Halloween: A Day With Black Sclera Contacts
October 31, 2007 | 1 Comment
Contents:
Intro
Two years ago I rocked the house with a sweet Scooby Doo costume. Last year I was a Ninja (but aren’t I always?). This year was a bit different…a bit more traditional/spooky/subtle. Black Sclera contacts.
For those of you that don’t know and are slightly curious, Sclera Contacts are contacts that cover…well…the sclera:
My Experience
Overall, I have been very happy with my contacts once I learned how to put them in. The look is just creepy and causes double-takes of passerby. At the Halloween party that I attended and throughout the day at work while the contacts were in place, I got just the right amount of surprise, disgust, averted eyes, and laughs to make it all worth while.
Thank god that I have a MacBook Pro with a webcam on it because the contacts have popped out a number of times and had no desire to use public bathrooms for contact insertion (in the off chance they fell on the floor). Setting the webcam’s properties, my monitor becomes a handy dandy electronic mirror! w00t!
Here’s a quick little video of me with my Sclera in place at home along with fake teeth from Dental Distortions:
What few know is how long it took me to learn to put these quarter-sized contacts into my head. To just get one in, it took me over an hour and a half of actual attempting split up by searches online and questions to contact wearing friends for help. It wasn’t until I found this awesome video that I actually learned how to insert the little suckers. Kudos to whoever it was that threw that puppy together.
The Drawbacks
Despite the cool factor…there are some drawbacks.
- Comfort…or Lack Thereof
- Prescription
- Price
- Installation into head
Comfort…or Lack Thereof
Because the contacts that I ordered are not custom fit (few Theatrical Sclera Contacts are), there is some level of discomfort that comes and goes with increasing frequency the longer you wear them. I find myself adjusting the contacts throughout the day to ensure optimal visibility and minimize the blurriness caused by creases that creep up due to my eye being a bit too small for the contact’s diameter of 22mm.
Prescription
A prescription is required even for non-corrective lenses because contacts are a “medical device.” Fine fine…I’d understand that if they were custom fit for my eyes (which they aren’t, typically) and corrective. But stock sizes and non-corrective shouldn’t require a prescription. The lame part about that is…even though you are required to have a prescription, if they cannot contact your eye doctor within 3 days, the order is processed anyways. Such is life, I suppose.
Price
Sclera lenses cost an arm and a leg. I set my sights (pun intended) on these contacts last halloween and saved accordingly. The lenses I purchased cost $128 a lens. Yup. Per lens. The enjoyment is worth it though (at least that’s what I keep telling myself).
Installation In To Head
As I mentioned before, putting these quarter sized objects on top of my eyes was very difficult at first taking a good 10 minutes per eye once I finally knew how to put them in (thanks to this awesome video). Never having worn contact lenses before made this very complicated for me. Now that I have removed and inserted them a number of times I can do so with little irritation and typically on the first or second try (sometimes third if I have no mirror).
Basically what needs to be done is this:
- Wash your hands
- Clean the contacts
- Make sure the contact lens is not inside out (an inside-out contact lens flares out along the edges)
- Place the ridiculously huge contact on the tip of your index finger and middle finger of your dominant hand, curved side down (of course)
- Hold your upper eyelid up with your non-dominant hand just enough for you to slip the edge of the contact under your eyelid with your dominant hand (index and middle fingers).
- Next, basically wiggle and shove the contact up under your lid (opening your other eye and looking into a mirror to check your progress is key) until the majority of the contact is shoved under the lid. This can fill like shoving a handful of gravel in your eye, but that passes quickly.
- As soon as you notice that the contact is sufficiently shoved under your upper lid, release that lid with your non-dominant hand and pry your lower lid down and over the lower part of the contact lens.
- At this point, depending on how sensitive your eye is, you may need to close your eye tightly to get your bearings because it may still hurt at this point. Keep it closed until you feel you can open your eye just enough to wiggle the contact around on your eye to get it in place. This gets easier and less painful each time you do it.
- The end. w00t. If you are doing two contact lenses…I’d suggest doing the eye opposite your dominant hand. (if you are right handed, do your left eye first and vice versa). That worked out better for me.
