A bit more than a month ago I cut my fingers, pretty deep, so now I lack feeling right above the cuts and from the center of the cut to the fingertip. The transition between normal feeling and no feeling is the same as when your arm or leg is asleep, a bit tingling and weird sensitivity.
A few odd things to do when you lack feeling in the fingers used are to:
Cut your nails, you can’t tell if it’s the nail or the finger itself you’re cutting.
Move a wet finger over a surface which is usually not slippery, it’s odd with less friction as you can’t feel that the finger is wet.
Scratch your eye, as you can’t really feel if you would go into your eye… except when you do.
Press any hard button, you can’t feel on the skin how hard you are pushing it.
Gripping something heavy between the thumb and that finger, it feels like you only have a good grip with the thumb as you can’t feel the friction on the finger.
Putting a CD on the finger is an odd sensation. It feels like it should fall off, because you can only feel it resting on one side of the finger, even though you know that it is not physically possible!
Below is a video which includes footage of my poor fingers from shortly after I slipped with the knife to just a few days ago. Beware though, if you did not like the images in the previous post linked in the beginning, you wont like the video. It contains blood and open wounds, so if that does not suit you, don’t click play!
This summer I was invited to join my parents and my brother to camp a week in their mobile home on Öland, an island outside the main land of Sweden. Hesitantly I accepted the offer, but I regret nothing as it was very nice to get away for a while!
While I was there I couldn’t help but spamming photographs with my camera, as well as videos, which I guess is my normal behavior. I tried out my underwater camera housing in the ocean, but the sub surface visibility was incredibly bad, and it was my first prolonged experience of swimming around with flippers and a diving mask, both very cheaply bought.
Instead of writing a ton of text to insert the images into I’ve added titles to the images themselves. My choice of picture viewer for WordPress is Shutter Reloaded, sadly it does not yet support using the title of the IMG tag as a caption, it takes the title from the A tag, but the default behavior of WordPress is to post the title in the IMG tag… I’ve requested it twice, but nothing yet. I relly like Shutter Reloaded except for this small issue.
Anyway, here comes the pictures! In chronologial order, even.
I was going to post just a few pictures, but apparently it turned into quite a lot… oh well. Beneath is the camera running while I soak it in fresh water to dissolve the sea salt which would otherwise store up in the underwater house making the buttons wonky.
Just a little late, but I still have more summer pictures! Not sure when the next batch will be posted, but that will most likely be the last for this years summer :)
Even though I lost a fair amount of blood when cutting my fingers three weeks ago I went to donate blood today again. My second time. This time around it went so smooth that I feel like I could do it every day! Except that I would be dried out pretty soon, eh.
I live right next to the central bus station in our town, so I just went down there, took the bus who went straight to the hospital. Arriving there I had to sit around a bit, as I was early, but then they let me in earlier than my original booking.
I’m still not very used to the puncturing of skin it requires to lose blood. I think I’m actually a bit worse at handling it since I cut my fingers. I guess that means my head is trying to tell me it does not to be cut or stabbed again!
They give you a gift as well as a drink and a sandwich every time you donate blood. This time I picked a black shirt with “Generous” on the chest. A nice thing is that they compensate you for your travelling expenses!
Both when walking to the bus station, first picture in this post, and while waiting for the bus to get back home I found the sun coming through the clouds and the wet ground to look very nice. So naturally I snapped a few pictures.
At work we are supposed to have private mugs so the general ones can be used by guests. I used a blue Christmas mug at first, but now I have one which is truly mine… me! Surely nobody will mistake it for theirs!
The process to generate this mug includes an eight year old idea, sawing, video recording, LEGO and custom software.
Read on if you want the full story behind the creation of the mug(s)!
Background
In 2000 I found photos made by Andrew Davidhazy, a professor in imaging and photographic technology, but by then I didn’t know how they were made or who had made them. Six months ago or so I found the files on my computer and could via Google Image search find where they came from!
Andrew Davidhazy utilized a scrolling film with a slit that exposes a beam of light over time, creating weird photos which fascinated me; especially those of people. As I didn’t know about this technique at the time, I came up with my own way of how to create similar images.
As depicted in the crude 3D animation above (from 2000-02-25) my idea was to use a video camera to record imagery, and then I would extract a column of pixels from each frame in the video to create my images. At the time I only speculated in what kind of apparatus I would need to rotate a camera perfectly around objects (like my own head) to create unwrapping pictures, but I never got to constructing anything as I was not very resourceful back then.
The image to the left is from 2001, generated by sitting on a rotating office chair while recording with a webcam. The software used in this case was a VB application which saved columns of actual screen pixels, made by a school classmate. Not especially practical but it worked, the entire thing was experimental.
