Lainzine

Issue 1
Published 20 April 2015

Contents
Editors' Notes
For Lainzine #1
Noise
Gopher Protocol
Recommended Reading
Art of the Glitch
Introduction to Cryptography
Word Search
Where Do I Start?
FreeBSD Guide for Newbs and Dummies
Youtube Proxy
Structure-based ASCII Art

1
1
2
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23

Colophon
Created by the good people of Lainchan from
all around the world.
https://lainchan.org
Released in good faith and for free to the public
domain.
0, $0, 0

Staff
Editors
Typesetters

junk & Tilde

Ivan & Dylan

In
Waking
All
Known
Unconscious
Reality
Atrophies
Linger
And
It
Nihilates

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Editors' Notes

For Lainzine #1

I hope enjoy this magazine. We all have put some

effort into it and I am personally impressed by
what we accomplished. Thanks for reading!
finfq bas zp bsosnhe uxrmz R ddpvwef
cvqsn kumu pq nxfq.

Woa, a zine on Lainchan? Is this what you guys

were doing while I was trudging through sector
7.b189 looking for unused datacards last week
[depression]? This is really something, glitch
scattered between the pages impressive. Just
in time for the birthday party. Lainchan is the
name, OC is the game. Look out for my submission soon.

junk

We live in a ferocious world, one where it is

easy to get swept up and aggregated into the
next big thing. Lainchan is a place somewhat
removed from the beaten path, where the magnetic pull of social assimilation is not quite as
strong. It is an eclectic gathering of people from
across the planet, who come together to explore
the essential ideas of the present, the stuff that
will become the science fiction and science fact
of the future.
Most of all, Lainchan is friendly. Stop by
and say hello, won't you?

Kalyx

Tilde

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Noise

Gopher Protocol

Tapping into the noise building

a contact microphone
There is a constant humming in the wires above.
We are told that at either end sits a small
terminal box that listens carefully and modulates the cosmic pulses to find what is useful.
But in recent years, the wires have stretched
out. The terminal has receded to some unattainable point in the distance. We find ourselves in
the open: Alone and listening, but unable to
separate the signal from the noise.

Parts needed

Piezo disk,
scraps of wire,
audio jack socket,
something to amplify and listen with,
soldering iron and solder (optional),
something to secure the mic in place (optional).

Instructions
Sound doesnt only travel through the air. A
contact microphone picks up the sounds from
inside of solid objects. You can shout as loud as
you want, the contact mic cant hear you. But if
you stick it to a wooden board and scrape a nail
across it you can hear the sound of the wood
grain resonating, crushing the piezo crystals
and generating a small electric field.
Doesnt work? Make sure your contact mic
is connected to an amplifier of some sort, PC
speakers will work if theyre turned all the way
up. Disconnect the wires and try them the other
way round, then try the first way again.

Developed in 1991 by a team at University of

Minnesota, the gopher protocol is a TCP/IP document distribution system that was popular before the world wide web became the standard
protocol. It is primarily devoted to serving plain
text documents organized into a hierarchical directory structure and lacks formatting, dynamic
content, and even the mixing of media and text.
While the protocol may not have style sheets, it
certainly has style.

The Protocol
The simplicity of the gopher protocol is evident
from the mere fifteen pages of RFC 1436 the
Network Working Groups 1993 document on
implementing gopher servers and clients. For
comparison, FTPs RFC 765 is 68 pages, and
HTTP/1.1 is represented by the 176-page 2616.
A reader with even a cursory understanding of
TCP/IP can learn the core of gopher over a cup
of coffee.
Learning the complete internals is better
suited to the RFC and is left as an exercise to
the reader, but well go ahead and write a couple of one-line scripts that handle the majority
of the available interactions. All that you need
to know is that the default port is 70.
Script 1: Ask a gopher server to list its
contents
First, the client opens a connection to the server, for the example: sdf.org on port 70 Then, the
client sends CLRF to the server to request a directory listing. CLRF refers to Carriage Return
Line Feed, but on most systems will be handled
by the simple newline character: \n. To do this,
use the netcat utility which is a command line
program for establishing raw network connections. This very powerful tool can be used for
exploring remote hosts and even listening as a
server itself.

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

iWelcome to the SDF Public Access UNIX System .. est. 1987\t\tnull.host\t1
i\t\tnull.host\t1
iWe offer FREE and inexpensive memberships for people interested\t\tnull.host\t1
iin the UNIX system and internetworking.

Personal GOPHERSPACE\t\tnull.host\t1

iis available to all users as well as hundreds of UNIX utilities,\t\tnull.host\t1

igames and networking utilities.

We are a federally recognized\t\tnull.host\t1

inon-profit 501(c)7 organization and we are supported entirely\t\tnull.host\t1

iby donations and membership dues.

telnet://sdf.org\t\tnull.host\t1

i\t\tnull.host\t1
1SDF Member PHLOGOSPHERE (151 directories)\t/phlogs/\tsdf.org\t70
1SDF Member GOPHERSPACE (2334 directories)\t/maps/\tsdf.org\t70
1SDF Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)\t/sdf/faq/\tsdf.org\t70
1SDF Accredited University Courses\t/sdf/classes/\tsdf.org\t70
1Software and Documentation for various computers\t/computers\tsdf.org\t70
7GopherSpace SEARCH Engine\t/v2/vs\tgopher.floodgap.com\t70
1Floodgaps GOPHERSPACE\t/\tgopher.floodgap.com\t70
1NetBSD Distribution Mirror\t/NetBSD/\tsdf.org\t70
i______________________________________________________________________\t\tnull.host\t1
i

Gophered by Gophernicus/1.5 on NetBSD/amd64 6.1_STABLE\t\tnull.host\t1

Figure 1: Response of the Gopher server

echo "\n" | netcat sdf.org 70

Script 2: Navigate to a particular item on

Assuming the host is online, your terminal the server
should now contain a list of directories, as pic- Now that we know, via the client, what is availatured in Figure 1. It might not be the most beau- ble at the root tier of the hierarchical structure,
tiful output, but is certainly readable.
the client can dig deeper into the gopher hole.
The numbers preceding each items refer to
echo "/sdf/faq/\n" | netcat sdf.org 70
the type of item that it is. 1 lets the client know
Assuming all went well, you get a response
that SDF Member PHLOGOSPHERE is a subdirectory, while 7 marks GopherSpace SEARCH similar to the one listed in Figure 2.
With these two simple commands at your
Engine as a gopher search server query.1
The string after the items name, such as / disposal, you can freely traverse the gophersdf/faq/ is the magic string (actual RFC termi- space! All of these are further subdirectories,
nology) that directs the client to that particular but once you hit an item whose identifier is 0,
item.
you will have finally arrived at a plain text file.
Finally, the output contains a line whose
sole character is a period. This line indicates The Clients
that the server has listed everything and will I used this rudimentary network socket approach to demonstrate how trivial it is to comthen close the connection.
municate with a gopher server, but a variety of
robust clients exits. As the text pages are pure
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_ streams of information without style sheets and
(search_engine)
dynamic behaviors, the content of a gopher site
3

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

1BASICS

SDF History and UNIX Basics - START HERE\t/sdf/faq/BASICS\tsdf.org\t70

1CHAT

Questions about IRC, ICQ and such.\t/sdf/faq/CHAT\tsdf.org\t70

1DIALUP

SDFs TENEX National Dialup PPP Membership\t/sdf/faq/DIALUP\tsdf.org\t70

1EMAIL

Questions about INTERNETWORKED EMAIL.\t/sdf/faq/EMAIL\tsdf.org\t70

1GAMES

Single and Multiuser GAMES.\t/sdf/faq/GAMES\tsdf.org\t70

1GOPHER

Gopherspace questions and answers.\t/sdf/faq/GOPHER\tsdf.org\t70

1MDNS

Dynamic DNS with mdns.org \t/sdf/faq/MDNS\tsdf.org\t70

1MEMBERS SDF Membership Information and Responsibilities\t/sdf/faq/MEMBERS\tsdf.org\t70

1MISC

Miscellaneous, Odd and Very Interesting Questions

\t/sdf/faq/MISC\tsdf.org\t70

1MOTD

Coding, Journals, Forums and Galleries for UNIX Hackers\t/sdf/faq/MOTD\tsdf.org\t70

1MYSQL

SDFs MySQL database server\t/sdf/faq/MYSQL\tsdf.org\t70

1TEACH

Using SDF to teach UNIX and NET concepts.\t/sdf/faq/TEACH\tsdf.org\t70

1TECHIES Advanced UNIX Topics, UUCP and programming.\t/sdf/faq/TECHIES\tsdf.org\t70

1TWENEX

SDFs Project TENEX Free Software Community\t/sdf/faq/TWENEX\tsdf.org\t70

1UNIX

Questions about UNIX Shells.\t/sdf/faq/UNIX\tsdf.org\t70

1USENET

Newsgroup Questions and News READERS\t/sdf/faq/USENET\tsdf.org\t70

1VHOST

Virtual Hosting and Domain Name Service.\t/sdf/faq/VHOST\tsdf.org\t70

1WEB

Webserver questions and answers.\t/sdf/faq/WEB\tsdf.org\t70

i______________________________________________________________________\t\tnull.host\t1
i

Gophered by Gophernicus/1.5 on NetBSD/amd64 6.1_STABLE\t\tnull.host\t1

Figure 2: Response of the Gopher server

is particularly suited to terminal browsing; the

classic terminal browser lynx has supported gopher natively since 1992. Alternatively, plugins
are available for Firefox and most other mainstream browsers.2
Before continuing with the rest of the document, please take a moment to acquire a client
and wander about the gopher sites. The most extensive portal to the gophers that I am aware of
is over at Floodgaps server.3 Be sure and check
out the link to GopherVR. Having had a taste
of the protocols simple pre-http delights, no
doubt you are eager to set up your own home in
the gopherspace. You have a couple options: either find a place in the city (existing server such
as sdf.org) or try to make it out on your own in
the country (run your own server).

