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I've acquired a new superpower
261–270 of 583 posts
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like https://triaxes.com/docs/3DTheory-en/522ParallelCrosseyedvie... which some people struggle with, somebody posted a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereogram to HN yesterday which some people get and others don't. (That's different from the "cross-eyed stereogram" because one of them involves having two images and the other one has one image with two images hidden in it)
I have a big problem crossing my eyes too while having no problem with the parallel view way seeing stereograms. I am actually going to stop trying as my eyes started to hurt.
For me, what's difficult is holding my right eye closed without my left eye drifting to look at my nose. My right eye's good, I can move it and focus on anything within my (now peripheral-limited) view... but the left is wonky. I think I learned how to wink (and hold it) with the right really early, by age 3 or 4, but the other side I never tried until I was pre-teen... some sort of muscle atrophy?
You can also tell if your head's level, just by crossing your eyes. If the two images are diagonal to each other, then your eyes/head aren't level. I have no idea what the possible use for that would be.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#263Is the technique to this exactly the same as the technique to view a 3d stereogram image?
I was able to get a 3rd image to be clearly visible in the middle doing this, on the 2nd image I could definitely seem some spots appear that lead me straight to 3 of them but didn't work for me on the other 2 images.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#264We got a magic eye book when I was maybe 6 - some time early elementary school. After learning how to do it, and also trying it by crossing my eyes to see an "inverted" image, I started doing it whenever I saw some repeating pattern IRL. It was most interesting when it was slightly uneven, for example a fence with sloppily applied vertical planks. Doing the magic eye would make it seem like some of them are closer to…
I wrote a paper about doing this using human eyes as the "repeating pattern" (either someone else's, or your own in a mirror): https://philpapers.org/archive/ALEDSK.pdf ...You can use this trick to make boring meetings or conversations mildly more amusing (but be careful not to look like a clown crossing your eyes). If you're an expert at this, you can even do it to your own hands. Hold both hands in front of you but…
Peak HN.
Stereogramming your colleagues eyes during boring meetings.
Ha
Edit: I accidentally did something similar by imaging the crease on an N95 mask as a smile near their nose. It made them look like ducks and I had to bite my tongue so hard to not laugh. I could not unsee it.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#265At a local bar they had a game machine, and if you got a high score on any of the games, your tab for the evening was free. One of the games was a "spot the differences" between two pictures with an ever decreasing timer for each round. Using this trick I was able to easily surpass the high score, and garner a crowd watching me perform this mind numbing feat. Probably my peak fame right there.
Failed to perform the technique despite multiple retries, but didn't have any issues spotting differences the normal way for all except the impossible mode - which just felt like it would be tedious. My usual method is just to brute-force linear scan from left to right, top-to-bottom. May not be elegant, but it works.
Took me about 10m total to get it all the way to impossible mode. I think you can do it!
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#266I'm frequently surprised by the amount of seemingly ordinary skills I picked up as a bored child that other people didn't. This was an obvious way to solve those "spot the difference" pictures in magazines.
I wonder what skills other people picked up that I didn't.
Some recent example of things I shared:
+ When your belt buckle hangs a little loosely on the front of your pants. You can hook the buckle's prong onto the front button of your pants and it'll stay put. So many people are excited to learn this.
+ Putting a jacket or any open-front garment on quickly. I saw someone struggling to maneuver their second arm in a tight jacket behind their back. I explained that if they hold their jacket out in front of them, put their hands in the arm holds, and slide their arm in further as they swing it around their body they'll get it on in a moment. It's also more stylish. They were so surprised.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#267If you've done Magic Eyes, this is straightforward. Was able to get all 3 of the test images quickly. This is with focusing beyond the screen. Focusing in front of the screen is something I am unable to do, and not for want of effort. Also, your eyes might accidentally do this if looking at tiled patterns, e.g. wallpaper. Relative image size (e.g. view distance) is important.
Yup, I loved Magic Eyes as a kid. This was easy.
Nevertheless, I was astonished that "impossible mode" literally took me only 1-2 seconds to find the missing star.
Like, I knew our vision is good at interpreting depth from images. I figured it would be all right at finding large areas of differences. I had no idea a single freaking pixel could stand out like a sore thumb.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#268Stereograms have been used in structural biology publications for many decades now. Google 'stereogram structural biology'
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#269I've been using this to do quick source code diffs for years. I started back on the days of printouts.
Re: I've acquired a new superpower
#270At a local bar they had a game machine, and if you got a high score on any of the games, your tab for the evening was free. One of the games was a "spot the differences" between two pictures with an ever decreasing timer for each round. Using this trick I was able to easily surpass the high score, and garner a crowd watching me perform this mind numbing feat. Probably my peak fame right there.
I can't overlap the images to save my life - they get like halfway there and that's it...
Treat it like a "Magic Eye" photo and just relax your eyes to a further focus point.