Color Blind

Every once in a while I get a reminder that I have partial color blindness. Certain shades of green, brown, red, and some blues and purples are not "distinct" to me.

I came across this article today about an Internet security expert who developed an iPhone app to help color blind individuals distinguish colors. It "punches up" the hues of certain colors so they become discernible to the color blind.

You point your iPhone's camera at something and in real time it displays the chromatically adjusted image on the screen.

In case you are wondering, in the images above I just see a bunch of random dots when I look at the 2 circles on the left. In the enhanced images on the right, I can clearly see the number "45" and make out a pixelated "6" in the other.

The author of the app, Dan Kaminsky, is not color blind. He was intrigued by a color blind friend who was unable to identify the green skinned girl in the last Star Trek movie as having green skin. She appeared tanned to him.

For those of us in the computer business, Kaminsky is fairly well known as a proponent for improved methods for securing transactions on networks.

For those of us in the Star Trek world, the green skinned girl was an Orion. The first reference to the Orions was in The Menagerie where an Orion slave danced for Captain Pike.

A few months ago, the neighbor across the street painted her house a bright pink, (think Pepto). To me it looks like a light rosy beige, but mostly beige. She had to tell me it was pink. The typical comment expressed by others (when she is not around) is "It is PINK!!"

On a completely different note, check out our Christmas photos on Flickr.