The Servers

2 http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/
3 gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/
4

There are advantages to each. By setting up your

own fresh gopher server, gophers web presence
become further decentralized; it it not ideal to
have everything crammed into a single point
of failure. However, home-brew servers have
a tendency to not last. Fresh holes may find
themselves quickly buried when running a 24/7
instance doesnt go as planned. On the other
hand, by starting a site on sdf (or elsewhere),
you help to strengthen the existing, but small,
gopher community. Your content will be much
more easily found and more likely to remain online.
Personally, I think the best approach is this:
if you already run a server of some sort, then go
ahead and add gopher. But if you just want to get
content online, simply register on sdf, or wherever
else you choose. That said, writing a gopher
server is a great project for learning network
programming: you learn how to work with cli-

Lainzine, Volume 1 (April 2015)

ent-server communications, read and implement specifications, and can have a complete
product within a fairly short time. For writing
the server in C, you may find Beejs Guide to
Network Programming a very helpful reference.

The Charms
As Ive repeatedly emphasized, the protocol is very simplistic. Perhaps it comes off as
anachronistic in a web 2.0 world of social media, e-commerce, and spookily addictive flash
games.4 Unfortunately, I think its easy to write
gopher off as something impractical, and only
of interest to those enthusiastic about minimal Linux installs. I would argue though
that its contraints give it a characteristic wholly
lacking in the modern web: predictability. I enjoy shopping online, posting on imageboards,
and interacting with dynamic graphs, but when
I simply want to access information, all those
individual choices regarding styling and formatting mean that I cant rely on any consistent experience.
Scripting, scraping, and parsing are basic
operations to perform on data sources, but
are severely limited by the design choices of
web designers. Even if a particular website has
a thought out design that allows elements to
sanely referenced, it is still a unique entity to
learn and then trust not to change and break
whatever you had been doing with it.
With the gopher, you know what are getting: plain text. Its a beautiful format that
worked before PHP and ASP.NET and Javascript
and w3schools and works just as nicely today. If
the strength of the world wide web is its freedom and support for myriad behaviors, gophers
is in restricting itself to perform its few tasks efficiently, structurally, and uniformly.

4 http://dagobah.net/flash/Flandre_Game.
swf
5

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Recommended Reading

cepts and technology behind their favorite text

editor will be thoroughly pleased with this read,
The Craft of Text Editing by Craig Finseth
especially if they use Emacs.
I look forward to recommending more
Are you interested in text editing, fellow Lains? books to you all.
I would certainly hope so.
For those wanting to go further in expanding their knowledge, The Craft of Text Editing
4
is an excellent read.
The book is based on the authors bachelor thesis examining the underlying principles
of text editors of the time. After 11 years, it
was expanded into a book to cover the advances and other changes that had occurred in the
meanwhile.
The book pays special attention to Emacs-type editors and the choices made in their design, but a majority of the work applies to all
text editors and several different ways of doing
things are always discussed for each topic.
The subjects covered include
the hardware that programs interact with, the language of the
editor and the language exposed
to the user, the conceptual structure of the edited text, and various editor implementations. There
are chapters on redisplay, the user
interface, the command set, and
several other interesting topics.
Lastly, the book makes for an exhilerating look back on computing
and the considerations that were
taken into account historically. The
bibliography also makes for good
reading material for those wanting
to delve deeper into the topic.
As this is the first recommended reading section for the first
Lainzine, Ill point out that this is
not meant to be an exhaustive coverage or a review, but merely a suggestion. I guarantee that any Lain
with a healthy interest in the con6

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Art of the Glitch

Seeking an Understanding

An Existential Analysis of its Products,

Processes, and Practitioners
by Dylan
The glitch is a wonderful experience of an interruption that shifts an object away from its
ordinary form and discourse. For a moment I
am shocked, lost and in awe, asking myself what
this other utterance is, how was it created. Is
it perhaps a glitch? But once I named it, the
momentum the glitch is no more
Rosa Menkman (Art of the Glitch, 2009)
Abstract: This paper is an examination of
the art style known as glitch art and questions
preconceived notions about glitches and art,
and asks if they fit that which defines them. It
looks at glitch art created by established professionals and how their thoughts and processes
relate to the established definition of glitch art
and if the definition should be altered to fit the
art style. It also compares the effects of popular
culture on glitch art.

Introduction
The analytics of the art world and art itself has
always been a grey area. How can one critique
something non-objective? When considering
new mediums, who is to say who else is an expert? The field of digital art is something relatively new and is one that has many interesting
facets and faces. Delving further into one of
these sides, the oddly beautiful realm of glitch
art is one of these parts of the art world that is
difficult to critique. When the purpose of the art
form is to destroy something, can one judge its
beauty? Does it exist as art at all? To understand
these questions, one must look at the roots of
the art style. It will be questioned if it can exist
as a style at all, given the methods and practices
employed are accurate under the term, glitch.
7

To understand the root causes, underlying

structure, or machinations of an issue, theme,
or skillset, is to understand it at a deeper level,
to lead oneself to a greater proficiency. This is
the approach that will be taken moving towards
a more thorough understanding of the notion
of glitch and glitch art. It is also a means to examine the rationale for desiring a system that
can be seen as a destructive one, the reasons for
the seeking of chaos, especially when so much
of the work that is done by humankind is to
bring order to the disordered. Papers are sorted,
lists are numbered, and infrastructure is created, all to correct this entropy (that seems so
grounded in nature). Given these systems, why
would this entropy be sought out? What good
can come from disorder? This art style that is
almost against the nature of human beings will
be broken down and examined at its roots and
its mysteries revealed.

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

A glitch could be defined as an undesirable

result or outcome; a deviation from an expected
conclusion. Is it possible that one might simply
tack the idea of art on to the end of that definition? An undesirable artistic outcome? This,
rather simple, definition leaves a multitude of
things susceptible to its grasp. A walk down the
street could have a glitch when one trips and
falls. Certainly, one does not desire to trip and
fall when walking anywhere. Perhaps a crack in
a glass or a misprint in a paper could be considered a glitch. These things, yet, are different
from the glitches that are considered art. A misprinted paper is certainly not art, nor is a broken glass. We might, then, ask ourselves, what
is art?
Looking at the vast expanse that is the artistic timeline, we can see an enormous amount of
different styles and methods for producing art,
and it can be understood that to try and define
art would be quite a challenging feat. They do,
however, have one thing in common: they are
all pleasing to look at (or interact with or whatever the intended form of experience may be.
Regardless, the idea is that it is enjoyed). Monets impressionist paintings are indeed beautiful (beauty is subjective, however, and what one
might find beautiful, another might find repulsive. This will be an inherent property of art, at
least established for the sake of this writing).
Returning then, to the broken glass with this
new found knowledge, these bright, open, eyes,
we find that this broken glass is not beautiful. It
lies on the countertop, in pieces, and does not
move us to gaze upon it longingly, only to wish
that it was not needed to now be cleaned up.
This glitch art then, the child of two definitions that were so unceremoniously glued together (perhaps it is fitting, given the word that
is being defined), can be understood, at least,
for now. One could be typing a paper when for
no reason at all, the computer screen glitches. It
is in this moment that an artist is born. This daring soul captures the screen to produce a very
8

strange, yet visually appealing image. The image

is shared and enjoyed by many; the origin of the
glitch art.
What then, of these imitators, these followers, of this new found style? The perceived
beauty of these images that are so wonderfully
distorted have a movement behind them. There
are those that wish to see more of this. However,
the methods that were employed to get these
results are actually non-existent. The followers
of glitch arts only way to create more of this art
is to go about their daily lives and keep an eye
out for an opportune moment when something
might break in their favor. Perhaps they use the
same software that the originator used. Perhaps
they try to replicate the actions of the previous
user. They do, but the time it takes for anything
to happen is too lengthy for their tastes, so they
abuse the software. They feed the program input that any normal user would not dare.
Here, however, we can already see a problem. Returning to our definition of glitch, an
undesirable result or outcome, we can see that
these new users that are abusing this software
for their own gains are no longer adhering to
this definition. The results that are produced
from their knowledge of this program and the
intent to output errors means that what they
are producing is no longer glitch art (in the
strictest sense). Before we look to questioning
what this new art style really is, let us look to a
notable glitch artist, Rosa Menkman and her
take on the style.

