Started working on CVI...

before


after

As I reported some time ago Rowella James gave me the idea for a new disability which could be included in 2nDisability. This visual impairment should be based on experiences a friend of hers told her about. She provided me with some images that show how this friend sees the world (see comments on the linked post).
Now I did a first prove of concept to see if one could replicate this impairment in Second Life. On the right hand you see screenshots with and without an attack. So it works...

I just have to finish the effect and then we will have a new version of 2nDisability ready. Yay!!!!

Rowella James reporting back from SL

Hi everybody!
as i reported yesterday Rowella James is now the second 2ndisabled person! She wrote me an eMail about her experience which I want to share with you. Her text is italic, comments or additions I made in the text look like [this]

Hi Fez,
First of all, thanks for letting me testing out the 2nDisability script. I didn't encounter any script-related problems after you left.
The blindness was very disorientating to say the least. The weird thing was that for me the speech bubbles were gone too, so I could only see what's being said when having the history window open. Of course moving around in that state is not advisable as there is no way of guiding yourself by audio or touch. [This is a very interesting fact as I did not know this... So in some cases you are blind and deaf...]
The stuttering caused a bit of confusion at first for the person I was talking to, but once they understood what was going on they didn't make any problems of it. Same with Tourret.
The [camera-]palsy effect was weird at first, but once you know what can happen you're a bit more prepared to be disorientated.
The most disrupting disability is (apart from blindness) epilepsy, it can throw you really into trouble. I ended up in the water at least three times, on top of someone else once and bumped a few people once too.

I haven't noticed any effects from hayfever. [This is because it only works on the sim of the SL-EcoSystem and she did not go there yet...]

I'll probably test it some more in the coming days if time permits. To be honest, some people find it really weird and are a bit freaked out by the idea.


Well according the last comment: This is what I realized too and what is not very surprising... But it looks as if we're one step closer to a growing community!
Thanks to Rowella for her help!

Tags: secondlife, disability, betatest, community

Another disabled person

I was VERY excited yesterday, but I just did not find some spare time to report the GREAT news.
After talking with Rowella James about the new disability she gave me the idea for (reported here) she tried the 2nDisability HUD as the first person (excluding myself...) ever.

She kept it on for quite some while (also I still produces QUITE some debug output) and maybe she will occasionally report her experiences here on the blog!

So stay tuned everybody!

Images by a blind painter [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

While wandering the lands today I stumbled across a place called "Art in the park". I met one of the owners (Has Lassard) and while chating along he told me that they were showing works of a blind artist (Amaya Summers). And the most amzing thing about her images is HOW realistic they are (the one in this post is by her).

This really made me wondering how she interacts with SL and other graphical software...
I hope to meet her sometimes soon to get some more information about that!

SLURL: Art in the Park

Web2.0 Schizophrenia

Just made an interesting discovery on Muli Koppel's Blog: Desktop Regions: The Real My Space.

He talks about a flickr project of someone else (Desktop Regions)... But he invents the term "Web2.0 Schizophrenia".
Well and this surly is some new form of virtual disability. One that surly should be lookd into somewhat deeper... Interesting thing is that it somhow exists BETWEEN the virtual and the real world.

Tags: post, flickr, schizophrenia, disability, blog, web20

on 2nDisability: SL-FORUMS.COM

I just found a thread on SL-FORUMS.COM which was started by Rowella James...

Looking forward to how it will evolve...

Tags: on2nDisability, forum, post, discussion

A new idea... [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Rowella James and me
Originally uploaded by FezRutherford.

Today when I was hanging out at the museum Rowella James came buy on her flying carpet. We started chatting along...

Well after a little while she had another idea for 2nDisability. That is why I put the chatlog up here on the blog...

