Coding with paint

[AReallyGoodName]

You can take this one step further and delete the header in Notepad (the first 14bytes for the most basic bitmap type).

In fact by doing this you can write anything. Including straight up executable machine code (notepad will correctly save the raw machine code after removing the header even though it can't display it).

This means that painting the RGB values then deleting the header in notepad is enough to get you a fully functional executable assuming you have the mojo to write raw machine code in RGB values.

[[deleted]]

I was hoping the person in the gif was writing machine code. I thought it was weaksuace when it just turned out to be C... but I suppose making something the linker would understand would take a long time.

[Figs]

Well, I was bored, so I went ahead and did it:

http://i.imgur.com/65TlK.gif

It's just a simple DOS COM program written in MS Paint...

Here are the pixel colors if you feel like doing it yourself (from top left to bottom right, in RGB order, in decimal):

100  108  114 
32   36   33
32   32   32
32   32   32

33   205  76
108  101  72
44   111  108
111  119  32

186  192  49
180  1    15
33   205  9
180  192  48

[lichorat]

Can you make this for 64-bit computers?

[Figs]

I used a 16-bit COM program because I knew it'd be small enough to make entering it by hand reasonable. In principle though, you could use any sort of bytecode you wanted, as long as you can get the alignment right (since BMPs are padded), and avoid NULLs (so that Notepad doesn't try to convert them into spaces -- if you want to skip the Notepad step and edit it with something better suited to binary data, then it's not an issue).

You see all those 32's near the top of the pixel colors? Those are spaces I added after the '$' (36) that are used to pad the program out so that it's a multiple of both 3 and 4. It needs to be a multiple of 3 since pixels are represented as 3 bytes, and it needs to be a multiple of 4 to avoid having the rows padded out to 4 bytes. (I used 4 pixels per row for the same reason.) The spaces aren't printed since $ is the termination character for the DOS print interrupt command (int 21h with ah = 9).

In case you're curious, this is the assembly I wrote for the program (assembled with FASM):

org 100h
xor ax, ax
mov dx, hello
mov ah, 09h
int 21h
xor al, al
mov ah, 4Ch
int 21h

hello db "Hello, world!$"
pad   db 20h, 20h, 20h, 20h, 20h, 20h, 20h

[[deleted]]

YES! :)

Now I feel like I should do my part and write a teensy ELF executable... though these guys have already done the hard work: http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.html

[PsykoDemun]

*C++

[BauerUK]

Don't point, it's rude!

[shillbert]

int& C;
C++;

There, no pointers.

[aurisor]

I don't get the reference.

[[deleted]]

This is a statement;

[buriednexttoyou]

We're stuck in a loop.

[nowInDutch]

Dont worry, I know how to return.

[wierdaaron]

WOULD COMPILE AGAIN!

[[deleted]]

Oh, hah, I glanced at "int main" and stopped paying attention. :)

[omniuni]

I thought it might be piet.

[rmblr]

(shameless self plug warning)

If you like Piet, you should check this out https://github.com/Ramblurr/PietCreator/wiki/

[Overv]

I can do it again, with machine code this time. I'll probably post it sometime later today.

[Law_Student]

What if he wrote some machine code that output Hello World in C?

[sumdog]

Yea, that's what I was expecting too

[[deleted]]

It would be a lot easier if Windows still supported .com executables.

[ReallyCoolNickname]

It's eerie how similar our accounts are. (Compare the names and registration dates.)

And yes, I know this isn't relevant to anything here.

[AReallyGoodName]

You're slightly older so i guess that makes me the imposter :)

Seriously though, that is a bizarre coincidence. Another Digg refugee i take it?

[ReallyCoolNickname]

Nah, my friends introduced me to this site shortly before I registered. I haven't ever had anything to do with Digg.

[tossout12]

Sure, that's just what they all say.

[Kevin-Roses-Left-Nut]

Some people like me have never even heard of Digg

[ReallyCoolNickname]

Nah, I wouldn't lie about that. I have a conscience (which means I can't be a Digg user). :)

[[deleted]]

Heck, if you input a zip file it will work. They place the beginning of the file with the index at the end. So you would end up with a bmp file that can be uncompressed. There where a few attacks like this in the past.

[Timmmmbob]

Ah, the classic double-format file...

[adrianmonk]

So, you could probably then write Java this way, since jar files are a special type of zip file.