An Existential Crisis
Rosa Menkman does in fact, associate the definition in a similar way that has been laid out
previously, as she states here: The glitch has no
solid form or state through time; it is often perceived as an unexpected and abnormal mode
of operandi, a break from (one of) the many
flows (of expectations) within a technological
system. (Menkman, 2009) Though she scopes
it to a tighter view of a technological system,

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

it fits the idea, regardless. She also notes that,

the concept of these errors is altered when they
are realized and made into an idea along with
the glitch. The original experience of a rupture
transcended its own self and moved into a new
mode of existence entirely. The glitch has ceased
to be, and has become an ephemeral, personal,
experience. (Menkman, 2009) She speaks to
the very idea that has been presented: that the
definition and idea of a glitch are no longer that
when they are realized. The mere observation
or thought of them has changed them forever.
An interesting point is made, however, when
she touches upon the act of commercialization
of glitch art, whether it be in the
form of a script or a glitching software. She claims that they move
away from the process of, what she
calls, creation by destruction and
focus on only the final product. In
short, it is about the journey, not
the destination, that gives glitch
art its meaning. When the glitch
becomes domesticated, controlled
by a tool, or technology (a human
craft) it has lost its enchantment
and has become predictable. It is no
longer a break from a flow within a
technology, or a method to open
up the political discourse, but instead a cultivation. For many actors it is no longer a glitch, but
a filter that consists of a preset and/or a default:
what was once understood as a glitch has now
become a new commodity. (Menkman, 2009)
This cultivation that she speaks of is inherent
in just about any form of media, from music (a
local band rising to international fame) to art
(the rise of the popularity of the impressionist
art style) to social trends (the explosion of the
undead and supernatural creatures genre). If
there are these communities that exist, producing glitch art as an end, rather than a means,
they will be subject to scrutiny next.
9

Glitch Art in Popular Culture

Rosa Menkman talks about the attempt to define glitch art by media and art historians, giving
rise to labels such as post-digital and datamoshing. She provides, what she believes, to
be a solution to this problem, but for now, a
gaze will be cast upon that subsection of glitch
art called datamoshing. Author Shad Gross
describes datamoshing as a technique whereby
the compression of digital video is manipulated as a means of creative expression. Gross, S
(2013) His article talks about how digital art (and
most all digital media) lacks any form of physical
forms but rather, holds within it, a vast number

of potential forms. Gross looks to glitch art and

datamoshing as a way to reveal these inherent
forms of digital media, to focus on the digital
aspect of the digital, rather than as a vehicle to
a different form entirely. The process of datamoshing involves the editing of frames within
the video, more specifically, the frames that relay information about which parts of the screen
(pixels) to draw or redraw after something has
changed. For many original authors of glitch
art and datamoshing, the popular adoption of
this style or the adaptation of the style into the
mainstream culture, was to lose some of the
original luster that it once possessed. Glitching
and datamoshing were ways in which people

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

could transform and alter popular culture, but

now it has transformed into the ends, rather
than the means, that was mentioned earlier.
Reducing glitch art to this minimal effort
approach also loses a key aspect of the idea that
it takes a skill and knowledge of the hardware or
software to intentionally produce these glitches.
Experimentation is a key element, as noted by
Funda (2013): [i]n forcing a visual glitch, there
is an element of unpredictability that makes
experimentation worthwhile and rewarding.
However, the production of scripts and tools to
make this kind of art more accessible is what removes the appeal.
Some artists view glitch art as a means of
questioning the nature and existence of art itself. Only after hundreds of years of creation
of artwork do some people begin to ask, why?
rather than how? One might view this as
a driving purpose behind glitch art, to break

down the established cultural norms and look

at the craft from a new perspective. This style
of thinking has been observed by and invited
upon by the InterAccess Electronic Media Arts
Centre in Toronto. Artists created video games
based around the idea of what it means to be
and produced some very interesting results. As
an example, Terrence (2006) reported this:
[Ashmores] Mario Trilogy places the eponymous plumber underwater, in prison or wandering through an empty landscape, with only
the viewer/player to move him around aimlessly
until the game clock runs out and he dies. This
kind of work of art certainly leaves the player
with a new outlook on life when the game is finished due to its very relatable message of death
and the purpose of existence, or well described
by Krapp (2013), the contrast between playing
a game and playing with a game. This mode of
thinking can be applied to glitch art, questioning, and perhaps challenging, the
very existence of art. With its destructive nature, twisted ideas and
indefinable genre-state, it is almost
as if glitch art is the death of other
art forms.

Redefining Glitch Art

Given these new insights, one can
see the beginnings of glitch art,
its methods and practices, and its
shortcomings. It is justifiable then,
to say that the term glitch art is
incorrect when it is being described.
If glitch art is less about the glitch,
and more about the experience,
more about the path taken and the
surroundings enjoyed on that journey than the end result, then it is
to be understood that a new definition is in order. The true glitch art
will live on as the far most removal
of oneself from the desire to create it, though one could question if
10

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

that is even possible.

Regardless, consider the term modal, which
is relating to somethings mode or manner. It
will be used as related to a mode of action or
simply put, its procedure. Looking back again,
we remember the description of the artist who
followed in the footsteps of the original glitch
artist. He pushed the limits of the software
he was using to create these glitches. It will be
termed that this kind of action taken with electronic devices, to produce a desired non-standard result, as abuse. Just as the terms glitch
and art were joined together to create a new
meaning, this style of glitch art that desires the
malfunctions and errors and actively attempts
to produce them, will be termed, modal abuse.
To put it in a more official format, let us say it
this way, Modal abuse the intentional modification or mistreatment of a hardware or software piece to produce an atypical result for the
sake of artistic expression.
The newly defined glitch art is, perhaps, a
more fitting representation of the values, methods, and ideas that it aims to be. While, however,
the views that others (mostly artists) may have
on this style may transcend all definitions into
a more ideological and emotional realization, to
other people, a definition can help create an understanding that is the difference between confusion and clarity. Now, then, begins a new task:
to truly remove all elements that could reflect
the possibility that any amount of disorder was
desired.

11

References
Funda S. T. (2012). Glint: Audiovisual glitches. Leonardo, 45(3), 296-297. doi:10.1162/LEON_a_00383
Gross, S. (2013). Glitch, please: Datamoshing as
a medium-specific application of digital material.
175-184. doi:10.1145/2513506.2513525
Krapp, P., & Ebooks Corporation. (2011). Noise
channels: Glitch and error in digital culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Menkmen, R. (2009) Glitch studies manifesto Retrieved from http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.nl/
Terence D. (2006). Controller: Artists crack the
game code. Winnipeg: Arts Manitoba Publications Inc.

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Introduction to Cryptography
by peeping_Tom
Cryptography is the practice of secret writing
where information is hidden from adversaries.
First used by the military, it is now used in every
facet of our lives, from simple web browsing to
paying bills, talking to your friends, and much
more. With examples, I will show you the basics
of cryptography and how all encryption is crackable. Cryptography is a wide topic that takes
much mathematical ingenuity, so I sliced it into
two parts. In this first part, we will explore the
origins of cryptography and some simple ciphers
you might use with your buddies online or off.
This article is mostly theoretical but I encourage
you to put your newly acquired knowledge to
practice by coding working examples.
Encryption is based on the idea that cracking takes time, and that the more time it takes
to crack, the better. Think of bike locks. We
know they do not offer perfect security, but
we rely on the idea that it will take bad people
more time to break them than it will take for
someone on the street to stop them. Cryptography follows a similar mindset.
The simplest cipher (method of encryption
or decryption) is the substitution cipher. As its
name implies, this cipher substitutes letters.
The most famous substitution cipher is the Caesar cipher in which all the letters are replaced
by their neighbors in the alphabet a few places
over to the right or left. Imagine if A became B,
B became C, C became D, and so on until we got
to Z, which became A. This is a basic example of
the Caesar cipher.
Another interesting substitution cipher is
the Pigpen cipher. Used primarily by Freemasons, this cipher substitutes letters for shapes
and dots.
Every substitution cipher works on the
same simple idea, substitution of letters for
some other symbols. The way anyone would go
12

Figure 1: The Caesar cipher

about cracking this cipher is through a checking process: look for common words in the
message's language, then substitute in reverse.
For instance, you would look for repeated sets
of 3 letters, expect them to be the, then carry
out the necessary substition on the rest of the
ciphertext, i.e., the encrypted text.
Extend this process to letters, rather than
for words, and you get something called frequency analysis. This method cracks any substitution cipher if you know the language of the
plaintext (original message). To crack any substitution cipher you start with the fingerprint
of the plaintext's language, and then look at a
frequency analysis of symbols in the ciphertext
to see the rules for substitution.
The fingerprint is simply a frequency of
occurrence of some letters in a language. For

Figure 2: The Pigpen cipher

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

example, if you were to take this wall of text

and count the occurrences of every letter, you
would find that the most common letters are
(by total count): e, t, a, o, i, n, s, (just
remember ETAOIN SHRDLU and that way you
remembered the 12 most common English letters). The following image shows the fingerprint
of the English language.

Figure 3: The distribution of letters of the

alphabet in English by frequency of occurrence

This property is unique to the English language, however all languages have a common
letter use property. To evade this, people built
the polyalphabetic cipher.
The polyalphabetic cipher works on the
same idea as Caesar cipher, making multiple
shift ciphers of the same plaintext. First, a codeword is established between the parties. The
codeword denotes the shift ciphers, for example the codeword snake means that there are
5 shift ciphers each with their own designated
shift. The first cipher substitutes the first A to
occur with S, B with T, the second A with
N, B with O, and so on. Now that we have
5 shift ciphers with different letter shifts, how
do we apply them to the plaintext? We repeat
the ciphers in order. The first cipher on the
first/sixth/eleventh/ letter, second cipher on
13

the second/seventh/twelfth/seventeen/ letter,

and so on. The most famous of polyalphabetic
ciphers is the Vigenre cipher, which I have just
explained.
Take the initial left column to be the codeword, and first row to be the plaintext or ciphertext you want to encrypt/decrypt. Repeat
the codeword over the letters of the plaintext/
ciphertext without any spaces. For example, try
to decrypt WEBFCSLYZVMYCPN with codeword lainchan. How would a cryptanalyst try
to crack this? Since it's just many Caesar ciphers,
frequency analysis of the ciphertext is safe bet,
right? Well, after he does that he is presented
with flat or equally distributed letter frequency. That's because there were several different
shifts performed on one text. If he doesn't know
the codeword, he can't really crack it. Unless he
knows the length of codeword.
Since we know that the length of the codeword is N letters, and that every 1+KN letter
shares the same shift cipher (where K is a number from 0 to or at least until KN becomes
longer than ciphertext), we can do frequency
analysis on every KN-th letter. Since we used

