I had a bit of spare time on my hands at lunch and created a little JavaScript application of the Bent Lines Illusion I blogged about earlier which was a re-post of this Richard Wiseman blog post.

The application allows you to change the orientation of the black diamonds by clicking on them which makes the perfect grid of squares look really weird.

The application can be played with HERE

Try changing a straight line of them right through the middle to start off with to see how the effect works. Remember that the squares are all equal, straight edged and perfectly aligned!

I have tested it in FireFox 3, Google Chrome, Apple Safari 4, Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 and it seems to work fine in all of them except IE6 in which it works but incredibly slowly. Please give any bugs, comments or suggestions as comments to this post.

Richard Wiseman re-posted another great optical illusion this morning which was tweeted to him by @ButMadNNW and @glennbroadway. I think it was originally posted on this interesting looking blog called Things You Wouldn’t Know If We Didn’t Blog Incessantly.

The illusion shows a grid of light and dark squares and at each corner there are 2 black diamonds positioned either vertically or horizontally in an alternate fashion, this is except in the middle, both vertically and horizontally. The ensuing effect is the squares appear bent and like the whole shape is bevelled inwards (or outwards depending on your point of view). It really is quite an impressive effect.

I noticed on the image that the black diamonds didn’t quite line up with lines Wiseman put in to demonstrate that the squares were indeed squares, and thought maybe this was part of the effect, someone else on Wiseman’s blog also noticed this so I recreated it making sure everything was perfectly aligned. The effect still worked.

Original Bent Line Illusion

First Version of the Bent Line Illusion

Bent Lines Illusion With Diamond

What is cool about this illusion (especially now I have my Photoshop patterns set up) is that I think it would be possible to put a simple image into it by changing the orientation of the black diamonds. I will have a play and maybe re-post later.

Thank you Richard and the guys that originally posted this! I love a good optical illusion.

Gah. I had good plans for this weekend. I made scripts and everything but then a complete balls up with something I was working on at work came back to steal my weekend. I spent all of it righting wrongs with my work and didn’t have a chance to do anything bloggy or youtuby. Well hopefully after today things will be a little more quiet.

So this weekend I will have a near empty flat and also some spare time. Just the combination to start making videos! Hopefully I will start with my series on Logical Fallacies and maybe make a couple of responses. I want to do as much as possible just so I can get in the swing of making videos.

I took the Bar Contrast Illusion a step further and made this

I know this is yesterdays news now but I thought I’d finish off something I was working on.

This uses the same principles as the other illusions I posted only there are 2 different intensities of the purple and orange stripes. I also changed the direction of some of the lines to highlight areas of detail. I think it works but then I have been staring at it for a while.

I think I am done with this illusion for now. I hope you like it though.

EDIT: Stepping back and having another look at this I think the Higher Contrast Purple and Orange stand out to much for the effect but I still think it looks pretty cool.

A while back Richard Wiseman posted an excellent optical illusion on his blog here. It looks like a green, blue and pink stripy spiral when in fact it is a turquoise, purple and orange spiral. The difference in purple and orange make us perceive the turquoise differently making it appear either blue or green.

He started making his own one of a world map which you can see here which is pretty impressive. I decided to make a few of my own including a higher resolution version of his world map.

Do you see green land and blue water or orange land and purple water?

An Orange Butterfly

A Green Butterfly

What do you think?

I know that the last one wasn’t done very well, there was a small filling issue when I changed the Hue and Saturation but you can still get the idea.

EDIT: Would just like to say a big thank you to Richard Wiseman and John Matson @ Scientifig American. This illusion got picked up by them and I had a great response, a bit of a supprise. It has been posted here on the Scientific American Gallery

I Wuz In Ur Eocene, Pissin' Off Ur Creationists

I created this a while back and posted it to the Richard Dawkins Facebook group. I really want it on a teeshirt.

I have been planning my YouTube videos which I hope to start making really soon. The first video will be a simple and probably boring Introduction video which I have written already but at the moment there are a few things stopping me from recording and publishing it.

I realised when I found an hour on Sunday to record it that I am very camera shy. This is silly and I think I can overcome this. but due to me being camera shy I didn’t want any one else in my flat to hear me recording it. I don’t know why I was finding it embarrassing. I decided I would stay late at work last night to record it hoping people would leave the office at a reasonable time but they didn’t, they hung about until I left. Grrr. I will try again tonight. I think that once I have made a few my fear will go away and I will just be able to record them at home. I was speaking to one of my flatmates saying that I was going to start making YouTube videos and he thought it was cool which has made me feel a little less awkward about making them.

I am currently planning a series of short videos explaining the most common logical fallacies that the theists use. This will hopefully be a useful resource for anyone interested in critical thinking or any one who is currently in a debate and need to be able to identify flawed logic or want to make sure that their arguments are sound.

Following these videos I will make some explaining the scientific method and why, as Atheism isn’t a belief system, that the burden of proof really is on those claiming a God. I understand many of the counter arguments to that statement so I will also try to address those. I recently came across a user who has a different style to many YouTube atheists and focuses on the Philosophical side of it. His name is Nykytyne2 and watching his approach might help me a lot in how to deliver the message.

Hello world.

Blogs are incredibly useful and interesting things. My only problem is that I have never been able get my self into a position where I can maintain and update one on a regular basis. I have tried many times to build and design my own, I have tried a couple of times to skin a Wordpress and keep that going and then I resorted to the beautiful simplicity of tumblr though I found it to restrictive and gave up on that. Well, I am back with Wordpress on my own web host and this time I am not going to care about skinning, I am just going to use a simple theme that I found and focus on the content.

I have finally decided to put all my thoughts in one place and start using the video camera I bought over a year ago to keep a YouTube Vlog. This time it will work. This time I have time to do it. The blog will mainly consist of ideas on Skepticism, Atheism, Philosophy, Science, Neural Science and Artificial Intelligence or any combination of the above. I will also use it to organise my YouTube videos. I am not really expecting many people to read it but if my YouTube channel takes off it will be a handy utility to have. There will also probably be random personal updates, links to my creations, songs I have written and photographs I have taken.

All I need now is to actually make my first YouTube video.

Thanks for reading