Matt

Mellow 80s Mixtape #1

RECORDER: Panasonic SG-HM09A
TAPE: Maxell UR90 Type I Normal Bias (90 min)

SIDE A:
True - Spandau Ballet
No One Is to Blame - Howard Jones
Wouldn't It Be Good - Nik Kershaw
Only The Lonely - The Motels
Running Up The Hill - Kate Bush
Missing You - John Waite
Drive - The Cars
Hold Me Now - Thompson Twins
Don't You (Forget About Me) - Simple Minds
Here Comes the Rain - Eurythmics

SIDE B:
More Than This - Roxy Music
Voices Carry - Til Tuesday
Bette Davis Eyes - Kim Carnes
Eyes Without a Face - Billy Idol
A Little Respect - Erasure
Shattered Dreams - Johnny Hates Jazz
If You Leave - Orchesteral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Edge of Seventeen - Stevie Nicks
Love Is A Battlefield - Pat Benatar
Valerie - Steve Winwood

#music #cassette #mixtape

Some weird phenomenon I encountered regarding visual imagery. It's difficult for me to form and retain mental imagery, however, I found that I get very vivid imagery briefly between blinks when viewing a bright light source. I wonder if I can build some sort of shutter system that can continuously drive this effect

#vision #aphantasia

With all the COBOL vibe-coding talk going on, I would like to spotlight LDPL (https://www.ldpl-lang.org/) which is a COBOL flavoured programming language that runs on modern UNIX-like systems (including MacOS)

#LDPL #programming #COBOL

Tip: You can setup an audio input channel as a monitor of any audio output using `pavucontrol` on Linux

In other words, if you have audio playing through speakers, you can record those samples with another app which can save them to file. Great for recording audio from VOIP calls and other streams locally

#audio #linux #PulseAudio

Does anyone know anything about the REM port on the side of tape recorders? Like what the spec is for interfacing with it? It's like lost technology on the Internet and I can't find any details on it

I'm assuming it's for remote control, but I'm getting mixed information about it

#electronics #CasetteTapes #retro

Finally, after what... 25 years? Probably longer since I've been playing this game since the demo version I downloaded off CNET. Never fully cleared the board even though I've probably sunk more time into it than any other game

#OpenRCT2 #rtc

We have high-framerate presentation working again on MacOS. This is done by having a lock hold the main thread until the OS signals that the desktop compositor is ready for a buffer. This has been an issue plaguing our users for the last few years and it might finally be fixed!

Attached is an oscilloscope trace of photodiode output showing that interleaved B/W frames are being displayed correctly

#MacOS #PsychoPy

Managed to get object detection in camera streams working today in #PsychoPy

Not super optimal to conform to user expectations, but I still got a few days left to figure things out

Check out this screenshot from the time I was working on VR support for #PsychoPy. I was in the middle of adding #GLTF2 support with PBR shaders, but the project stalled during the pandemic shutdowns

My first research project back in '08 was on the efficiency of cortical networks responsible for processing lighting direction when viewing Lambertian surfaces. It was surprising as an undergraduate how well we can perceive things with eyes that have such low quantum efficiency

#VisionScience #Psychology #Neurocience

Happy Gustav Fechner day psychophysics people!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Fechner

#psychophysics #psychology #fechner

I really like how the Egyptian and jungle scenery blend together here

#OpenRCT2

I didn't know that October 22 was "Fechner Day" (the founder of psychophysics)

If you don't know who Gustav Fechner is, you can read more about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Fechner

#VisionScience #psychophysics

I'm collaborating with someone to bring 3D and eventually VR support to PsychoPy Builder, so that's happening (woo!)

However, OBJ/GLTF2 mesh importers I worked on in grad school are really picky about file structure, requiring everything to be filtered through Blender prior to loading them in PsychoPy. Unfortunately, Blender changed a lot in the last 7 years and it looks like a completely different app now. Guess I should make a doughnut or something

#Blender3D #PsychoPy

Now Heavy Gear needs a comeback, too

There are probably some patriotism points for Canadians who get that revival going

#Battletech #HeavyGear

"New insights into how the visual system synchronizes visual information"

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-retina-synchronizes-visual.html

#vision #NeuroScience #VisionScience

Back into working on VR and stereoscopic rendering again for PsychoPy

#Psychology #PsychoPy

Movie playback and recording are both going to be excellent the next #PsychoPy release

#psychology #neuroscience

Astronauts are so respected in society we used to name stuff after them even well before they died

#MarcGarneau #space #canada

Worked on improving camera recordings in PsychoPy today. Some of the optimizations I made to movie player are now being applied to the camera interface with excellent results

#PsychoPy #psychology #psychophysics #neuroscience

Got buttery smooth video playback in #PsychoPy using the new FFMPEG (via ffpyplayer) backend

Working on improving movie playback support for PsychoPy today. The new FFMPEG interface is working well. It will be possible to use movies as stimuli for time sensitive experiments with perfectly synchronized audio. Seeking is also considerably more responsive than before

#PsychoPy #programming

I'm considering adding pen support to PsychoPy. There is a brush stimulus component but no pen support for things like pressure and tilt yet

I could even store the velocity values along the curve and do things like allow the user to draw on other stimuli to mark them up as responses

#PsychoPy #psychology

Got experiment-level configuration for eyetrackers working again in #PsychoPy

Excited to receive a new GazePoint GP3 eyetracker today for our testing lab!