Figure 4: A polyalphabetic cipher

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

ZDXWWW
HTSVTV
YHJYEQ
CKHVEX
QXAUIP
CRWVHI
EXFIPJ

EJKAWO
RRYYEG
TDLCQT
VXYVCS
PXZQIJ
FRNTQW
KICASQ

FECIFE
EXNCGA
HZBSIZ
WOGAAZ
JIUWYH
AJVWRT
IOUQTP

WSNZIP
GGQVRF
IRZDYS
OUVVON
COVWMJ
ACAKRD
ZSGXGH

PXPKIY
FHZCIB
RBYJFZ
GCNEVR
UZOJHL
OZKIIB
YTYCTI

URMZHI
EWLGGR
AIRCWI
LMBLYB
DWHPER
VIQGBK
BAZSTN

JZTLBC
BZXQDQ
UCVXTW
SBDCDC
UBSRUJ
IJCWHF
JKMFXI

YLGDYJ
DGGIAK
YKPQMK
PCGVJX
HGAAPR
GTTSSE
RERYWE

Figure 5: An example of a one-time pad

lainchan as our codeword, we can do frequency analysis on every 8th letter in WEBFCSLYZVMYCPN and find out all 8 shift ciphers that way,
or in English, we can find the codeword. If we
don't know the length of the codeword, and we
saw flat distribution of frequency analysis, then
we would try frequency analysis of every (1+KN)
th letter, where K ranges from 0 to . Since we
don't know N (length of the codeword), we will
assume it's 1 letter long, then we will assume its
2 letters long, and so on. We do this until we
get the original, readable plaintext. This process
can be automated with computers, which easily
make it take less time. Longer codewords result
in stronger ciphers since the cracker has to assume all possible codewords shorter than the
real codeword.
This is only possible because the codeword
is repeating, but what if it wasn't repeating?
What if we had a codeword as long as the plaintext itself? This is called a one-time pad. The
codeword lainzine can be seen as a list of numbers by which the shift is occurring in each shift
cipher (L = 11, A = 0, I = 8, and so on). Also
note that having a random number sequence
for codeword is much more secure than having
a word.
A multiple-shift cipher with random shifts
on each letter that is as long as the ciphertext is
unbreakable by frequency analysis because the
shifts don't repeat. The only way to break this
one-time pad is brute force.
Bruteforce, in layman's terms, is trying out
every possible combination. Since we know that

shift ciphers can shift letters by at most 26 until

they repeat (as there are only 26 letters in the
alphabet that you can shift to), bruteforcing a
Caesar cipher would be simple since the shift
is always the same. So you try out all possible
shifts (from 1 to 26). For the polyalphabetic cipher and the one-time pad, bruteforcing becomes impossible since there is a shift for every
letter. You would need to try all possible letter
shifts for all possible letters, meaning that you
would need try out all 26 shifts for only one
letter. The longer the ciphertext is, the greater amount of shifts you need to try out. Given
that's 26 shifts for a letter, and N is the amount
of letters in the ciphertext, you would need 26N
tries to crack the text. Best explained by a simple example.
Let's say that we encrypted word lainchan with one-time pad with codeword of
ZDXWEJKA, making it KDFJGQKN. There
are 26 possible shifts for all letters, making it 2626262626262626 = 268 =
208,827,064,576 possible combinations of
shifts. As the plaintext becomes longer, N becomes larger and so does the amount of possible outcomes 26N. If the codeword is truly random, one-time pads are on par with asymmetric
encryptions. If you have a friend with whom you
can practice encryption, try remembering pi to
300 decimals (it's not that hard, just listen to
Hard n' Phirm's Pi song a bit and you already
have 160 digits), and then encrypting everything
with it (first letter shift by 3, second by 1, third
by 4).

14

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Although the codeword needs to be truly

random, this would work fine as long as you and
your friend don't reveal the codeword to anyone else.
That's about all we need to know about
the origins of cryptography and simple ciphers.
In the next article, we will talk about XOR and
asymmetric encryption. I hope you liked this
short introduction, and that you will have loads
of fun with your friends armed with this knowledge.

Word Search

Y T P S Y C H E T J C D U K D E A T H
Z A Y R O R M A E R D D U A B N M S H
S N U V V O L I V I A S A A Q J I O D
V A P Y Y Y H S B N G F I O F S Z R I
D B D R T H V V A N B H N S A U U A I
J I C I I C D X K V S I E N F O K T R
N H T R L S T U I O A L I B I I I S I
V C J O A C J W T L Z H Z E O C A T E
U A I F E P Z I A E C V R S K S R H I
O T Q J R B H R C A C E U M V N I G M
Z H O X C S U N M S Y R M R H O S I A
S R B B O K E X B A B R J I P C U N S
P H G Y A I E N L D E I L O C B P K A
H S L W T S O X R S R K H C H U Z J M
Y O I N U F Y I N O I T R O T S I D N
S R E E T G E F J Z A E E J I V A N B
N S D X Y W K K K C A L B N I N E M M
H U S K J M M A M V V Y R O M E M E Z
E V E F M K K W I R E D L M T M O E G

15

Lainzine, Volume 1 (April 2015)

Where Do I Start?
A primer to offensive security
by Hash_Value
Every computer forum you find is flooded with
questions about hacking. When lainchan makes
it big, we are going to get these questions a lot
on /cyb/, so point them to this guide when they
ask!
Hacking has a lot of definitions depending
on who you ask, but let's go straight to offensive security (which I know is what you all want
anyway). First, you will need a basic but strong
foundation in programming, networking and
operating systems.
To get a strong foundation in programming/
scripting/coding you need to practice! I don't
mean following along with easy college intro to
programming course either. You need to build
something useful. It doesn't have to be complex,
just useful. Just run a web search every time you
have a problem. Start off with some simple syntax and then go use that to solve problems and
get better and go bigger. A lot of the time, you
just need to know simple scripting languages
such as python and ruby. If you plan on building
something big, use C or C++. Personally, I always
recommend this project based approach. That

way you get to see how the pieces fit together

and you actually end up with something at the
end.
Next is networking. You will need to know
how packets move, and how routers and switches move them! There are hundreds of tutorials
on this, as with programming. Visit Cisco's website and download a little program called packet
tracer. This tool simulates creating a network,
although it doesn't have all the security measures and you don't get the physical hands on
experience. It's one of the best tools available,
though, and I highly recommend playing with it!
If nothing else, you can buy an old Cisco router
on the web for cheap and it will still be good,
trust me. Businesses are usually slow to change
their routers and switches. In addition to all of
this, you also need a strong understanding of
ports and TCP handshake.
Moving on to operating systems, the big
three are Windows, OS X, and Linux. Back in
the early days, if you wanted to do any hacking
it had to be on linux. That isnt necessarily true
nowadays, as many tools have been ported to
Windows and Mac. However, Linux is still your
best bet. Regardless of which operating system
you choose to work with, you have to learn both
Windows and Linux. Why? Each holds about half
of the server market, and if you plan on breaking in to either you have to learn both, including
Linux and Windows server versions.
Let's not forget web applications! Since the
arrival of web 2.0, HTML5 web applications have
become more and more popular. You will need
to know HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
and Javascript (a client-side scripting language).
You also have to know how websites work, and
how databases interact with websites. You can
start by installing LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQLPHP5) in a virtual machine (which we will discuss later).
Okay, now that you have a rough idea of
what you should be learning, time for the good
stuff!

16

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

First the age old question: Should I download a hacking specific distro? The truth of the
matter is, you don't really need too. You can
download all the tools into any distro of Linux
from the web, so the only real reason you would
want to download a pentesting distro is the fact
all the tools are the there and you don't have
to waste time finding all the dependencies for
metasploit. So my advice for you is this: Download a pentester, but don't install it as your main
distro. Yes there are some distros that can serve
both purposes, but I wouldn't recommend using them that way.
Alright, you got your weapons and the
skill to wield them, now all you need is a dojo.
"But why can't I attack Shitbook or [insert other
mainstream site here]? I'm glad you asked! It's
because that would be illegal, and you would
get caught. I recommend visualizing everything,
because it's cheaper, if you fauurrk something
up you can revert back to a snapshot, and it's
cheaper. Now, many recommend VMware. It
costs a lot of money, and I won't lie, VMware is
really well made. However, Virtual Box does the
same thing at a price you can't beat, free (as in
both free beer and freedom).
Well, this was just a starters guide, rough
and dirty. I do full time college and work, so opportunities to shitpost on the web are few and
far between. I wanted to do a starters guide on
BeEF (browser exploitation framework) as well,
but it was going to take longer than I first suspected. Ill try for that next time, but no promises. If you want to talk to me, feel free to give
me something to research; I love to learn new
things. Chances are Im lurking in #lainchan on
freenode.