[7:38] Rowella James: What's 2nd Disability?
[7:38] You: an project / experiment of mine
[7:38] You: its about disabilities in virtual worlds
[7:38] Rowella James: cool
[7:39] You: I try to think about which disabilities might exist in virtual worlds
[7:39] Rowella James: Great idea
[7:39] You: and I build scripts to live them
[7:39] You: thanks
[7:39] Rowella James: It will help people understand the diffulties disabled people have in RL
[7:40] You: CORRECT!
(I have an epilepsy attack and drop down from the museum)
[7:41] You: sorry
[7:41] You: that was an expilepsy attack..
[7:42] Rowella James: That's ok, a youth friend of mine had epilepsy
[7:42] Rowella James: well he still has, but I don't see him anymore
[7:42] You: okay...
[7:42] FEZ Rutherford: okay...
[7:42] Rowella James: So what scripts have you created so far?
[7:43] You: blindness / epilepsy / tourret / "Hay Fever" / CameraPalsy
[7:43] You: oh and stuttering
[7:44] Rowella James: Oh wow! You've been really working a lot on it then...
[7:44] You: well... kinda...
[7:44] You: ;-)
[7:44] You: it becomes an obession...
[7:44] Rowella James: I guess
[7:44] Rowella James: Need an idea for the next?
[7:44] You: If you have one...
[7:45] Rowella James: A friend of mine has CVI (Cerebral Visual Impairment) he sees only the periferal area, but foggy. The centre is black blots
[7:45] You: okay... that is possible...
[7:46] You: may I put the chatlog from this session on my blog?
[7:46] Rowella James: Sure!!
[7:46] You: So I can keep track of this idea
[7:46] You: Thanks a lot
[7:46] Rowella James: I should thank you actually!
[7:46] You: lets take a picture ;-)
[7:47] FEZ Rutherford: Eat my shorts
[7:47] You: lets go up front
[7:47] FEZ Rutherford: lets go up front
[7:47] FEZ Rutherford: Eat my shorts
(We walk up in front of the 2nDisability projection screen)
[7:47] FEZ Rutherford: *GNARRRRRF*
[7:48] You: okay... thanks
[7:48] You: (I'm not a good photographer I must confess ;-)
[7:48] Rowella James: I haven't mastered it either yet. This was my first photo :-)

Well, we kept on talking. But that is another story ;-)
I will for sure read myself into CVI and include it into 2nDisability as soon as possible.

So stay tuned!

Tags: secondlife, disability, chat

Some more debugging done [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

While living with my 2nDisability I somehow had the feeling that blindness and tourret attacks occour more often than camera palsy and epilepsy do. So I added a logging script which tells me what attacks start and stop when. After some days of testing I now realized that something in one of my scripts went wrong. I changed it and now I hope that all attacks do occour at (more or less) the same rate.
As a technical sidenote: It was one of those typos where you type a "2" and think a "4"... And bang results depend on "2" and not on "4" as you thought they would ;-) Anyhow, it's fixed now, the HUD is rebooted, let's wait and see what will happen.

As another side note: Camera palsy seems to have a easier cure than I thought it would have (althoug I had a certain feeling about it), when I first came up with the idea. Due to limitations in LSL the attack does NOT have any effect when you have focused onto something (using ctrl+alt+mouseClick). I will leave it in the HUD anyhow.

Tags: secondlife, disability, HUD, debugging, campalsy

[offTopic] Taxes in Second Life would be a mistake...

As Reuters reports [link] Jim Saxton, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee which is studying ways to tax the Second Life economy, said it would be a mistake by the IRS to step forward with such regulations.

Well let's wait and see how long the US government will keep to this word. [*humm*]

EDIT:
After posting it here I went to the Reuters place... and well, what must I see? It already has been "tagged" by sprayers...
Seems like there are sprayers ou there who really are into their art... Let's hope this does NOT go to far.

Tags:
secondlife,
taxes,
government,
news,
reuters,
graffiti

Virtual Hallucinations [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Just got pinpointed to the "Virtual Hallucinations" project (SLURL: Sedig/26/45/22) which is basically the same idea as 2nDisability. Although "Nash Baldwin" can base his indeed VERY IMPRESSIVE and frightening experience on real patient interviews. He als

Unfortunately he's not online right now, so I will leave him a message and hope we will get into contact soon.

Everybody reading this blog should definitly visit that space and take the tour... wow, I think I will dream of this tonight....

Tags: secondlife, disability, hallucinations

[offTopic] Taxes on SL??

As the lately joined Routers reports on Second Life Insider the United States of America are thinking about putting taxes on Second Life.
Let's hope that will not happen, as I just don't know which kind of unforseeable effects that may have on Second Life and its economy (including the Linden Exchange)

Tags: secondlife, commercial, taxes, economy

Tagcloudr

Tagcloudr 04
Originally uploaded by FezRutherford.

