So what is all this random rambling about? Well for those that are unaware, I enjoy understanding and learning how the human mind works - especially when it doesn't quite work as expected, such as when we see optical illusions. So here are a few that I would like to share.

Impossible Motion: Magnet-Like Slopes

Our brain doesn't always decipher what we see with our eyes in the real world properly. It tries to be too smart and often fails. But that's ok, since it means we can see awesome optical illusions!

Change Blindness

You've probably heard of this before - as humans we can be very "blind" to how our environment changes around us. Some rather big changes can occur and we don't notice at all.

Another change blindness example - just for fun

Leaning Tower Illusion

So what about a still image, no videos, just a plain old image. How will your eyes (or should I say brain) trick you now?

The two images are identical...really!

That's it for now - hope you enjoyed the random selection above What I find most interesting is that for many of these "brain quirks" even though you know what is happening, even though you know the trick you still can't un-trick your brain to see what is really there.

]]> http://psychopyko.com/cool-stuff/quirks-of-being-human/feed/ 2 http://psychopyko.com/cool-stuff/oz-slang-and-street-view-in-3d/ http://psychopyko.com/cool-stuff/oz-slang-and-street-view-in-3d/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:29:37 +0000 pyko http://psychopyko.com/?p=169 So, it's April Fools today, and as usual, Google has come up with some random stuff...

Oz slang for directions in Google Map...Chuck a left! (Directions from Max Brenner to San Churro!)

Street View...now in 3D!

There seems to be a couple of other April Fool hoaxes Google has provided this year

To be honest, I just took the use of Google for granted and never really thought much about it until I went to Ignite Sydney last week. One of the awesome talks "Everything I know about you" by Michael Kordahi tested to see if our perceptions to the search results (he comapred Bing, Google, Yahoo) would be the same if the branding was removed. The results of preference (and the search terms people looked for) are indeed very interesting - definitely worth watching!

Interesting thing was after the night I went home and gave it a go myself. For simple/basic searches (which were essentially keyword searches) all three search engines were roughly the same for me - but in picking the preferred one I actually rarely picked Google! Though for more complex searches (eg. ones which I just typed in a question) Google was the clear winner. The other two were nowhere close.

Random footnote - I hear some of you may be asking, what is Ignite Sydney? No, it is not an event where pyromaniacs go and set fire to Sydney landmarks. Ignite Sydney is a series of presentations with one very simple idea behind every presentation:

Make the presenters stick to a rigid format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, giving a guaranteed 5 minute presentation.

This means no death by powerpoint - yay! and generally very interesting, entertaining and well thought out presentations - double yay! If you don't live in Sydney then don't worry - there are Ignite events all around the world. Have a look here for the full list

When Google Maps was released in early 2005 it was quite cool to be able to see a birds-eye view of various places (even if you could only zoom in so far). Since then, there has been many improvements - more view types, clearer pictures, closer zoom etc.

In mid 2007, a new view type: Street View was made available. I must say, it is quite cool - Street View allows you to actually see the street as if you were there at the place. This view was only available to a selection of cities in the USA and Australia (the 'birth' place of Google Maps) was left out...until today!

Yes, as of today (5th August 2008) there is Street View in Google Maps for pretty much all of Australia! At first I was quite excited, as I've had a look at Street View in USA before (1 Infinite Loop ) and thought "Wouldn't it be cool if this was in Australia?". Now that it is in Australia I must say it is cool, but definitely also scary! In my opinion, being able to see your own house on Google Maps and with the correct (or a very close) address feels scary!

Though having said that it is definitely very cool! After spending quite some time just randomly looking at places, I begin to wonder how long it took them to 'capture' all the streets in Australia. Not only that, also how they could capture such great photos by driving a van around the streets.

Now that I'm slightly over the 'excitement' of Street View in Australia, I wonder if it is a good or bad thing that there is Street View? There has definitely been a lot of controversy with privacy that surrounds Street View (and now that I can see places I recognise it really 'hits home'). In my opinion, it is actually good - since if someone does have your address, and they are in your neighbourhood they can always just look at the Refidex and locate you; I guess with Street View it means people can 'preview' what they will see before they physically go there. It'd be interesting to know what others think.

After seeing this documentary I decided I wanted to do something similar - make my own time capsule However it wasn't until a few months later in early 2008 when I found an old exercise book which had some short stories that I had written in 1995 that really got me started. Reading those stories made me realise how much can change in a few years (and how much we can forget!). My time capsule is bit different to 21 Up Japan - it does have a set of questions which I plan on answering once every year or so, but the majority of entries are more diary-like entries of times when I feel like something important has happened.

