Yesterday afternoon, a part of my life which I thought I'd fixed began to malfunction again. Our church was having a get together at someone's house, and I'd just finished a hotdog and bowl of extremely mild chilly. I was relaxing in an exceedingly comfortable chair - the perfect end to a great weekend. Then this man came over to me to announce to everyone within earshot (including our potential future pastors) that while I wanted to see, I believed being autistic was okay. He began to explain that God wants us all to be whole people, without any illness or infirmity in our brains or bodies. He then suggested that asking God for eyesight and then telling Him I did not want anything else healed was a bad thing. He might have said that it would harm my relationship with God, but I don't remember for sure. We got into a discussion where I could not get any of my logical points across and our words kept overlapping each other. I ended the discussion by telling him to leave it up to God and agreeing to email him something I'd written on this subject a couple of months earlier. He will probably misinterpret it.
Thankfully, a few minutes later I was across the room (in a not so comfortable chair) with The Engineer, who was intent on establishing a conection between a bluetooth headset and my netbook.
I do not have the words to explain why the suggestion of a cure affects me the way it does. More than a year ago, I read a book called The Speed of Dark. An excellent book review posted by the Quixotic Autistic can be found here.
In her review, Leah Jane writes:
"Immediately after finishing The Speed of Dark, I was forced to sit down in a quiet corner for a few minutes and cry, shivering and trying to bring myself "back to planet earth" so to speak. That's how upset I was, as an autistic person, by Lou, the protagonist, meeting such a fate. There are very few adult autistic protagonists out there for me to relate to. The one I have been most strongly influenced by is Lisbeth Salander, of the Millennium Trilogy. Lou Arrendale, of The Speed of Dark, had great promise as another one that I could relate to. But, by the end of the novel, he is no longer Lou as I knew him in the rest of the novel. He had completely transformed into an unrecognisable neurotypical, because he had elected to have a new treatment which made him "normal", in the words of the book."
I still remember feeling sick after reading the book and telling myself aloud, over and over, "It's not real." My brain was temporarily reduced to a quivering, misfiring mass. I would not react in this way if Lou had simply died, but something much worse had happened. Unlike the book, yesterday's talk of a "cure" was aimed at me personally. This man sought to draw a comparison between a pair of eyes which do not function at all and a brain and nervous system which function correctly, but differently from his own. He categorized the thing I hate, a scourge I use all my technology and brains to fight against, as being similar to the thing I am - an autistic person. I was not diagnosed until I was 22. Before I was Aspie or autistic I just was. I still am. If you cure a person who is, you end up with a person who is not. That is not the same as being "afraid of losing your uniqueness," as he so put it. For most of the remainder of the party, I retreated further into the other room - a mental place where others seem distant, but I can still interact with them. Many signals were being fired as a result of hearing and meditating on those words. It felt as though something sharp and deadly were being forced up under my rib cage near the left side. I wanted to cry but couldn't. From my distant vantage point, I knew that no one was likely to have any idea of the hurt I was feeling. It was almost time to go. My second mom approached and said to me, "I don't know why I'm telling you this, but I love you. Call if you need anything."
Monday, August 15, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
A New Season
I completed this seemingly endless semester achieving my goal of an A in physics and feeling physically and mentally exhausted. For about a week I have not wanted to study or, God forbid, worry about which section of Vogsphere's paperwork labyrinth my request for a Braille pre-calculus textbook might be stuck in at the moment. Instead I have been reading and playing a demonstration of the first accessible flight simulation game.
Three-D Velocity
Once satisfied that I could shoot down other aircraft and land without crashing, I moved on to something else. The picture you see was written inside a Java program which makes use of a graphics library by Richard Baldwin to output an SVG (scalable vector graphics) file. His description of the process - one of the modules of his online book on accessible physics for blind students can be found
here.
What's unique about this simple drawing is that I created it without seeing or touching it. Many blind people would probably be able to scratch out something similar on a tactile drawing pad, but I neither have one of these nor the equipment/software needed to emboss an SVG file. Instead, each time I made a change I converted to JPG and sonified using the vOICe learning edition.