In 2003 I begun to use parts of my thought out method with a static camera which rotated to create standard panoramas in Halo, a videogame for the Xbox. To do this I had my cousin create a specialized software to process the videos after my specifications. This is the same application I used for this project, five years later.
Creation Process
Now, in 2008, the concept sparked to life in my mind again when I got the pressure on me to find a private mug to use at work, and I decided it was about time to realize the old idea of unwrapping my head. Many of the things I would need this time around were readily available, or could be acquired cheaply. Here is what I needed.
Video-capable camera with lockable ISO/exposure setting.
A construction that would rotate the camera around my head.
Custom software to process the video with.
The Camera
The camera I used was my beloved Canon Ixus 75 bought in January prior to a skiing trip. It’s a cheap ultra compact camera but it’s the best video capture device I currently own, and it’s physically small enough to simplify the next step of the project. It captures a compressed video stream in 640×480 pixels at 30 frames per second, which had to make do. A feature I found after about 15 face scans was a way to lock the exposure/ISO setting during recording which generates a much better image. Too bad I didn’t find that earlier!
In accordance with my old idea of how to scan a head I decided I would create a device that carried the camera on around my head, looking inwards all the time. The easiest way to construct this was to use my old LEGO bricks.
The LEGO
First I created a vehicle with different speeds on the inner and outer wheels, which caused it to move in a circle. It ended up being way too hard to align it correctly for a perfect circle and it had to travel at a very slow speed to not vibrate or shake too noticeably.
My second concept was a whole frame that would rotate around my head. I experimented with different wheels and constructions. Wide tires would have too much sideways grip so they would only gradually follow the circular track, causing it all to wobble. I ended up using the thinnest tires I could find.
For propulsion I started using two motors facing each other on the construction, but as the motors got different speeds even though they were of the same model I used one large motor instead. I ordered the extra motor and extension cables to reach the battery pack from the LEGO store. In addition I bought additional tires off of eBay as I only had five of them from the beginning.
The final construction is supported by 16 wheels that is in contact with the surface, four of which are driven by the motor via gears, axles, screws and two differentials. The larger tires were added to counter some of the weight and to add grip. The camera hangs outside the outer supporting wheel which caused the inner to slip, causing the rig to travel outside the edge of the table.
The Table
First I got a second hand table which was one meter in diameter, sawing a hole in the center. This table was round and nice, but it could be extended; which meant the board was split in two. This caused the LEGO construction to jump as it crossed the seam to the other board. I went back to the second hand store again to find a table with a whole board. Finally I got a smaller table, square, and precisely the right size.
The Software
As I mentioned before I used the old application my cousin made for me when I created the Halo panoramas. One limitation it has is that it can only handle raw AVI files which cannot be larger than 1GB. To work around this I cropped the video to a small stripe and exported that without sound. A side benefit is that it saves disk space as well as making it lighter to work with.
The Scanning
I tried several different ways of positioning the table and myself before I got to the final scan session. This is how I ended up doing it.
I put the table on four stools to increase the height; so I could fit a chair underneath.
I bought a cheap lawn chair that fits under the table.
I using my Wii Balance Board (which I don’t use very much anymore, sadly!) to gain height from the chair, as I didn’t get high enough up as it was.
I hanged an Xbox Live Vision camera in the ceiling, hooked up to my Xbox 360 displaying a picture on the TV so I could align my head correctly.
I used a universal remote to deactivate the screensaver on the 360 when it activated.
I began with setting the camera to video mode, macro and fixed ISO value. Then I focused it on my hand which I put where my head would be, turned on the recording and inserted it into the LEGO construction and turned on the LEGO motor. Next I climbed into the setup, which almost always resulted in a sour shoulder or other muscle pain, and tried to align my head while the LEGO traveled around the table.
For a successful capture I need to sit still for about two minutes with the same face. Your face can relax when the camera has traveled past it, but the risk is that you change your posture if you relax too much. Some of the faces were hard to keep for two minutes, as well as not blinking when the camera passed!
Other considerations where lighting, angles and distance. I noticed that I got blue strikes through some images, and that was due to my wall mounted lamps getting into the video image. As for positioning, whatever you have closer to the camera will take up less horizontal room in the generated image, so to get a result that is as proportional as possible I needed to center my head. As you can see in the collection of scans keeping your head straight is also important. When you angle the head a whole lot of distortions enter the picture. If you lean your head to the side the whole image will be heavily distorted, but that was easy to control. It was harder to remember to look straight forward, if you do not your ears will be rotated and moved, getting different proportions compared to when you keep your head level.
The Mug
After several face scanning sessions across several months I finally decided I had images I was happy with. I cut them up in Photoshop and adjusted scales so my ears would be in the right places on the mug. After that I ordered three panorama mugs from Emmagjort.se, I found their price was very acceptable and even had phone contact to arrange the details, very nice!