Well, when I'm not working directly on 2nDisability I like to script every now and then.
After reading an articel on the menti.net blog which was about visualising different information (in this case technorati rankings) in Second Life I started thinking about what outside information could be shown in Second Life.
Also at the moment I'm quite fascinated by del.icio.us and the whole Web2.0 and tagging thing. So I started trying to connect Second Life with del.icio.us. From there on it was a little step to the idea of Tagcloudr.
It is basically the attempt to visualize my TagCloud in the SYNTHeyeSIS museum.
What it does, is, it polls the inforamtion from my del.icio.us account (thanks to Britta Gustafson for perfect support) and creates bubbles according to the TagCloud. Every bubble is a tag (sorted alphabetically) and it's size represents the count of the tag. These Bubbles are place above the main Tagcloudr object in a single helix.
You can see a text version of my TagCloud a little further down on this page.

If you want to visit the museum in Second Life, just click here!

Tags: secondlife, tagcloudr, scripting, del.icio.us

Brigadoon

While surfing the net I stumbled across this blog: Brigadoon. It is the blog of a community which uses Second Life as a platform to communicate about their disabilities.
It started of as a project for people suffering from Asperger's Syndrome and Autism but seems to broaden it's spectrum up.
I will try to get in touch with them, maybe we can join forces in some way.

Tags: secondlife, disability, autism, asperger, blog

Camera Palsy update

Just a short little update on camera palsy.
It now is implemented into the tool. Only problem up to now is, that I cannot take focus from the user if he used Alt+Ctrl+MouseClick to focus on a certain object.
I will have to dig into this problem a little more. Will keep all of you up to date!

Tags: secondlife, 2ndisability, scripting, virtual disability, campalsy

InGame only Disability

While walking to my workingplace today (in RL) I had an idea for the first inGame only disability to be invented in 2nDisability. "InGame only" in this case means a disability which does not have any real life counterpart as so called "transfered disabilities" would have.
I call this new disability "camera palsy". It is a Second Life specific disability. When an attack occurs, it fixes you camera to a certain position (maybe even randomly) and does not allow you to change the focus. I think I will add it to the scripts as soon as possible.

While talking about "inGame only" and "transfered" disabilities, I once more realize that I should come up with a first version of the Manifest as soon as possible!

Tags: secondlife, 2ndisability, virtual disability, campalsy

Rebuilding done

Rebuilding done
Originally uploaded by FezRutherford.

Today I finished rebuilding the 2nDisability Meeting Center with adding Some scripts so I could work on the house more easily.
The script seems really to be fine. So it's official: We can start beta-phase from today on! Just contact me, if you want to join!

Tags: secondlife, modeling, 2ndisability, meetingroom

Creating a shirt and a commercial

Snapshot_008
Originally uploaded by FezRutherford.

Today I created a little 2nDisability shirt and tried to shoot some pictures for a box to put it into and realized that I'm not really a modle (as you might already have realized)
If you have any idea about how I could package the shirt... Let me know

Tags: secondlife, 2ndisability, commercial, donation

Tourret and the fear of being banned

The longer I live with my different disabilities, the more i realize that one of them really gets me into trouble: Tourret (or at least the way I transfered it into SL).
At the moment each attack of Tourret (which appears randomly about every 5-10 minutes) makes me shout some (randomly chosen) swearwords. Some of these words were - as I must confess - quite obscene (on purpose). But the more I get around, the more people tell me to just shut up, which of course is just the same as they would do in RL.
Well the point I fear at the moment is, that some of these people start reporting me to admins for using bad language or spamming the chat... This would lead to a ban for me. And this would kill the whole experiment.
So I'm in quite a conflict at the moment. What I did as a first countermeassure is to reduce the obsceneties and to introduce some not so bad words into the script, plus I reduced the amount of words said.

I would be happy about some feedback and thoughts of you about that. Maybe someone has an idea on how to cope with this situation.

All the other disabilities do stay the same at the moment.

Tags: secondlife, 2ndisability, tourret

eMailer Bugfix [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Object-Name: FEZ Rutherford
Region: Tan (256000, 257024)
Local-Position: (136, 85, 28)

Just fixed a bug in the HUD-Blog-emailer. It now sets the correct name as sender of the article.
In addition to that it now give a visual feedback while sending emails.

Technical update [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Okay... Here is one more update on the technical status of the scripts:
- All disabilities (well the one I have up to now) seem to work
- Right now I'm writing a logging extension which sends emails to a log-server
- I will do some more testing, then it's up for a little open-beta
- The hud has to be designed a little more for a better look ;-)

Okay that's it from me and for now....

Hope to see some of you inGame soon...

Writing the manifest

When I had to (RL-) drive by train for some time last thursday I found some time to start writing on the 2nDisability-Manifest. Originally I wanted to do that on my notebook. But it did not boot anymore...
Well so I had to write it by hand, which stuck my some kind of funny as writing a manifest as a digital person for a project which only exists in cyberspace on "analog" paper feels kind of strange.
Anyhow, I will publish a first version of the manifest in a few days here on 2nDisability.

