Learn to read a binary font by reading a story • Hacker News Board

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#11

Post by teeray » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:33 AM UTC

I've always wondered what Conway's Game of Life was trying to tell me...

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#12

Post by tseabrooks » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:37 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #9

trogdoro wrote: post #2

Here's a shorter one. The first one is a bit long: http://dotsies.org/stories/the-runaway-couple.html If you have any preferences for any stories from gutenberg.org I can add those too.

[deleted]

Adventures of sherlock Holmes. I think single chapters might be nice.

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#13

Post by gcanyon » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:39 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #9

trogdoro wrote: post #2

Here's a shorter one. The first one is a bit long: http://dotsies.org/stories/the-runaway-couple.html If you have any preferences for any stories from gutenberg.org I can add those too.

[deleted]

Maybe I'm just tired, but both of these were near-uninteligable to me even at the beginning. It could also be simply that I'm a bit compulsive about reading -- I find it impossible to gloss over even a single word that I can't puzzle out, so even the first lines stop me in my tracks even though I can read all the words but one or two.

In any case, if you have the inclination, a version that started even more gently might work better for me.

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#14

Post by adrusi » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:42 AM UTC

trogdoro wrote: post #2

Here's a shorter one. The first one is a bit long: http://dotsies.org/stories/the-runaway-couple.html If you have any preferences for any stories from gutenberg.org I can add those too.

are these programmatically generated? if so, would it be possible to get a script to make one of these from say an article scraped by instapaper?

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#15

Post by Mizza » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:45 AM UTC

This is super sweet. I just did the whole thing, now I can read Dotsie!

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#16

Post by quink » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:47 AM UTC

So... if I want the single letter 'B' by itself, it looks exactly the same as the letters A, C, D or E?

In other words, 'DE' look exactly the same, without any reference, as 'AB', and there is a haphazard set of similar combinations?

I'm not doing that. Learn Braille instead.

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#17

Post by Patryk » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:50 AM UTC

Why not stack Morse code horizontally? At least Morse code is somewhat designed to take advantage of the frequency distribution of letters (e.g., e is a single dot.)

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#18

Post by trogdoro » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:51 AM UTC

tseabrooks wrote: post #12

[deleted] wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Adventures of sherlock Holmes. I think single chapters might be nice.

Here you go (the 1st 12 chapters):

http://dotsies.org/stories/adventures-of-sherlock-holmes.htm...

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#19

Post by trogdoro » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:54 AM UTC

Patryk wrote: post #17

Why not stack Morse code horizontally? At least Morse code is somewhat designed to take advantage of the frequency distribution of letters (e.g., e is a single dot.)

Try it out and post a link! It would be interesting to see.

Re: Learn to read a binary font by reading a story

#20

Post by karlshea » Sat, Mar 31, 2012, 2:56 AM UTC

This seems like one of those things that will push something useful out of my head if I learn it.