Glasses of Seeing +3, +6 versus academic journals

[drcuriosity]

My first scholarship disbursement's come through, so I now have a positive cashflow again. Hurrah.

Went to see the optometrist yesterday. She seemed to like having someone she didn't have to talk down to about human vision. All up, new spectacles (exam, frames, lenses, 10% discount) are going to cost me $812.90 - hooray for having a suitably abnormal prescription. Still, in 7-10 working days I'll have glasses again, which means getting a lot more reading and coding done. I got bad eye strain from overdoing it during my summer crunch research (which they still haven't paid me for). The eyeballs themselves are healthy, but they're still marginal on endurance for doing a lot of focus work. Which is pretty much everything I do.

Speaking of focus, the PhD progresses. I'm looking at research in virtual environments, primarily with application to education. I'd like to get to a point where they're more of a useful tool than a curiosity, and there are definite advantages for a number of people who don't work well in traditional classes. It's an area that's had a lot of marketing hype in recent years, but the ground's still fairly fresh for conducting fundamental research.

One of the major steps there will be identifying and categorising problems with existing technology, and looking at how to solve them. I've got a few ideas I'd like to pursue already, but there are two important things: making sure I'm actually moving towards solving a problem rather than creating an intellectual sideshow, and making sure that I'm making an actual novel scientific contribution rather than just an applied software integration project. Ideally I'd like to come out at the end of three years and still have a passion for what I study (and hopefully reasonable employable), so I don't want to just latch onto the first idea that settles for long enough.

It'll be an interesting process, certainly. I have the bones of many synthetic worlds to stare at and much hype to cut through. Now I just need the eyes for it.

Comments

[absinthe-satori.livejournal.com]

I still need to get my specs. Slow deterioration plus a corneal injury about a year and a half ago have taken their toll. But it's been low-priority since I can see well enough to read, drive, etc. The priority, of late, has been getting my brain to work right. Focus. I was (finally, after all these years) clinically diagnosed with severe ADHD a couple months ago. This came along with accidentally finding a psychiatrist. I wasn't exactly in the market for one; I was trying to help my girlfriend find some help for a crisis she was having. It turned out that unbeknownst to me, an old (if not super-close) friend of mine of many years is a psychiatrist. I went in with my girl when she went to see him, since some of her problems are related to me and our relationship. About halfway through the interview, the doc hands me a questionnaire, along with giving her the same one. Then we laughed our way through it. The girl and I are both ADHD, and mine is so far out there we all laughed at every single question. It was the first time I have ever been a "textbook case" (doctor's words) of anything. LOL

So, having a doctor who talks, gently, across to me rather than down to me, and listens carefully to what I say, is making all the difference. Rather than telling me what to do, he asked what I wanted to do about things. I presented a cogent and educated case (and case history). The only thing he disagreed with was my suggested dosage of my chosen psychostimulant. He said the dosage should probably be substantially higher than what I had suggested. He prescribed the higher dosage and told me to titrate accordingly, with a view toward reaching the dosage he advised. And I had my next appointment last night, got mildly scolded (he doesn't actually scold; that is one thing I love about him) for not taking enough of the stimulant, and discussed some current problems that have been going on with me. He asked what I was doing, and wanted to do, about them. He agreed with me that some things I have been doing, while not "good," are understandable in the circumstances and need to be adjusted rather then just roundly ignored and shut down. He validated some issues I am having which others around me have not. And he asked what I thought of a couple of pharmacological ideas, then listened when I explained the good, the bad, and the ugly about a couple of them, then made a cogent and educated case for what I wanted to do. He agreed with my assessment, supplied what I needed, and made it happen.

Enough about me (I guess I needed someone smart but not too close to just glow and blather about my cool doctor to - LOL). I am quite interested in virtual environments - and simulations therein - with enough horsepower under the hood to be of actual use for research and learning, instead of just being eye-candy. I do visual eye-candy as a (temporarily on hold, but still in the plan) living, and have a substantial resume in that field, but I really like the hard science side of things too, and the idea of adding realism at as many levels as possible to VR and simulation science. I'm just too much of an ADHD artist socialite type to actually DO much hard science, but I love and self-study a great deal of science of many types and areas, and do have a passion for it. It just doesn't "flow" quickly enough for me very often, the way scientifically-based/supported performance-art does. Even properly medicated, my attention span is too short for serious programming or research science. I write a perl script here, do a quick 3d-animation rotoscope there, but I need crowd energy and flow like music has (I do music too) to really keep my motor running.

[cheesecat.livejournal.com]

I wonder if you could write code which altered images in a way complementary to your abnormal vision so they could be easily viewed by your abnormal eyes.

I somehow doubt it o_o because focus is interesting. Cats.