This concludes the eight year old idea… fantasticly relieving! Of course I have ideas of how to make a much better construction from engineered metal parts, but that is 20 years off.
Yesterday (2008-10-05) I managed to do a really clumsy thing. I had my brothers visiting playing Zack & Wiki (not new but awesome!) so I was a bit out of focus when I battled with separating frozen bread slices for us to eat, after they had been grilled. After chopping away with less sharp tools I carelessly decided I would use my Global bread knife I got for my 25th birthday last year. It worked fantastically well, even too well. I had of course applied way too much force as the row of frozen slices previously had seemed like a solid object, but now the knife went straight through, into my unsuspecting fingers.
The first few moments of shock is quite unsettling. The feeling of seeing huge gaping gashes in your fingers is completely unreal, until the blood starts gushing out and you realize you should like… try to stop it. I ran to the sink to not mess up my kitchen, but as I was getting lightheaded and felt like fainting I got some tissues under my hand and laid down on the floor instead.
I called out for my brothers so they could phone my father, that was my instinctual reaction. He later managed to arrange a time at the emergency watch, and an hour later I was sitting in the waiting room filling out the damage report. 40 minutes later I got into a room and they began cleaning up my hand before the doctor would arrive, which took another 20 minutes.
The doctor had me straighten my fingers which hurt a whole lot and sent a funky jolt of pain through my index finger. At first they did not deem my injury very serious as a lot of dried up blood made it hard to see, so they went to another patient while the anesthetic got to work.
They got back a while later and began sewing me up. She originally didn’t think it was very deep, but due to the blood pumping out of the cuts she changed her mind. Instead of her first suggested one stitch on my long finger she used four, and five stitches on my index finger! The anesthetic wasn’t completely working when she started sewing, but I wanted it over with, and after enduring three or four stitches I didn’t feel much anymore.
Now I’m home from work trying to take it easy. Just using my fingers a little is quite painful, but I did get a fair amount of sleep tonight. Painkillers woohoo!
You might have noticed the friendly images in the text, below are some of the bloody and scary images, so if you aren’t into that kind of stuff avoid clicking the links! I’ve also added a warning screen if you step through the images in the display system.
WARNING
THE FOLLOWING IMAGES CONTAIN BLOOD & GORE!!
PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! IMG1IMG2IMG3IMG4IMG5IMG6 END OF DANGER
I have been careful when cutting things throughout my entire life, so I’m not quite sure how I got to this point. My guess is that it was a mix of distractions, stress and frustration. Distracted as the others were playing a video game, and I was interested in the puzzles, stress as I was already late preparing the food and we were very hungry, frustration as I couldn’t get the slices to separate! And when it comes down to it, I was not even trying to cut something, I was just going to separate them! Of course I’ve gotten many tips and ideas of how to separate frozen bread slices without damaging your fingers now, like I wont think twice the next time.
My first and only MP3 player is a Creative Muvo 128MB, which has survived lots of things since about 2002. Airplane travels, rounds in the washing machine, too many bus trips… it has been very reliable, though without a display or even a shuffle feature it leaves you wishing for more.
This Tuesday I got a new MP3 (etc) player, finally. Yet again a Creative, but their Zen X-Fi 8GB. When looking for a new player I wasn’t so much browsing for MP3 players, but something that could do a little more. The Zen X-Fi can play back video and it has a very nice speaker built in, those were the feature who made me pick it. Now I have various videos I’ve made on the device as well as a bunch of Anime episodes. I’ve successfully watched two episodes so far, and it works very nicely at 2.5″ and 320×240 pixels. I love it :) But enough about the player.
I remember seeing a whole lot of the transparent monitor pictures online, very well made too, and when I discovered I can easily change the wallpaper on the player I just had to try this.
So, here it is… the translucent media player!
If I ever buy myself a laptop, I will do this for each and ever place I put it in! Well, maybe not.
Last week I was at the optician to try out one-day-contact-lenses. There, with the guidance of the professional optician, it took me an hour to insert and remove a contact lense for one of my eyes. As I am going there tomorrow again for a followup where I am supposed to wear the contact lenses when I arrive, I decided it was about time I practiced today. I’ve been postponing it as I have had a cold since the middle of last week, and it’s not advisable to use contact lenses when sick, but now I’m mostly fine.
I wasted the two first lenses I tried to insert, as it took too long, so it dried up… but on my third try, after 40 odd minutes, I got it in there! Dang, I really don’t like putting things in my eyes! Then, after finishing the right eye, I got the left lense in at the first try… I ended up mounting a mirror on top of my kitchen shelve so I could see what I did, even if I looked up. Then when putting the lens in I looked as far up as I could, and it kind of solved itself. After trying lenses I have a deep respect for those who can just slap them on and remove them in an instant… or are they just insensitive?
