Color recognition

Iam color blind .- Hmmm not completely ! .... Well atleast I dont have the sense of color ! ( Wait ... let me not be so harsh on myself ... I dont have the dressnig sense .... hmmm or a little milder would be My sense of fashion is weird .. !
Well maybe its because I cannot recognize different shades of color ? Here is a little experimental thought ....

• You are shown one particular shade of brown .... for maybe 5 seconds .. ( CONTROL sample )
• And then .... you are shown a palette of different shades of brown ( POPULATION sample )..... and asked to choose from it , the shade just saw ....
  
• Can you pick the right shade ?? How much of a deviation would you cause ?

After thought : I found this task difficult with both CONTROL and POPULATION , both shown to the subject ! Now I can imagine how difficult it would be if the control sample is not shown ! Phew !

Future actions :

• Build a small software and test it on different gender and age group .
• Show the gradient ! Ask them to choose from it.
  
• Now lets make the steps a little more difficult ... We donot give it as a gradient .. but a random scatter of shades ! ( whoa ! I know thats difficult )
  

I had this idea with the octaves - ( hmm ... the sounds .... do , re, me ...ring a bell ? ) . More on that later.

How would it be .... to be old ?

Very similar to an old idea that I had ... which I called 'Future on a napkin' ... But this is much personal ! I have started imagining how would it be ... 10 years from now ... and 20 years from now .
Well ...on one hand it is interesting , partly due to the uncertainty of it .. and partly because of the imaginative creativity you are bestowed with.
And on the other ... it disappoints you, because 'your future' is only as good as your imagination ! ( And if you dont have a good one , you dont have a good future ! )

So I kept a blog of the future where I keep entries which are way ahead of the future and ...wait .. when the future is on you, you update the blog with how true your 'prediction' was . Interesting isnt it ?

A sample blog entry looks like this :

Entry for 2027 January 31

My kid will be 10 years old today. Written on 2004 April.

Okay my kid will be older than that. ( Looks like I would be too old to make a kid that late ) Modified on 2005 May 12th

I think I would not get married ! Modified on 2007 October 2nd

I thought this would be a great idea :)
See my related post on future on a napkin.

Additional points :

1) Save each entry as "scheduled posts".
2) Subscribe to the blog that you made so that you get an email reminder when that entry is posted. ( eg : You create a blog entry for 6 months in advance and then when it actually posts on that day , you get a mail of what you thought about that day , 6 months ago ! Whoa ! )

Checking your response time .

Small Decisions.
Thats the word for the day. ( okay .. 2-words) How can you ability to quickly adapt and respond to small decisions affect your life ?

That sounds a little deep. Here is the simpler version ! Very similar to checking your response time on some of those flash games . But this time,


To implement :

• A software that takes in inputs from the user .
• To start with, the screen flashes either of the 4 direction keys in random. ( step 2 )
  
• The user responds by pressing the key displayed on the screen. ( step 3 )
  
• The software calculates the time difference between step 2 and step 3.
  

How much is your life worth now ?

Here is a thought experiment I do to others ! ( Somehow it does not work with oneself ! )

Ask this question to your friend ( mind you ... only close friends ) ...

• Imagine , there's a gun with 100 bullet chambers ( than the usual 6 round one ) .
• And 99 of it is empty.
• 1 chamber has a bullet.
• The chamber is rotated - so you dont know finally if the round is empty or has a bullet (Oh just like the Russian-roulette ! )
• Now ask your friend if he would be willing to keep it on his temple and fire. ( oh just like the russian roulette - but ... you dont play .. just your friend )
• But here is the reward . If he is alive, he will get $1 as reward. Is he willing to do it ?
  
• Not willing ? Okay how about a MILLION dollars ... would he do it ? ( remember .. the chances are 1/100 *only* )
• If he says yes, .. wait ... it means he values his life against risk worthiness somewhere between $1 and $1 MILLION !
  
• Now increase the lower figure and decrease the upper figure .
  
• Keep doing that .. until he / you reach a bracket of figure where you would not be able to make a decision ... maybe something like ... between $16,000 - $75,000 ( Which means ... he would not be willing to do it for $16,000 but definitely for $75,000 ! )
• See if you can come with a fixed figure .

Now do this sometime later in his life ! And see if that has changed !

I realized that this figure depends on many things -
1) The current financial situation he is in.
2) Is he contented with his life . ( higher the dollar figure, the chances are it is a closer indication of whether he is happy or not )
3) Social obligations and responsibilites. ( The $ figure is higher for people with higher social responsibilities )


Modifications
1) You can change the number from 100 to any other that you like

How long does it need for one to recognize a face ?

If I were to flash a picture of a celebrity for 100 milliseconds , can you recognize that face ? Now how about 20 milliseconds ? Well .. it could vary between images - Is that what you think ?

To do :

Okay .. recognition of a face is little complex . Lets get to the micro level - Numbers.
If I were to see the number plate ( a 6 digit alpha-numeric pattern ) of a vehicle for a split second, can I remember that for a while ? ( atleast store it in my short term memory ? )

Implications :
Does this in anyway help decrease the myth of photographic memory ? Oh wait .. Iam talking split second photographic memory . ( If ever that exists ... )

Effect of time, mood swing and sleeplessness on biological clock

When I started off this experiment on myself, I was almost sure ( from the readings that I had done over the years) that there is a definite effect on our estimation of time based on the temperature of the body. ( I cannot recall the source though ) .

In other words, it meant something like " when you have a fever, your body clock runs faster .. so you think that 50 seconds might be actually 1 minute" or in other words.... time runs slower.

Factor 1 : Time of the day: Now I wanted to estimate this quantitatively, based on different factors . I estimated that probably time runs faster in the mornings ( when you are getting ready for office ) ... and runs little slower when you are bored . ( yeah .. dont we all know it )

Factor 2 : State of mind :
What is our perception of time with respect to our mood swings ?

Methodology
I developed a software ( screenshots attached ) which does the verification of the same .

To do :
Since this, like most of my other experiments , was done solely on myself, I wanted to extend it to the other spectrum of the society.

• People with blindness.
  
• Women in their different phases of ovulation cycles
• People affected by cerebral Palsy (CP )
  

Future on a napkin

I use this much like an exercise in thinking beyond the present... and a peek into future. I call this one ... "Future on a napkin" . It works like this :

You are out with one/few of your friend(s) for a coffee/dinner . And the conversation is drying up with mundane ideas - soccer, family et al. And here is something you put forward .

You take a napkin and start writing a question :
For example .... something like this -

When will I get married ?
Person A : 2014
Person B : 2015
Person C : 2015
Person D : You wont get married


Well ... i did this sort of thing ... and well .. trust me, it would be wonderful to look at it once in a while later on !

Additional things to do with this :
1) Scan the napkin and send it to your friends the next day ( or better still sometime when the event actually happens - if you still have that copy :) )