This is a broken wall. There is not much to see except a lot of “stuff”. Most of it is broken bricks and mud.
Brokenwall
A broken wall
A plinth
Hello all,
I am remodeling my house. This is a superb photo opportunity for me to photograph it from its new beginning. I will be uploading a series of images relating to its construction and hope to capture it as it grows.
This is the first image, namely a plinth.
People often ask me what I use the vOICe for. Construction sites are messy places and I don’t fancy touching anything unless I have to. These images are an example of not touching something but still knowing what it is.
plinth
Training the blind to see, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with ABC Radio
Australian ABC Radio National interviews Professor Amir Amedi and his team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, about the vOICe and their work.
Hear the interview at this direct link.
In addition, there is a demonstration of a virtual cane. My favorite part of the interview is Professor Amedi’s lucid explanation about the brain and the working of the vOICe.
I wish more soundscapes had been recorded during the program. Good work Ella and Lior!
hijack: rewiring brains to see with sound
This is the title of a superb article on the vOICe in the New Scientist Magazine. You can read the article here.
The article states in part:
“Not everyone is quite so impressed. For example, J. Kevin O’Regan, a psychologist at Descartes University in Paris, France, points out that the system needs time to scan an image and so lacks the immediacy of vision. “I think it’s possible with resources and time to make something much better than the vOICe,” he says.”
Dr. O’Regan, The vOICe can indeed deliver immediate feedback by using the “all at once” option under the view submenu.
I was not part of the article but I do plan to study whether the all at once option yields better results. Watch this blog for more.
Finally, congratulations to Luis Goncalves and Enrico Di Bernardo of MetaModal for the NIH study and I wish them all the very best. Next year is going to be very exciting!
I read letters using a CCTV and the vOICe
I was at the NTPC training center at Delhi University this morning. I had a chance to try an old Prisma closed-circuit television camera (CCTV). My host drew some letters on a sheet of paper and placed them on the CCTV. I had my mobile phone with me and used the vOICe to gauge the shapes of the letters by pointing the phone camera at the CCTV monitor. I was successfully able to identify the shapes in most cases.
I was unable to name the letters except for the letter a which I remembered having a triangle. But that was due to my lack of practice more than anything else. Interestingly, this is the same way that I read braille. My usage of braille is not very frequent so I have to run my finger along the braille line one character at a time.
A Glock and I
I had a chance to visit a firing range and try a number of weapons. I was wearing my video glasses and had the vOICe running. I decided against using the fisheye lens since I was shooting at figure 11 targets and the idea of a gun site is to focus on to a target. My plan was to look through the site of the gun and align the barrel accordingly. However, I did not find this to be necessary. In the first place, the Glock doesn’t really have a site against which I can place the camera. There is a little notch on the gun you need to look through that notch at a little V-shaped that is fixed atop the barrel. The notch, the V-shape and the barrel all have to be in one line. Of course, the notch and the V. shape are not movable. I initially tried looking for the V-shape but it was very small and difficult to find. I needed to position the pistol slightly below the camera and then look through the site. Secondly, I was able to see the target using the vOICe. I was at a distance of about 20 m. Looking through the site of that gun reminded me of my experience when looking through an eyepiece of a digital camera. The view is very small. I initially practiced looking at a tree with the gun site.
Once I had viewed the target, I then tried aligning the barrel of the pistol with the target. I had to remember the position of the pistol with respect to what I saw and then align the barrel in that direction. This was a little tricky. I initially fired blanks. I then switched to live ammunition so I always had someone double-check my alignment.
Warning: in case you go to a firing range, carry earmuffs with you. Fortunately, these people had earmuffs which resemble headsets without wires. I had the entire set up on, and wore the ear muffs over the headphones. This helped muffle the noise of all the firing though it became quite painful towards the end since the earmuffs were exerting a lot of pressure on my years. Without the earmuffs, I found the noise to be extremely sharp and, after a few shots, my ears started ringing.
I have tried looking through the sites of other rifles and submachine guns. It is not really easy at least when wearing glasses since it’s difficult to handle the weapon and then align the glasses. Most of these weapons are heavy unless you have been trained on them.
Another warning: be careful of the recoil. The kinetic energy in a Glock’s recoil is 500 Jules (If I remember correctly) and the pistol jumps upwards. The first time I fired, the Pistol almost hit my glasses. I caught it in time and there was no damage done.
A river
This image is my attempt to capture a part of a river. I was on a jetty. There is a round blob on the right that could be a rock or perhaps a tyre. This image has been taken just before sunset.
River