Then, thirty minutes later, I decided it was time to remove the contact lenses. This time around it was the complete opposite. The right eye gave me its lens almost at once, while the left eye almost had me panic. I see better on my left eye, so that lens is much thinner than the one I wore on the right eye. Which my explain why it went on easier. Now, when removing it, I had a really hard time to see where it went! At one point, I thought it had rolled up, but when I tried to grab it, it vanished! I rolled my eye about like a madman trying to find the little roll, and I thought I could feel it on top of my eyeball.
Eventually I took out my small Fenix L0D flashlight, which I carry on my keyring, to see if I could locate the thing. Then I could see a very thing outline around the eye, the lense was still on!! Whew… a few moments later and I had it out, and breathed heavily as my life was saved. I have a hard time seeing myself getting used to the horror of inserting foreign objects in my eye sockets.
Flumen Formula is one of my many spare time hobby Flash projects which is unfinished. This one I’ve spent a fair amount of brain-juice to create, so I better complete it or the waste would be terrible! The game is fully functional, but what it lacks is levels, and some polish.
Development grinded to a halt when it was time to design the 144 levels the game can handle, but after several months I got the suggestion that I should open up level creation for anyone who would dare, which is now what I’m doing.
So here you have it, your chance to make a contribution to this project!
The Game
Water flows from the blue block. Your mission is to move and rotate the colored blocks so the water uses all canals in the entire level, without any leaks, including canals that are immobile.
How to Play
To lift a block, click it and hold the button down. To rotate the block, use the scroll-wheel or the left and right arrow keys. To drop the block, simply let go of the mouse button. Give it a test spin to understand what it’s all about, use the link at the top or click the game logo.
Level Creation
I’ve written a description of how to create and test levels for Flumen Formula, and I present it here in Word, PDF or HTML format. Also available are reference material in PDF, PNG and Flash (in HTML) formats for the game board, the various blocks available and a sample paper conversion.
As mentioned above, levels can be pasted into the game and tested, right now! How to is described in the documentation!
Submission
To contribute your level to the project, please paste it in an email, or attach a .txt file with the level data, and send it to submit@7708.net. You decide yourself what personal information you want to disclose, but any type of name will do. It’s all that is needed for the credits. There is no deadline, but I will post a message when I have gathered enough acceptable levels!
Ownership
If you submit a level you grant me the ownership to the level data if you don’t specify otherwise. This is to simplify the process if someone wants to purchase a license for the game or the source code. If you do not want to grant me the ownership please note that in your email submission. In an eventual business transaction those levels will be removed from the game.
Credit
Everyone who gets their level(s) in the final version of the game will be mentioned as level designers in the credits and on any eventual site/page that accompanies it. If you go by a moniker, it shouldn’t be perverse, politically incorrect or anything else I wouldn’t want to say in public.
Genereal Feedback
Of course I also appreciate feedback on anything surrounding the game. Be it user interface, graphics design or anything. Feel free to send your feedback to feedback@7708.net or post a comment right here!
Thanks!
Note: The game itself is hosted on my private server, and not the server that hosts this blog, which is why it’s located on the 7708.net domain.
Update: My initial plan was to have this ready two weeks ago, but as I was finalizing the public release I came up with new features that changed how levels were constructed and other things that needed polish, so I’ve been postponing it several times. Two times the post managed to pop up on my front page as my social life kept me so distracted I forgot about when the post was going live, as well as denying me the time to finish the small details I myself thought necessary, sorry about this.
Lately I’ve been really busy with a few projects which are still not public. One of them is almost good enough to post soon, planned it last Tuesday… but then I got more ideas to implement… you will see, soon! (promise!) There’s so much going on, phew.
Today I got a package I had no idea what it contained, as I have ordered quite a few things lately. To my joy it was a gym bag which I had spontanously ordered after seeing a bag in the same range on Prylfeber.se! I love it, a bit small, but I don’t things will fit… I’ll just bring a smaller towel! Oh, and if it isn’t obvious enough, I’m still fond of LEGO, even though the new Technic parts freak me out.
Two days ago, that is Monday, the day started with the announcement that we had no water, as a water leak had been discovered near our building. During the day I saw various machines and people coming and going outside my window. At one point I was up on the top floor so I spent a couple of seconds snapping a few pictures from there. It’s not everyday that people sporadically dig up a large pit on in the lawn on the other side of the road. A change to my view.
We eventually got water from a nearby supply to keep the factory up and running, but midday yesterday things were like normal again, except for the pit then.
Oh, and while I’m talking about pictures… I have to sit down and pick some out from my vacation to post. Someday… soon, hopefully.
I also tried my shaky hand to record a zoomed in video to be able to create a loop. As you can see below my hands were indeed shaky, but at least it kind of loops! Next time I’ll make sure to get a tripod. I like video loops… but this one is a bit too wonky :P played back in four times the original speed.
