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Midnight Bruiser
Sep 14, 2005

by Ozma

Caffeinated Sloth posted:

...different set of qualities... ...it takes a while to form an opinion.

That's exactly what I'm after. I as probably most people are, am very visual oriented guy, I'm only attracted to very pretty girls, and I'm wondering if there's something else behind this besides the pure visuals that attracts me to them and sometimes I wish I didn't pay so much attention to the looks. Well okay, there is of course body language (btw, the other day I was completely spellbound by some quite attractive girls' body language, the way she moved when she talked, it just blew me away), still you have two other senses that you can use, auditory and the sense of smell. I can only assume that pheromones play a bigger part in your relations to women, even if only at subconcious level.

Once I've watched some documentary and there was a blind painter who said his wife was pretty, eventhough he never saw her, but he said he knew, because pretty girls behave differently so that he can deduct empirically if they're attractive or not. But he didn't elaborate on that and I found this to be insufficient.

I'd be very interested to know more about this. Also, if you can't think of much now, I'd appreciate you shooting me a PM whenever you will, even if it's going to take you a year, just don't forget. :D

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Stealth Bomber
Dec 21, 2005

The Army is going to fuck me for fucking other's wives! I'm an asshole!
I dated a blind girl, and she was incredibly touchy-feely, like constantly holding onto me, hugging me, and cuddleing anytime we were sitting, are you the same way?

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

meatcookie posted:

Have you ever considered taking martial arts, such as judo or aikido (both being grapples, holds, joint locks, throws, etc. as opposed to pure punching and kicking)?
I've considered this but haven't actually done anything about it.

meatcookie posted:

I understand that your eyes themselves are nonfunctional, but how about your optic nerve? I ask because of a phenomena I've experienced and always wondered about in relation to others, namely: when I'm tired and have some eyestrain (from reading or the computer) I'll rub my eyes (eyes closed obviously). This has the side effect of putting pressure on the optic nerve which results in some semi-psychedelic visual patterns, usually checkerboard patterns or bursts of "light" and over the years I've often idly wondered if some blind folks get the same thing. (Granted, I've also wondered what our evolutionary precursors saw but that's neither here nor there).
My understanding, which may be incorrect, is that my optic nerve is at least somewhat functional. I remember that when I was perhaps four years old, I'd sometimes press my fingers against my eyes. (This is a very undesirable stereotypical blindness-related habbit that I stopped long ago.) I remember thinking that the "light" that I saw was the same as it was outside around noon. I didn't see anything other than light when doing this, and the level diminished to normal when I stopped.

meatcookie posted:

That, however, leads me to wonder what you think of fog. I'd imagine it would be somewhat confusing given its tendency to strongly but subtly distort sound. To be fair, it also distorts the visual aspect, and seeing is just hearing with your eyes.
Fog tends to deaden sounds, and I'd think it would do something similar for visuals.

meatcookie posted:

semi-edit: re: people touching your dog... I think I'd find that just as irritating as if someone were to walk up and start touching my eyeballs.
I'd think that it would be similar to someone waving their hand right in front of your face. Very distracting, dangerous in the right situations, and extremely annoying.

Stealth Bomber posted:

I dated a blind girl, and she was incredibly touchy-feely, like constantly holding onto me, hugging me, and cuddleing anytime we were sitting, are you the same way?
I enjoy physical contact, and try to figure out pretty early on what the other person's boundaries are. I don't think it's necessary to always be touching the other person whenever we're alone. Each person is different though.

Marley Wants More
Oct 22, 2005

woof
I don't have a question, Caffeinated Sloth, I just wanted to thank you for spending so much of your time on this thread. This is really fascinating--probably the most interesting thread I've ever read here. No need to bother with responding, I just wanted to say thanks.

And thanks to the posters for asking such great questions, for that matter.

I guess I do have one question--what's your dog's name?

Fasheem
Feb 19, 2007

SeraphSlaughter posted:

Print size. In order to read a book of normal typeface (something like 12 point font) it needs to be no less than six inches from my face. The bigger the font, the better I can read farther away. On the computer I'm normally about six to eight inches away from the screen, without glasses. I find it easier to read without glasses, as I get headaches if I read with them for some reason. Because of this, I have not taken one single note written on a board in school. I rarely take notes, and only if they are said aloud.

Everyone tells me I just have to "get used" to wearing glasses but I'm currently sitting with my face pushed against the screen because wearing glasses gives me a headache. This is the first time anyone has backed me up on this. Do you have any theories about why? I think it's the crazy unfocused peripheral vision. I never had problems when I wore contacts.

sink
Sep 10, 2005

gerby gerb gerb in my mouf
Thank you for this incredibly insightful and enjoyable thread. I hope I don't ask or suggest anything unkind with these questions.