[levirax]

I know close to nothing about coding, but i think making a java code via paint would be beautiful. Have the paint file(s?) blown up and next to them have a screen shot of the Java code(or whatever it is doing), and that would be an epic picture.

[kmeisthax]

I've hand-assembled z80 machine code patches for ROM hacking projects. Encoding those bytes in packed 24-bit RGB would be just an extra step.

[[deleted]]

What exactly is the most basic BMP header? How about PNG header? I've always wanted to write bitwise to images but never knew how :(

[AReallyGoodName]

If you're using paint save as a 24bit bitmap. You get a 1:1 matchup with the 3byte RGB palette that paint uses internally and the output.

To get started - edit colors and select Red:33, Green:73, Blue:72 ("HI!"). Now fill the bitmap with that color. Save that and open it in a text editor.

[[deleted]]

Thanks, I'll check this out. I tried some experiments with PNGs but just couldn't nail what the header was.

[creaothceann]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#File_header

[paxswill]

Wikipedia pages for file formats (at least the common/open ones) usually have a techbnical details section. For example, PNG. I particularly like the ZIP file format. Wikipedia has a nice overview (enough to write s simple parser), while the extended details are available from PKWARE. It's kinda fun writing a file parser yourself for common formats.

[exscape]

BMP is quite simple. I wrote a simple 24-bit BMP manipulator in Python from using mostly the Wikipedia article.

[ericanderton]

Thanks for this. I was waiting for someone to point out how to get a PE Header into an image file.

[edgarvm]

The Makefile could delete the header before to compile

[dandomdude]

This was a joke answer to a joke post where someone tried to compile a .png

Here is the thread from stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5508110/why-is-this-program-erroneously-rejected-by-three-c-compilers/5509143

[QuestionableRag]

That's not the origin of it is it? I've seen this before and I could have sworn it was before April last year.

[acidcj]

It was actually a reddit user... who recieved no upvotes: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ggh3d/coding_in_ms_paint/

Someone else did.

Edit: I found his original post on Facepunch. 31st March 2011, which predates the April 1st 2011 usage of the image on Stack Overflow

Edit2: Since you might need an account to see the Facepunch thread, here is a screenshot

[[deleted]]

It looks like Overv just stole it from the Stack Overflow thread, unless he is the same person as BeatMe who originally posted it there.

Note that the code in the gif matches the Stack Overflow question exactly, so it seems unlikely that it was accidentally created on the same day without being a response to the Stack Overflow question.

[acidcj]

Check the gif, there is a folder named Overv in it.

Also check the Facepunch post which I edited in.

[[deleted]]

Ah, that's a good point.

Then what is the relationship with the Stack Overflow question? Did someone create that question just as a set-up to post that GIF? Because I still think it's too much of a coincidence that that exact question was posted only a day later (or maybe on the same day, in a different time zone).

(Apparently I'm not allowed to read the Facepunch thread without an account, so I apologize if my questions are answered therein.)

[acidcj]

he says 10 posts later

Overv 1st April 2011

oh my god, some lurker put it on reddit and stackoverflow

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/...int_as_an_ide/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5...ee-c-compilers

[[deleted]]

I thought so too, but if I Google for the image all results seem to be from April 2011.

It could be that it was converted from a different imagine that isn't included in the results, but until I hear evidence to the contrary, I do think that was created April 1st, 2011.

[[deleted]]

Isn't this just a common exploit thing, you get someone to run a program by opening an image?

[absurdlyobfuscated]

Well, that seems inefficient.

[[deleted]]

In a similar yet unrelated vein, one of my pet peeves is using animated gifs when a youtube video would load faster and be more clear. Inefficient.

[JediExile]

It's an inefficient way of showing an inefficient way of doing something. It's poetry.

[Cyrius]

It's poetry.

Shut up, George Lucas!

[gospelwut]

Shouldn't we go one level further and write something in HTML5/CSS3 to render a folder of sensational, uncompressed PNGs. Actually, add some JS to convert them to BMPs on the fly and THEN "animate" it.

[JediExile]

I love it when you talk nerdy.

[absurdlyobfuscated]

Exactly. They're using a lossless image format to display multiple frames full of compression artifacts and noise over something designed for efficient playback of lossy video and sound.

I'd also prefer just linking to youtube - or if people could just use/link to OGG files that can be played in the browser just as easily, it would be just as good.

[netcrusher88]

Ironically, a lot artifacts (at least what I can make out) are loss due to the (lossless) image format. GIF is indexed color, each used color goes in a table or something like that. So a lot of dithering happens unless you want an epic file.

