SwarmChemistry/)
+- [OpenPraparat - Cellular Automata Simulation](https://github.com/A5size/OpenPraparat)
+- [Evoloop - Several small alife simulation projects gathered together](https://github.com/Lehnart/alife)
+- [Bibites - Brain Simulation using Unity](https://www.youtube.com/@TheBibitesDigitalLife)
+- [Orb Farm - A small and relaxing aquarium simulation on your desktop](https://orb.farm/)
+- [Avida - Simulation of Evolving programs](https://github.com/devosoft/avida)
+- [PicBreeder - Interactive Evolution for generating Art](https://nbenko1.github.io/#/)
+

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_11.md

@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+## Eleven Rich Community Resources
+On the 11th day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Eleven rich community resources to engage with and contribute to! Are you looking for teaching material, definitions of common ALife terms, or a contest to participate in? We have you covered!
+
+- [The ALife journal library](https://github.com/imytk/alife_journal): a list of all the papers (+metadata!) published in the ALife journal since its beginning
+- [The ALife wiki](https://alife.org/encyclopedia/): a wiki where any ISAL member can contribute
+- [ISAL's ALife News Aggregator](https://alife.org/online-resources/latest-news-from-around-the-web/): The latest news and papers about ALife from around the web
+- [Artificial Life Teaching Materials](https://github.com/isal-alife/artificial-life-teaching-materials): Lecture slides, exercises and other stuff for teachers and students
+- [BiotaCast](https://biotacast.org/): A podcast about things ALife with developers, academics and users
+- [Complexity Explorer](https://www.complexityexplorer.org/): online courses, tutorials, and resources for the study of complex systems
+- [This very ALife Newsletter](https://alife-newsletter.github.io/Newsletter/): subscribe [here](https://forms.gle/DeEvU2mwDKQh9LKz9)!
+- [The Virtual Creatures Competition](https://sites.google.com/view/vcc2022/home): A yearly competition for the title of best virtual creature 
+- [The ALife conference’s Student Literature] Contest(https://sites.google.com/view/alife2023-literature-contest/home): a yearly contest of essays on the theme of the conference
+- [The Evolution Prize](https://www.panspermia.org/eprize.htm): 17 years unclaimed, $100,00 for a demonstration of open-ended evolutionary innovation in a closed system
+- The ALife conference’s Art Contest: every year, the conference feature art pieces related to ALife.

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_12.md

@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+## Twelve Thought-Provoking Papers
+
+On the 12th day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Twelve Thought-Provoking Papers! Here is a selection of ALife papers with a slightly philosophical edge that have (mostly) featured in the Artificial Life journal over the years. Whether you’re new to the community or if you’ve been involved for decades, we’re sure you’ll have plenty of chin-scratching moments by visiting or revisiting some of these articles.
+
+- [What is Life—in Everyday Understanding? A Focus Group Study on Lay Perspectives on the Term "Life" (Kerbe, 2016)](https://direct.mit.edu/artl/article/22/1/119-133/2834)
+- [Primer for ALife Art (Penny, 2009)](https://escholarship.org/content/qt1z07j77x/qt1z07j77x_noSplash_29e82584dcff293612414d1ef5ad8d16.pdf?t=kx4619)
+- [Active Mutation in Self-Reproducing Networks of Machines and Tapes (Ikegami and Hashimoto, 1995)](https://doi.org/10.1162/artl.1995.2.3.305)
+- [Why Do We Need Artificial Life? (Bonabeau and Theraulaz, 1994)](https://doi.org/10.1162/artl.1994.1.3.303)
+- [Four Puzzles About ALife (Bedau, 1998)](https://doi.org/10.1162/106454698568486)
+- [Artificial Life and the Chinese Room Argument (Anderson and Copeland, 2002)](https://doi.org/10.1162/106454602321202435)
+- [Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter (Rasmussen et al, 2003)](https://doi.org/10.1162/106454603322392479)
+- [Artificial Life: Discipline or Method? (Noble et al., 2000)](https://doi.org/10.1162/106454600568375)
+- [Emotion as Morphofunctionality (Pérez and Sanz, 2013)](https://doi.org/10.1162/ARTL_a_00086)
+- [Creativity and ALife (Boden, 2015)](https://doi.org/10.1162/ARTL_a_00176)
+- [The Cognitive Domain of a Glider in the Game of Life (Beer, 2014)](https://doi.org/10.1162/ARTL_a_00125)
+- [Toward a Formalization of Emergence (Kubi, 2003)](https://direct.mit.edu/artl/article/9/1/41-65/2415)