I am a programmer as well. I imagine (although this is just a guess) that your memory is trained exceptionally well to deal with stack state (the number of parantheses open and closed in a statement, for example) as you are presented with only one datum at a time (that is, only one word or character is read to you). Is this the case and do you find this to be true compared to other people? Do you prefer certain programming paradigms to others because of your different mental visualization abilities? For example, you said that you do a lot in SQL, a declarative language. Have you ever played with Forth?

You have provided very good descriptions of what interacting with JAWS is like. You touched on this earlier, but can you please describe how you interact with your programming development environment, or is it similar to how you interact with the forums? What editor or IDE do you use?

Do you find using Unixes sometimes more convenient to use because of the powerful command line capabilities?

Ever since I've been little, I have had dreams with little or no audio/visual component. Usually these involve following a line with intense composited and layered emotional components. Sometimes after a particularly long coding session, I will dream in code. I will be aware of the state of a program and the branches of execution that it follows but nothing will really be drawn in my head (sometimes this even sheds some insight on a problem!). Does this ever happen to you after working too much? I ask this because I've described this experience to other people, and nobody has described having no visual component to a dream.

Thanks in advance for your answer.

sink fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Sep 5, 2007

DoomCenturion
Aug 4, 2007

drat space alien demons killed my rabbit
Have you ever worked with the Win32 API? I've written some Win32 and I was wondering what attributes I should set to make JAWS read it right. Of course, getting a HWND and navigating the child controls is pretty simple, but would it take tab order into account? (Does any of this make sense? I don't know if the idea of a tab order and "child" controls make any sense to a blind person. I have seen how Windows itself does it, but I get the feeling few people use it.)

Also, just agreeing with everybody else who thought that this was a great thread.

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

Midnight Bruiser posted:

That's exactly what I'm after. I as probably most people are, am very visual oriented guy, I'm only attracted to very pretty girls, and I'm wondering if there's something else behind this besides the pure visuals that attracts me to them and sometimes I wish I didn't pay so much attention to the looks. Well okay, there is of course body language (btw, the other day I was completely spellbound by some quite attractive girls' body language, the way she moved when she talked, it just blew me away), still you have two other senses that you can use, auditory and the sense of smell. I can only assume that pheromones play a bigger part in your relations to women, even if only at subconcious level.
I'm still thinking about this. It's a hard question to answer.

Marley Wants More posted:

I don't have a question, Caffeinated Sloth, I just wanted to thank you for spending so much of your time on this thread. This is really fascinating--probably the most interesting thread I've ever read here. No need to bother with responding, I just wanted to say thanks.
Thanks for the comment. You can find a number of interesting threads, some of which are a lot more interesting than this IMO, through sorting the a/t archives by rating in descending order.

Marley Wants More posted:

And thanks to the posters for asking such great questions, for that matter.
I totally agree. No great questions would make for a dull thread.

sink posted:

I am a programmer as well. I imagine (although this is just a guess) that your memory is trained exceptionally well to deal with stack state (the number of parantheses open and closed in a statement, for example) as you are presented with only one datum at a time (that is, only one word or character is read to you). Is this the case and do you find this to be true compared to other people? Do you prefer certain programming paradigms to others because of your different mental visualization abilities? For example, you said that you do a lot in SQL, a declarative language. Have you ever played with Forth?
I don't have syntax highlighting, so I've found it very helpful to be able to keep track of things like braces and parentheses. (Lisp was very frustrating--I had to use fingers to keep track.) If I'm reading code, it's a linear process from top to bottom and elft to right. It's easier if more important things are encountered first and then the details are filled in later. I'll include something relatively short that I wrote one time in a few minutes for myself. It looks in maildir-style directories, gets the X-Spam-Status (Spam Assassin) score for each message, and prints the scores with message totals. It might shed some light on coding differences.
code:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my @spamdirs;
push(@spamdirs, "/somewhere/.maildir/.spam/cur/");
push(@spamdirs, "/somewhere/.maildir/.spam/new/");
my @files;
foreach my $spamdir (@spamdirs) {
opendir(my $dp, $spamdir)
or die("Can't open directory $spamdir: $!\n");
while (my $filename = readdir($dp)) {
next if ($filename =~ /^\./);
push(@files, $spamdir . $filename);
}
closedir($dp);
}
my %scores;
my $total=0;
foreach my $filename(@files) {
$scores{get_score_from_file($filename)}+=1;
$total+=1;
}
        my @sortedkeys = sort({$a <=> $b} keys %scores);
foreach my $key(@sortedkeys) {
printf("%s: %s (%.2f%%)\n", $key, $scores{$key}, ($scores{$key}/$total)*100);
}
printf("Total: %s\n", $total);

sub get_score_from_file {
my $filename = shift;
open(my $fin, "<", $filename)
or die("Can't open $filename for reading: $!\n");
my $score = -1;
while(<$fin>) {
my $line= $_;
if ($line =~ /^X-Spam-Level: (.*)$/) {
my $stars = $1;
$score = length($stars);
}
last if ($score >= 0);
}
close($fin);
return $score;
}

sink posted:

