Month: October 2017

#inktober 2017 days 21-25

[Inktober: 31 days 31 drawings, following a prompt list]

Day 21: ‘furious’. Black ink brush pen drawing of a roaring gorilla.

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Day 22: ‘trail’. Black ink pin pen drawing of a dirt path winding next to a tree and what in hindsight looks like a pile of poo but was meant to resemble a pile of rocks.

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Day 23: ‘juicy’. Grey India ink brush pen drawing of a dripping slice of orange and the word ‘juicy’ underneath.

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Day 24: ‘blind’. Black ink pin pen, grey India ink brush pen and black ink brush pen drawing of feet walking forward, following a white cane.

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Day 25: ‘ship’. Black ink pin pen, grey India ink brush pen and black ink brush pen drawing of a lopsided ship stranded in the sand on the shore.
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Inktober prompt list:
Inktober prompt list

#inktober 2017 days 16-20

[Inktober: 31 days 31 drawings, following a prompt list]

Day 16: ‘fat(so)’. Grey India ink brush pen and black ink pin pen drawing of a wombat in a medallion, the words ‘Mortal Wombat’ underneath. Tribute to the logotype of the ‘Mortal Kombat’ video game I used to play in the 90s.

Grey India ink brush pen and black ink pin pen drawing of a wombat in a medallion, the words Mortal Wombat underneath. Tribute to the logotype of the Mortal Kombat video game I used to play in the 90s

Day 17: ‘graceful’. Black ink pin pen drawing of a detail of Antonio Canova’s masterpiece sculpture ‘Three Graces’.
Black ink pin pen drawing of a detail of Antonio Canova’s masterpiece sculpture ‘Three Graces

Day 18: ‘filthy’. Grey India ink brush pen and black ink pin pen drawing of a cartoon showing President Donald Trump in a Captain America costume, a dollar sign on his shield, carrying a nozzle and hose of lubricant.

Grey India ink brush pen and black ink pin pen drawing of a cartoon showing President Donald Trump in a Captain America costume, a dollar sign on his shield, carrying a nozzle and hose of lubricant

Day 19: ‘cloud’. Black ink pin pen drawing of clouds, sky and stars, done with parallel straight lines.

Black ink pin pen drawing of clouds, sky and stars, done with parallel straight lines

Day 20: ‘deep’. Black ink pin pen drawing of a giant squid grabbing the Nautilus.

Black ink pin pen drawing of a giant squid grabbing the Nautilus

Inktober prompt list:
Inktober prompt list

Interesting findings regarding dyslexia

Selfie as I wore my dyslexia t-shirt which reads (although it's in French) "sodilarity with the dyslexic"Today, the part of the Internet which I pay attention to was abuzz about the recent findings about “Left–right asymmetry of the Maxwell spot centroids in adults without and with dyslexia” published today in The Royal Society, and the work on a lamp that probably cancels or enhances the blue in question, to help override the anomaly (good luck with shining that light in digital media!) See the appendix for the article’s abstract.

I’ve had dyslexia all my life (duh, as though it could be a virus), well before I knew what it was. And today I learned a new characterisation: “visual and phonological deficits“.

Testing

So I looked out a window at something in particular among the brightness of the outside, for at least 10 seconds so that the image of that thing printed itself at the back of my retina. Then I looked away, closed my eyes and put my hands on them. While keeping my eyes closed, I removed a hand and covered my eye again then removed the other hand and covered my eye back. I did that for a bit, assessing which eye had the clearer retinal persistence. This is a technique to determine which is your dominant eye. Retinal persistence in my case was as clear in one eye as in the other. No surprise.

A decisive joke!

A pal I hang out with on IRC suddenly made a candid but decisive joke, “so you need to close one eye!” And I thought, why not? and I did.

I read the same bit of text I had been reading before and found the process of reading much much smoother. It was so incredible that I suspiciously chose text I wasn’t familiar with at all and again, found the process of reading with just one eye much faster and fluid.

Sensory handicap paradox

It is counter-intuitive, in case of a sensory handicap to narrow-down the sensory input, but in this case I was happily surprised. Similarly to when I discovered many years ago that in order to best depict in 2D on paper something I was looking at in 3D, all I needed to do was close an eye and draw.

I’m glad I work from home. Nobody will see me when I read while wearing the eye-patch a friend of mine gave me for Halloween years ago.

Appendix

Here is a quote of the abstract of the article Albert Le Floch and Guy Ropars from the University of Rennes published:

In human vision, the brain has to select one view of the world from our two eyes. However, the existence of a clear anatomical asymmetry providing an initial imbalance for normal neural development is still not understood. Using a so-called foveascope, we found that for a cohort of 30 normal adults, the two blue cone-free areas at the centre of the foveas are asymmetrical. The noise-stimulated afterimage dominant eye introduced here corresponds to the circular blue cone-free area, while the non-dominant eye corresponds to the diffuse and irregular elliptical outline. By contrast, we found that this asymmetry is absent or frustrated in a similar cohort of 30 adults with normal ocular status, but with dyslexia, i.e. with visual and phonological deficits. In this case, our results show that the two Maxwell centroid outlines are both circular but lead to an undetermined afterimage dominance with a coexistence of primary and mirror images. The interplay between the lack of asymmetry and the development in the neural maturation of the brain pathways suggests new implications in both fundamental and biomedical sciences.