March 31, 2008

Hang On, Lemme Process That For You

In high school, I can remember my speech teacher, Mr. Schumacher, talking about different kinds of learners. Some people learn visually, some aurally, some through written word. I'd never thought about this before, but I could instantly apply it to various classes and friends. Mr. Schumacher went on to talk about introverts and extroverts and a variety of other personality differences - he did this partly because we were a class of sophomores, juniors and seniors with varying comfort levels about high school, and partly because his was one of the very few high school classrooms where I rarely saw any kind of bullying happen. Mr. Schumacher was excellent at observing his students and preventing crappy behaviour before it even started. To this day, he is my role model when I consider going back to teaching.

Since I've left high school, I've done loads of reading on developmental stages of psychology, personality tests such as the Meyers-Briggs and processing issues like dyslexia, ADD and austism.

What I find fascinating is that nearly all of this really speaks to how we process the information which bombards us each day and how our filters deal with the overwhelming amount of information.

For example, many autists cannot stand tags in their clothes. Why? Because those individuals cannot stop processing the sensations from the tag. Think about the worst itch you ever had in your life - chicken pox, mosquito bite, poison ivy - that itch that you just could NOT stop thinking about and acting upon. What if the tag on the back of your shirt felt like that? What if that "itch" was literally so intense that it locked up your ability to think and became something you HAD to deal with NOW, regardless of what people thought? What if, in fact, you could not even fathom the thought "what will people think about my gyrations to get this thing off of me" because that itch was literally all you could focus on?

That's one form of processing disorder and often a common trait in autism.

What if, on the other end of the spectrum, every bit of information being tossed at you seemed equally important? Everything from the way the seam of your shorts feels kind of funny under your thigh to the rocking motion of your recliner to the level of light in the room to the feel of the keyboard under your fingers, the sound of the rain outside, the ringing of the phone, the colour of the dust motes floating in front of you, the sound of the keyboard, the sound of the cat walking across the room, the sound of your partner shifting weight slightly and lifting a beer, the smell of the Glade plugin that you read somewhere was a fire hazard and you keep meaning to unplug, the way the light flickers across the black polish of the television casing, the little bit of dust on your monitor --

Of all of those things, what is the one item that probably needs an immediate response?

With some kinds of processing disorders, you literally can't classify those according to importance. Sometimes that's an issue with autism; sometimes one with attention deficit.

What if you are so focused on what you are doing - on a regular basis, not just every once in a while - that you cannot see nor hear all of those stimuli?

What if you are so focused on your peculiar interest, that you have never learned to interpret the nuances of facial expressions? Would you know the difference between polite interest, avid interest and flirtation?

What truly fascinates me is not just the many ways in which we process (or don't process) the world around us - but the reasons why as well. For some, it's an official diagnosis of autism or asperger's or attention deficit disorder. For some, it's simply "absent-mindedness" or "bad social skills" or simply the function of a particular time, place and project.

For some, it's a biochemical process of the brain which "fouls" the "normal" ways of processing. For some, it's a matter of learning or training. For others, it's that they were never taught how to process or their environment kept them from processing in a "normal" fashion. And if that happens at an early enough age, that also affects the brain chemistry so that it might not be fully possible to learn to process "normally."

We all have our processing quirks and blind spots. Some are by choice, by faith or due to hard wiring.

And all of these processing foibles are a small portion of what makes so many of us exclaim, "If you'd just listen to me" or "if you'd just do what I told you" then all the ills of the moment could be fixed.

But the truth of the matter is ...

... we process all of those bits of information through our own experiential filters in our own ways ... and that inevitably leads to differences in what bits we process as most and least important.

It is the variety of ways in which we process the world around us which makes communication and accord so difficult, and yet it is also one of our greatest strengths as well, as new ways of processing teach us new concepts and ideas.

It's just that sometimes, we need to remember that the other guy's way of processing may not be wrong, merely different.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:18 PM | Comments (4) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Stumble

March 10, 2008

Celt Claire

Today we have a quick li'l lesson in Photoshop and why you do not want to annoy a graphic designer. This is actually a very easy tutorial. Which, of course, is made more difficult by the fact that I'm not taking screenshots or making this into a video. Why? Because I didn't think of any of that until after the whole thing was done. So, you get text and the final result.

Step One - find images. In this particular case, someone suggested that a friend should be made a Smurf, yes, a Smurf, one of the bollox-y little blue buggers. So, I went looking for a Smurfette image, just to add insult to injury. I'm mean that way. You might be nicer, I dunno. This friend enjoys hiking and I very quickly found an image of Smurfette rock-climbing. Close enough for government work. I then went to her Flicker account and swiped an image of her. Whilst there, I saw some gorgeous pix of Derwent Edge - just the thing!