This eyetracker is made in Canada, so if you're a researcher looking for one, consider supporting Canadian tech by checking out GazePoint or SR Research

#eyetracking #psychology #neuroscience #MadeInCanada

I finally got to work on a prototype for the audio/visual synchronization tester I designed a few years back

This device is used to measure the lag between the presentation of a visual stimulus on screen and a sound that's associated with it

This design will be open sourced and uses widely available components

#electronics #psychophysics #psychology #audio

What were they smoking when the made the Plutonia Experiment? I can beat Doom 1/2 on UV easily, but I get pulverized in PE on "Not too rough"

That monster closet with an Arch-vile and Baron on the third level is sadistic on such a low difficulty setting

#doom #gzdoom #plutonia

I bought loads of capacitors for work and I still don't have the right value for this project I'm starting :/

The project is a tone detector module for a device which measures audio/visual/input lag on computers used for psychophysics experiments. It also allows us to benchmark software techniques that correct for synchronization errors

#psychophysics #electronics #psychology #science

Charging the VR headsets for testing VR support in #PsychoPy. I promise I'll be reworking VR support this year, possibly supporting a wider range of stereoscopic displays, too

Joystick/gamepad changes are coming soon, including features for inputs that support motion trackers and vibration (like the Oculus Touch)

The OpenGL graphics interface library I created while doing work for Meta is proving very useful years later

Starting to replace portions of PsychoPy's rendering pipeline with those routines so the software can finally move away from OpenGL 2.1

#OpenGL #graphics #PsychoPy #psychology #neuroscience

Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas photobombing the LASCO coronagraph

#aurora #sun #solarmaximum #comet

Working on a new movie stimulus component in PsychoPy. This one features random access of video frames and precision audio/video synchronization

#psychology #PsychoPy

I had two side gigs in grad school: Converting figures from old journals to vector format, and making PCBs for various labs on campus. The last one is really odd for a psychologist now that I think of it, but electronics and machining are surprisingly useful skills to have as a psychophysics researcher

#psychophysics #electronics #psychology

Psychophysics moment: I was making kebab and there was leftover seasoning in the packet. I was considering to add the remainder, but my mind went: "Don't bother, adding it will likely be below the JND threshold for spiciness on an already elevated noise floor due to the green chilies."

#perception #psychophysics

Looks like people are interested in PsychXR again

#PsychoPy #VR

A friend recommended "Rich Girl - Gwen Stefani" for testing out speakers. The bass that song has could blow a cheap subwoofer

#songstotestspeakers

I came across some interesting pictures from grad school about 10 years ago

These are photos of a machine I (mostly) designed and built to study depth perception in physical environments

#psychology #perception #psychophysics #neuroscience

Open Science Tools Ltd. is hiring a Software Engineer (full-stack or backend)

For details see: https://www.careers-page.com/open-science-tools-ltd/job/L86Y3R8R

Please boost or share with anyone who might be interested

#hiring #jobsearch #jobalert #fedihire #GetFediHired #psychology #neuroscience #PsychoPy #Pavlovia #software #engineering #developer #programming

Spent the last few days getting plugins to work correctly again in #PsychoPy

Issues on Linux and MacOS seem to have been resolved in the release branch

Finally managed to release the SR Research Eyelink plugin for #PsychoPy

The science team put a lot of work in tracking the remaining issues down and fixing them

Considering making a set of fake eyes for testing the eyetrackers with. They'll need reflective 'retinas' for this to work

It might be worth the effort since it makes it considerably easier to debug these eyetracker libraries when I'm by myself in the hardware lab

#psychopy #eyetracking #neuroscience

"Colorimetry Data for Oculus HMDs"

Page presents the colour spaces of various Oculus HMDs I created a few years back

http://psychxr.org/topics/colorimetry.html

#vr #colorimetry #psychophysics #perception #color

I wonder if my undergrad thesis ever got a follow up. It was a study to characterize the noise floor of brain circuits responsible for the perception of lighting direction in 3D scenes (Dr. Murray's lab at the CVR in 2008)

Anyone out there familiar with recent developments in this topic?

#perception #psychophysics #neuroscience

The Centre for Vision Research (CVR) at York University is hosting their annual 'CVR-VISTA Vision Science Summer School' program for undergraduates considering graduate studies in vision science

I attended it back in 2009 and it was well worth the experience, more info here:

https://www.yorku.ca/cvr/summer-school/

#psychology #psychophysics #neuroscience #VisionScience #cvr #yorkuniversity

Working on getting eyetracker support via plugins ready for the next release of #PsychoPy

Something cool I came across in the hardware lab. A BBTK that was gifted to us here a while back. This one is a bit old and uses a parallel interface. I'm considering building an interface for its sensor modules that can hook up to the oscilloscope for timing assessments

The circuitry in the control unit is (almost) all 7400 series chips

#psychophysics #electronics

Found a screenshot from when I was working on Physically-Based Rendering (PBR) in PsychoPy a few years back. I created a GLTF2 loader for static meshes, too

#PsychoPy #Python #Graphics #OpenGL

Anyone know of any inexpensive color calibration hardware for lightsources/monitors? The CRS ColorCal MKII is discontinued and I need something like it

Bonus for no proprietary libraries or software

#VisionScience #monitors #color #colorimetry #psychophysics #electronics

Created a new video system for PsychoPy today. Looking like most issues around movie playback will be resolved for good this time

Lots of the improvements I made to real-time camera streaming are being applied here too

Also, utterly amazed how fast I put this one together

#PsychoPy #Python #programming

What even happened to Heavy Gear? I feel interest in it just evaporated sometime in the early 2000s

#ttrpg #HeavyGear #gaming