public String getElement(long index) throws Exception
{
// throw new Exception("fixme!");
RandomAccessFile raf = new RandomAccessFile(bedFile, "r");
raf.seek((index / 4) + 3);
String byteString = reverse(bits(raf.readByte()));
raf.close();
int bitpair = (int) (index % 4) * 2;
return byteString.substring(bitpair, bitpair + 2);
}