Q: Kali Linux?
A: Only liveboot, dont install it.
Q: Do I have to learn to code?
A: Tools can only go so far Anon.
Q: How do i hack Facebook?
A: Look into SET.
Q: What are the tools i need to hack X?
A:

Portscanning: nmap

Password cracking: hydra

Web app: Burbsuite is popular, but I like
w3af

General use: Metasploit is an all-in-one tool
which is pretty much perfect for everything

Social engineering: payphone/SET
Q: Where can I get hands-on experience?
A: Places to practice hacking:

https://www.hackthissite.org

https://www.hackthis.co.uk

https://pentesterlab.com

https://hack.me

https://community.rapid7.com/docs/DOC1875
Networking help and tutorials:

https://www.netacad.com/web/about-us/
cisco-packet-tracer

https://www.youtube.com/user/danscourses
Very good resources and general use education:

http://pastebin.com/cRYvK4jb

https://udacity.com

https://www.youtube.com/user/thenewboston

FAQ

Exploit development:
Q: Im just a poor boy who has to steal wifi.

http://www.myne-us.com/2010/08/fromA: Get Reaver or, if you're using Windows, Cain.
0x90-to-0x4c454554-journey-into.html

4
17

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

FreeBSD Guide for Newbs

should auto connect to your home wireless, but

if you go somewhere else it won't do this (obviously). So follow these simple steps:
1. ifconfig this will print out your card
name and its alias. Most of the time it is
by gh0st_
just wlan0.
2. ifconfig wlan0 scan brings up network
Getting the release
ids
First go to freebsd.org and pick the proper ar- 3. ifconfig wlan0 nwid 'FooBar Network'
wpakey FO0Bar_password
chitecture. You will see the option of x86 and
x64. To find out which one to pick you generally 4. If your network is unencrypted use the
-wep or -wpa option where the wpakey
need to go by how much RAM you have. If you
would normally be
have under 4gigs of RAM the go with x86, 4gigs
5. dhclient wlan0 this will setup all the
or more then go with x64.
DHCP shit
6. to test run ping google.com
Knowledge requirements

Unix basics ie. directory setups and conPart 2: Users
cepts.

Shell, i.e. Bash, CSH, KSH, etc. You need You will come to a point where you will be asked
if you want to create a user. Select yes and go
to have a basic grasp on this.

Unix concepts i.e., everything is a file, shit thru the basics until you get to the part where
it asks you if you want to add this person to any
like this.
groups. In this you want to type wheel this
will be used later when adding you to the list of
Install
If you have never messed around with Unix like sudoers
OSs before then you probably should go to Linux first, pick something like Ubuntu and learn Part 3: Post install
the Unix basics (also, the installer on Ubuntu is After you are done you will reboot your computer and take out the medium which you used to
generally more friendly).
Note: If you don't want to, then go and install FreeBSD with. The computer should boot
grab the FreeBSD handbook and read through it. normally and you will be confronted with a basic
CLI login screen (we will be adding a graphical
login manager later). Login as root (only for this
First boot
Press Enter and go through the basic installer section, doing this routinely is a rootkit waiting
(it is pretty fucking easy). If you can't navigate to happen).
Once you are logged in as the root user you
through that then you shouldnt be reading this.
will do the following:
1. We are assuming you are connected to your
Part 1: Wireless
home network; run ping google.com to
If you are on a desktop, you don't have to wortest this.
ry about this. However, if you are on a laptop
you, will be confronted with a wireless connec- 2. Now we are going to install a few basic
packages. You will be doing all this as root
tion screen inside the installer. Just find your
for now but later you can finally use the
wireless network id and click it, then enter your
user you created. Run the pkg command
password and continue. After the install, you

and Dummies

18

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

and go through the dialouge. Next, run

pkg install sudo.
3. Run visudo and once you see text press
the i key to start editing text. Scroll down
until you see Uncomment to allow members of the wheel to blah blah blah, press
the Del key to uncomment. Next press the
Esc key then press Shift :wq. Having done
that will allow the user you created to have
access to sudoers.
We will now be setting up our desktop environment and login manager as well as a shit
ton of other stuff to get you started. First run
pkg install nano. Once that installs you want
to install basic GUI packages such as a desktop
environment
I will later write a file on how to customize
xfce, but for now we are just setting up.
Part 4: Packages and settings up the
desktop environment and login manager
Run pkg install xorg xfce4-session firefox
hexchat epdfview. Once that finally installs
run pkg install xfce4-wm-themes slim
xfce4-mixer (or xfce4-pulseaudio-daemon).
Once you install this, you can poke around and
configure xfce to your liking but that is for a
different zine.
4. Log out of root and login as the user you
created. You should have basic permissions
now that you are a sudoer. Next you want
to configure things so that xfce will work,
run sudo nano /etc/rc.conf and add the
following to the file:
dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"
slim_enable="YES"
moused_enable="YES"
powerd_enable="YES" (if you are on a
laptop only)

Next, press Ctrl-O and press Enter.

Now your xfce should be able to function
19

normally. Next run cd ~ to get to your home

directory and run nano .xinitrc . Add the following to the file:
exec /usr/local/bin/startxfce4

This will make it so when you boot up and

login with SLIM or the CLI login screen you will
be able to boot into xfce. (Note that if you aren't
using a graphical login manager you will need to
run startx to boot into the desktop.)
That's all for now folks. Stay tuned for my
next article in the next issue of lainzine. I will be
covering ricing your xfce desktop.
Note: This will have some spelling errors
and maybe even some gaps in the guide. Don't
bitch about it, figure it out. If you can't, there
are tons of forums, discussion boards, mailing
lists and IRC channels dedicated to Unix full of
helpful, enthusiastic people.

Lainzine, Volume 1 (April 2015)

Youtube Proxy1
The following script runs on vanilla Node.js and requires an executable of youtube-dl. If it's not
located in the same directory as the script, change the line
var job = spawn('./youtube-dl', args);

to something like
var job = spawn('~/path/to/youtube-dl', args);

Usage examples
Download a video in MP4 from YouTube:
http://example.com:8567/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXXXXX

Download a video from YouTube and extract audio in M4A format:

http://example.com:8567/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXXXXX.m4a

Currently, the headers it sets are designed for downloading. You can change them so that it
plays in your browser, but I mainly wanted it for downloading videos on my phone and Firefox on
Android wouldn't download it without them.
Also, be aware that it needs a downloads directory that is not created automatically.
var spawn = require('child_process').spawn,
fs

= require('fs'),

http

= require('http'),

mime

= require('mime');

var server = http.createServer(function(req, res) {

var m

= req.url.match(/\/(.*)\.(.*?)/),

format = m[2],
url

= m[1];

if (!/^.*\.[a-z0-9]{3,5}$/.test(req.url)) {
format = 'mp4';
url

= req.url.match(/\/(.*)/)[1];

}
var file

= url.replace(/[\/:?!&=\.]/g, '') + '.' + format,

mimeType = mime.lookup(file),
args

= ['-o', 'downloads/' + file];

1 Original comment on /tech/: https://lainchan.org/tech/res/5644.html#5658, original source

code at http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=amxBtmmj
20

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

if (['m4a', 'mp3', 'opus'].indexOf(format) !== -1) {

args = args.concat(['-x', '--audio-format']);
} else {
args.push('-f');
}
args.push(format);
args.push(url);
console.log(args.join(' '));
var job = spawn('./youtube-dl', args);
job.on('close', function(code, signal) {
var fileStream = fs.createReadStream('downloads/' + file);
pipeReadstream(req, res, fileStream, mimeType, file, function(err) {
console.log('error: ' + err);
});
});
job.stdout.on('data', function(data) {
console.log('stdout: ' + data);
});
job.stderr.on('data', function(data) {
console.log('stderr: ' + data);
});
});
server.listen(8567);
// Pipe some stream as HTTP response
function pipeReadstream(req, res, readStream, mimeType, filename, cb) {
var headWritten = false;
readStream.on('data', function(data) {
if (!headWritten) {
res.writeHead(200, {
'Content-Disposition': 'attachment; filename=' + filename,
'Content-Type': mimeType
});
headWritten = true;
}

21

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

var flushed = res.write(data);
// Pause the read stream when the write stream gets saturated
if (!flushed) {
readStream.pause();
}
});
res.on('drain', function() {
// Resume the read stream when the write stream gets hungry
readStream.resume();
});
readStream.on('end',

function()

{ res.end(); });

readStream.on('error', function(err) { cb(err); });

}

22

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Structure-based ASCII Art

Xuemiao Xu
Linling Zhang
Tien-Tsin Wong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Figure 1: Structure-based ASCII art generated by our method (the input is banquet of Figure 18). Characters were chosen from the set of
95 printable ASCII characters.

1 Introduction

Abstract

ASCII art is a technique of composing pictures with printable text

characters [Wikipedia 2009]. It stemmed from the inability of
graphical presentation on early computers. Hence text characters
are used in place of graphics. Even with the wide availability of
digital images and graphics nowadays, ASCII art remains popular
due to the enormous growth of text-based communication channels
over the Internet and mobile communication networks, such as instant messenger systems, Usenet news, discussion forums, email
and short message services (SMS). In addition, ASCII art has already evolved into a popular art form in cyberspace.
ASCII art can be roughly divided into two major styles, tone-based
and structure-based. While tone-based ASCII art maintains the intensity distribution of the reference image (Figure 2(b)), structurebased ASCII art captures the major structure of the image content (Figure 2(c)). In general, tone-based ASCII art requires a
much higher text resolution to represent the same content than the

The wide availability and popularity of text-based communication

channels encourage the usage of ASCII art in representing images. Existing tone-based ASCII art generation methods lead to
halftone-like results and require high text resolution for display, as
higher text resolution offers more tone variety. This paper presents
a novel method to generate structure-based ASCII art that is currently mostly created by hand. It approximates the major line structure of the reference image content with the shape of characters.
Representing the unlimited image content with the extremely limited shapes and restrictive placement of characters makes this problem challenging. Most existing shape similarity metrics either fail
to address the misalignment in real-world scenarios, or are unable
to account for the differences in position, orientation and scaling.
Our key contribution is a novel alignment-insensitive shape similarity (AISS) metric that tolerates misalignment of shapes while
accounting for the differences in position, orientation and scaling.
Together with the constrained deformation approach, we formulate
the ASCII art generation as an optimization that minimizes shape
dissimilarity and deformation. Convincing results and user study
are shown to demonstrate its effectiveness.
Keywords: ASCII art, shape similarity
e-mail:

[email protected]
[email protected]
e-mail: [email protected]
e-mail:

23

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

(a)

(b)

(a)

(c)

(b)

(c)

Figure 3: (a) By inspecting the overlapping image between the edge

map of the reference image (Figure 2(a)) and the structured-based
ASCII art (Figure 2(c)), one can identify the two matching strategies employed by ASCII artists: (b) misalignment is tolerated; (c)
the reference image is deformed to increase the chance of matching.

