Looking at housing societies

I was looking for a new house in a Housing Society for a relative. A housing society around here is an agglomeration of buildings made by a single entity. These buildings are usually in a compound. The compound has its own shops, medical facilities etc. I was using my net book with my current video glasses. Part of the compound was still being constructed. My mom and I strolled over to it. I could hear men digging some distance away so I turned my head in that direction and tried to see whether I could watch them dig. That did not happen but I was able to make out a small pile of stones that was lying to the left. For some reason, that made my mom sit up for the first time in so many years and take notice of the vOICe. After that, I saw plants, several doorways and walls and even had a chance to look at some staircases. I had to of course remember to look down while on the staircase. Staircases do have distinct rhythms. I was also able to see people and was able to track the side profile of a man as he walked past my position. I did once mistake two walls that were close together for some plants but I suspect there was some clutter in the scene. Doorways are also easy to make out once you know what to look for. A half opened door has a sort of angry sound unless of course the door is a little broad which tempers the sound. Context of course plays a very large role in all of this. For example, I was looking at some corrugated sheets they had placed around one of the buildings. These sheets resembled shutters of shops. Subsequently, as we cruised around the compound in a battery-operated golf cart, I saw something else that looked like corrugated sheets. At that point, my dad explained that these were not corrugated sheets but, they’ve had a similar texture to those sheets. He described it in terms of ridges and valleys and, upon feeling them, I’m not going to disagree with that description.

I would recommend a battery operated golf cart to anyone. In case you want to try driving with the vOICe, I doubt you could find anything better. They are quite open so you can track traffic noise and I suspect it should be possible to mount a camera on them. I did not try driving the golf cart this time because of the poor field of view of my camera.

One of the reasons we had all gone to the housing society was to gauge whether we could estimate the quality of construction. My civil engineer father explained to me that gauging the quality of construction is virtually impossible in a plastered wall. Most of the initial houses we saw were finished so all you could see was smooth walls and floors. The trick apparently is to see a house that is being constructed. There would be irregularities in the concrete which would tell you that the construction is of poor quality. I was unable to really see any such concrete on this trip.

There were also several balconies that I was able to perceive.

After seeing a number of sample houses, we returned to the office of the real estate agent. I decided to flip through some of his brochures. Surprise surprise, I was able to distinguish that there were different shapes on that brochure. The trouble is, I don’t know the English alphabet all that well. Also, I wish there was a way to increase the inter-letter spacing and to make them larger. I did try two fold zoomed but that did not help much.

Finding my optic nerve

I had a b-scan of my eyes. Checkout the image of that scan. The optic nerve is the wavey line towards the top of the image.

There is a lot of scarring in my eyes so not much else is visible. The doctor doing the ultra sound had a lot of difficulty in finding the optic nerve. She had to press the probe down hard and that got a tad uncomfortable. My eye has been described as a disorganized globe. It is very difficult to determine the exact structures inside my eyes. You can try and sdee whether you can analyze the shapes of these structures.

Checking battery charger status

See the below images relating to a battery charger that Jacob was using to charge the battery of his car.
battery charger turned off
battery charger turned off

A security gate

Checkout this image of a security gate
Try listening to the bars and designs on the gate. There is a fair bit of background clutter too.

An audio chat on the vOICe

Brian Shaw and I have conducted an audio chat on the vOICe. you can get it at the following links.
direct mp3 link
mp3 streaming link

Steps for identifying a shape with the vOICe

I am often asked how I identify shapes with the vOICe. Here is the answer to that question.

1. Here the soundscape of a given shape.

2. Decode the soundscape using the defined sound schema of the vOICe.

3. Consider the context in which I’m listening to a soundscape.

4. If required, move my camera closer or further away from the object to get a sense of perspective.

5. Come up with an answer.

6. If required, verify the answer.

Let me illustrate this with an example.

1. I hear a soundscape. The soundscape consists of several ascending tomes.

2. Since I know the sound schema that the vOICe uses, I know that ascending tomes represent height. So, I’m looking at a series of vertical lines.

3. I now apply context. That is I consider where I’m standing. In this case, I’m standing in a balcony.

4. I now move around a little in the balcony and change the camera position. The sound does change but the vertical lines are still there.

5. At this point, I conclude that I’m probably looking at a railing that has vertical supports that move towards the floor.

6. I now with a reasonable degree of confidence walk up to the object and touch it. As luck would have it, this did indeed turn out to be a balcony railing. The railing had rods that ran from the bottom of the railing to the floor of the balcony.

Finding that elusive glass of water

Just another success with the vOICe this time the mobile version. I was able to find a glass of water on a somewhat cluttered dining table. The problem in such situations is that I tend to swing my arm slowly but there are chances of the glass falling. This has happened more than once. I took some time to examine the table in the general area where I knew the glass to be. I was feeling lazy so was not using earphones. Still, I was looking for a tall object. The high pitch indicating a vertical line was all I needed to move my hand to the glass.

I had the vOICe set to 4d audio and had maxed out the sampling rate and the volume.

Pranav

Lunch at the Delhi Golf Course with the vOICe

I went for lunch to the Delhi Golf Course this afternoon. I took the vOICe with me to see whether I could see the flags they put on the greens to mark the holes. I switched on the vOICe in the golf course bar. I was able to see the bottles behind the counter and to see the counter itself.
As I moved towards the green, I was able to see the walls and other things such as some bamboo plants and some trees. There were also other structures like tea stalls that I saw in the view. Walking on to the green however was difficult since due to the poor viewing angle of my webcam, I was unable to see the ground very well. There were a few slopes and a couple of bumps but I did not see them. I was unable to see the flag due to the image saturation of the webcam’s sensor. I should have seen a vertical line with something on it but that did not happen. This was around noon.

I was however able to see the blades of the diesel mowing machine and for once did not have to touch it to make out what it looked like.
The swimming pool was also a disappointment since I was unable to make out the difference between it and the ground. Both were smooth structures. Lucky I had my sited father with me otherwise this story would have had a different ending. I am not sure what went wrong and I will get a movie of all this the next time. Reaching for the laptop in my backpack to set all those options is not easy and I forgot the speech command to take a snapshot.

I am becoming better at identifying doorways and I need to keep reminding myself that silence in part of the view means an obstacle is very close. There was a fire hydrant which was fascinating. I could make out the circular valve and the box in which the hose was stored. That box though blocked the light so I had to step back a bit to see it clearly.

The inside of the clubhouse was relatively less well lit so I lost a lot of visual input. I was unable to make out the spiral stairs since part of them were poorly lit from the perspective of my webcam. Things changed when I walked back into the bar. There were some dark patches in the view and plenty of unidentifiable shapes which upon later examination proved to be parts of chairs and tables.

Lunch was a disaster since I had a hard time looking at my plate and the wires were obstructing my mouth. I had to be really really careful to ensure that I did not stab a wire with my fork. The close talk microphone of my Plantronics DSP 400 headset did a good job such that I was able to issue commands to the vOICe without problems.

The return journey in the car was uneventful except for my looking out the side windows and the front windscreen. I have movies of this and am trying to figure out how to upload them. They are 16 and 54 MB in size.

Once I reached home, I took a look at the staircase I have to climb if I need to gain access to the first floor and above. I was able to see this in the lower part of the view but that was only after my mother switched on the staircase lights. These steps are quite big and I will post a picture of them in a subsequent post.
Pranav

Rain drops

Some rain drops.

During some light rain

Raindrops1

Some clouds

An image of low dense clouds. There is going to be some rain.

Some clouds

Cloudstrees