A leaf pattern is the first test drawing that came to mind because plants seem to be surrounding me. They are all around my apartment complex, at the grocery store, and almost everywhere else both in and outdoors. On the short bus, it seems to be the plants which stand out in my mind and inform me that I am approaching school. The typical landmarks sightlings might use such as nearby buildings are less likely to get my attention than these patterns which can sometimes seem to repeat hundreds of times in one frame. Unless they smelled nice, I was never very interested in them before the glasses. Back then I probably would have guessed that my first drawing would be of a homework assignment or some electronic gadget, but stacks of familiar machines or branches of vector diagrams are not lining my way to remind me that there is natural order in the world. To draw an entire plant requires use of the 3D illusion and will have to wait until I am fluent enough to convey it. In the future, as the drawing interface becomes easier to use and I improve, I will draw and post pieces of my experience. Right now, though, I am remembering that the last time I flew something like an F16 I was shot down by a battleship. The deranged scientist then demanded that our airforce surrender unconditionally to prevent his worldwide release of genetically engineered clone soldiers.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
When is a Vogon not a Vogon?
Today at school, I took a trip to the Office for the Segregation of the Disabled (OSD) and was pleasantly surprised. The OSD is a place where specially qualified students go to avail themselves of services not typically provided in unsegregated classrooms. It is often run by
Vogons,
making navigation of this system difficult for an
Aspie
such as myself. As a child, and even into my 20s, people could/still can be a source of unordered background noise and could potentially cause any number of unpredictable things to happen to me at almost any time. Fortunately there exist mentors such as the Neandertodd - a maverick whose special interest is physical fitness and who works both within and outside of the OSD. Today I was able to demonstrate the skill of manipulating the system - one which he has been teaching me over the past couple of years.
First, I had the Neandertodd check to make sure Vogon#1 (the manager) was in her office. I then walked into the main part of the OSD and asked the lady at the front desk to allow me to speak with Vogon#1. For some time I have suspected this lady behind the front desk to actually be an animated speech-recognition program with set responses such as "I'm sorry, I can't help you," and "I'm sorry, today is not walk-in day." My request triggered the second of those responses. After all of the Neandertodd's examples and verbal instruction for getting what I wanted within this system, I knew what to do. I must not talk in a loud, demanding voice, or my loudness would activate the subroutine which would cause her to tell me to leave. Instead I engaged her in a loop which caused her to answer many similarly worded questions until Vogon#1, who was not busy, heard me and guided me back to her office. She then told me the great news - I may soon have all the Brailled math books necessary to complete through calculus 3. She is the same one who told me in the past that I should be greatful for all the things the office was doing for me, that other blind students didn't need their math Brailled, and that, due to my "other disability," I'd convinced myself that having my math books in Braille was the only thing that would work. Now, sitting at her desk, a stack of one or two books and some papers visible on my left and a toy vehicle to fiddle with on my right, I listened as she emailed someone who could purchase my book. We parted with the agreement that she would give me an update on the math situation on Thursday.
I left feeling calm, but I am beginning to wonder why Vogon#1 is not acting like her namesake. In the past, she has withdrawn me from math courses rather than provide me with Braille. She once threatened to take my learning assistant away if I did not participate in a class for which I had no book and no way to make sense of lectures taught from the blackboard. Now, instead of quoting meaningless jargon, she is agreeing with everything I say. Why? Is it because I've followed the rules? The neandertodd suggested that it might have something to do with our new school president who wishes to prove himself by upholding policies. Still, after years of experience, I was expecting the usual battle and wonder if I've failed to predict something. I will wait and watch this situation very closely.
Vogons,
making navigation of this system difficult for an
Aspie
such as myself. As a child, and even into my 20s, people could/still can be a source of unordered background noise and could potentially cause any number of unpredictable things to happen to me at almost any time. Fortunately there exist mentors such as the Neandertodd - a maverick whose special interest is physical fitness and who works both within and outside of the OSD. Today I was able to demonstrate the skill of manipulating the system - one which he has been teaching me over the past couple of years.
First, I had the Neandertodd check to make sure Vogon#1 (the manager) was in her office. I then walked into the main part of the OSD and asked the lady at the front desk to allow me to speak with Vogon#1. For some time I have suspected this lady behind the front desk to actually be an animated speech-recognition program with set responses such as "I'm sorry, I can't help you," and "I'm sorry, today is not walk-in day." My request triggered the second of those responses. After all of the Neandertodd's examples and verbal instruction for getting what I wanted within this system, I knew what to do. I must not talk in a loud, demanding voice, or my loudness would activate the subroutine which would cause her to tell me to leave. Instead I engaged her in a loop which caused her to answer many similarly worded questions until Vogon#1, who was not busy, heard me and guided me back to her office. She then told me the great news - I may soon have all the Brailled math books necessary to complete through calculus 3. She is the same one who told me in the past that I should be greatful for all the things the office was doing for me, that other blind students didn't need their math Brailled, and that, due to my "other disability," I'd convinced myself that having my math books in Braille was the only thing that would work. Now, sitting at her desk, a stack of one or two books and some papers visible on my left and a toy vehicle to fiddle with on my right, I listened as she emailed someone who could purchase my book. We parted with the agreement that she would give me an update on the math situation on Thursday.
