psychopyko » fun

Quirks of being human

pyko — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:43:33 +0000

We are all human, yet we are all different from each other, we are all unique; or as someone put it "You are unique, just like everyone else." However, for the majority of us, no matter how "unique" we are, we are still human...which means most of us are susceptible to quirks in how our brain works.

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.

Oz slang and Street View in 3D!

pyko — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:29:37 +0000

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

Musings of a psycho #49

pyko — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:36:05 +0000

This week's musings will take a different format! Partly because the previous format took too long and partly because it sometimes felt like I was stretching myself to find a musing for each day. Or maybe I'm just lazy So here are some musings from the 49th week of the year.

Something as simple as "fun" can change people's behaviour for the better.

When I saw "Piano Stairs" on YouTube it made me smile It was great to see that by adding some 'fun' to something ordinary like stairs can change people's behaviour. It was quite interesting to see the range of people that chose to take the stairs over the escalator because the stairs had been converted into a piano - seems like everyone likes a bit of change and fun! If you're wondering who would spend so much effort transforming ordinary stairs into piano stairs, go and take a look at the people behind it - The Fun Theory.

Get feedback on your work - even if it is crap!

As some may be aware, I can be quite obsessed in making sure things are perfect. There is something in me that wants to go over every single detail to make sure nothing is out of place. This is all well and good for small projects/tasks (though I probably still spend too much time perfecting things that most people will not even notice) but when it comes to slightly larger projects this obsessiveness is a curse. So when I read "Version 1 Sucks, But Ship It Anyway" on Coding Horror, although not exactly related to obsessiveness, it still jumped out at me.

One of the reasons for my obsessiveness (I prefer to see it as attention to detail) is most likely because I want to know that I have thought of everything and checked everything. But realistically this is impossible. There is bound to be something I've forgotten, didn't think of or didn't know existed at all. Which brings me back to the article - no matter how much you try to polish something there is bound to be something you left out simply because you didn't know about it.

So it is important to get feedback as soon as possible - obviously you shouldn't ask for feedback on something that is totally hopelessly crap but neither should you wait until it has been fully polished and super shiny. In my opinion, the key is being able to identify when you have something good enough, stop being obsessed and get some feedback.

Here's a nice little poem by Donald Rumsfield about knowns and unknowns

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

blutack pig

pyko — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:17:26 +0000

On Sunday I decided to make a small pig out of blutack Probably sounds very random, but it was because earlier in the weekend I had saw similar small pigs at Paddy's Market and they just looked so cute! Here is the result of my procrastination:

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!