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Okay, ambidexterity is so last year. That was just a warm up to the mental decathlon this is quickly becoming. If you're just joining in, check out Part I and Part II to get all caught up.
Suffice it to say, I have now become a functionally ambidextrous person with respect to writing. But while teaching myself to write with my left hand, I became more and more enamored with the idea of training both hemispheres of the brain to do things far beyond "normal" by breaking down and reassembling the very way we naturally processes information.
When it comes down to it, what I really decided to do was to reinterpret the characters of the English alphabet as objects, not as symbols. Allow me to explain. If you see the letter "l" put on its side, it's a hyphen. If you see it at an angle, it becomes a backslash. The orientation of this symbol determines its meaning. But if you see a tree from the sky, or from the ground, from in front or from back, it will always be a tree. Written English demands that you read it with the proper orientation to give its 26 symbols the proper meaning. For whatever reason, I decided to train myself to learn to write independent of fixed orientation, and here are the results:
First came my right hand writing my control phrase. Then writing the same phrase upside down. Not to be outdone, I performed the same feat with my left hand. Then came the real brain twister. The circular writing test began with me starting in the center, and writing outwards in a spiral without altering my hand position in any way, and without rotating the paper. The test was to be able to write each letter correctly with a constantly shifting orientation (and while keeping the spiral reasonably circular). Give it a try for yourself, it's much more difficult than you'd imagine. The finale, of course, was in being able to reproduce the spiral with my non-dominant left hand... again without changing the relative angle of my wrist to the paper, and keeping the paper stationary (pun intended). Once you wrap your mind around what is essentially mental spatial rotation of the letters, you'll be surprised how easy it is to perform simple tasks like writing upside down. Next on the list of potential challenges, mirror cursive. That one could prove difficult...
Anyone who ever uses two DSLR's at the same time knows that figuring out a good way to stow that second camera is a challenge. I've scoured the internet, and found a few good ideas, from actual gun style holsters, hip bags, body sling mounts, and special straps. Some kind of cool, some ridiculously goofy. After a bit of thinking though, I realized that I could probably just as easily buy a few parts and pave my own way, DIY style.
My epiphany came when i realized that there already existed the perfect connecting mechanism for camera bodies... tripod base plates. So after a little research, I was lead to the Manfrotto 323 RC2 Rapid Connect Adapter with 200PL-14 Quick Release Plate. This crazy invention has it all, a quick locking mechanism so that you can snap the camera onto the tripod quickly, and a safety latch to keep you from accidentally unhooking your camera.
The main problem to overcome, was how to adapt this to a vertically oriented belt attachment. My particular solution to this was pretty simple. I bought an old leather belt from the Goodwill Store down the street, cut it up and put a screw through the belt and into the base. There's already a screw hole there that you're supposed to use when attaching to a tripod, so the only real issue was finding a short screw that fit the threads. All done, I was left with my new holster with a leather loop for my belt.
Provided that the leather doesn't rip (it's pretty thick), there's very little chance of this thing falling apart. And it's not like the camera's going to rotate around the mount enough times to unscrew itself.
And some more pictures of my new holster in action.
Notice the latch next to my thumb. It's really easy to reach, and perfect for keeping me from dropping/breaking the camera.
In the end, this project was an exercise in compromise. The only way to fully protect a camera is to put in in a case, but cases are bulky. The setup allows a little bit more movement than I'd have liked, but again, anything that would stabilize the camera to my hip would also require a more elaborate rigid framework. All in all, this setup hit enough pros to outweigh the cons.
[UPDATED 09.23.09] So... after a bit of thought, I figured I didn't want to hang (potentially) $5000 worth of gear off this contraption without a bit more reinforcement. I just completed version 2.0 of the Camera Holster. The main addition: a steel plate on the inside. Seeing as it is now physically impossible for the screw head to rip out of the holes in the leather... the only way for everything to fall apart is if both leather straps rip through sideways. I consider the odds of that happening slim, and even if it does, I'll be able to see the rips in progress before things go south... literally. Here's the updated, sleeker, model:
If you were born in the 80's, chances are good that you watched The Neverending Story. And you probably loved it. Now... this may be a case of telling someone telling you not to look down, only to have you look down as a direct result of them telling you... but I'm telling you now, if you have good memories of watching the film as a child, do yourself a favor and never watch it again as an adult.
I made that mistake myself during my time as an undergrad. Everyone knows that one of the greatest perks of dorm life is the easy access to countless movies in neighboring collections. I was making one of my frequent weekend rounds for something to watch when I stumbled upon this "gem" from the good old days. I think my exact response upon finding a copy was "Holy crap! I loved that movie! May I borrow this?"
92 minutes later, I wished I had a time machine... if only to have had the opportunity to go back in time to punch past-me in the face. Hindsight is cruel that way. After two more extremely painful viewings (years later, I might add... you have to give a guy time to recover), I have condensed the bad, so that you don't have to sit through it yourself. (Call it a community service)
Problem 1: Pacing. Or should I say... paaaaacccciiiiiing. Can you say slow? I bet you can't say it as slowly as this movie can. This isn't even Blade Runner slow. This is like 2001: A Space Odyssey slow... or maybe Star Trek: The Motion Picture slow. People talk slow, people move slow, nothing happens quickly. Yes, it was a less rushed era. But it doesn't hold up in today's attention deficit society. Am I still on Problem 1? I've already lost interest.