You have provided very good descriptions of what interacting with JAWS is like. You touched on this earlier, but can you please describe how you interact with your programming development environment, or is it similar to how you interact with the forums? What editor or IDE do you use?
I tend to use vim for perl and php, which are the languages that I've been using lately. I'm sure that I only use about 2% of the power of this editor.

sink posted:

Do you find using Unixes sometimes more convenient to use because of the powerful command line capabilities?
Yes, but this is definitely a personal thing rather than a blindness thing. I use mutt for reading email because of its configurability and speed. It's also nice to have the same environment and files regardless of what computer I happen to be using.

sink posted:

Ever since I've been little, I have had dreams with little or no audio/visual component. Usually these involve following a line with intense composited and layered emotional components. Sometimes after a particularly long coding session, I will dream in code. I will be aware of the state of a program and the branches of execution that it follows but nothing will really be drawn in my head (sometimes this even sheds some insight on a problem!). Does this ever happen to you after working too much? I ask this because I've described this experience to other people, and nobody has described having no visual component to a dream.
If I'm very familiar with code, I can think of a line or an action and picture the branches that lead to it or the flow of execution after it. It's very helpful in tracking down bugs.

All of my dreams, or at least all that I remember, have some sound component.

sink posted:

Thanks in advance for your answer.
Feel free to ask for clarification if any of this doesn't make sense.

DoomCenturion posted:

Have you ever worked with the Win32 API? I've written some Win32 and I was wondering what attributes I should set to make JAWS read it right. Of course, getting a HWND and navigating the child controls is pretty simple, but would it take tab order into account? (Does any of this make sense? I don't know if the idea of a tab order and "child" controls make any sense to a blind person. I have seen how Windows itself does it, but I get the feeling few people use it.)
I've worked some with VB .Net, but not directly with the Win32 API. It's helpful to assign proper tab order to controls, and to make sure that controls which don't need to be accessed aren't in the order. Also look at MSAA, which can be used to tell a screen reader what a control is and will improve interaction. The MSAA bit should already happen for standard controls, as far as I know.

Tab order and the relationship of parent and child controls make sense to me.

HellsEmbrace
Jul 14, 2004
I'm only on page 14, and trying to catch up little by little, so this might have been asked, but do you ever go on Wikipedia and just browse that in your spare time? At your rate of listening speed, it seems like you could devour web pages on all sorts of stuff really quickly, and just be a walking trivia book. Great thread, by the way.

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

HellsEmbrace posted:

I'm only on page 14, and trying to catch up little by little, so this might have been asked, but do you ever go on Wikipedia and just browse that in your spare time? At your rate of listening speed, it seems like you could devour web pages on all sorts of stuff really quickly, and just be a walking trivia book. Great thread, by the way.

I don't usually read random pages, but it's interesting how you can totally get off topic when you start reading about something specific. It's really easy to read lots of material, but it's harder to retain it all.

PhotogK
Jul 21, 2007

Cicada Ctyle Cex
My apologies if this has been asked as I've skipped from page 8 to here.

I'm a professional photographer and my line of work is very much my passion as well. After I've had a really good shoot or more often when I'm formulating my next one I like to talk about it with my friends.

A close friend of my best friend is blind and when we hang out together I try to avoid talking about photography becuase I suspect that it would be a very boring conversation to him. Am I correct in thinking this or can discussion of visual art interest blind people (assuming they enjoy art to begin with of course).

In a similar vein, do you ever feel that you blindness makes it more difficult to people for whome sight is a very big part of who they are. I assume your ability to have realtionship along the lines of friendship would be largely unaffected, but what about more intimate relationships. For example, do you think it would be harder for you to date a painter than a musician or a programer?

H-Tail
Dec 18, 2005

"I'm not a crybaby"
Are you able to play Minesweeper at all? Similarly for flash games or video games like FPS's. How can you, if at all, tell what's going on onscreen?

fredor
Apr 10, 2007
So mind boggling thinking about how a person goes about explaining to a blind person that they are indeed blind. How do you tell them that they can't "see" and how do you tell them what "seeing" even means? Blows me away.

Sorry if these have been asked, ( I only read to page 6 so far)

My questions are:

Do you speak any languages besides english?
If not, Do you want to learn any?

Have you ever flown anywhere? Good or Bad experience?

On a side note, In canada our bills have braille on it. Seems like such a simple solution for solving the problem of not knowing if you received the correct change.

