MONTAGE!!!

I have a number of blog posts to put online from my little non-net-capable netbook (Ironic, no?), so I decided to combine them all together into one honkin’ big post before posting it.

Post 1)  “INSPIRATION”

I visited a park.  Specifically Fort Benjamin Harrison park.

There’s a lot of history at Fort Ben.  Unfortunately, by design or by coincidence, the park has essentially no informational signs.  

We have just identified a problem.

The AVL has a solution!  Enhanced Reality.

Enhanced Reality is different than Virtual Reality because some of what you are seeing is real; just not all of it.  Typically, special glasses are used to project data on top of the “real world”.  This would be specially useful in places like Fort Ben, where conspicuous displays and plaques would ruin the area’s natural beauty.

Here are a few concept sketches I whipped up.

Forgive the crappy sketch.  This is what it looks like now.

Virtual "signs" are projected onto the user's glasses.  The signs are informative, yet unobtrusive.  Amazing!

That concludes post #1.  On to...

Post 2) “AWW, CRAP. I BROKE MY EYEBALLS.”

I broke my glasses.

This wouldn’t have been a problem until recently, because I used to be able to wear contacts all day with no problems.

However, recently I have developed an allergy to the plastic used in the contacts.  They become unbearable to wear after four or five hours, tops.  Sometimes I can’t even stand wearing them for thirty seconds.

Now, I’m pretty blind without my glasses.  I can’t read any further than about 9 inches in front of my face.  I’m waaay past being able to drive without them.  I can barely function in a social setting without them because I can’t see people’s faces.

So I had to go four days without them while they were getting new lenses.

It really was an eye-opening (har har) experience.

Before the use of eyeglasses was widespread, “visually impaired” people (such as myself) would have been practically helpless.  I had to rely on family members to drive me everywhere.  I couldn’t watch TV or play video games, and I could barely use a computer.  I read several novels and ran into a lot of walls.  

You wouldn’t think I’d run into walls, but while my left eye can read at 9 inches, my right eye can only read at about 6, so my depth perception gets wonky without vision correction.

I know the “sensory deprivation” assignment isn’t coming up for a while, but I figured this was certainly worth blogging about.

Hope you enjoyed post #2.  Now for...

Post 3) “SDRAWKCAB GNIKLAW” (oh, if only I could make this sideways, too.)

This was less of a big deal than I thought it would be.

I have always had good balance, so the whole “staying upright” part was easy as pie.  The navigation part was a little harder, but not too much.

It reminded me of when I took swimming lessons over a decade ago.  When doing the backstroke, you can’t see in front of you; you have to gauge your distance to the wall by looking backwards at a line of flags.

I wasn’t very good at it at the time.  I would ram headfirst into the wall when I thought I still had a dozen feet left.

But now that I have better depth perception (partly due to my wearing glasses...) I used fixed reference points behind me to determine where I was.

Looking backwards in seeing sideways to know where I am now.  Complicated.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog montage.  If I could put music to it, I would.

~TomBob