And Then, Something AMAZING Happened

No, I'm not talking about my laptop loan increase coming through. Though that was pretty important, if not actually amazing. Seeing as I had filed a receipt and not an estimate, I was (am) already on the hook for that $2,500 of computing merchandise which I have so happily been playing around with for the past few days.*

Today, I found out that YOUTUBE HAS 3D!! Okay, so maybe this is old news to the rest of the world. It's perhaps possible that because I'm not cool enough to have a posse of would-be filmmakers willing to help write, shoot, edit, and upload humorous/enlightening/awesome videos of me, I may not be fully up on the modern trends and such. Anyhow, I know now that 1.) Youtube has 3D, and 2.) It has an option that doesn't require glasses!

On 3D enabled videos (which you can get to by searching "yt3d:enable=true") you can select the type of apparatus you'll be using to get your 3D, ranging from various multi-colored glasses (from the cinematic good old days) to the POWER OF YOUR MIND (crossing your eyes correctly). Now, I was never good at those "magic image" books where you had to see the hidden image in 3D. I, for whatever reason, actually saw the images inverted--rather than popping out at me, they sunk in to the page, even more hard to find than before. Nevertheless, this exercise in cross-eyedness is a success for me.

If you don't have glasses, like me, here's what you do. Select "cross eyed" in the 3D dropdown menu at the bottom. Look at the video, cross your eyes. If you remember ever being shown as a kid how you can "make your fingers touch" by holding them apart and crossing your eyes till the images of your fingers overlap, do that. What you should get is a 3rd image in the middle of the two pictures on the screen. You need to cross your eyes till the images line directly over each other. This may take some practice, but stick with it. Let your eyes relax and cross, this may help. Once you get the right state, it will be easier to hold in place.

Now that you've done that, focus only on the middle picture and nothing else. Let your eyes slowly focus in on what your seeing, and get yourself to believe that this phantom image is the real image, that there is nothing else to look at. Let your eyes come into focus on the picture. You may need to sit forward or back to the screen and maximize or minimize the YouTube video. You may also want to make the video as high resolution as your computer can handle w/o skipping.

You are now experiencing the world in 3D.

Here is an example of a 3D vid for you to try on [EDIT: You're gonna need to double click on the vid to see it on youtube, where the video is correctly formatted side-to-side for cross-eyed viewing and other viewing options are available]:

And this video is not in 3D but it's hilarious and awesome. If you haven't heard of the "Double Rainbow Guy" then go here. If not (which is to say, "if you have indeed heard of the guy"), then watch the autotuned song of him by the folks who brought you the Autotune the News videos, below. This has gotten a ton of views, so if you're like one of the people who contributed to around 3.5 million views of this...feel free to watch it again. Because it's awesome.

*BTW, I've finally managed to get my facial recognition software to know who I am more often than not. And, no, I don't want to hear why you think I don't need facial recognition software. You are wrong.