ASCII Anomaly with Illustrations !

An ASCII Image is simply an Ordinary Photographic Picture that has been reduced to a Gray Scale of 16 Shades of Gray, Then Converted to A Set of Characters from a Given Alphabet.

The ASCII      Conversation Program ( written for this series in ‘Scratch’ ) then Samples The Picture at Various Points to Determine which Gray Shade is at that location— Then it Selects from a List of Characters, One which Ostensibly Conveys that Same ‘Sense’ of ‘Darkness’ or ‘Lightness’ —

e.g.;  A very Light Swatch ( Pixel ) in The Photograph will be rendered on The ASCII Image as a :    . , ‘ or a -

A Dark Swatch ( Pixel ) would be Translated into a :   W M R or K

The Internet has many such ASCII Conversation Programs Available for you to use;

But i have found that many of them; Nearly All in fact, Are very lazy about choosing which Characters are used for Which Shades of Gray. Even if you were to find an ASCII Conversion Program that Uses more than 16 Shades of Grey; Say— 24, 36, 128 or 256; The Generic Approach is to Use One Single Character for Each Shade of Gray; So that there is a Consistent 1::1 Correspondence with Grey Swatch to Character Used.

The Problem; As i Perceived it; Was that this approach created Regions in which a Single Character was Used Exclusively, & Worse, Far Worse ( !!! ) — Was that when a Given Gray Region would Buttress another Gray Region; The Boundary of these Two Regions would create an UnSightly & UnNatural Looking Ridgeway ( ! )

When there are Several of these Ridgeways Defining a Larger Swatch which in The Photograph looks like a Smooth Gradation from Very Light to Very Dark— When it is Translated into as ASCII Region, It becomes a Garish Series of Stripes ( !!! ) That is Unbearable !

So The Solution that i incorporated into my ASCII Program; Originally Pioneered on my HP48sx Programmable Calculator— Was to allow The Program to PseudoRandomly Choose a Character from A List or Region in A Continuum of Characters for Each Gray Shade !

e.g.; A Given Shade of Middling Gray may be Either a :   y 2 3 6 9 or P

This Results in a ‘Noisier’ Gray Region,

Which seems to ‘Imply’ a Greater Resolution !

Such a Rendering Looks Something Like This :

The Chances of Two of The Same Characters Appearing Side by Side given that The Two Gray Swatches are Equal is The First Character x The Second Character from a List of Six Characters or 1 in 6.

Three Characters Sides by Side would be 1 x 6 x 6 or : 1 in 36

But.

i thought that this would be ‘Too Often !’

So i wrote a little Loop into my Program that would try to Find a Unique Character 3 Times.

So that; Now— Two Characters side by side would be 1 x ( 6 x 6 x 6 )

or 1 in 216.

But in a Very Large ASCII Picture, is is bound to happen many times.

But 3 Characters side by side would 1 in 432.

& that would happen many times still, When— The Three Gray Sampled Patches are all Equal, which happens pretty often.

So for there to be a Truly Anomalous Region to Exist;

There has to be Quite a Bit of Repetition, & Additionally; By my Reckoning, There has to be Several Lines, Vertically Arranged, in a Particular Horizontal Region—

In Other Words; A 2D Blob of Repetition !

The Bigger this Blob is; The More Anomalous it is. ( !!! ) ( ? )

The Chances of this Occurring, According to my Calculation is :

Something like 1.0 with 57,132 Zeros after that.

In other Words; Very Unlikely for this Tiny Swatch.

This one as shorter Horizontal Repetition Sequences,

Each only Bucking The Odds to Something like 10_million per line,

But then they are arranged Vertically, about 7 high;

So that makes it about ( ? ) 1 with 300,000 Zeros to 1.

Very Unlikely.

So when one of these shows up :

What does this mean ?

The Fact that these are occurring very irregularly;

Means that The Program is Working as it should, most of The Time.

Nearly all of The Time, The Distribution looks exactly as it should.

What is Going on ?

i’m thinking that it -Must Be- somekind of weird anomaly in The Scratch Application, but How or What is it doing ( ? )

This is The Whole ‘Kaden’ Image that The Really Weird Patch Came from; With The Other ‘Anomalous’ Regions in Red.

Is Discrimination ( per se ) Bad ?

Monday, April 6, 2015 8:13:01 PM

Is Discrimination ( per se ) Bad ?

 

It seems like every once in awhile, some group (x will claim that they’re being discriminated against & will demand equal rights.

What is curious, is that no one ever fights against Discrimination ‘itself’ because everyone wants to reserve their right to Discriminate agains some ‘other’ group in The Future.

Consequently;

Negros, Women, Gays, Jews, Mormons, The Irish, Southerns, Any Neighboring Country & its Nationals ( Citizens ), Communists, Arabs or Muslims, Socialists, The Poor ( Class Distinctions ), Persons with Opposing Fashion Sensibilities, Young or Old, Intellectuals, or The Horrifically Dumb; Nerds & Geeks, Christians, Asians, Native Indigenous People or Aborigines, Neo-Nazis, TransHumanists, The Proletariate, Lizard Headed Aliens disguised as British Royalty, Lowly Service Providers, Sales Clerks, Lawyers, Chiropractors, School Teachers, Bureaucratic Administrators, Bosses, Gentlemyn Criminals & Gypsies, Sissies & Nancy Boys, TomBoys, Environmentalists, Excessively Tall Women And Child Molesters — have all had to fight their Battles against Discrimination One Battle at a Time, Clawing their way up to Social Acceptance while all their misfit brethren hid behind thick shrubbery or fought against them to show that they were part of The Established Orthodoxy.