Very short update

Just finished porting all scripts into the new version of 2nDisability. From now on it will be quite some testing and debugging before we can start a beta-phase of the tool. I will be out (in RL) for the next few days, so it will be around a week till then. But nevertheless I hope we can start beta in about 10-15 days!

I hope you have a nice time!
FEZ

PS: I nearly forgot: I got a first applicant today for the beta ;-) Yeah! So application is open, just contact me inGame (IM if I'm not online!)

A short snapshot of my place

Snapshot_001
Originally uploaded by FEZ Rutherford.

This more a technical test than a real entry to the blog. I just startet an account at flickr and it allows me to blog on pictures directly via the flickr page.
And now I want to test this.

Enjoy!

PS: If you want to support 2nDisability by building a nicer meeting place than the one you can see here, feel free to contact me ;-)

Tech Talk [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Here is one more tech-info. I spent the last few hours with rewriting the 2nDisability HUD to make it more understandable.
The most obvious change is the fact that now the HUD only has two prims (Main plus Blinder). The Main Prim now contains several scripts (instead of only one). Each of these scripts handles a certain task. Some of them do the background and managemet functions, some of them are
the disabilities themselves.

Not all functions have been ported by now but it's getting late over here plus they shut down scripts at Tan at the moment...

So nomore scripting for now, have a nice night,
See you all tomorrow!

My 2nd Thoughts[written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Object-Name: blogHelper
Region: Bethselamin (240384, 238336)
Local-Position: (208, 91, 24)

Just got kicked out and banned from a place called Studio Takashi for no certain reason.
I just went in there. The ower was in too. After looking at the place I first had an Tourret attack
and shortly after one of Epilepsie.
Then I got kicked/banned by the owner without any warning or attempt to contact me.

Sad

Literature research

Today I started to do some literature research. I will try to keep this list up to date and maybe comment a little on it.

• National Center for Health Statistics
  "International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF)"
  Web Page
  
• Philip Sampson
  "Prosthetics And The Virtual Body"
  Heise, 1996
  
• Jana Schwarz, Hiltrud Walter, Katrin Weiner
  "Communication and identity in the cyberspace of poeple with disabilities".
  HU Berlin, 2000
  
• Uni Lübeck
  "Disease and Procedure Classification I"
  Webpage
• Klaus-Peter Wegge
  Barrierefreies Internet
  FIff-Kommunikation
  

If you do have some more Papers, Pages or information feel free to share it here in the comments.

Update on the code [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Object-Name: blogHelper
Region: Ambleside (262912, 257536)
Local-Position: (175, 154, 104)

While sitting in a Balloon and enjoying a ride over Ambleside (it's nice although I happen to get blinded every now and then) I have some spare time to keep you updated on how the development process of the tool is getting along.

New:
- As I reported earlier today I implemented Hay Fever behaviour into 2nDisability. It is implemented in a extra box which enables me to give out only this part of the code to the developers and fans of the EcoSystem.
- I also added one more behaviour which I call Stuttering. It repeats (every now and then) some of the last word you have said.

Fixes:
- Sending eMails now works very easily

ToDo:
-[BlogHelper] Add username to objectname
-[BlogHelper] Add "subject:" finder
-[BlogHelper] Make it more efficient on the memory by moving the notecard line by line
-[*] Comment and clean up code

That's it for today,
have a nice evening

A picture of mine...

As the last picture of mine was quite dark (it was taken at night time) here is a new, brighter and shortly better one...

EcoSystem integration [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Object-Name: blogHelper
Region: Tan (256000, 257024)
Local-Position: (160, 77, 101)

Some days ago I've reported about a project called [off-topic] EcoSystem in SL which tries to build a whole EcoSystem on its own sim.
I got in contact with the developers lately and added hay fever into 2nDisability. This means that if you are 2ndisabled and get in touch with too many of their plants you will start sneezing.
There will we an entry about it on their wiki as soon as possible.

Building at home... [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Object-Name: blogHelper
Region: Tan (256000, 257024)
Local-Position: (154, 81, 26)

I have a little place on my land which I use as my workshop and studio. It i high up in the sky. Since I am disabled I keep falling down from that platform every now and so often. Today I started to make the platform handicapped accessible by adding some fences aroud that place.

I'm getting more and more the feeling of really being disabled.