I left feeling calm, but I am beginning to wonder why Vogon#1 is not acting like her namesake. In the past, she has withdrawn me from math courses rather than provide me with Braille. She once threatened to take my learning assistant away if I did not participate in a class for which I had no book and no way to make sense of lectures taught from the blackboard. Now, instead of quoting meaningless jargon, she is agreeing with everything I say. Why? Is it because I've followed the rules? The neandertodd suggested that it might have something to do with our new school president who wishes to prove himself by upholding policies. Still, after years of experience, I was expecting the usual battle and wonder if I've failed to predict something. I will wait and watch this situation very closely.
Friday, July 29, 2011
What is a sightling?
This is not a question to a Jeopardy quiz show answer. It is an edited version of an email I sent some months ago in an attempt to explain part of the reality in which I find myself. I will post it here before launching into an explanation of my experiments with vision synthesis. Warning: This is not a politically correct post and is likely an unpopular opinion among blind people and the rehabilitation specialist whose job it is to make everybody feel like they can do anything.
They're the most powerful beings on planet Earth. Most of them gain the ability to travel at incredibly high rates of speed (easily over ten times faster than I can run) and still remain aware of their surroundings as they shoot past. As a result of this power, their dwelling and commercial structures are spaced so far apart that I must solicit one of these super men in order to temporarily gain access to one of these structures and then traverse the distance to my home again. They were the ones who discovered that we lived on a sphere-like object. Hundreds of years later they decided to fly to a neighboring object they call the moon, not because there were desirable items located on it, and not because it was easy, but because it was hard, and to prevent the sightlings on the other side of the sphere from getting there first and planting a symbol no one would be able to see from here. I guess so much speed made almost every place on the home sphere too easy to reach, so they got bored. Other powers include flight and super strength, just to name a couple. The base power from which all of these are derived is sight - the ability to perceive in detail particles which are very far away from themselves or too small to sense through touch. Since it has become part of their communication system, they use the base power on each other and myself to try and ascertain intensions; they are obsessed with faces. I have no true understanding of what a "shared looking experience" is like. They can touch me without my knowing it, with invisible, incorporeal "hands", so when I am at home I am sure to stay behind materials which these "hands" cannot penetrate, because I am worried they will be able to touch every cell of me and every corner and edge and surface and speck of dust and molecule and atom within my living space. After all, it is these "hands" with which they explore the universe itself - something I have only dreamed of. And yet with so much power, they complain, and some of them don't use their abilities to make it easy and safe for everyone to be. Some of them derive new powers to kill or control their enemies, often because their "hands" inform them that the enemy has a slightly different skin composition or some other silly thing. Others become captivated by a hand-held device and stop using the power long enough to cause a completely avoidable high-velocity collision, and then they must be transported at an even higher velocity to receive emergency care.
Now that a couple of definitions have been outlined, I will explain what I am trying to do and why. As a kid I had questions whose answers were, "Don't focus on that," or "You'll see when you get to Heaven." As an aspiring scientist, my curiosity about things in the world has not ebbed even slightly in the years since I was old enough to start asking questions, making those answers simply unacceptable. Finally, I was researching a project in a programming course and came across
this site.
The free software (called the vOICe) was developed over 10 years ago by Dr. Peter Meijer and with the recent advent of netbooks is much easier to use in portable mode than ever before. After months of experimentation with still photos and graphs from school, I had collected enough evidence to suggest the system would work, so I bought a pair of camera glasses and started learning to see in real time. Here's how the system works: Images (either from picture files or through a webcam) are converted into sounds one frame at a time. Each frame is called a soundscape and is heard from left to right in stereo earphones. The higher the pitch of a sound, the higher up the thing it represents is located in your view, and the lower the pitch, the lower the object. Brightness is represented through loudness. Combining these three simple rules gives an accurate auditory representation of a grayscale image - I am not yet seeing in color or realtime but in a series of black and white still frames. The website gives some very simple line and shape examples which illustrate the concept beautifully.
Here are the two things I find exciting about this system:
1. I have always seen abstract shapes when hearing certain music so may be better prepared to handle what is coming.
2. Through sensory substitution I am perceiving these sounds not as noise, but as pictures I can literally see - I am rewiring my brain so that the visual cortex will respond to stimuli within my perception. I am now free to learn what vision is, through my own experience.
Although at this point my visual comprehension cannot rival that of the average two-year-old, here is a list of some cool things I have already learned to do since acquiring the glasses in March.