Boner Slam
May 9, 2005
I know this has probably been touched upon by you before so feel free to ignore this question if it gets boring.

Have you been able to get a concept of vision by looking at the scientific explanations of how other humans can see?
Can you forms some sort of world in you head, with the objects around you situated "in space" (like 1 meter away from you, two meter), or is it more causal like an object beeing a certain action away?
You said at one point you percieved light and darkness? Couldn't this be used to explain "vision" to you? If you can have a concept of space, then surely you can imagine objects emitting light (in a scientific sense) as rays. And then you could imagine those rays touching your eyes and you feeling it. And since we can feel all objects this way as long as they are in a straight line with our eye, we see our environment and put the motion of our eyes (or better: our bodys in this space) in perspective of the angle of the rays recieved and can therefore predict where an object is situated.

Has there been a time in you tried to get an understanding how "seeing" feels, or is it no longer important for you (I mean why should it, really). It's just hard to me to wrap my head around.

Edit: I just mean when you could see light at one point, and maybe absence of light, then don't you think it could be possible to explain vision and color to you? I'd say if you ever saw anything really, if it just be light, then you at least know how this sensation differentiates from sound, taste or feel. And if you know that, I'm sure someone could write an explanation using light and darkness, since seeing is basically just different "sorts of light" coming from objects.

Boner Slam fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Sep 8, 2007

purity control
Jan 2, 2005

i look better in real life. seriously.

HellsEmbrace posted:

I'm only on page 14, and trying to catch up little by little, so this might have been asked, but do you ever go on Wikipedia and just browse that in your spare time? At your rate of listening speed, it seems like you could devour web pages on all sorts of stuff really quickly, and just be a walking trivia book. Great thread, by the way.

This made me wonder.. Caffeinated, you "read" through your ears. Does that mean you can have a tendency to remember a lot better just by listening to people? Do you have a great memory for conversations and what people have said, because how you commit to memory is by listening?

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

PhotogK posted:

I'm a professional photographer and my line of work is very much my passion as well. After I've had a really good shoot or more often when I'm formulating my next one I like to talk about it with my friends.

A close friend of my best friend is blind and when we hang out together I try to avoid talking about photography becuase I suspect that it would be a very boring conversation to him. Am I correct in thinking this or can discussion of visual art interest blind people (assuming they enjoy art to begin with of course).
Personally I'd be pretty interested in the technical asspects of photography. I'm sure it depends on the individual.

PhotogK posted:

In a similar vein, do you ever feel that you blindness makes it more difficult to people for whome sight is a very big part of who they are. I assume your ability to have realtionship along the lines of friendship would be largely unaffected, but what about more intimate relationships. For example, do you think it would be harder for you to date a painter than a musician or a programer?
It depends on how much the person uses sight to communicate. If the painter could only show paintings, and couldn't describe them or communicate feelings/thoughts about them in words or via some other nonvisual method, we'd probably have problems. I look for people with communications skills. Almost everyone I've ever come across is able to communicate things in some way that I can interpret so I don't think it would be a big problem.

H-Tail posted:

Are you able to play Minesweeper at all? Similarly for flash games or video games like FPS's. How can you, if at all, tell what's going on onscreen?
I can't play Flash-based games or FPSs. This has everything to do with the inaccessibility of the interface. If one could be designed that I could use and that would convey the same information, I'd play. As for Minesweeper, I think that someone either made a version with a different interface or made a screen-reader configuration which made the original game easier to play. I don't remember any specifics. I'd be more interested in multiplayer games with some social component.

fredor posted:

So mind boggling thinking about how a person goes about explaining to a blind person that they are indeed blind. How do you tell them that they can't "see" and how do you tell them what "seeing" even means? Blows me away.
It's probably something along the lines of "I can tell that a certain object is at a place that I can't actually touch."

fredor posted:

Do you speak any languages besides english?
If not, Do you want to learn any?
I had a few semesters of Spanish in college, but I've forgotten all of it by now. Foreign languages aren't something that I pick up naturally.

fredor posted:

Have you ever flown anywhere? Good or Bad experience?
Yes. Flying is kind of fun. I haven't had any bad experiences other than the occasional piece of missing luggage that the airlines find in a day or so.

fredor posted:

On a side note, In canada our bills have braille on it. Seems like such a simple solution for solving the problem of not knowing if you received the correct change.
Doesn't it though?

Boner Slam posted:

Have you been able to get a concept of vision by looking at the scientific explanations of how other humans can see?
I can get a concept. I have no way of determining how accurate it is though.

Boner Slam posted:

Can you forms some sort of world in you head, with the objects around you situated "in space" (like 1 meter away from you, two meter), or is it more causal like an object beeing a certain action away?
I use this to picture environments that I'm in, for example a network of streets with different buildings of interest. I can picture me standing on a certain corner of an intersection and facing in a certain direction, and where the other streets and buildings are in relation to me.

