14 Comments on “My Jazz Hands, Let Me Show You Them”

1. My kid has been a Spore junkie since I downloaded this. I think I got make one as opposed to her making fifteen. I am really looking forward to the game.

2. Yeah, EA and Maxis are doing an excellent job priming interest in Spore.

3. How does she get it so skinny?

4. “In the kingdom of the blind …”

   Ramona has no depth perception, poor thing.

   Unless her species has a way focus/refocus her eye on objects ‘very quickly’?

5. Ramona’s strength : weight ratio is probably awesome for climbing and gymnastics.

6. I liked the Creature Creator a hell of a lot better when the offspring only jammed up ONE computer with it instead of hogging every machine in the house so they can all play at the same time.

   I guess “Save your creature and quit – Mama wants to play Age of Conan now is not going to get me the Mother of the Year award, huh.

7. Brian Dunbar @ #4: It could happen! The mantis shrimp has trinocular vision with each eye (and, in general, a mantis shrimp missing an eye can see better than most things on Earth).

   Or, you know, Ramona bangs into doorframes a lot. But I’m sure she does it with grace and style.

8. Scoliosis is lateral curvature of the spine and would be apparent in a fore-and-aft shot, so it’s not present. There could be a great deal of kyphosis or lordosis, though.

9. RAWR!

   (All right, that’s it…that’s all I could say between the shrieks of laughter.)

10. It could happen!

    I’m sure it could – depth perception is so darn handy, it’s gotta be a ‘must have’ for successful species.

    Or else you’ll get eaten up by lions who DO have depth perception and you’ll never evolve to build doors.

    The mantis shrimp has trinocular vision with each eye

    I just learned something. So .. while I’ve been productive and made breakfast, lunch and dinner for two boys and sort of cleaned the house AND spun myself up on CSS .. I’ve learned something about mantis shrimp.

    Including that there is such a thing as a mantis shrimp. Today has truly been good – thanks!

11. Brian Dunbar–be glad you learned it the easy way.
    Learning about mantis shrimp the hard way could result in the loss of a finger.
    Or other small appendages.
    You know, depending on how much you like shrimp.

    I’m not kidding. Google it. They’re nasty.

12. I am embarrassed to admit that I can’t play this yet. My video card does not include a “pixel shader”, so the program loads, but won’t play. Oh well, I guess it’s back to H3 for me. Sigh.

13. I’m not kidding. Google it. They’re nasty.

    I’ve never seen anyone spell ‘awesome’ that way.

14. Brian Dunbar @4,10:
    Depth perception need not involve having multiple eyes; another approach is to move the one eyeball you have and compare successive images over time. Objects which are relatively close will appear to have largely-varying relative bearings, while distant objects only shift slightly in relation to “the background.”

    First read this in a book by Carver Mead¹, who in turn got it from behavorial biologists. Turns out that in humans, the ocular baseline — call it 60-80mm — is only sufficient to resolve distances out to about 8-9 meters using purely stereoöptic (static) methods. Dynamic depth resolution kicks in before then and works to much greater distances, while intuitive depth assessment operates sporadically over the near to middle range.

    In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed creature will spend a lot of time bobbing and weaving to maintain its dynamic depth perception … and also to protect its single eye from all the bastards who want to gouge it out!

    ____
    [1] Introduction to Neural Networks and Analog VLSI, IIRC. Carver used this principle to design the SeeHear chip, which interprets a moving scene and generates audio cues to assist the unsighted in placing (and avoiding) objects.