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_2.md

@@ -1,2 +1,6 @@
-## Day2
-this is Day2
+## Two Inspiring Introductions
+
+On the second day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Two inspiring introductions to Artificial Life! Share these links with your friends if you can’t quite explain what you are doing late at night reading about microbes, artificial chemistries, and simulations of evolution! Two approachable descriptions of our vast, dear field.
+
+- [Life Evolves, can attempts to create artificial life evolve too?](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/life-evolves-can-attempts-to-create-artificial-life-evolve-too/)
+- [An Introduction to Artificial Life for people who like AI.](https://thegradient.pub/an-introduction-to-artificial-life-for-people-who-like-ai/)

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_3.md

@@ -1,2 +1,6 @@
-## Day3
-this is Day3
+## Three Active Youtube Channels
+On the third day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Three active YouTube channels! These YouTube channels provide excellent viewing, listening, and learning for anyone that is interested in ALife. If you were ever feeling a bit short on ALife-related viewing on YouTube, then these channels will give you hours of content to peruse. If you like what you see, please subscribe to the channels and share them with your colleagues!
+
+- [Alien Project Channel - GPU accelerated Life simulation](https://www.youtube.com/@alien-project)
+- [Dave Ackley’s channel - on Robust Computation](https://www.youtube.com/@DaveAckley/videos)
+- [Cross Roads by Cross Labs - Several talks of interest to ALife people](https://www.youtube.com/@CrossLabsAI/playlists)

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_4.md

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+## Four Stupendous Subtypes 
+On the fourth day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Four stupendous subtypes of ALife research! ALife is commonly divided between Hard ALife (hardware: robots, chips…), Wet ALife (chemistry, biology…) and Soft ALife (software: simulations, algorithms…). And let’s not forget the 4th one: art, from images to operas!

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_5.md

@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+## Five Amazing Artwork Collections
+
+On the fifth day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Five amazing collections of artwork inspired by Artificial Life, for you to enjoy and feel inspired by. Sometimes they are a different way of looking at an existing concept, sometimes they are new things we can create with our existing tools. In the end, Life can be an inspiring thing, and so can Artificial Life!
+
+- [Images using Alife techniques by Mitsuyoshi](https://mitsuyoshi-yamazaki.github.io/ALifeLab/pages/gallery.html)
+- [Artificial Nature Project of Alife Inspired Art Installations](https://artificialnature.net/)
+- [Maxim Zhestkov Art Projects Webpage](https://zhestkov.studio/)
+- [Astrovitae Magazine on Speculative Biology](https://www.astrovitae.com/)
+- [Art Exhibition at ALife 2023](https://2023.alife.org/art-exhibition-unconscious-relationship/)
+

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_6.md

@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+## Six Knowledge-Kindling Non-Fictions
+
+On the sixth day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Six knowledge-kindling non-fictions. Need to quench your thirst for ALife knowledge this Christmas? Here is a selection of books related to artificial life in some way, some of which are written by active members of our community. From books describing the mathematics that organize natural systems to discussions of autonomous machines, there is something on this list for everybody! It’s not too late to get them on your Christmas wishlist…!
+
+- [ROBOT 100, edited by Jitka Čejková](https://www.robot100.cz/book) 
+- [Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life, by Mitchell Whitelaw](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262731768/metacreation/)
+- [Philosophy of Artificial Life, by Margaret Boden](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-philosophy-of-artificial-life-9780198751557)
+- [Rise of the Self-Replicators, by Tim Taylor and Alan Dorin](https://www.tim-taylor.com/selfrepbook/)
+- [Life's Other Secret: The New Mathematics of the Living World, by Ian Stewart](https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Life_s_Other_Secret/c9MPAQAAMAAJ?hl=en)
+- [Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology, by Steven Levy](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/737831)