Boner Slam posted:

You said at one point you percieved light and darkness? Couldn't this be used to explain "vision" to you? If you can have a concept of space, then surely you can imagine objects emitting light (in a scientific sense) as rays. And then you could imagine those rays touching your eyes and you feeling it. And since we can feel all objects this way as long as they are in a straight line with our eye, we see our environment and put the motion of our eyes (or better: our bodys in this space) in perspective of the angle of the rays recieved and can therefore predict where an object is situated.
I can imagine all of these things. It's probably similar to you imagining telepathy--it might make sense from a scientific standpoint (if you're reading the right book) but imagining it and experiencing it are two different things. I'm not trying to belittle your explanation at all.

Boner Slam posted:

Has there been a time in you tried to get an understanding how "seeing" feels, or is it no longer important for you (I mean why should it, really). It's just hard to me to wrap my head around.
This isn't something that I'm likely to ever really know, so while it's interesting to talk about on occasion, I don't obsess over it.

purity control posted:

This made me wonder.. Caffeinated, you "read" through your ears. Does that mean you can have a tendency to remember a lot better just by listening to people? Do you have a great memory for conversations and what people have said, because how you commit to memory is by listening?
I can usually remember if I've discussed something with someone, but I don't know if this is attributable to the fact that I listen to things. I mostly think that you gain information by seeing, I gain it by listening, and after that initial point we process it in the same way. When I'm reading through listening I'm generally not paying any attention to the voice (especially if it's synthesized). I'm more focused on absorbing the information. When I'm talking to someone I'm paying a lot more attention to their voice, tone, inflections, pauses, etc. along with what they're actually saying.

ArcaneMan
Nov 2, 2004
uh oh
I read somewhere that motion sickness is due to differences between the signals coming from the sense of balance from the inner ear and the sense of sight. Does that mean that blind people don't get motion sick or seasick?

Apologies if this has been asked before.

nowhere fast
Nov 27, 2005

aww, shoot... that was my last quarter :o(
I just wanted to say what everyone else has said a billion times already. This thread is awesome, voted 5, I read the whole thing and lost track of time, etc. Really one of the most interesting threads I've ever read, and definitely the most interesting in A/T (where threads like "Ask me about being a furry!" and "How do I have sex with girls?" make up the bulk).


I'd really like to know what your take on astronomy is. Do you know much about it, and have people tried to explain it to you so you could better understand? For those of us who can see, it's still a really hard concept to grasp and very difficult to imagine how big the universe really is. You mentioned having problems with size and how big/small things really are, which made me wonder about this. Do you know how big the earth is? How do you try to determine these things? What is your basis for comparison?

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

ArcaneMan posted:

I read somewhere that motion sickness is due to differences between the signals coming from the sense of balance from the inner ear and the sense of sight. Does that mean that blind people don't get motion sick or seasick?
I don't know if I've experienced motion sickness per se, but here's my theory. I can anticipate turns by shifts in speed and other things that I'm not consciously aware of. Sometimes a driver will take sharp turns without any warning, and with enough of that I'll feel a bit odd. Most people slow down some before terns, or they make smooth sort of gliding turns, so this isn't an issue.

nowhere fast posted:

I just wanted to say what everyone else has said a billion times already. This thread is awesome, voted 5, I read the whole thing and lost track of time, etc. Really one of the most interesting threads I've ever read, and definitely the most interesting in A/T (where threads like "Ask me about being a furry!" and "How do I have sex with girls?" make up the bulk).
I'm glad that you've enjoyed the thread, and totally agree with you about a/t. I have faith in this forum and I'm sure that this is only temporary.

nowhere fast posted:

I'd really like to know what your take on astronomy is. Do you know much about it, and have people tried to explain it to you so you could better understand? For those of us who can see, it's still a really hard concept to grasp and very difficult to imagine how big the universe really is. You mentioned having problems with size and how big/small things really are, which made me wonder about this. Do you know how big the earth is? How do you try to determine these things? What is your basis for comparison?
I usually try to compare things with other objects that I've either examined or where I have a better concept of size. This method breaks down with things that are planet-sized, other than being able to compare something like Earth and Jupiter in terms of size. I can understand distances conceptually but it's difficult to grasp what that means--I think that's probably true for everyone though. Astronomy is something that I find interesting and not something that I've spent any significant time studying.

Typhoon Jim
Sep 20, 2004

space moo
After reading this thread, I tried to think of games in terms of "how can I play this without being able to see anything". Most of the time, improvements that would help a blind person would seem to make the game easier to control in general. For instance, in EVE Online, if every action you could take had a hotkey for it, you could pick things to shoot at completely using the keyboard, and if you were alerted when people got within certain ranges of you, it would be at once almost completely playable for blind people, and also take care of a lot of things that sighted players of the game complain about constantly.