Figure 2: ASCII art. (a) A reference image. (b) Tone-based ASCII

art generated by the program PicText, requiring the text resolution
3029 in order to depict the content, though not very clearly. (c)
Structure-based ASCII art manually designed by an artist, with a
significant lower text resolution of 87.

2 Related Work
structure-based one, as the high text resolution is required for producing sufficient tone variety. On the other hand, structure-based
ASCII art utilizes the shape of characters to approximate the image
structure (Figure 2(c)), without mechanically following the pixel
values. To the extreme, smileys, such as :) and :(, are the simplest examples of structure-based ASCII art.
Existing computational methods can only handle tone-based ASCII
art, as its generation can be regarded as a dithering problem with
characters [Ulichney ]. OGrady and Rickard [2008] improved
such dithering process by reducing the mismatches bewteen character pixels and the reference image pixels. Nevertheless, high
text resolution is still required for a clear depiction. Note that
ASCII art gradually loses its stylishness (and approaches to standard halftone images) as its text resolution increases. In addition, as
the text screens of mobile devices are limited, the character-saving
structure-based ASCII art is more stylish and practical for commercial usage such as text-based advertisement. However, satisfactory
structure-based ASCII art is mostly created by hand. The major
challenge is the inability to depict the unlimited image content with
the limited character shapes and the restrictive placement of characters over the character grid.
To increase the chance of matching appropriate characters, artists
tolerate the misalignment between the characters and the reference
image structure (Figure 3(b)), and even intelligently deform the reference image (Figure 3(c)). In fact, shape matching in ASCII art application is a general pattern recognition problem. In real-world applications, such as optical character recognition (OCR) and ASCII
art, we need a metric to tolerate misalignment and also account for
the differences in transformation (translation, orientation and scaling). For instance, in recognizing the characters o and o during
the OCR, both scaling and translation count; while in recognizing
characters 6 and 9, the orientation counts. Unfortunately, existing shape similarity metrics are either alignment-sensitive [Wang
et al. 2004] or transformation-invariant [Mori et al. 2005; Belongie
et al. 2002; Arkin et al. 1991], and hence not applicable.
In this paper, we propose a novel method to generate structurebased ASCII art to capture the major structure of the reference image. Inspired by the two matching strategies employed by ASCII
artists, our method matches characters based on a novel alignmentinsensitive shape similarity metric and allows a constrained deformation of the reference image to increase the chance of character
matching. The proposed similarity metric tolerates the misalignment while it accounts for the differences in transformation. Given
an input and a target text resolution, we formulate the ASCII art
generation as an optimization by minimizing the shape dissimilarity and deformation. We demonstrate its effectiveness by several
convincing examples and a user study. Figure 1 shows the result
automatically obtained by our method.

As a culture in the cyberspace, the best references of ASCII

art can be found online.
There is collaboratively prepared frequently asked questions (FAQ) for Usenet newsgroup
alt.ascii-art [CJRandall 2003], which keeps track of the
update information and resources related to ASCII art. Other
sources of reference are online tutorials written by individual enthusiasts [Wakenshaw 2000; Crawford 1994; Au 1995]. To produce ASCII art, one can type it using a standard text editor. It is
not as intuitive as painting, however. Enthusiasts developed interactive painting software [Davis 1986; Gebhard 2009] to allow users
to directly paint the characters via a painting metaphor.
Besides the interactive tools, there are attempts to automatically
convert images into ASCII art [Klose and McIntosh 2000; DeFusco 2007; OGrady and Rickard 2008]. However, they can only
generate tone-based ASCII art, as it can be regarded as a dithering process. The major academic study is in the area of halftoning [Ulichney ; Bayer 1973; Floyd and Steinberg 1974]. OGrady
and Rickard [2008] tailor-made a method for tone-based ASCII art
by minimizing the difference between the characters and the reference image in a pixel-by-pixel manner. However, all these methods
cannot be extended to generate structure-based ASCII art due to
their inability to allow misalignment and deformation. In this paper, we focus on the generation of structure-based ASCII art as it
depicts a clearer picture within a smaller text space. Its generation
can no longer be regarded as a dithering process. Instead, the shape
similarity plays a major role in its generation. 3D collage [Gal et al.
2007] relies on shape matching to aggregate smaller objects to form
a large compound one. While transformation invariance is needed
during collaging, our character matching must be transformationaware and with restrictive placement.

3 Overview
An overview of our structure-based ASCII art generation is shown
in Figure 4. The basic input is a vector graphics containing only
polylines. A raster image can be converted to vector via vectorization. As the limited shapes and restrictive placement of text
characters may not be able to represent unlimited image content,
ASCII artists slightly deform the input to increase the chance of
character matching. So we mimic such deformation during optimization by iteratively adjusting the vertex positions of the input
polylines. Given the vector-based line art, we rasterize it and divide
the raster image into grid cells. Each cell is then best-matched with
a character based on the proposed alignment-insensitive shape similarity metric (Section 4). This completes one iteration of optimization, and the objective value, which composes of the deformation of
the vectorized picture (Section 5) and the dissimilarity between the

24

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Vectorized polylines

Input

Deformed image

Result

Substituted with best

matched characters

Optimization
Figure 4: The overview of our framework.

(a)

O O 69

1
2

(b)

Figure 5: Real-world applications, like OCR and ASCII art, require

a similarity metric to account for scaling, translation and orientation, as well as tolerate misalignment. (a) A scanned image for
OCR input. (b) Misalignment with ideal characters (in green) exists.

(a)

(c)

Figure 6: Alignment-insensitive shape similarity. (a) A log-polar

diagram to quantify the letter A with the corresponding histogram
underneath. Its row and column correspond to the angular and radial dimensions of the log-polar diagram respectively. (b) N points
are regularly sampled in a grid layout, each with a log-polar diagram. (c) The corresponding log-polar histograms.

characters and the deformed picture, can be computed. In the next

iteration, we adjust the vertex positions of the vector-based line art
with a simulated annealing strategy (detailed in Section 5). Since
the line art is changed, the above rasterization-and-AISS-matching
process is repeated to obtain a new set of best-matched characters.
Such deformation-and-matching process continues until the objective value is minimized.
Before the optimization, we need to prepare the input and the
characters. Since character fonts may have varying thicknesses
and widths, we simplify the problem by ignoring font thickness
(via centerline extraction) and handling only fixed-width character fonts. We further vectorize the characters and represent them
with polylines. In order to focus only on the shapes during matching, both the input polylines and the characters are rasterized with
the same line thickness (one pixel-width in our system). Note that
the characters are only rasterized once as they can be repeatedly
used. Before each optimization step, the input polylines are rasterized according to the target text resolution, Rw Rh , where Rw
and Rh are the maximum number of characters along the horizontal and vertical directions respectively. As the aspect ratio of our
characters, = Th /Tw , is fixed, the text resolution can be solely
determined by a single variable Rw , as Rh = H/(W/Rw ),
where Tw and Th are the width and height of a rasterized character
image in the unit of pixels respectively. W and H are the width and
height of the input image. Hence, the input polylines are scaled and
rasterized to a domain of Tw Rw Th Rh . Furthermore, since the
vector-based input is scalable (W and H can be scaled up or down),
users may opt for allowing the system to determine the optimal text
resolution (Rw Rh ) by choosing the minimized objective values
among results of multiple resolutions, as our objective function is
normalized to the text resolution.

(b)

.
.
.

Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) or mean-squared error (MSE),

and the well-known structural similarity index (SSIM) [Wang et al.
2004] belong to the former category. Their similarity values drop
significantly when two equal images are slightly misaligned during
the comparison. On the other hand, the transformation-invariant
metrics are designed to be invariant to translation, orientation and
scaling. These metrics include shape context descriptor [Mori et al.
2005; Belongie et al. 2002], Fourier descriptor [Zahn and Roskies
1972], skeleton-based shape matching [Sundar et al. 2003; Goh
2008; Torsello and Hancock 2004], curvature-based shape matching [Cohen et al. 1992; Milios 1989], and polygonal shape matching [Arkin et al. 1991]. In our case, the transformation matters.
Hence, no existing work is suitable for our application.
In fact, the above metric requirement is not only dedicated to our
application, but applicable for real-world applications of pattern
recognition and image analysis, such as OCR. For example, Figure 5(a) shows a scanned image ready for OCR. The characters
o , o, 6 and 9 are magnified in Figure 5(b) for better visualization. It is not surprising that the scanned character images (in
black) may be slightly misaligned to the ideal characters (in green)
no matter how perfect the global registration is. Hence, an alignment insensitive shape similarity metric is essential. Besides the
misalignment, the transformation difference has to be accounted for
in OCR as well. Characters o and o have the similar shapes, but
are different in position and scaling. Characters 9 and 6 also
share the same shape but with a difference in orientation. In other
words, the shape information alone is not sufficient for recognition,
since position, orientation and scaling have their own special meanings. Therefore, the desired metric must also account for position,
orientation, scaling, as well as the shape information.