Step Two - open Photoshop. Open your background image first. Now, open your cartoon and your person. Align your windows so that you can see a wee bit of your background image file. Now, go over to the layer window and drag the layer of the cartoon over to the bit of background image window that you can see. Voila! you have now added a new layer to your Photoshop file. Hit save. Do the same with the image of the person. You should have 3 layers now. Make sure the background image is on the bottom, the cartoon in the middle and the person on top.

Step Three - Face-off. In this case, I want to insert just the face onto the cartoon image. First, I need to erase everything that is not the face from the person layer. Make sure you've selected the person layer in Photoshop, then use the lasso tool to do a "rough cut" and get rid of all the superfluous background crap from that layer. Then use the eraser tool to smooth things out. The best part about inserting this face over the cartoon is that cartoons have a nice black line to define edges ... so your edges don't have to be perfect. However, you will need to be perfect as you delete all the superfluous stuff around the cartoon character. But! don't forget you have those pretty black outlines to rely on, so it's really not so bad to clean the background off of that layer.

Step Four - Colourizing. In my case, I need to make my friend a nice Celtic blue. If I just use Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation, I'll change the whites of the eyes to blue as well and I don't want that. So, the next step is to duplicate the person layer. To make it easier to work, I hide the person layer which is below this one - just for a few minutes. Now, I'm going to erase everything except the whites of the eyes. When that's done, make the person layer below visible again and hide the layer which only has the eyes.
Make sure you now select the visible person layer. Go ahead and change the Hue/Saturation to get a nice blue colour, trying to match the blue of the cartoon. You want to make sure to select Colorize (darn Photoshop spells that wrong), so you can get a great blue hue. When you have it how you like it, make the layer with the eyes visible again. Merge those two layers together. You've got a blue face with white eyes now!

Did I lose you? Really? I'm sorry. I suck at tutorials when I don't use 3495027 screen shots to help you along. Maybe one day I'll do one as a video. (You can check out Donnie Hoyle's excellent tutorials. If you're not at work, that is.)

Step Five - Smooshing the Face. This is a tad bit tricky. I change the opacity of the face layer to between 50 and 85% depending on the background and how well I can make out what I want to do through the semi-opaque layer. First thing, if you need to rotate the face so it matches the head on the cartoon, do that now! when you've got that lined up, then you smoosh the size of the face down with the re-size handles. You do not necessarily have to do this evenly ... you might take more off the height and leave the face a bit wider - this is a cartoon, remember. You want the face to overlap as much as possible of the cartoon to make later steps easier. You'll want to erase some of the face so it looks like the cartoon character's hair is covering the face.

Step Six - Cleaning Up. Chances are you'll need to use the clone tool or the healing brush or even the smudge tool to get rid of some small flaws.

In my case, I had to copy and paste some of the rocks so they poked out a bit more to the side so the cartoon's hands were actually grasping rock instead of thin air. That required some judicious smudging and cloning to keep the edges looking natural and not like I'd just copied and pasted them. Also, I had to move the two pointing dudes off the near rock and put them on the next stack over. And then make them point at Smurfette instead of something off to the right.

Click to get a beautiful 1024x 768 wallpaper version.

And yeah, I'll make a for really tutorial about this one of these days. :)

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:45 AM | Comments (4) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Stumble

March 7, 2008

March Showers?

So, our shower has some issues. First, it's the only fixture in the bathroom which is an almond colour. And I don't think we can actually wrangle a new tub in through either the doorway OR the window. Bugger. So, we did the nice tub paint thing on it. Except the paint was a little "stiff" on the last coat ... and somehow we never got around to buying another can of it to finish up. Then, turns out, you're really not supposed to leave your wet shower curtain on that paint forever and ever in the corner. Cuz now all the paint in that corner has worn off.

Next, and more important on a day to day level ... is the showerhead. We were getting next to no water pressure for the last couple of weeks. And the hot water was just not wanting to get hot - but ONLY to the shower. No drippy pipes.

Today I decided I'd had enough. I carefully took the showerhead down. Easy fix, there's a pressure adjuster in there that we don't need since there's only adults in the house. And, it was gunked up a bit with some rust particles. Yank that sucker out and screw the showerhead back up.

Good news? We have hot water which is actually hot. We have water pressure. I fixed the showerhead.

Bad news? Then I broke the showerhead.

GAH! I had to take it off with a wrench, but I started putting it back on by hand. I pulled out the hand wrench to give it the infamous "last little twist" - trying to gauge the force correctly since I didn't want to --

Oops. I didn't want to break the damn plastic screw-on connection, but guess what? Literally one twist with the wrench and POP!

Dammit.

Now I have to go buy a new showerhead. Frankly, the other half is ecstatic as she didn't like that one anyway.

Just what I wanted to do today! WOOHOO!

(Maybe I'll go to Chipotles for dinner ... mmmm ... burritos and REAL guacamole.)

UPDATE: I didn't go to Chipotles ... wound up not on that side of town. And you know what? We're out of food now. I ate chicken fajitas tonight ... without any tortillas (or guacamole). Damn.