I can't help but think that if more attention was paid to how blind users could use games, the games themselves would be better for sighted people, too.

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

perianwyr posted:

I can't help but think that if more attention was paid to how blind users could use games, the games themselves would be better for sighted people, too.
I completely agree, and wish that more game creaters thought likewise.

Zyme
Aug 15, 2000

Wake_N_Bake posted:

Yes, it is constant. I would imagine that if you looked at a graph of distance versus size, it would be a straight linear progression.

It wouldn't be linear. The size of an object decreases with an inverse square proportionality, just like the force of gravity and such.

Great thread. I think about a world where everybody else has an extra sense that I don't, like being able to detect infrared radiation or something. I don't really think it would bother me that much.

Rainman
Sep 13, 2004

I don't really have anything to ask, but I'd just like to mention that you've really expanded what I thought a blind person could do. I've actually thought about how my life would be different if I couldn't see and I basically wrote off computer related work completely. Being a Computer Engineer (more software oriented) this would completely change my life. However, after reading this reading I now know that I could do essentially the same thing that I plan on doing. It's a bit comforting to know that although I don't think blindness is in my future.

Incubus
Sep 12, 2007
Wow, I just spent an hour and a half reading all the replies and answers. I am also amazed at how quickly you listen to the speech- in your demonstration the 'faster' mode sounded like 'blurble blurble blurble ok thats it if you have any questions...' Also for perspective I actually turned off all the lights as well as the monitor that way I could focus on listening. It actually reminded me of when I used to listen to a late-night radio show while lying in bed in the dark. Somehow not having the distraction of seeing things can often make it sound more funny.

Personally from what you have said I don't think your blindness is a handicap at all. For all the advantages of sight there are plenty of disadvantages; glare and darkness being good examples. I have two questions for you-

Have you ever been in a situation where you had an advantage over someone because of your condition? As odd it sounds, I could imagine that you would be really good at tag or dodgeball if it were in total darkness. Did you every play games with your friends (or girlfriends) in the dark? Personally if I had a blind friend I'd be a little paranoid of them sneaking up on me in the dark to startle me as a prank.

Lots of questions have been asked about your perception of women, but I have one as well. You said a part of your interests in a partner is how other people look. There is a stigma in the U.S. against larger women, but my own experiences with my girlfriend (who is on the heavier side) is that one of the biggest turnons I have is how her body feels. I imagine this would be even more so with a blind person. What I'm puzzled about is that for me, I have had insecurities with my girlfriend about how other people might think they look, and I would think that not being able to see would make this much less of a problem.

The show Nip/Tuck kind of dealt with this. A blind woman gets prosthetic eyes installed, and one of the surgeons actually follows her on her first date to 'check up on her'. He is a little surprised when it turns out she is meeting a blind man. However things take a sad twist when the blind man goes to the bar and asks the surgeon if the woman that was sitting with him looked hot. Disgusted at the question, the surgeon lies and says she's ugly. Disappointed, the man actually leaves without telling the blind woman and she gets stood up.

...The surgeon later has sex with the blind woman but that's besides the point. I don't know if the story was meant to convey that the blind can be just as shallow as sighted people, or the feedback of sighted people is really necessary for blind people to feel confident in a relationship. Like when I mentioned about the bad things about being able to see, in this case I would think being blind means you do not carry a bias in that regard, and you can pay a lot more attention to a person's personality.

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

Rainman posted:

I don't really have anything to ask, but I'd just like to mention that you've really expanded what I thought a blind person could do. I've actually thought about how my life would be different if I couldn't see and I basically wrote off computer related work completely. Being a Computer Engineer (more software oriented) this would completely change my life. However, after reading this reading I now know that I could do essentially the same thing that I plan on doing. It's a bit comforting to know that although I don't think blindness is in my future.
Thanks. That's one of the things that I hoped to pass along.

Incubus posted:

Wow, I just spent an hour and a half reading all the replies and answers. I am also amazed at how quickly you listen to the speech- in your demonstration the 'faster' mode sounded like 'blurble blurble blurble ok thats it if you have any questions...' Also for perspective I actually turned off all the lights as well as the monitor that way I could focus on listening. It actually reminded me of when I used to listen to a late-night radio show while lying in bed in the dark. Somehow not having the distraction of seeing things can often make it sound more funny.
The speed also comes with years of practice and occasional upward adjustment. When I started listening to such things it was at a speed only slightly faster than the first sample.

Incubus posted:

Personally from what you have said I don't think your blindness is a handicap at all. For all the advantages of sight there are plenty of disadvantages; glare and darkness being good examples. I have two questions for you-
I see it as more of an inconvenience than anything else--sort of a minor role in a larger play.