My 2nd Thoughts [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Object-Name: blogHelper
Region: Sandbox Island (254464, 255488)
Local-Position: (173, 117, 26)

After reading on the CyberOne homepage that they hold their classes also in SL, I went to their place (Berkman Island 82/81/25) to maybe meet someoen of the team. Unfortunately I was not lucky with that but I must say they do have a VERY nice place over there.

On the tool: I just changed the blog-interaction to single-action. This means that now a message can be sent to the blog by simpley dragging a notecard onto the hub-symbol and it then is directly sent. Much easier to use than the last system which needed several clicks. One drawback I still see is, that a single paragraph (or line) in the notecard may be 255 characters maximum. This is due to the possibilities of the SL-Script-engine. I still hope that 2nDisability-reporters will understand.

On my disability: While moving over SL and to different places, I realized a interesting form of places beeing not made for handicapped persons like I am. When you think about such buildings in real-life you may think about people in wheelchairs and stairs (at least this is a quite common example). What i realized here in SL are places where scripts are not allowed by the land owner. In such places I can not be a disabled person anymore (as my disability depends on scripts). Well, this is a little different to the RL pendant, but still they are not friendly places for disabled persons...

Okay. It's getting late. I'm off for bed.
More to come....

Short update [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Object-Name: blogHelper
Region: Tan (256000, 257024)
Local-Position: (171, 73, 67)

Online again. At the moment I'm only scripting my tool to make an easier interface for the report-to-blog-from-ingame stuff.
But while checking the logfiles of my (now 2 days old) blog, I realized that I already had some referrers. Some of them from the SL-Homepage. But one from blogs.law.harvard.edu! There Gene Koo reports that he/she had some idea of a virtual disability too!
I'll keep you up to date and hope you will have a nice day!

Interesting contact

Just found an interesting event in SL which is about ethics and is held on a 3-times a week basis. Unfortunately I had to leave quite early beacause of a real-life meeting ;-(
I talked to the host Selaras Partridge if we could meet again and talk about the experiment. I'll try to catch up with her. Maybe we can discuss my experiment in one of the meetings. If so, I will for sure post it here.

Pitifulness or understanding

While talking about 2nDisability with a real-life friend today we came up with a quite interesting question. We asked ourselves which might be the feelings other SL residents will have concerning my disability.
Our first thought was, that it could be (as in real-life) pitifulness. But we doubt that as still the tool is worn voluntarily and as such I think that no real pitifulness might or will come up.
This led as to the thought that some people might not understand the purpose of the experiment and such might get angry because of my behavior (such as the DJ in this post).
Following this thoughts I hope that most people will show understanding for my disability.

[off-topic] EcoSystem in SL

Just found another great experiment run in SL (SL EcoWiki) which tries to create virtual species etc in their own simulator.

Update: Find the Location here!

New development... [written inGame by FEZ Rutherford]

Object-Name: blogHelper
Region: Tan (256000, 257024)
Local-Position: (160, 79, 67)

Right now I'm working on a additional function of my tool.
This function will allow me (and later on all others who will join the experiment) to easily write blog-entries from inseide the game.
up to now it's very basic, but it will grow while I keep working on the tool!

Being around

Beeing around a little more today I got a first feeling how it feels in some situations to be disabled. Esp. while building some stuff on my own land the blindness-attacks where very hard to cope with.
Luckily my Tourret got a little better which really made it much easier for me in crowded places.

That's me

Well, not much to say ;-)

First experiences in public

Today I joined a party over at Wheelies when a Tourett attack hit me... Luckily people over there took it quite nicely

One example...
...Tourret attack...
Iago Zabibha: ok fez?
You: yep
Iago Zabibha: k
You: sorry about that
Iago Zabibha: lol
Iago Zabibha: tourettes?
You: yep
You: actually
Iago Zabibha: ok np

Others (like the DJ for example) did not take it so good. This is mostly to the strength of the attacks I have. Guess they are really a little strong up to now....

Funny thing about some stuff one starts is that it sometimes gets its own life faster than one thinks. In this case my handicap-script really handycaps my development. In this case I just cannot create stuff online as soon as I switch on the tool. Which really keeps me from developing it further.
This is why I have to give me a rule:
I will only switch the tool off, if I am "at home". Which means if I am on my homespot in "Second Life"

Today I started the 2nd-handicap project. It is a social project which tries to cope with different aspects of beeing handicaped.
Therefore I'm developing a tool in "Second Life" which tries to transport the feeling of beeing handicaped into a virtual environment