Problem 2: Acting. In that, it has none. Watching children act on screen is usually painful enough. But there are two of them in this film (three if you count the princess). Both horrifically bad. Noah Hathaway (playing Atreyu) is at least passably painful in his role, but Barret Oliver as Bastian... this guy gives Jake Lloyd a run for his money... and yes, that's a dis. To both of them.
The issue is that these kids have nothing to play against, and, as you'd expect, they overact their pants off. Atreyu loses his horse Artax in the Swamps of Sadness. An emotionally heavy scene, yes. But it happens about half a second after you're introduced to these characters. The raw emotion comes off as really awkward. Bastian is even worse off. 90% of his scenes are reaction shots to events that aren't happening anywhere near him... which is what happens when you steal a book, ditch class, and hide away in a school attic by yourself. His ridiculously overwrought exclamations to no one in particular are nothing short of face-palm inducing. And I have the red palm on my forehead to prove it.
Problem 3: Extremely jarring editing, super-cheese 80's music, and head-scratchingly bad effects. Let's get the editing out of the way first. The film cuts (often) in the middle of crescendos to a completely new scene. Let me repeat that. The music cuts in the middle with the shot! That's not bad editing, that's a mistake. Here's what it feels like to watch this stuff: Imagine you're in the shower, innocently shampooing your hair, whistling an old Beatles song... and a freaking catapult launches you stark naked out your bathroom window and inexplicably into a fiery volcano. Yeah. That's what these cuts are like. As for the synth-heavy music, I suppose you'll have to forgive that... the 80's definitely left its mark on this film. And that's not a compliment.
The effects are all over the board. Some of the practical effects work great, but the rear screen projection and optical effects are pretty sloppy. In some cases, painted backdrops abruptly end within frame, creating distinct lines between locations and props. Canvas set extensions have wrinkles and stretch marks in them for crying out loud. Shame on you Wolfgang Peterson. You've done so much better.
Problem 4: Creepy factor. And this film's got it in spades. What's with the naked statues? Isn't this a children's movie? If anything, it would have gone over better with female sphynx statues sans nipples. Ah the good old days of inconsistent censoring.
But the real gold mine is Falkor, the luck dragon. Or, as I'd call him, Pedophile-dog-creepy-dragon-thingy. Seriously. Falkor is like a dirty old man with a dog's head and pink sequined pimp feux furs. He saves Atreyu in an amazing bit of deus ex machina, after which we see Atreyu waking up from a coma snuggled up next to him (which begs the question of how long this coma cuddle went on for, and begs us not to ask the question of why there was cuddling in the first place). Falkor tells Atreyu that he (verbatim) "loves children" (really), and winks at him multiple times (really). He then asks Atreyu to scratch him behind the ears, like you would a dog, and the look of intense, tongue waggling satisfaction on his face... well, let's just say that I cringed so hard I thought my face would cave in. Falkor's Art Director was probably aiming for cute and endearing. I think he ended up with alarmingly sleazy.
Honestly, I'm sure it was made with good intentions. I'll give it the benefit of a doubt. I'm sure Falkor was written with nothing but innocence. But seriously... that freaking Dragon's a pervert. As my friend Dan (a full grown adult, I might add) said while watching a few of Falkor's scenes: "Whaaaah! I'm gonna have nightmares!" Me too Dan. Me too.
As for a general blanket statement on the whole film, I'll admit, this was probably groundbreaking stuff back in the day. And you can't fault it for trying. If anything, it's vivid. Like... if hallucinogenic mushrooms could take LSD, vivid. And as such, it stuck in the collective psyche's of a generation of impressionable children, myself included. But to watch it again as an adult, you'll find yourself smiling... but for all the wrong reasons. You have to laugh at it, because it's the only way to stop yourself from jamming something sharp in your eye. If you have good memories of watching it, do yourself a favor and let those memories rest in peace. The Neverending Story demands to be blissfully forgotten. And if remembered... to be remembered fondly only in hazy recollections and pop culture throwback humor.
Well, it's been seven months since I set out to teach myself to be ambidextrous. Check out the beginning of my experiment in Part I. During my months of mind and body hacking, I've endeavored to write with my left hand as much as I can remember to. Most of it ended up being during work while waiting for particularly large Photoshop Documents to save (30 minutes for a 4 gig file. Ouch).
But all my hard work has paid off. I can now write comfortably with my non-dominant hand, and legibly as well! At my current level of muscle memory, I can write with my left hand just as quickly with my right with only moderate legibility issues. But if I slow down to about 75% of my right hand's speed, I can make my left handwriting nearly indistinguishable from that of my right. Behold the fruits of my labor:
What you're looking at is one line written by my dominant right hand, and the following four written with my left. It may not look like much improvement compared with that of my first post, but there is a marked increase in the speed with which I can write. As an added bonus, I discovered that I can write with both hands at the same time... which gets trippy when your hands move together most of the time, but cross t's and f's in opposite directions. My brain asplode!