1. If I sit on the right side of the short bus and look out the window, I can tell when I'm getting close to one particular school campus and whether or not the driver has stopped at the correct dropoff point.
2. I can recognize my friend Mary from at least 6 feet away, because she is the only one I know who carries a white cane that is covered in ridges, and she cannot hold it streight to save her life.
3. Certain things are starting to appear 3D although I only have one camera. More on that in another post.
4. When using the school restroom, I noticed one day that the plastic thing on the door contained a piece of paper with writing on it; it must be the maintenance list. The writing is much too small to read with the current system, but I can definitely see that lots of it is there and then gleefully turn it over so that the blank side is visible. Who would ever suspect?
They're the most powerful beings on planet Earth. Most of them gain the ability to travel at incredibly high rates of speed (easily over ten times faster than I can run) and still remain aware of their surroundings as they shoot past. As a result of this power, their dwelling and commercial structures are spaced so far apart that I must solicit one of these super men in order to temporarily gain access to one of these structures and then traverse the distance to my home again. They were the ones who discovered that we lived on a sphere-like object. Hundreds of years later they decided to fly to a neighboring object they call the moon, not because there were desirable items located on it, and not because it was easy, but because it was hard, and to prevent the sightlings on the other side of the sphere from getting there first and planting a symbol no one would be able to see from here. I guess so much speed made almost every place on the home sphere too easy to reach, so they got bored. Other powers include flight and super strength, just to name a couple. The base power from which all of these are derived is sight - the ability to perceive in detail particles which are very far away from themselves or too small to sense through touch. Since it has become part of their communication system, they use the base power on each other and myself to try and ascertain intensions; they are obsessed with faces. I have no true understanding of what a "shared looking experience" is like. They can touch me without my knowing it, with invisible, incorporeal "hands", so when I am at home I am sure to stay behind materials which these "hands" cannot penetrate, because I am worried they will be able to touch every cell of me and every corner and edge and surface and speck of dust and molecule and atom within my living space. After all, it is these "hands" with which they explore the universe itself - something I have only dreamed of. And yet with so much power, they complain, and some of them don't use their abilities to make it easy and safe for everyone to be. Some of them derive new powers to kill or control their enemies, often because their "hands" inform them that the enemy has a slightly different skin composition or some other silly thing. Others become captivated by a hand-held device and stop using the power long enough to cause a completely avoidable high-velocity collision, and then they must be transported at an even higher velocity to receive emergency care.
Now that a couple of definitions have been outlined, I will explain what I am trying to do and why. As a kid I had questions whose answers were, "Don't focus on that," or "You'll see when you get to Heaven." As an aspiring scientist, my curiosity about things in the world has not ebbed even slightly in the years since I was old enough to start asking questions, making those answers simply unacceptable. Finally, I was researching a project in a programming course and came across
this site.
The free software (called the vOICe) was developed over 10 years ago by Dr. Peter Meijer and with the recent advent of netbooks is much easier to use in portable mode than ever before. After months of experimentation with still photos and graphs from school, I had collected enough evidence to suggest the system would work, so I bought a pair of camera glasses and started learning to see in real time. Here's how the system works: Images (either from picture files or through a webcam) are converted into sounds one frame at a time. Each frame is called a soundscape and is heard from left to right in stereo earphones. The higher the pitch of a sound, the higher up the thing it represents is located in your view, and the lower the pitch, the lower the object. Brightness is represented through loudness. Combining these three simple rules gives an accurate auditory representation of a grayscale image - I am not yet seeing in color or realtime but in a series of black and white still frames. The website gives some very simple line and shape examples which illustrate the concept beautifully.
Here are the two things I find exciting about this system:
1. I have always seen abstract shapes when hearing certain music so may be better prepared to handle what is coming.
2. Through sensory substitution I am perceiving these sounds not as noise, but as pictures I can literally see - I am rewiring my brain so that the visual cortex will respond to stimuli within my perception. I am now free to learn what vision is, through my own experience.
Although at this point my visual comprehension cannot rival that of the average two-year-old, here is a list of some cool things I have already learned to do since acquiring the glasses in March.
1. If I sit on the right side of the short bus and look out the window, I can tell when I'm getting close to one particular school campus and whether or not the driver has stopped at the correct dropoff point.
2. I can recognize my friend Mary from at least 6 feet away, because she is the only one I know who carries a white cane that is covered in ridges, and she cannot hold it streight to save her life.