Getting Halloween Sclera Contacts
If you are totally pumped and want your own, you can pick up some Theatrical/Movie/Halloween Sclera (sometimes called full-eye) contacts at a number of places:
- FXEyes
- Coastal Contacts
- ExtremeSFX
- etc…just search for on the interwebs and you should find a supplier.
Dance Vader
October 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This just must be posted. You just can’t beat a dancing Darth Vader and Stormtrooper!
Thanks to Sara for sending me this!
DotA v6.49 Released (finally)
October 26, 2007 | 12 Comments
After long last, DotA v6.49 has been released! It seems they have re-done N’aix once again. Eegad. You can get the map here or here. Here’s the changelog if you are interested!
- Added a new recipe item (Armlet of Mordiggian)
- Added a new recipe item (Orchid Malevolence)
- Added a new recipe item (Shiva’s Guard)
- Added a new base item (Javelin,139527)
- Remade Power Treads
- Changed Monkey King Bar recipe
- Remade Vladmir’s Offering
- Reduced Ultimate Orb price by 50 gold
- Mystic Staff price from 2900 to 2700 gold
- Reduced movement speed bonus from Boots of Travel by 5
- Reduced Linken’s Sphere recipe by 100 gold
- Changed the second secret shop model (to Goblin Shop) and the shop’s carried items
- Bottle and Ring of Basilius no longer shift positions in your inventory when used
- Reduced Black King Bar cooldown from 100 to 85 seconds
- Increased Kelen’s Dagger of Escape cooldown from 25 to 30 seconds
- Improved Bloodstone’s charge regeneration rates
- Reduced mana cost on Hand of Midas
- Lowered mana cost on Helm of the Dominator
- Purchasing Bottle fills it to 2/3 instead of to maximum.
- Lowered Eaglehorn price from 3400 to 3300 gold
- Dagon’s mana costs and cooldown now decreases per level
- Reduced mana cost on Nathrezim Buckler
- Euls and Guinsoo now share cooldown
- Lowered Gloves of Haste price from 610 to 550 gold
- Recoded Aghanim’s Scepter. It can now be dropped, sold and disassembled. It also properly updates itself in deathmatch.
- Decreased Linken’s Sphere cooldown from 60 to 40 seconds
- Reduced Hyperstone price from 2300 to 2100 gold
- Remade N’aix
- Changed Crystal Maiden’s Brilliance Aura to a global effect
- Increased Acid Spray duration by 4 seconds
- Undid previous Jugg armor buff and increased starting strength by 3 and movement speed from 290 to 295
- Removed the invulnerability period while Priestess of the Moon is leaping
- Lowered Puck’s initial Intelligence and Intelligence Growth
- Lion’s Mana Drain is now faster (same mana drain over 4 seconds instead of 5)
- Changed Dark Rift from channeling to cast delay and reduced mana cost
- Increased cooldown on Call of the Wild
- Increased Lich attack range from 500 to 550
- Increased Pit Lord’s movement speed and starting Intelligence
- Improved cast and attack animation time on Broodmother
- Decreased cooldown on Death Coil from 15 to 11 seconds
- Rewrote Fissure to avoid Entangle and Impale based spell conflicts
- Improved Chen’s movement speed by 5
- Reduced Bristleback’s strength growth from 2.7 to 2.2
- Reduced Poof’s cooldown and mana cost
- New loading screen art (kunkka.deviantart.com)
- Added player index flags to replays
- Fixed a typo with Reaper’s Scythe
- Fixed some rare exploits with the Freeze Leaver system
- Improved Harbinger’s story (Terrorblaze)
- New Spectre background story (-Jenova-)
- New Visage background story (Grujah)
- New Storm Spirit background story (Inferno[DK])
- New Ogre Magi background story (Digital Anomaly)
- New Alchemist background story (Inferno[DK])
- New Lion background story (vertigo12)
- New Centaur background story (-Jenova-)
- New Slardar background story (Inferno[DK])
- New Tinker background story (Grujah)
- New Rigwarl background story (Volcove)
- New Zeus background story (Inferno[DK])
- New Pudge background story (Inferno[DK])
- New Traxex background story (Volcove)
- New Vengeful Spirit background story (-Jenova-)
- New Mortred background story (Inferno[DK])
- Fixed various item tooltips
World of Warcraft Satire: The Guild
October 24, 2007 | 2 Comments
While browsing YouTube as I typically do when I’m bored in the evenings, I found The Guild. The show focuses on “Codex”, a female WoW addict and her guild’s in and out of game interactions. The star, Felicia Day, is also the writer and has done an amazing job at capturing the varied personalities that you often encounter in an online gaming group.