Anyhow, I installed the new showerhead shortly after getting home. Works like a charm. :)

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:04 PM | Comments (5) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Stumble

March 5, 2008

Six Years

Happy birthday, little man!

(Yes, I'm one of those weird people. But dammit, he's a sweetie.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:09 AM | Comments (8) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Stumble

March 4, 2008

The Speed of Dark

I read an excellent book by Elizabeth Moon called The Speed of Dark a few years ago, a really interesting look at a future not too far away and a man named Lou Arrendale. Lou works at a company where he is employed to "find patterns."

As it turns out, Lou is one of the last generation who is an autist. By the time Lou was born, there are wonderful educational techniques which enable people with autism to interact and socialize with the world more like the high-functioning autists of today. But, not long after Lou is born and learning through these new methods, a new treatment for autism is discovered -- correcting the issue and making those who've had the newest treatment normal (or nearly so - we get some intimations that their social interactions are a touch off, but no more so than the typical insensitive person).

What I found fascinating about the book - besides the wonderful writing and really vivid characterization - was the similarities between geek culture and the culture that Moon created around these folks with autism.

Lou and the other folks like him at his work, enjoy a small gym where they can go to calm themselves down. There's a small trampoline and a treadmill; there's classical music to help them get into a project or calm down; there's lots of colorful spinners in Lou's cubical which help him focus himself on his pattern finding projects.

Geek culture has some similarities, I think. Our jobs often involve either a creative process or programming process (sometimes both) that the higher ups generally don't even pretend to understand. And most true geeks that I know have at least a few toys (action figures, cars, PVC statues or minis, LEGOs, Star Wars and/or Star Trek, Nerf!!!). They have these toys to keep them creative, to keep them focused, to keep them sane under pressure - even though others may think them childish or simply silly.

And, of course, there are a lot of geeks (not all, by any means) whose social skills are still not very great. A great many geeks would prefer to do away with some of the niceties of social interaction and just "say what you mean." We see a lot of this in the book, too. Lou often thinks to himself about various common social phrases and has to think through both the literal meaning and then what he knows the social meaning of the phrase or act is. And he constantly asks himself if it wouldn't just be simpler to say what you mean instead of these weird social codes. You can still see the "damage" that autism has caused in Lou's interpretation of social cues, where he has a fundamental confusion over why people do some things that's not even seen in geeks.

But the parallel is there.

And, of course, there's been a lot of news coverage and research lately into the creativity and ... well, the geekiness of high-functioning autists. How they get into art or music or computers or pure math.

Just makes me wonder ... how many "diseases" or disorders are out there where the diagnosis is only quantifying a segment of a continuum? Does talent in one area cause a deficit in another? Or does a deficit in one area cause a talent in another?

If we know the speed of light, why don't we know the speed of dark?

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:21 AM | Comments (1) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Stumble

February 21, 2008

Steampunk Nerf

First, let me kind of react to some of the comments about the Nerf Sniper Rifle post. My issue is not with the toy's existence, it's with calling it a "toy." I don't want to legislate crap like that. I am for involved parenting.

All of that said, and as fun as most of the Nerf guns are for ALL ages, I still don't think a sniper rifle that shoots foam darts is truly a toy. Do some mods on it like the good folks out at Nerfhaven.com and get better accuracy and firepower out of it and go play a nice game of "foam-paintball." Now, if my 10 year old wants it ... I doubt it. Not without a buttload of rules like, "never point it at a person or animal." Not because it's as physically dangerous as a BB gun, which kids have been playing with and surviving without shooting up their schools for decades, but because I believe in involved parenting, as several of my commenters on the previous post stated. Involved parent who lets their kid play with a Nerf sniper rifle under rules and such ... okay. I'm just saying how many parents are NOT thinking and just buying Nerf?

Anyhow. Enough said.

For a complete change of topic, I bring you to the realm of Steampunk. What is Steampunk, you ask? From Wikipedia:

Steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction which came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of "the path not taken" of such technology as dirigibles or analog computers; these frequently are presented in an idealized light, or a presumption of functionality.

Think 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Or Steamboy.

Need a visual? Try the Datamancer. Or this iPod gelaskin from GelaSkins.com.

Now, enter my goofball self.

As I was running some preliminary research on the Nerf sniper rifle, I discovered Nerfers and Nerf Wars ... well, really that was a re-discovery. I already knew about the sport/hobby, but hadn't really gotten into it. But then I found Chris (from the weekly geek show) and his Steampunk Nerf Maverick gun. Oh my. I haven't done a good modding project in quite some time. Most of my equipment is in the basement, including my big-ass box of Citadel paints that I got and then never opened. (I know, I know.)

So, of course ... I HAD to! Click the images to see the larger size version. (Oh, and the blue "lights" on the gun look better in person, more glow-y and less paint-y)

 

 

 

Fun times!!

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:19 PM | Comments (3) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | hobbies | Stumble