Alignment-Insensitive Shape Similarity

The key to best-match the content in a grid cell with a character is the shape similarity metric. It should tolerate misalignment
and, simultaneously, account for the differences in transformation
such as, position, orientation and scaling. Existing shape similarity metrics can be roughly classified into two extreme categories,
alignment-sensitive metrics and transformation-invariant metrics.

Misalignment Tolerance Misalignment is, in essence, a smallscale transformation. To tolerate misalignment, a histogram of a
log-polar diagram [Mori et al. 2005] is used as the basic building

25

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Query

block of our shape descriptor (Figure 6(a)). This log-polar histogram measures the shape feature in a local neighborhood, covered
by a log-polar window. Its bins uniformly partition the local neighborhood in log-polar space. For each bin, the grayness of the shape
is accumulated and used as one component in the histogram. As
the bins are uniform in log-polar space, the histogram is more sensitive to the positions of nearby points than to those farther away.
Moreover, since only the sum of pixels within the same bin is relevant, it is inherently insensitive to small shape perturbations, which
leads to its misalignment tolerance nature. In other words, the degree of misalignment tolerance is implicitly defined in the log-polar
diagram. During the pixel summation, black pixel has a grayness
of 1 while the white one
is 0. The bin value h(k) of the k-th bin is
I(q), where q is the position
computed as h(k) =
(qp)bin(k)
of the current pixel; (q p) is the relative position to the center
of the log-polar window, p; I(q) returns the grayness at position q.
The lower sub-image in Figure 6(a) visualizes the feature vector h
with respect to p (the blue dot).

SSIM

RMSE
(after blurring)

(2)
(3)
(4)

Figure 7: Comparison of four shape similarity metrics. From left to

right: our metric, shape context, SSIM, and RMSE-after-blurring.
P3
P2
B
r
B
A
P4

P
A
1
P
r
B
A

Unlike the original transformationinvariance scheme in [Mori et al. 2005], we propose a novel sampling layout of log-polar diagrams in order to account for the transformation difference. The log-polar histogram can natively account
for orientation. The bin values change as the content rotates. To account for scaling, all log-polar histograms share the same scale. To
account for translation (or position), N points are regularly sampled
over the image in a grid layout (Figure 6(b)). Both the reference
image in a cell and the character image are sampled with the same
sampling pattern. For each sample point, a log-polar histogram is
measured. The feature vectors (histograms) of the sample points are
then concatenated to describe the shape, as shown in Figure 6(c).
The shape similarity between two shapes, S and S  , is measured by
comparing their feature vectors in a point-by-point basis, given by
1 
||hi hi ||,
M

Shape context

(1)

Transformation Awareness

DAISS (S, S  ) =

Our metric

(a) Local deformation

(b) Accessibility

Figure 8: Deformation metric

paying less attention to the shape (demonstrated by queries 1 and

3). In contrast, our method strives for a balance between shape and
position in all results. The query of a long center-aligned horizontal
line (query 4) demonstrates the advantage of our metric. Shape context maximizes shape similarity, ignores large displacement, and
chooses the longer underscore character to match the long line.
SSIM and RMSE match the shape with an equal sign = because
its lower line overlaps with the query image. Our method pays attention to the shape (a single line), tolerates a slight misalignment,
and chooses a shorter hyphen - as the best match.

(1)

iN

5 Optimization

where hi (hi ) is the feature vector of the i-th sample point on S

(S  ); M = (n+n ) is the normalization factor and n (n ) is the total
grayness of the shape S (S  ). This normalization factor counteracts
the influence of absolute grayness.

To raise the chance of matching characters,

ASCII artists intelligently deform the reference image. We mimic
such deformation during our optimization. We deform the reference
image by adjusting the vertex positions of the vectorized polylines.
However, unconstrained deformation may destroy the global structure of the input. We designed a metric to quantify and minimize
the deformation values during the optimization process. This consists of two terms, local deformation constraint and accessibility
constraint.
Deformation Metric

In all the experiments, histograms were empirically constructed

with 5 bins along the radial axis in log space, and 12 bins along
the angular axis. The radius of the coverage is selected to be about
half of the shorter side of a character. The number of sample points,
N , equals (Tw /2) (Th /2). To suppress aliasing due to the discrete nature of bins, the image is filtered by a Gaussian kernel of
size 77 before measuring the shape feature.

Local Deformation Constraint The first term measures the local deformation of a line segment, in terms of orientation and scaling.
Consider the original line segment AB as deformed to A B  in
Figure 8(a). As we allow global translation during the deformation,
the local deformation of line segment AB is measured in a relative
sense, as follows,

Comparison to Existing Metrics We evaluate the metric by

comparing it to three commonly used metrics, including the classical shape context (a translation- and scale- invariant metric), SSIM
(an alignment-sensitive, structure similarity metric), and RMSE
(root mean squared error) after blurring. For the last metric, RMSE
is measured after blurring the compared images by a Gaussian kernel of 77, as one may argue that our metric is similar to RMSE
after blurring the images.
The effectiveness of our metric is demonstrated in Figure 7, in
which we query four different shapes (the first column). For each
metric, the best-matched character is determined from a set of 95
printable ASCII characters. From the matching results, shape context over-emphasizes the shape and ignores the position (as demonstrated by queries 2 to 4). On the other hand, the alignmentsensitive nature of SSIM and RMSE drives them to maximize the
overlapping area between the query image and the character, while

Dlocal (AB) = max {V (AB), Vr (AB)} ,

(2)

where V (AB) = exp(1 ), and

Vr (AB) = max

exp(2 |r  r|), exp

3 max{r, r  }
min{r, r  }



[0, ] is the angle between the original and the deformed line
segments. r and r  denote the lengths of the original and deformed

26

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

(a) Iteration 0
E = 695.76

(b) Iteration 60
E = 425.33

(c) Iteration 120

E = 375.32

Figure 10: Intermediate results during optimization. The input is Figure 18(s3).

(a)

(b)

(d) Iteration 155

E = 365.76

where Ddeform = 1 when there is no deformation. Figure 9(c) visualizes Ddeform of the deformed image (Figure 9(b)) by color-coding
each line segment with lighter value indicating higher deformation,
and vice versa. As the objective function is computed on the basis of a character cell, the deformation value of a character cell j,
j
, is computed. All line segments intersecting the current
Ddeform
cell j are identified, as denoted by the set {Lj }. li is the length of
the i-th line segment Li (partial or whole) in {Lj } occupied by cell
j. Then, the deformation value of cell j is then computed as the
weighted average of deformation values of involved line segments,

(c)

Figure 9: The green and black lines indicate the original and deformed polylines respectively. The input is Figure 18(s3). (a) With
the local deformation constraint alone, the drift of circular windows
cannot be avoided. (b) With local and accessibility constraints, the
drift can be avoided. (c) Visualization of the deformation value of
each line segment in (b). For visualization purpose, the deformation
values are non-linearly mapped.

j
Ddeform
=

li Ddeform (Li ), where

li =

li

i{Lj }

i{Lj }

li

(5)

With the shape similarity and deformation

metrics, the overall objective function can be defined. Given a particular text resolution, our optimization goal is to minimize the energy E,

Objective Function

line segments. Parameters 1 , 2 , and 3 are the weights, and empirically set to values of 8/, 2/ min{Tw , Th }, and 0.5, respectively, in all the experiments. When there is no local deformation,
Dlocal = 1.
Accessibility Constraint The local deformation constraint alone
can only prevent the over-deformation in the local scale. It cannot avoid the over-deformation in a global scale, as demonstrated
in Figure 9(a). Three circular windows drift away from their original locations and destroy the layout, even though each of them is
not over-deformed in a local sense. To constrain the deformation
in a global scale, we propose a 2D accessibility constraint, inspired
by the surface exposure [Hsu and Wong 1995] and 3D accessibility [Miller 1994]. This maintains the relative orientation and position between the current line segment and its surrounding line segments.

E=

nl


wi Dlocal (P Pi ),

where m is the total number of character cells, and K is the number of non-empty cells, and is used as the normalization factor.
j
DAISS
is the dissimilarity between the j-th cells content and its
j
best-matched character, as defined in Equation 1. The term Ddeform
is the deformation value of the j-th cell. When there is no deformaj
j
= 1; hence E is purely dependent on DAISS
. Note
tion, Ddeform
that the energy values of different text resolutions are directly comparable, as our energy function is normalized. The lower row of
Figure 12 demonstrates such comparability by showing our results
in three text resolutions along with their energies. The middle one
(2821) with the smallest energy corresponds to the most pleasant result, while the visually poor result on the left has a relatively
larger energy.
We employ a simulated annealing strategy during the discrete optimization. In each iteration, we randomly select one vertex, and
randomly displace its position with a distance of at most d. Here,
d is the length of the longer side of the character image. Then,
all affected grid cells due to this displacement are identified and
best-matched with the character set again. If the recomputed E
is reduced, the displacement is accepted. Otherwise, a transition
probability Pr = exp(/t) is used to make the decision, where
is the energy difference between two iterations; t = 0.2ta c0.997
is the temperature; c is the iteration index; ta is the initial average
matching error of all grid cells. If Pr is smaller than a random number in [0, 1], this displacement is accepted; otherwise, it is rejected.
The optimization is terminated whenever E is not reduced for co
consecutive iterations, where co = 5000 in our implementation.

