Three Dimensional Fun

The picture is of an open floor plan house that I created on Trimble© Sketch-Up.  I have the free version which Google© popularized.  You can find more of what I've been playing with at the 3-D Warehouse© .  My collection is called "do as you will."

Since my motor vehicle accident and resultant traumatic brain injury, I have all kinds of perception and ocular motor
problems.  These difficulties are not a result of any deficiency in my visual acuity.  [Visual Acuity is measured by the Snellen Eye Chart, how clearly one can see and results in a measurement of a/b e.g. 20/20, 20/30...  My visual acuity is very good.  I don't need glasses to drive].  But my eyes don't play nicely together or with my brain.  Consequently, I live with double vision and photophobia.  Almost nine years after my brain damage, I continue to work at cognitive exercises and puzzles daily.  One of the things I've started to play with is the free version of Trimble© Sketch-Up. 

Since around the middle of August, I have been creating three dimensional models of shapes, houses, other buildings, furniture (mainly coffee tables), and a few other random things almost daily.  And I've gotten better at it.  There are free videos available but I've found that I am better off experimenting with the toolbar myself and only resorting to watching part of a video if I get stuck on something that I am attempting.  I like making the models and found it a natural progression from making e-stationary and textures.  [Note: the textures on my house above are all included with the free version of Sketch-Up.  So they aren't textures that I've created].

I've found creating a ball to be more difficult than making any of the models in this sample of things I've done.  And creating 3D shapes (-- other than the rectangle-- rendering a successful model of a four sided di took me several hours) was harder for me to learn than how to chauffer edges.  (The surface of this kitchen table is chauffered, using a tool called "Follow Me).

 

 

 

 

I like challenging myself to learn new things, even stuff that forces my eyes and brain to work together.  And forcing myself to use my damaged brain to think in new or unfamiliar ways is a definite win.

sapphoq on healing t.b.i.

Milestone

I was in recovery from my addictions for many years before the car accident that rendered my brain brilliant but a bit sideways.  It is once again September and thus time for the obligatory post.  I am now thirty two years out from my addiction to drugs including but not limited to the drug alcohol.  I am slightly less than one third of that time away from the day I got my t.b.i.  I have maintained my weight loss for about a year and a half.

I made the sign.  I did not create the font.  The font came in my legal copy of a digital editing program.  I don't care if you download this tag or what you do with it.  Just don't hotlink.  Con respecto, muchas gracias.  sapphoq healing tbi

So yeah.  Happy Birthday to me!

Working on my Visual Perception Problems

My traumatic brain injury left me with some rather outstanding perception problems.  Because I have diagnosed permanent double vision in one eye, I have been treated to the sight of folks with two heads, four arms, and two torsos which extend into one set of hips and two legs casually jogging in my neighborhood.  Because I have been diagnosed with ocular-motor dysfunction and a visual accommodation disorder, objects and people appear as having ghost lines around them, especially when fatigued and my brain is too tired to block those ghost lines.  (And let's not forget the photophobia which is responsible for me limiting my driving at night to "only local and only when not tired."  And my fatigue from dealing with all of this which led me recently to switch to an e-reader which is set to make reading easier for me).  


I know that first paragraph sounds like I am whining.  But really, I am not whining.  I want to tell you about Google Sketch-Up®.  Sketch-Up® is a three-d modeling program that is available at http://sketchup.google.com/download/ as freeware.  [If someone is a professional and wants more bells and whistles, they can buy a professional version from Trimble].  I like three dimensional stuffs and I also like animation.  I've been endeavoring for some time to use DAS®, Bryce®, Blender®, and Hexagon II® and I've had no success to speak of.  [Those four programs were all available as free legal downloads a couple of months ago from their company's website.  I believe the special offer may have ended.  At any rate, I got in on it the very last day].  Those programs were too hard for me to learn at the present time.  One night I happened upon Sketch-Up® and promptly downloaded the free version.  

In short order, I found that I was able to produce rectangles, circles and 3d text.  [If you want to see a few of the things I've made, google "warehouse lovemakesafamily" to find some examples that I've uploaded to Google Warehouse®].  After watching a few free tutorial videos,  I went on to make several skyboxes, some other shapes, and a box with a chaffeured lid.  As I continue to work with my digital camera and computer art, building in Second Life®, and Google Sketch-Up® I've noted some improvement in the way that my eyes work together when I practice  my vision therapy exercises.  This improvement I must still label as "subjective" since it has yet to be confirmed by my t.b.i. eye doc. 

Sorry to the dedicated optimists who want me to say that my vision problems are totally abated, cured, or not permanent after all.  It simply ain't so.  I have to deal with my situation as it is and not engage in dreams of being "almost or exactly 100%" of who I was before my accident.  I am very fortunate to be alive.  I would have been better off-- certainly financially and in some other ways as well-- had the motor vehicle accident not happened.  But things are what they are.  I continue to deal with Briella [my still brilliant brain, just a bit sideways] on a daily basis.  When I think back to how far I've come from the early days of sleeping twenty-two hours every twenty-four, relearning on the computer how to write a complete and organized sentence, playing Tetris® because other T.B.I.ers told me it would "help" with my eye-hand coordination, and myriad discussions about the names of the seven dwarves, I smile broadly and say to myself, "Yup I done good.  Now I gotta keep striving."

sapphoq healing t.b.i.