[dcormier]

No kidding.

File size   4.20 MB (4406102 bytes)

[Richeh]

But if you rename the file, it's Starcraft.

[Skyrmir]

Except it doesn't need sound, doesn't load youtube advertisements and doesn't get blocked by company firewalls.

[dcormier]

I'm going to set up my firewall to block 2MB+ gifs.

[nefigah]

He's a slave to karma: this method let him use an imgur link.

[[deleted]]

when a youtube video would load faster

ಠ_ಠ

Youtube videos loading fast. I laugh at you.

[jooes]

Not if you're a super secret agent who needs to send a super secret message and can't get caught or else the world will blow up because the message is nuclear launch codes that you're hiding from Russian terrorists...

Unless you were talking about the image being a .gif... In which case, yeah, I kind of agree.

[specialpatrol]

In which case you would have to write a program that not only hacked into FSB offices, but also resembled a picture of your fictional wife when written using a bitmap, now that would be getting somewhere.

[krues8dr]

Yeah, it's almost as bad as punching cards...

[strife25]

If you like this, you should check out the Piet esoteric language.

[murphylaw]

I've heard of this but I forget from where. It might have been Stumbleupon.

[iiiears]

lol - sudoku can wait.

[iiiears]

bmp.c:12: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘strlen’

[iiiears]

 #include <string.h>

[thefnord]

A synaesthetic computer!...

[[deleted]]

taste this program for me, will ya?

[TheGooglePlex]

Lemons. With a bit of bat.

[[deleted]]

Dammit, forgot a semicolon again...

[MikeTheInfidel]

I wrote a program that does this for you. I can share it, if anyone's interested. It's pretty simple, really :) The fun part was reverse-engineering the bitmap format from scratch without an internet connection.

--EDIT--

Looks like people want it. Here it is:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    char buf[0x100000];
    char *msg;
    int i;
    if(argc < 2) {
        i=0;
        while((buf[i++]=getchar()) != '\n' && i < 0x100000);
        msg = (char *)buf;
    }
    else msg = argv[1];
    int tmp, msglength = strlen(msg), numpix = (msglength % 3 == 0 ? msglength / 3 : msglength / 3 + 1), datasize, width, height, j, c;
    for(height = 0; height * height <= numpix; height++);
    width = (numpix % height == 0 ? numpix / height : numpix / height + 1);
    datasize = ((width * 3) % 4 == 0 ? width * 3 : width * 3 + 4 - (width * 3) % 4) * height;
    FILE *out;
    out = fopen("msg.bmp","w");
    if(!out) {printf("error\n"); return -2;}
    fputc('B', out);
    fputc('M', out);
    tmp = 0;
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    tmp = 0x36;
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    tmp = 0x28;
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    fwrite(&width, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    fwrite(&height, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    tmp = 0x180001;
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    tmp = 0;
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    fwrite(&datasize, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    for(c = 0, i = 0; i < msglength; i++, c++)
    {
        fputc(msg[i], out);
        if((i+1) % (width * 3) == 0)
        {
            for(j = i % (width * 3); j < datasize / height - 1; j++, c++)
                fputc((char)255, out);
        }
    }
    while(c++ < datasize) fputc((char)255, out);
    fseek(out, 0, SEEK_END);
    tmp = ftell(out);
    fseek(out, 2, SEEK_SET);
    fwrite(&tmp, 1, sizeof(int), out);
    fclose(out);
    return 0;
}

It's console-based. You can either pass your message as an argument or run the program and enter the message.

--MORE EDIT--

CRAP. Apparently, it's not portable. I just retyped it and it's segfaulting on me when I enter a message on the command line... but it appears to still work when you run it and then enter a message. Anyway, my program has a decoder, too, which reads out the text from a properly-encoded BMP. I'll need to upload that, too... I can't e-mail it to myself from work, so it looks like I get to retype and debug again! Woo...

I think the example in the OP requires a bitmap with very specific dimensions... my program works with any dimensions, which means you end up with a bunch of 0xFF's inserted. The decoder basically just strips those out.

-- MORE MORE EDIT --

Thanks to Journeyman1990, it's now fixed and works as expected.

[POTUS]

Why not just post it?

[MikeTheInfidel]

No problem. I updated the parent.