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_7.md

@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+## Seven Upcoming Conferences
+On the seventh day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Seven upcoming conferences! Conferences are great! They create opportunities to stay up-to-date with upcoming research, to expand our networks, to meet old and new friends, and to travel to fun places! Here is a list of upcoming conferences in 2024 that we think ALifers might be interested in keeping an eye on - or even attending!
+
+- [Intelligent Virtual Agents (September 16 - 19, Glasgow, Scotland, UK)](https://iva.acm.org/2024/)
+- [ALife Special Session at WCCI](http://conclave.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp/pub/ss-alife-wcci2024.html)
+- [Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (July 14 - 18, Melbourne, Australia)](https://dl.acm.org/conference/gecco) 
+- [AROB-ISBC-SWARM 2024: International Society of Artificial life and Robotics (January 24 - 26, Beppu, Japan, and Online)](https://isarob.org/symposium/) 
+- [SAB 2024: From Animals to Animats: 17th International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (September 9 - 12, Irvine, USA)](https://sab2024.socsci.uci.edu/) 
+- [The 2024 Conference on Artificial Life (July 22 - 26, Copenhagen, Denmark)](https://2024.alife.org/) 
+- [Astrobiology Conference (AbSciCon) (5 - 10 May, Providence, Rhode Island, USA](https://www.agu.org/abscicon)

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_8.md

@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+## Eight Gripping Games
+
+On the eighth day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Eight gripping games that remind us of Artificial Life! These are digital and physical games in the past, present, and future; they play with ideas that are dear to our research, such as complex simulations, evolution, adaptation, alien worlds and alien lifeforms; and above all: “life as it could be”. Take some time to remember how people explored these ideas in the past, or maybe try something new to play during the end of the year break!
+
+- [Screeps - online battle between programmable swarm robots](https://screeps.com)
+- ["Photosynthesis" - boardgame about plant life development](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/218603/photosynthesis)
+- [Spore - Computer game about evolving from a cell to a spacefaring race](http://www.spore.com/)
+- [Creatures - Computer game about agents with brains that evolve with Genetic Algorithms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatures_(video_game_series))
+- [Dwarf Fortress - A world simulated from its history to the fingers and teeth of every creature living in it](https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/)
+- [Grandroids - Game inspired by Artificial Life](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1508284443/grandroids-real-artificial-life-on-your-pc)
+- [ANLIFE: Motion-Learning Life Evolution](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2452130/ANLIFE_MotionLearning_Life_Evolution/)
+- [Universal Paperclips - A short Web game that discusses the meaning of life in an Artificial Mind](https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/)

12_days_alife_2023/80_contents/day_9.md

@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+## Nine Fascinating Fictions
+
+On the ninth day of ALife Xmas, the newsletter gave to me: Nine fascinating fictions that will certainly delight the ALifers out there. The links today introduce several books and movies that involve themes such as future society, artificial intelligence, sentience, and what it means to be a living being deserving of rights. Grab a nice couch, and dive in these words! Maybe your next research idea will come from one of these?
+
+- [Permutation City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_City)
+- [Children of Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel))
+- [Frankenstein](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/84/84-h/84-h.htm)
+- [Lifecycle of Software Objects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lifecycle_of_Software_Objects)
+- [Blade Runner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner)
+- [The Bicentennial Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bicentennial_Man)
+- [Ex Machina (2014)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/)
+- [Humans (TV Series 2015–2018)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4122068/)
+- [RUR (Rossum Universal Robots)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.)
+