Chastity White Rose

Author: Chastity White Rose

  • More Programming Ideas

    I learned something about the Windows Subsystem for Linux. It runs Linux ELF executables that were compiled for Linux. It’s possible to write a program with this system and create something that would run on a 64 bit Linux operating system assuming it also had an Intel CPU.

    The one restriction is that the WSL can’t run GUI apps and is limited to console only. That’s not a real problem for me since I don’t have the skill for that anyway, yet.

    But the fact that Microsoft allows installing Ubuntu Linux inside Windows and the environment runs faster than using a PC emulator means that I now have an additional method of compiling C programs and could produce Linux versions.

    I don’t yet have something ready to publish but I thought of an idea. I could have something that asked a user the details of what kind of checkerboard they wanted. It has 4 variables they could choose.

    Image Width

    Image Height

    Square Size

    First color

    Second color

    I normally set these variables within a C program and recompile whenever I feel like making something. But the concept is simple enough that all it requires is a few scanf calls to request input from a user.

  • BBM Update 8-4-2019

    I wrote new functions tonight. I made a big function that automatically writes the PBM,PGM, or PPM formats depending on whether the bits per pixel is 1,2,4,8,3,6,12, or 24. All other values fail. However these allow me to create PNG files the same as I could with the pam format with the pngtopng tool. I also wrote a function that can XOR every pixel in an image with a color.

    My code is still quite disorganized and it’s hard to imagine writing a tool that allows actual users to use it for anything. It’s more like a collection of source files containing functions that I call whenever I’m trying to make something neat. The full alchive of my source code is available here for anyone who wants to get an idea what I’ve been writing and how I make these strange images.

  • Programming Goals

    Because I work 50 hours a week and live with my mom who has a tendency to want me to do things when I want to be left alone, I can’t dedicate the time to my goals of programming and learning the Unix/Linux system administration that I want.

    I have big dreams that could not only be incredibly fun but also could turn into a computer career.

    My BBM graphics project is the most impressive thing I’ve ever done and the cool checkerboard animations are just the start. I want to add features that exist in other libraries such as copying part of one image onto another.

    My code is different in that it doesn’t use any object oriented programming features. No classes or even structures. It’s all done with pointers and other arguments to functions such as the width and height of the image. In recent times, my functions take a bits per pixel argument which is used to save image files using different degrees of grayscale or even reduce the number of colors in other ways. A lossy compression which works best with video game type graphics. Think NES or Gameboy to get an idea of the kind of images I’m talking about.

    I have code for the BMP, TIFF, PBM, PGM, PPM, and PAM formats. I also installed the ImageMagick and NetPBM tools which allow me to use commands to change those formats into others(how I made the animated GIF files my friends have seen on my Facebook account.

    And I’m not even using a real Unix environment yet but have customized my old Windows 10 computer with MSYS2 to compile my code and run other Unix commands. This means I have the Bash shell and if I ever succeed in getting my own apartment I will also learn shell scripting to a degree that may even allow me to run my own Minecraft server like Jamie already is doing and also a basic web server like I had on Ubuntu Linux years ago. I’ll collect old computers and connect them to the internet do handle these things and run a computer lab and teach people how to use computers or people already comfortable with basic usage how to get started programming.

  • Gabapentin Hair Loss

    Unfortunately I have been experiencing another side effect. It looks like I’ve lost some hair on my head. I did some searching and found that lots of others noticed significant hair loss in only 2 months. Jocelyne has mentioned it in June one night when taking me home but I didn’t think I noticed but lately I have been shedding hairs while at work that end up in my mouth and then I choke on them.

    And the insane amount of diarrhea, oily skin, and stomach pain I’ve had over the past few months is making me have to quit the Gabapentin anyway. It’s gonna be hard to build up my health savings fund anyway if I continue to use it to pay for it anyway because it’s so expensive.

    Plus my performance at work will probably be much better without the side effects.

    https://healthunlocked.com/rlsuk/posts/134363303/hair-loss-on-gabapentin

    https://www.jpsmjournal.com/article/S0885-3924(08)00650-7/fulltext

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Fibromyalgia/comments/7imk8u/i_took_myself_off_of_gabapentin_because_my_hair/

  • Rant of the day

    The first problem with the consistent life ethic as described by Wikipedia is that it only includes human life and therefore is not consistent enough for me.

    Second opposing assisted suicide is not something I’m interested in because quite seriously a person must have the right to end their life when it’s no longer worth it.

    For example if something happened where I was permanently blind. My life would be over since I could not work and make money or do my art.

    The consistent life is a good start but there is a difference between ending your own life and that of another without their permission.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_life_ethic

    PS: To all the people who have tried to tell me that a fetus is no more sentient than a carrot or something similar, I’ll never believe that and even if you were right, the problem is society doesn’t seem interested in preventing pregnancy or permanent sterilization surgery would be promoted by everyone and tax funded too as it should be.

    But people make money off of selling abortions and birth control pills and their greed is the reason why we don’t have the policies required to prevent pregnancy in the first place. That’s what we should be agreed on and work toward, not making abortion illegal, but preventing pregnancy in the first place.

    People think I call myself pro-life to mean my goal is about making abortion illegal but to be against something means you want to stop it from happening, not that you want to “punish” people or make them go to jail. Nobody should be punished because nobody has a free will and nobody deserves anything.

    But people are not usually on the level to understand that fact and they have the nerve to think people choose their actions. Nobody chooses their actions because those actions are the effects of prior causes. That is determinism and without that understanding nobody will learn to prevent abortion because they don’t know why it happens. Don’t think for a minute that I don’t know the social and financial reasons it happens. And that’s why we need to fix those problems. How to do it will be a talk we will all have.