Incubus posted:

Have you ever been in a situation where you had an advantage over someone because of your condition? As odd it sounds, I could imagine that you would be really good at tag or dodgeball if it were in total darkness. Did you every play games with your friends (or girlfriends) in the dark? Personally if I had a blind friend I'd be a little paranoid of them sneaking up on me in the dark to startle me as a prank.
Time for stories that I haven't thought of in years. One time some friends and I were in a large carpeted basically empty room that was almost totally quiet. The idea was that one person would try to sneak away as quietly as possible and I'd try to follow them. The carpeting muffled any footsteps, giving the person some sort of advantage, but it was still pretty easy. I could pick up on the rustling of clothes, breathing, that sort of thing. It was actually pretty funny.

Another time I was in a relationship and my girlfriend was also blind. We both lived in the same dorm, and she liked to listen to music at a pretty high volume and leave her door unlocked. I wanted to see if I could pull this off, so I quietly walked up to her door...slowly turned the knob to open it quietly...walked through the door and very quietly shut it behind me, slowly turning the knob back and releasing it after I was finished. I stood there, back to the door, listening until I could tell where she was. (This took a minute due to the loud music playing). I knew where most things in the room were since I spent a good deal of my time there anyway, so I crept across the floor until I was standing just to her right. I stood a couple feet away so she wouldn't detect a large change in nearby sound, leaned down so I was on the same level, and said hi. It totally scared the poo poo out of her and I'm probably lucky that she didn't attack me or something. I don't know that it really qualifies as a prank, but
everyone loves stories.

Incubus posted:

Lots of questions have been asked about your perception of women, but I have one as well. You said a part of your interests in a partner is how other people look. There is a stigma in the U.S. against larger women, but my own experiences with my girlfriend (who is on the heavier side) is that one of the biggest turnons I have is how her body feels. I imagine this would be even more so with a blind person. What I'm puzzled about is that for me, I have had insecurities with my girlfriend about how other people might think they look, and I would think that not being able to see would make this much less of a problem.
I think that society tends to judge people by who they're with, taking into consideration all sorts of factors (not just visual). I'm mostly interested in looks because I want to have the same information that anyone else would have. Presumably my (potential?) girlfriend is able to see what I look like and will use that knowledge in decision making, and I'd like to be able to do the same thing. That said I'm a lot more interested in my own judgement of people than I am in what random members of society (who I'll probably never come in significant contact with) may think. I don't feel less confident in my own abilities to determine who I'm interested in because I don't have this information, but it's a "nice to have" thing. I've had my own successes and failures with and without it.

Incubus posted:

The show Nip/Tuck kind of dealt with this. A blind woman gets prosthetic eyes installed, and one of the surgeons actually follows her on her first date to 'check up on her'. He is a little surprised when it turns out she is meeting a blind man. However things take a sad twist when the blind man goes to the bar and asks the surgeon if the woman that was sitting with him looked hot. Disgusted at the question, the surgeon lies and says she's ugly. Disappointed, the man actually leaves without telling the blind woman and she gets stood up.
First, from what I've seen, the number of couples where both members are blind is pretty high. Some people are only interested in dating others who are also blind "just because",, and others think that only someone who is also blind can really understand them. I personally think that some number of people will see blindness and dismiss me simply because of that (their loss) and that some other number are a bit more open-minded. I've dated sighted and blind women, and in my experience blindness plays an ultimately minor part in the relationship. (That was a longer aside than I'd intended.)

I think the blind man was in error for a few reasons. First, some random guy at a bar that he doesn't even know is not the most credible source of information. The surgeon could have given false information to increase his own chances with the woman. Also (and more realistically) the surgeon's views on looks may not match the blind man's, and they may not match those of most members in the society. Later, after meeting the girl, the blind man should have ideally asked a few trustworthy people, or at least a few random people to sort of average out the results. In the mean time, meeting her costs nothing and adds more information that he could use in forming an opinion.

Incubus posted:

...The surgeon later has sex with the blind woman but that's besides the point. I don't know if the story was meant to convey that the blind can be just as shallow as sighted people, or the feedback of sighted people is really necessary for blind people to feel confident in a relationship. Like when I mentioned about the bad things about being able to see, in this case I would think being blind means you do not carry a bias in that regard, and you can pay a lot more attention to a person's personality.
I'm actually glad that they showed this, because it does a great job of illustrating that blind people are just like the rest of us--some nice, some mean, some very very shallow. I think that blindness means that I don't have quite the bias towards looks, but I'm probably more biased towards certain personalities. Some people have great looks and horrid personalities, and I'd discriminate against them just as some would discriminate against people with great personalities and horrid looks. Blindness doesn't free me from bias or judgement, it just shiftss things around a bit. In some instances this is probably a good thing, and in others probably not. It all depends on the person.

