If you want to experiment some more, I made this little webgl app [0] that makes it easy to mess with Conway's GoL while it's executing (you hold shift, which pauses the simulation, and click on cells to toggle them on or off). It's easy to 'paint' some basic gliders (e.g. http://images.slideplayer.com/25/8056158/slides/slide_3.jpg), then un-pause and watch them go off for instance. Or just try drawing a vertical or horizontal line of three cells (you get a simple oscillator), then try adding or removing things to it.

There's also a dropdown full of interesting patterns you can load up (with descriptions from mathematicians).

[0] http://symbolflux.com/conwayz/