As a former addict to World of Warcraft, I (and to some degree, my wife) could immediately relate with the characters and had us laughing throughout. The script is quality.
Here’s the first episode:
Episode 1
There are currently 3 episodes (with more in the making) and a gag reel. Check them out here:
I just found out from the official The Guild Site that episodes 4 and 5 just gained funding so those should be out at some point soon! w00t! I need to go donate :D
Knights of the Old Republic MMORPG
October 22, 2007 | 2 Comments
I’m a huge fan of Star Wars and many many things Star Wars related (but not all). I was just reading The Flog and was alerted to this awesome news about BioWare’s new MMORPG.
New MMORPG? Yup. And it turns out that it may very well be based on the Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) universe. Now that would be super sexy. Star Wars: Galaxies was a definite flop…but BioWare is a whole different caliber of game development. I have serious high hopes in their abilities and will be excitedly watching as information on this game becomes available! My fingers are crossed that the game actually is a Star Wars game. With EA Games’ recent acquisition of BioWare and Pandemic Studios (pdf), this seems like more of a possibility.
w00t!
Zombie Republicans
October 19, 2007 | 1 Comment
Following Dee’s lead I have made a couple of JibJab videos over the past week and a half, each making me laugh out loud. The above is a newly released custom JibJab video knocking Republicans :) JibJab, of course, has a Democrat bashing version as well.
Great fun stuff.
Squirrel vs. Sunflower
October 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment
My wife grew some sunflowers this year and near the end of the growing season, a friendly squirrel began to visit and relieve us of the flower heads. I captured the above picture of our friend the squirrel taking a break from actually mowing down the top of the sunflower prior to its removal from the stem.
Below is a photo that Abby took of that same squirrel with his quarry on a post. As he munches, petals fly and we mourn the loss of our flowers. Yesterday I pulled the ~18 head-less stalks from our garden.
Automattic Acquires Gravatar!
October 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment
In a surprising move, Automattic has acquired Gravatar, which was announced this morning in Gravatar’s new WordPress installation. This breathes life into a quality idea that had floundered due to fast popularity and (I can only assume) poor funding.
For those of you that don’t know what Gravatar is:
I became a fan of Gravatar during my first launch of the SexyComments WordPress Plugin and was saddened at the instability and slowness of the avatar service after a few months of usage. My frustration grew so much that I looked to MyBlogLog as an avatar service despite its lack of features. As of release 1.4 of SexyComments, I had almost entirely wiped my hands of Gravatar.
Until now. Gravatar once again serves up avatars in the comments of this site and am excited at the changes that have already taken place:
- They have transferred the Rails application and most of the avatar serving to their WordPress.com infrastructure and servers.
- Avatar serving is now more than three times as fast, and works every time.
- They have moved the Gravatar blog from Mephisto to WordPress. :D
Additionally, I look forward to the features that Automattic is planning for Gravatar’s future:
- They’re going to make all of the Premium features free, and refund anyone who bought them in the last 60 days.
- Move the gravatar serving to a Content Delivery Network so not only will they be fast, it’ll be low latency and not slow down a page load.
- Take the million or so avatars that exist on WordPress.com and make them available through the Gravatar API, to compliment the 115k already hosted at Gravatar.
- From Gravatar, integrate them into all WordPress.com templates and bring features like multiple avatars over.
- From WordPress.com, bring the bigger sizes (128px) over and make that available for any Gravatar. Currently Gravatars are only available up to 80px.
- Allow Gravatar profile pages with Microformat support for things like XFN
rel="me"and hCard. - Develop a new API that has cleaner URLs and allows Gravatars to be addressed by things like URL in addition to (or instead of) email addresses.
- Rewrite the application itself (site.gravatar.com) to fit directly into our WordPress.com grid, for internet-scale performance and reliability.
All in all, this made me pee my pants a little.