To the questioner and others, feel free to ask for clarification or offer an opinion. This is an interesting line of discussion.

meriruka
Apr 13, 2007

You seem like such a good person, you've been exceptionally patient and it appears that not much ruffles your composure. So, what really ticks you off? What are some of your personality traits that are less than stellar?

Incubus
Sep 12, 2007

meriruka posted:

You seem like such a good person, you've been exceptionally patient and it appears that not much ruffles your composure. So, what really ticks you off? What are some of your personality traits that are less than stellar?

I agree! Wow, I'm surprised you're not in a customer service related job, because you are really good at letting little things go.

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

meriruka posted:

You seem like such a good person, you've been exceptionally patient and it appears that not much ruffles your composure.
Thanks for the compliment. You have the advantage of only seeing me during moments where I want to answer questions.

meriruka posted:

So, what really ticks you off?
This changes from time to time, but at the moment it's what I like to term "people without a clue." Mostly this includes people who assume that something is impossible without actually examining the facts.

I try not to get bent out of shape by things because, honestly, most things really aren't worth it. On the other hand I attach a lot of significance and invest a lot of energy in the things and people that I do think matter.

meriruka posted:

What are some of your personality traits that are less than stellar?
This is getting a bit off topic for the thread, but in the interest of the 3 of you who are curious I'll list a few. I equate "less than stellar" with "needs improvement." I'm nervous when meeting new people until I've established some common ground. I can be overly critical in the quest for perfection, though I try to direct this mostly at myself. I find it easy to dismiss my accomplishments--writing the descriptions for my resume was difficult. I'm sure there are more. If you (or the other two yous) are interested, PM or contact using one of the methods in my profile. This is an interesting topic but no need to derail my own thread.

Oh, and CAPTCHAs. They tick me off too.

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

Incubus posted:

I agree! Wow, I'm surprised you're not in a customer service related job, because you are really good at letting little things go.

I think that has a lot to do with the quality of the questions. I respect the time and energy that goes into asking most of them.

I wouldn't have the patience for stupid customers. Such a job might work if I could communicate through email but I don't think I could keep the sarcasm out of my voice forever.

PhotogK
Jul 21, 2007

Cicada Ctyle Cex
Hi, thanks for answering my previous question. I've recently become addicted to audiobooks. I've been using audible.com, but things are a little pricy there. Is there somewhere you would recommend more? Are some sites better for some things? For example perhaps audible is best for new books, but maybe some-site.com has classics like Alice in Wonderland and Shakespeare for a better price? Thanks a lot.

Ketocon
Sep 21, 2007
Bukkake Cannon
This post is so informative. Its actually 3:15 am where I live and I've done nothing but read the different posts for 30 minutes now.

When you're using jaws and someone types in all CAPS LIKE IM DOING NOW. Does the program its self raise its voice or does it stay the same.

Have you ever met anyone that liked you just because you were blind? Like a person thats fetish is being with another blind person? (wonder if that is even out there.)

Thanks for your time!

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

PhotogK posted:

Hi, thanks for answering my previous question. I've recently become addicted to audiobooks. I've been using audible.com, but things are a little pricy there. Is there somewhere you would recommend more? Are some sites better for some things? For example perhaps audible is best for new books, but maybe some-site.com has classics like Alice in Wonderland and Shakespeare for a better price? Thanks a lot.

I've been reading Ebooks almost exclusively for several years, mostly because I can get through them a lot faster than listening to audio at regular speed. I haven't actually used Audible, though I've heard good things about their selection. I think a volunteer-run project exists with the goal of making audio recordings of classics--and here it is--LIBREVOX.ORG - free audio books, books on tape, podcast books. I don't know anything about the offerings or quality of this project either.

Caffeinated Sloth
Apr 12, 2007

Grimey Drawer

Ketocon posted:

When you're using jaws and someone types in all CAPS LIKE IM DOING NOW. Does the program its self raise its voice or does it stay the same.
By default it only changes pitch to identify individual letters if I'm reading something letter by letter. In your example it didn't change.

Ketocon posted:

Have you ever met anyone that liked you just because you were blind? Like a person thats fetish is being with another blind person? (wonder if that is even out there.)
The internet has taught me that everything is out there if you care to spend enough time looking. I haven't run across this particular fetish but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it exists. if the person only liked me because I was blind, we probably wouldn't have much in common. If we happened to like each other and my blindness was simply an added benefit of sorts, that would be fine with me. I'd see it as being the same as anyone finding some particularly desirable physical characteristic in their partner, and that happens all the time. :iiam:

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Troll Pussy
Jul 28, 2003
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This thread is awesome, Caffeinated Sloth. I'm going to goldmine it, but if you wish to continue this discussion, please feel free to make a new thread.