(3)

i=1

where nl is the total number of intersecting line segments to P .

is the weight, computed
Dlocal (P Pi ) is defined in Equation 2; wi
nl
|P Pi |). Its value is
as the normalized distance wi = |P Pi |/( i=1
higher when the corresponding line segment is closer to P . Hence,
the overall metric of controlling the deformation is,
Ddeform (AB) = max{Dlocal (AB), Daccess (AB)},

(6)

j=1

To compute the accessibility of the current line segment, say AB in

Figure 8(b), multiple rays are shot from the midpoint, P , of AB
towards the surrounding circle in order to determine the closest
surrounding line segments. For each intersected line segment, the
nearest point, Pi , is determined, forming an imaginary line segment
P Pi . The accessibility is then computed as

Daccess (AB) =

m
1  j
j
DAISS Ddeform
,
K

(4)

27

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Input

(a) shape context

(b) SSIM

(c) RMSE after blurring

(d) our metric

Figure 11: Comparison of ASCII art using different shape similarity metrics.

(a) O ' Grady and Rickard

Rw = 18

Rw = 28
Rw = 35
Input

(b) Our method

Rw = 18 E =1319.54

Rw = 28 E = 1274.24

Rw = 35 E = 1282.90

Figure 12: Our method vs. the method of OGrady and Rickard. Rw is the width of the text resolution and E is the optimized energy.
Figure 10 shows the intermediate results along with their energies.
As the energy reduces, the visual quality of ASCII art improves accordingly. An animated sequence for better visualization of such
optimization is included in the auxiliary material.

To validate its importance, we compare the ASCII art results (Figure 11) generated by substituting the character matching metric in
our framework with different shape similarity metrics, including
shape context, SSIM, RMSE after blurring and our metric. Hence,
the same deformation mechanism is employed in generating all results. The result of shape context (Figure 11(a)) is most unrecognizable due to the structure discontinuity caused by the neglect of
position. SSIM and RMSE preserve better structure as they place
a high priority on position. Their alignment-sensitive nature, however, leads to the loss of fine details. Among all results, our metric
generates the best approximation to the input, with the best preservation of structure and fine details. The comparison demonstrates
the importance of transformation awareness and misalignment tolerance in preserving structure continuity and fine details.

Results and Discussions

To validate our method, we conducted multiple experiments over

a rich variety of inputs. The setting used for generating all our
examples in this paper and their running times are listed in Table 2.
Our method works with any font database of fixed character width.
This paper shows results of matching characters from ASCII code
(95 printable characters) and Shift-JIS code (475 characters only).
Figures 14 to 17 show our results. The corresponding inputs can
be found in Figure 18. Complete comparisons and results can be
found in the auxiliary material.

Figure 2 already demonstrates

the inferiority of the more nave halftoning approach in representing clear structure. The only alternative work that was tailormade
for generating ASCII art is by OGrady and Rickard [2008]. We
therefore compare our results to those generated by their method
in Figure 12(a). Due to its halftone nature, their method fails to
produce satisfactory (in terms of structure preservation) results for
Comparison to Existing Work

Metrics Comparison In Section 4, we have compared different

shape similarity metrics for matching a single character. One may
argue the visual importance of the proposed metric in generating
the entire ASCII art which may contain hundreds of characters.

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Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Text Character Running Time by

set
resolut.
time artists
Fig. 1

138X36 ASCII

15mins

ASCII

4mins

Fig. 12b 18X13 Shift-JIS

6mins

Fig. 11

(a) Input
(b) by artist
(c) by our method
Figure 13: Comparison of ASCII art between an artists and our method.

all three text resolutions (from 1813 to 3528). All fine details
are lost in their results.

Methods
Similarity

To conduct a user study, artists were invited to manually design ASCII art pieces for 3 test images. They were free to
choose the desired text resolution for their pieces, but the character set was restricted to ASCII code. We then use our method and
the method by OGrady and Rickard to generate ASCII art results
with the same text resolutions. Then, we invited 30 participants for
the user study. The source image and three ASCII art results were
shown side-by-side to the participants. Figure 13 shows our result
as well as the artist piece from one of the 3 test sets. The complete
set of comparison can be found in the auxiliary material. Each participant graded the ASCII art using 2 scores out of a 9-point scale
([1-9] with 9 being the best). The first score was to grade the similarity of the ASCII art pieces with respect to the input. The second
was to grade the clarity of content presented in the ASCII art without referring to the input. Therefore, there were 18 data samples
for analysis from each of the 30 participants. Altogether 540 data
samples can be used for analysis.
User Study

Clarity

26X16

5 hrs

Fig. 12b 28X21 Shift-JIS

8mins

Fig. 12b 35X28 Shift-JIS

8mins

Fig. 13

52X34

ASCII

7mins

2 hrs

Fig. 14

66X61

ASCII

12mins

Fig. 15

31X20 Shift-JIS 15mins

Fig. 16

35X27 Shift-JIS 11mins

Fig. 17a 24X37 Shift-JIS

9mins

Fig. 17b 24X38 Shift-JIS

9mins

Fig. 17c 25X36 Shift-JIS

9mins

Table 2: Timing statistics.

Standard 95% confidence interval

Mean deviation Lower Bound Upper Bound

Artists
6.86
7.36
Our method
O'Grady and Rickard 4.42
Artists
7.18
Our method
7.09
O'Grady and Rickard 4.15

1.32
1.13
1.82
1.25
1.30
1.80

6.60

7.11
7.58

7.14
4.06

4.77

6.94
6.84

7.42
7.34

3.80

4.50

Table 1: User study statistics.

second, third, and fourth columns show the corresponding text resolution, the character set used, and the running time for generating
our ASCII art. The running time increases as the complexity of the
input and the number of the characters increase.
Besides the fact that traditional ASCII art only works
on a fixed-width font, modern ASCII art also deals with proportional fonts, e.g. Japanese Shift-JIS. Our current method does not
handle proportional placement of characters or multiple font sizes
in a single ASCII art piece. Another limitation is that we currently
do not consider the temporal consistency when we generate the animation of ASCII art. To achieve this, one could first establish the
correspondence between the shapes of the adjacent frames. Then
one could constrain the deformation along the temporal dimension
to achieve temporal consistency. Since our system only accepts
vector input, real photographs or other raster images must first be
converted into outline images. This could be done either by nave
edge detection or a sophisticated line art generation method such
as [Kang et al. 2007], followed by vectorization. This also means
that our results would be affected by the quality of the vectorization. A poorly vectorized input containing messy edges would be
faithfully represented by our system. One more limitation stems
from the extremely limited variety of characters. Most font sets do
not contain characters representing a rich variety of slopes of lines.
This makes pictures such as radial patterns very hard to be faithfully
represented.

Limitations

From the statistics in Table 1, the results by OGrady and Rickard

are far from satisfactory in terms of both clarity and similarity. Our
method is comparable to (but slightly poorer than) the artist production in terms of clarity. In terms of similarity, however, our method
produced better results than the artists production. Such a phenomenon can be explained by that fact that artists can intelligently
(creatively) modify or even drop parts of content in order to facilitate the ASCII approximation (e.g. hairstyle of the girl in Figure
13(b)). In some cases, they even change the aspect ratio of the input to facilitate character matching. On the other hand, our method
respects the input aspect ratio and content.
Animated ASCII Art Figure 17 shows the ASCII art results of
converting an animation to a sequence of ASCII art pieces. Although each frame is converted independently without explicit
maintenance of temporal coherence, the generated ASCII art sequence is quite satisfactory. Readers are referred to the auxiliary
material for a side-by-side comparison between the original frames
and our generated ASCII art, in an animated fashion.

7 Conclusion

Timing Performance The proposed system was implemented

on a PC with 2GHz CPU, 8 GB system memory, and an nVidia
Geforce GTX 280 GPU with 1G video memory. Table 2 summarizes the timing statistics of all examples shown in this paper. The

In this paper, we present a method that mimics how ASCII artists

generate structure-based ASCII art. To achieve this, we first propose a novel alignment-insensitive metric to account for position,
orientation, scaling and shape. We demonstrate its effectiveness in

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Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

H SU , S.-C., AND W ONG , T.-T. 1995. Simulating dust accumulation. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 15, 1, 1822.

balancing shape and transformations, comparing it to existing metrics. This metric should also benefit other practical applications
requiring pattern recognition. Besides, a constrained deformation
model is designed to mimic how the artists deform the input image.
The rich variety of results shown demonstrates the effectiveness of
our method. Although we have shown an application of animated
ASCII art, its temporal consistency is not guaranteed. In the future,
it is worth investigating the possibility of generating animations of
ASCII art with high temporal consistency. An extension to proportional placement of characters is also worth studying. To further
control and refine the result, it would also be beneficial to allow
users to interactively highlight the important structure in the input
for preservation during the deformation.

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Acknowledgments
This project is supported by the Research Grants Council of the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, under General Research Fund (CUHK417107). We would like to thank Xueting
Liu for drawing some of the line art works, and ASCII artists on
newsmth.net including Crowyue, Zeppeli, Wolfing, and Asan
for creating the ASCII arts in our comparison between the results
by our method and by hand. Thanks also to all reviewers for their
constructive comments and guidance in shaping this paper.

OG RADY , P. D., AND R ICKARD , S. T. 2008. Automatic ASCII

art conversion of binary images using non-negative constraints.
In Proceedings of Signals and Systems Conference 2008 (ISSC
2008), 186191.
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2003. Skeleton based shape matching and retrieval. SMI 03,
130.
T ORSELLO , A., AND H ANCOCK , E. R. 2004. A skeletal measure
of 2d shape similarity. Computer Vision and Image Understanding 95, 1, 129.

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30

Lainzine, Issue 1 (April 2015)

Figure 15: ASCII art of Golden Temple

Figure 16: ASCII art of t rain

Figure 14: ASCII art of dragon-man

(s1) dragon-man

(s2) banquet

(a) Frame 1

(b) Frame 3
Figure 17: Animation of toitorse

(s3) church
(s4) Golden Temple
Figure 18: Inputs of examples in this paper

31

(c) Frame 6

(s5) train