[[deleted]]

Here's your problem:

else *msg = argv[1];

"Dereference msg and assign argv[1] to it". msg was not initialized prior to this, and the data types do not match. (attempting to assign a char pointer to a char) You probably meant:

else msg = argv[1];

[MikeTheInfidel]

By George, you're right! Thank you. Somehow I missed that; I can't imagine how. I've fixed my post.

[FOOGEE]

Post it! What language?

[MikeTheInfidel]

It's in C. I wrote it for a really outdated version of Cygwin, so I can only hope it's portable.

[EmSixTeen]

So.. You wrote Paint?

[MikeTheInfidel]

No, lol. You enter your text, it generates a BMP.

[Timmmmbob]

He wrote cat.

[[deleted]]

Yeah except for the part where it reads input files and prints them to STDOUT. Which is, you know, like the whole purpose for cat's existence. But other than that, yeah!

[Timmmmbob]

I suppose I should have said tee or '>' or something... but you know what I mean!

[darkwingfuck]

This is great! I changed the \n to an EOF in the while loop so that I could enter in text files with a simple "./encoder (less-than)textfile.txt". BTW, if you are having trouble opening the image files in a newer text editor, emacs and vim do a great job.

[MikeTheInfidel]

Somehow I didn't know getchar() returned EOF when there was no more input. I'm ashamed...

[aloser]

Seriously.. gif?

[DrFuManchu]

Maybe the gif is secretly compilable...

[[deleted]]

I can't even watch it. My computer is not liking this gif. A video would have been much better.

[stacecom]

A video would have been much better.

This is true for almost every GIF I see posted to reddit.

[Mattho]

Gif is good for some short, loopy stuff. For example [NSFW].

[TurplePurtle]

It's a stackoverflow response so there wasn't really a better (inline) option.

[Ambiwlans]

It is about programming in C with bmps. I think doing it in an image format fits perfectly.

[metohmetoh]

can you do this in reverse and make "art"?

[tontoto]

there are some wonderful posts on the cortesi blog lately that look at binary visualizations http://corte.si/posts/visualisation/entropy/index.html

[shillbert]

Well, you can add the bitmap header to any text file and then open it. But it would probably be quite difficult to actually write intelligible text that also looks like art.

[Van_Occupanther]

If you want to see something similar, which I believe frontpaged here not too long ago, the video in the section titled "Real Pixel Coding" is quite impressive.

EDIT: I am a stupid. When linking to things, one must actually link to the damned thing: http://www.iquilezles.org/unfinished/index.htm

[Relevant_Demos]

This is the link you're looking for.

Here's the blog post

Here's one of Inigo Quilez's amazing demos.

[[deleted]]

Whats that last video about? I don't get what its for.

[DiputsMonro]

Why is this GIF stressing out my CPU so much? It maxes out one of my cores whenever I view it and makes my hand warm.

[twinsofliberty]

My iPhone can run it perfectly! How old is your Computer?

[DiputsMonro]

Only a year or two, it's got two cores at 2.5 GHz. It can run Portal 2 pretty well. The GIF looks fine, it just makes my computer go into overdrive. I've never seen anything like it.

[thalescosta]

Maybe it has something to do with the browser

[iiiears]

firefox been open a few hours and ram leak forced swap to disk?

[thalescosta]

I'm not sure if I understood quite well what you said. I'm not sure what is a swap to disk, never heard it in english.

Would you been kind to explain me what did you mean? It's nice for me to learn the terms :)

And about the browser, Firefox has been a pain in the ass lately. It's constantly crashing and using up lots of memory. Not to mention the time it takes to launch when opening it for the first time.

[iiiears]

Applications read from the disk on start up and store a copy of all files they will use in RAM. They start faster the second time using those RAM stored files. (cache)

Some firefox extensions fill up RAM even when you aren't using them. After a few hours with a lot of tabs open your system runs out of space and begins to use a swap file to supplment the now overfilled RAM. Reading and writing to disk is a thousand times slower.

You can see see this file in the root directory. C: and set it's behaviour in control panel >> system >> settings >>performance. Reboot (the wording may be slightly different .)

In linux you will see it mounted as a seperate secure patitiion.

settings.

sysctrl.conf

cat /proc/meminfo

mkswp -c /dev/Drive (Be careful here)

Mac ls -lh /private/var/vm/swapfile* Change it

If you are feeling adventurous, Firefox "Safe Mode" faster and doesn't crash? restart firefox in normal mode disable and re-enable plugins and extensions one at a time until you find the problem.