I've only just started my time capsule, so still quite new to all of it - if anyone has any tips please share them Here are some of my tips/thoughts on how to create a time capsule:

1. Start now - it's never too early or too late!
2. You will forget what you've written (unless you've got super photographic memory...in which case you probably don't need to keep a time capsule)
3. Use pen/paper for your time capsule (or at least print it out). Having something on paper is just different to having it on your computer.
4. Include photos! (and write the location/date and names of people in that photo)
5. Have a set of questions (even if you only semi-follow them). It is quite different answering the questions and just writing a diary entry.

Even though I said to use pen/paper for the your time capsule, it's still ok to keep a few electronic ones - this blog for example is a good example - in fact I was reading my old blog the other day and found it very amusing! I've also subscribed to Photojojo's Time Capsule - it takes photos from your flickr from a year ago and emails them to you. Only recently started using flickr (because of the time capsule actually), but I would imagine this would work quite well if you're a heavy flickr user.

Just to finish off, this is a great example of how amazing a time capsule can be!

The pig itself is actually quite small - about 1cm in diameter, though I think that is what makes it cute. At first I was worried that using blutack would be very hard since blutack sticks to itself (and your fingers!), but in the end it wasn't that bad. A toothpick is a must though - not just to poke the holes for the eyes/nose but also to push and shape the ears.

Since the pig was quite small it was rather hard to take a nice close-up photo, so as usual I took several shots. However, this time while flipping through all the blurred photos I remembered a Stop Motion Video tutorial I had read on Photojojo few months back - so alas, more procrastination...my first stop motion video attempt!

Must say this time I had no idea why this illusion works, other than the random guess of our brains getting tricked yet again. However there is a short explanation on the website:

If we move around when viewing a solid object, our brain knows how the object we are looking at should behave. However the dragon gives us the wrong clues, because we mis-interpret what its shape is. We assume that the nose of the dragon is pointing out towards us, but in fact the dragon's head is concave.

So I guess since our brain makes up for the head being concave, it also somehow makes the dragon's head follows us!

Another similar illusion (which I presume works on the same principles) is the Einstein Hollow Face Illusion. If you haven't heard of it or seen it click on the link and have a look at the video. In fact, I can't believe I've just found this website, it is chockablock full of great illusions (or should I say Grand Illusions =P).

Update (25/09/2007)
I am no longer disappointed with the dragon as I managed to see the illusion few days ago! Started off with my random decision to film the dragon and since that turned out so well, decided to give it another go. Here are some tips to help see the illusion if you still can't seem to see it:

1. Stand about an arm's length away from the dragon
2. Close one eye (this really helps a lot!)
3. Place the dragon so you're looking at it roughly eye level
4. Position it so you can see the ears clearly (so not front on, but on a slight angle)
5. Convince yourself that the snout is pointing out

Once you've convinced yourself the snout is pointing out you should be able to move your head around and the dragon's head should follow If you're still finding it hard to see the illusion, take a step back and try again. It is quite hard to see the illusion with both eyes, but I find if you take a few steps back and not concentrate too much on it you might get a glimpse of the illusion.

The first time seeing the illusion in real life is the hardest, but once you've seen it, it is much easier to see it again (but just as amazing). A cool thing you can try when you're seeing the illusion is to touch the snout - now that you can't do with a film.

The image above probably looks very normal - a set of everyday chess pieces (without pawns). White pieces on top covered by black clouds, and black pieces at the bottom covered by white clouds. If they don't look like chess pieces, try clicking on the picture to enlarge it - my friend thought they were teeth when he saw it on my msn display pic!

So, if we are imaginative, and assume the chess pieces are real, it would make sense that we can use them and play a normal game of chess...right? Well, not quite - because the chess pieces are identical. They are the same - pixel for pixel. If you don't believe me 'cut and paste' the chess pieces and they will magically "change colour". Even if you believe me you can give it a go, quite mind blowing if you ask me!

When I first saw this picture in a psychology lecture and I was confused as to why the lecturer (Bart) had put the image up, until he said "It's an optical illusion, the chess pieces are the same." I think most people in the lecture had a sudden "no way" moment - I certainly did!

After the lecture, I tried to replicate the illusion (without much success) until I stumbled across the article Image segmentation and lightness perception that was published in Nature. Funny thing is the lecturer was actually one of the authors of the article - no wonder he used it in his lecture. My understanding of the illusion is that our brain takes some shortcuts when processing the image, and therefore it 'cuts' the image into segments which may not necessarily be correct, thus causing the illusion. For a better explanation read the article - it's quite interesting.

There are a few other optical illusion on Bart's homepage (go into Cool Demos), some of them are quite cool, but a must see is the moving version of this illusion. If you ask me THAT is really mind blowing!

Oh, and if you want to see my attempt to create the illusion have a look at my deviantID.

Finishing the plugin gave me a very nice sense of accomplishment - though realising that I had used camelCase, but WordPress uses underscore_notation was a bit annoying. Got plans for a few other plugins (must remember to use underscore_notation in the future), though they'll probably have to wait until after assignments are done...unless I start procrastinating...