Which Groups are still ‘UnRecognized’ ?

Each of these Groups was thought, at one time, to be Invisible, & Subhuman, undeserving of The simplest acknowledgement of social inclusion.

So that — Any Groups that remain ‘UnRecognized are hard to Spot.

They are Invisible.

It takes a keen eye to spot The invisible Flying Saucer, Bigfoot, Ghost or Brownie.

Candidates :

The Ugly. The Ugly are clearly discriminated against, but who amongst them wants to march in a parade to fight for their equal rights ?

Anyone exhibiting any number of ‘Personality Disorders’ which are usually so subtle that to discriminate against them is an act perpetrated by The Victim’s own Awkwardness or Indifference to Social Conventions.

Unconventionals or Eccentrics. These parakeets might, most certainly, have ‘something’ wrong with them, But merely Thinking outside The Box of Validated Fashions, Social Proprieties, Economic Necessities or Slang Memes is Enough to get you The Cold Shoulder at a local Bar or Skating Rink.

 Any Sneech without a Star on their Belly.

Cultures & Societies are Defined by Everyone within them, Sharing a Fixed Set of Values, Tastes, Rituals, Parameters for Etiquette, Customs & Taboos. If you fall outside this Framework, then you ‘Should Be’ Discriminated Against.

Imagine a World in which True & Real Freedom was allowed.

All The Crazy things The Those Foreigners Openly Do on their own Streets, would be allowed anywhere.

The Biggest Problem with Living in A Free Society,

Is Enduring The Freedom of your Neighbors.

Additionally; Many of our Taboos are Simple Indicators that someone is Dangerously Insane. If someone is Breaking a Taboo, Then They Must, By Definition; Be Crazy.

It used to crazy to talk to yourself. Nowadays, everyone seemingly talks to themselves with Bluetooth.

So that that rule has been discarded.

What about walking around Naked. Should that Be Allowed ?

Girls kissing Girls ?

Boys kissing Boys ? Boys wearing Dresses ? Older men wearing elaborate Makeup that is commonly seen on Women ?

i’ve often thought that it is very ‘odd’ that women are ‘required’ to wear makeup to be taken seriously.

How about Ugly People as Waiters or Waitresses ?

No one, absolutely no one, wants that or is willing to patronize a restaurant with predominantly repulsive waitresses !

Everyone has to play their selected or assigned roles.

No one wants to live in a society of True Equality.

That would be Crazy.

Seriously.

Interstellar ( minus two stars )

Monday, April 6, 2015 7:01:53 PM

Interstellar ( minus two stars )

 

In The film interstellar ( 2014 ), one of The astronauts employs, for The 47th time in cinematic usage; A Sheet of paper, which he folds over to explain ‘Hyper Drive’ or in this case; How a Wormhole works. They do, to their credit, depict The Wormhole, Not as a flat disk as it is portrayed in all previous expositions of a wormhole, But as a 3D Sphere. Unfortunately; This immediately reminded me of The horrifically bad science fiction fiasco with Dustin Hoffman called ‘Sphere’.

Also; it seems to me that when they passed into The Wormhole/Sphere, there should -Not- have been any turbulence or any indication that they passed through anything. The Space ‘Boundary’ should have been a ( i hate to use this expression ) Quantum ‘Illusion’, like The Boundary of An Atom, Electron or Any SubAtomic Particle which appears to be a solid autonomous entity, but actually ( ? ) Fills The Entire Universe.

This last claim may seem perfectly ludicrous, but consider for a moment that The Magnetic Field of each Atom clearly & unmistakably extends for several inches, that you can see; & The Gravity of each atom in The Sun is able to reach out & hold on to The Earth & Keep The MilkyWay Galaxy from Flying Apart.

Those Fields define The ‘Edges’ of these Particles.

But i digress.

What i was thinking on The Bus Today; Was wouldn’t it be fun if one of these Astronauts explained ‘HyperDrive’ a little Differently for The ‘Next’ Film.

When asked how their Star-Drive worked; The Post-Humanitarian Astronaut would shuffle through a drawer or cabinet & find a clear sheet of ‘Paper’, like acetate, & fold it with The Common Appearance of Origami to Form a Tesseract, which would be impossible of course, especially if its folded ‘correctly’. Tesseracts are usually depicted as a cube surrounded by 6 additional distorted cubes extending from each face, but in hyperspace, each of these extended cubes are a perfect cube of 4 Dimensions each. Whether such a thing actually exists in any ‘real’ way, they are quite easy to make inside a computer, where you can see how they ‘move’ when you ‘rotate’ them.

Which is how The Astronaut Nerd would explain this to The Little Girl that is asking him. After using a Sharpie to make a point on each side of The Form, he would then explain that in order for The Two Points to Then ‘Meet’ at a Common Location, It is only Necessary to ‘Rotate’ The Tesseract until The Two Points come together.

With a Star-Ship; The Universe is Not Turned, But The Space-Ship forms a Five Dimensional ‘Photon’ Distortion Inversion Icosahedron which it then rotates within until it finds on its surface, The intended location. ( or some such ) — The cute part is the Folding & Manipulating The Paper Tesseract.

- - -

The other thing that i ‘hated’ about this film, was its depiction of the Four-Dimension ‘TimeScape’ which was nothing more than a house of mirrors. This is The Problem with Depicting 4D Realms, You must have The courage to superimpose some conceptual ‘push’ into 4D Space, Otherwise, what is The point.

The Resulting Stylization is Cowardly ( which is used here, much more appropriately, than how it is repeated ad infinitum on The Television ! ) & Inept ( Tepid or Feeble ).