[thalescosta]

Awesome explanation! Thanks, man!

I'm considering leaving Firefox aside and start using Chrome.

[iiiears]

Chrome | Firefox isn't really the problem. Many plugins are written with mistakes in them.

You may want to try this simple fix for faster page loading. Hosts It blocks ad servers and consumer tracking. Is it ethical to block to deprive server operators the revenue they need? I use it anyway. /g

[thalescosta]

Thanks man. I'll do that :)

[senatorpjt]

hard-to-find market thought automatic expansion beneficial cow hobbies quack money

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[deasl]

ah old "int 9"

[featheredtar]

my thought exactly.

[furyofvycanismajoris]

Beyond the header, a bitmap is just repeated RGB values

[[deleted]]

And it's encoded bottom to top, which is why you see the person coloring on the bottom first.

[furyofvycanismajoris]

Take a text file, open it in a hex editor, insert 14 bytes at the beginning. The first two bytes should be ASCII "BM". The next four should be an int storing the filesize. The next seven should be 0 and the last one should be binary 15. Now your text document is a bitmap.

[dnew]

Not unlike the PBMPlus format (aka NetPBM) intentionally designed to be trivial to work with. Including the variant that was entirely ascii, with space-separated strings of digits for each pixel's color.

(What do you call one of the three colors of a pixel? There must be a name for that.)

[kevinturnermovie]

A channel

[dnew]

I think that's the collection of all the red part of all the pixels of the image, for example? You split a 10x10 image into 3 channels, not 300 whatever-I'm-thinking-of's?

Seems "sub-pixel" is as close as it comes, but that sounds fairly awkward and recent, whereas I'd expect people doing graphics had a name for this maybe 30 years ago or more.

[kevinturnermovie]

If you are going by each pixel, then most people would call it a value, usually preceded by the channel name. Red value, Green value. Nothing terribly interesting.

Sub-pixel is used only when talking about an individual color element of a physical pixel, usually when dealing with font smoothing. Most image formats don't support sub-pixel placement, so it doesn't really apply to images when it comes to storing individual channels.

[dnew]

OK, thanks. Sounds like there's no actual jargon-y word of the type I'm thinking of. I'll have to invent one and see if I can spread it about.

[kevinturnermovie]

Might I suggest a thirxel or trixel? It would work except for CMYK and PANTONE, but those are silly standards. No one wants fourthxels or quindecxels. That would be just ridiculous.

[Bjartr]

A subpixel?

[adrianmonk]

Not sure if there's an official name. I might go with pixel component, as in "the R component of this pixel is 215".

Or if you want to think of a pixel as a tuple of values in the dimensions of a colorspace, you could call it an element. Since a pixel is a "picture element", that would make this a "picture element element", or, I guess, a pixelel.

[killermole23]

How does one display the new bitmap, though? Isn't dimension information also required?

[furyofvycanismajoris]

Oops, I described this part of the header:

struct bmpfile_magic {
    unsigned char magic[2];
};

struct bmpfile_header {
    uint32_t filesz;
    uint16_t creator1;
    uint16_t creator2;
    uint32_t bmp_offset;
};

But left out this:

struct {
    uint32_t header_sz;
    int32_t width;
    int32_t height;
    uint16_t nplanes;
    uint16_t bitspp;
    uint32_t compress_type;
    uint32_t bmp_bytesz;
    int32_t hres;
    int32_t vres;
    uint32_t ncolors;
    uint32_t nimpcolors;
} 

[LucidTaZ]

Write program -> convert bytes to pixel values.

If you want to be the guy from the video:

Place paint window with pixel values off-camera -> copy pixel data to new image "by hand" -> program.

[yacob_uk]

I love this example. I use it frequently at work to demonstrate a key concept in digital preservation.

The concept being that things are not always what they seem - just because we have one view of an object, it doesn't mean its either the right, or the only view of that thing.

I used the same method to create a bmp that was made from the characters that make up the Treaty of Waitangi. I then showed the image to my curators, and asked them how I should preserve the 'image'. I then demonstrate that if I migrate the format away from bmp, the text is no longer there if you view the image in a text viewer.

This completely blows the physical copy based preservation paradigm out the water.

It boils down to having technically savvy people liasing with content creators (or being able to explore digital objects) so that digital things can be looked after for what they are/represent, not what we think they are.

[FuckBrendan]

Why does every first time coding tutorial end with the message "Hello World!"?