3. Certain things are starting to appear 3D although I only have one camera. More on that in another post.
4. When using the school restroom, I noticed one day that the plastic thing on the door contained a piece of paper with writing on it; it must be the maintenance list. The writing is much too small to read with the current system, but I can definitely see that lots of it is there and then gleefully turn it over so that the blank side is visible. Who would ever suspect?
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Chased by Aliens
My instructions were to meet them in a hidden location designated by a wireless signal which could only be detected through the use of specific software. Very few students knew of this small part of North Ridge campus except those of us who were specifically told how to search for it. Walking around outside, I scanned until coming across a network whose non-English name matched that of the one in the directions file.
At that location I saw rough rectangles and smooth, short bars as the result of hearing the hums at many frequencies and steady beeps of strange equipment. I cannot remember precisely what convinced me that they could restore eyesight or that they would have any desire to help me. I also cannot remember who warned me, at the last minute, of their true intentions. That someone pointed out a word in their tongue and tried to translate it into English. As best I could, I wrapped my mind around the meaning of that alien word, and I understood what had befallen other students who had come here before me. In every previous encounter, Aliens had been my friends, but not these. I started to run back the way I'd come. They gave chase, but there was no way they could prevent my exit. Every sensation (the heat, the pounding of my shoes on the sidewalk, the cane gripped tightly in my right hand and everything it touched, and the exact location of every building I ran passed) stood out with sharp clarity. I was pure will and adrenaline, with no curious dog to slow me down the way he had about a year ago as we were chased by the mad scientist across a space station which somehow morphed into the second floor of this same campus. Of course, I escaped. I got home only to find a forwarded email about my physics professor being sick and wanting me to come to the lab, which turned out to contain broken glass equipment. Then I remembered Sasha's warm up, thought about it a bit, and woke up.
I thought I'd start my blog by explaining how my week has gone so far, and that, my friends, was how I started Monday morning. I contemplate life through intensity. In the past week, I'd been praying for the wisdom to handle my enemies who work in the Segregation Office in the right way that is helpful to everyone. When I feel my livelyhood being threatened I tend to have dreams like this. Sasha is a Russian weight training coach who probably competed in the Russian Olympics and sounds a bit like the Terminator. I woke up from the dreams in a pleasant mood, remembering that I would be allowed to participate in enough of his mainstream class to cause my muscles to burn and heart to race before I'd even start practicing power moves. Some other things are happening this week. One of them has to do with the latest changes in my vision, which I will probably discuss tomorrow. Right now I am signing off so I can view some photos I received from an online friend. Just remember, if you find yourself at my school, please, stay away from secret groups, and stay away from Student Life too. They should be renamed Student Death by Pokemon and Unfinished Homework.
At that location I saw rough rectangles and smooth, short bars as the result of hearing the hums at many frequencies and steady beeps of strange equipment. I cannot remember precisely what convinced me that they could restore eyesight or that they would have any desire to help me. I also cannot remember who warned me, at the last minute, of their true intentions. That someone pointed out a word in their tongue and tried to translate it into English. As best I could, I wrapped my mind around the meaning of that alien word, and I understood what had befallen other students who had come here before me. In every previous encounter, Aliens had been my friends, but not these. I started to run back the way I'd come. They gave chase, but there was no way they could prevent my exit. Every sensation (the heat, the pounding of my shoes on the sidewalk, the cane gripped tightly in my right hand and everything it touched, and the exact location of every building I ran passed) stood out with sharp clarity. I was pure will and adrenaline, with no curious dog to slow me down the way he had about a year ago as we were chased by the mad scientist across a space station which somehow morphed into the second floor of this same campus. Of course, I escaped. I got home only to find a forwarded email about my physics professor being sick and wanting me to come to the lab, which turned out to contain broken glass equipment. Then I remembered Sasha's warm up, thought about it a bit, and woke up.
I thought I'd start my blog by explaining how my week has gone so far, and that, my friends, was how I started Monday morning. I contemplate life through intensity. In the past week, I'd been praying for the wisdom to handle my enemies who work in the Segregation Office in the right way that is helpful to everyone. When I feel my livelyhood being threatened I tend to have dreams like this. Sasha is a Russian weight training coach who probably competed in the Russian Olympics and sounds a bit like the Terminator. I woke up from the dreams in a pleasant mood, remembering that I would be allowed to participate in enough of his mainstream class to cause my muscles to burn and heart to race before I'd even start practicing power moves. Some other things are happening this week. One of them has to do with the latest changes in my vision, which I will probably discuss tomorrow. Right now I am signing off so I can view some photos I received from an online friend. Just remember, if you find yourself at my school, please, stay away from secret groups, and stay away from Student Life too. They should be renamed Student Death by Pokemon and Unfinished Homework.
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