Instructions

You can bring cells to life by clicking (click again to undo). Use STEP to move by 1 tim-step, or hit PLAY or press space-bar to start the time. Drawing new cells will automatically pause the game.
Game of Life rules are simple:

• Alive cells with 2 or 3 neighbours survive, others die
• Dead cells with 3 living neighbours come to life
• Neighbours are the 8 immediately surrounding cells

You can change the speed, grid size and number of cells using the sliders. Very high speeds are limited by your computer's number-crunching powers (and admittably, my implementation). Use the Random seed input to generate a random starting pattern with a certain percentage of living cells. The Presets menu can be used to load pre-defined starting patterns.

For more details on Conway's Game of Life and inspiration on patterns, see the Wikipedia page.