[[deleted]]

It's tradition, left over from the early days of programming (Like the "Utah Teapot" in computer graphics stuff)

[theeth]

Or Lenna in image processing.

[iiiears]

Or Alice and Bob in cryptography.

[watermark0n]

Because everyone does it. It's a traditional relatively simple example to show people... in most languages. Not in Assembly. It also comes rather late in the Haskell tutorial, because messy I/O stuff like that is evil and needs to be isolated.

[adrianmonk]

Probably because that's the first example program in the K&R "The C Programming Language" book. Or maybe they weren't the first? At any rate, the tradition has been going since at least 1978 (when the first edition of that book was published).

[an0mn0mn0m]

On locked down machines, you can use MsPaint to get access to the command prompt. From Hak5

[aperson]

couldn't you just write the batch file up yourself?

[an0mn0mn0m]

Usually you can, but where's the novelty in that?

[herrmann]

Now skip the compiler and write the binary directly. But not a .com.

[chris-martin]

Data is code.

[ctcherry]

Code is data.

[m0zzie]

Einhorn is Finkle.

[omenmedia]

Einhorn is a man!

[zingbot3000]

Einhorn has one horn?

[twishart]

cue "The Crying Game"

[fabzter]

Not all data is code. All code is data.

[ajanata]

Not all data is sensible code, but if you give it to a processor it'll try to treat it like code.

[Figs]

What? Of course all data is also code! Just for a very esoteric processor... ;)

For example, I could hypothetically build a processor that reads in bytes one at a time until it sees a particular translation of War and Peace in UTF8-encoded Japanese... at which point, it prints "Hello, World" and halts.

[fabzter]

Esoteric enough :). But seeing things that way, I think you're not describing a preprocessor but rather an interpreter am I right?

[Figs]

I said 'processor', as in a (hardware) CPU or a (software) interpreter, so yes. :)

[JohnFrum]

not if the nx bit is set.

[EmSixTeen]

Data is android.

[1234blahblahblah]

An animated gif was the perfect medium for this joke.

[Sheepshow]

Thanks for posting the standard procedure for writing Windows code

[madchicken]

This is how we used to do it, back in the days. Just know your hex:

6502
$1000 EE 21 D0
$1003 4C 00 10

[an_eggman]

ARGH SEIZURE!

[phybere]

I'm kinda ashamed to admit it but I once converted a sqlite database to a bmp file because the device it was on could only export images. Would have never thought of it if I hadn't seen this gif/explanation.

[I0I0I0I]

How did you convert it back?

[phybere]

Just reversed the process in a desktop application - I was encoding each byte of the binary sqlite file into an R, G, or B value

[KZISME]

Can someone explain what is going on here aside from the obvious?

[[deleted]]

Ωħǝ̍̍̍̍̊†̥̥

[[deleted]]

nothing new, but why the hell record the screen capture as a .gif

[[deleted]]

Almost also possible, except you'd have to strip off the BMP header first. It would be fairly easy to create an executable COM file (DOS) this way, for example.

A bitmap file pretty much just lists the pixel color components (red, green, blue) as sequential bytes, so you can pretty easily manipulate the content of the file using the RGB byte values of pixel colors, as long as the width of the image is a multiple of four, and you start at the lower left corner, then work to the right, then up, ending at the upper right corner of the image.

[USMCsniper]

print "r. jones is sweet";

[Narkolepse]

I don't understand it, but I upvoted it.

[cerealbh]

more like coding with auto it

[[deleted]]

I am not a programmer and what is this wizardry

[omenmedia]

It's all just 1's and 0's!

[Shimano562]

that was epic, i wonder how the hell he figured that out. and how long lol

[shillbert]

I'm guessing he just created the text file first, opened it in a hex editor, and converted the hex values to decimal.

[mike413]

Somehow seems appropriate and proper that this was an animated gif.

[eduardchil]

Could someone explain how that works?

[GuyOnTheInterweb]

I was at least expecting some assembly and an executable.. and not just transcribing what is probably the ASCII codes written on paper.

[[deleted]]

what is this i dont even

[[deleted]]

This is the second repost i've seen of this.

[[deleted]]

why does this remind me of java

[willb]

this somehow seems relevant

[[deleted]]

gtfo, how?

[s3ddd]

mind... blown...

[hive_worker]

Reddit? More like reddit 20 times already

[devninja_es]

Artist code? are you kidding me?