Sensors will monitor your oculomotor nerve and adjust the movie frame rate to match the moment that you blink, so you won't miss a second of the action.
-- spiraliii, Oct 10 2005

Sorry for the spelling error. Sometimes it is referred to as blink sync.
-- spiraliii, Oct 10 2005


//What's blink set?//

A typical blink set: *blink* <pause> *blink* <pause> *blink* <pause> *blink* <pause> *blink* <pause> *blink*
-- spiraliii, Oct 10 2005


Did you know that you miss 23 minutes of every day by blinking? That means that you miss about 3 minutes of every film - about the same as going for a swift toilet break. Which makes this idea cleverer than it seems.
-- wagster, Oct 10 2005


So..but wait, doesn't that mean everyone else who's watching the movie with you will see a pause in the movie everytime *you* blink?
-- phundug, Oct 10 2005


Maybe I should turn this idea on its head: through a conditioned response, your nerve inmpulses will be adjusted to match the movie frame rate. Thus, everyone's blink set will be in sync with each other and the movie.
-- spiraliii, Oct 10 2005


"The periodic loud click heard throughout the theater is annoying until you get used to it"
-- normzone, Oct 10 2005


[wagster]: 23 minutes based on how many hours and on what blink duration? Did you know that blink duration varies greatly? The more fatigued one is, generally, the longer the blink duration. People with sleep apnea generally have longer blink durations (~80ms vs. ~50ms).

There are a lot of other oddball things about blinking and blink durations. One I find really interesting: in gaze detection work a few years ago we discovered that bi-lingual people listening to their second languages blinked far less than when they were listening to their own first language. Weird, eh? Extra-strange as blinks are brain-stem functions and language isn't. Then there are laterality issues with some people where one eye blinks slightly differently than the other.

Even compensating for all the variables of blinking, overall, I think this would be annoying as hell, especially the necessary audio freezes or, barring that, the slewing of the audio as a blink correction takes place. Since the adjustments can only happen once the system has determined a blink is about to occur, there is very little time to make a more gradual adjustment.
-- bristolz, Oct 10 2005


As a kid, I was scared of lightning, and during thunderstorms I used to keep my eyes closed except for the occasional "inverse blink". But I found that an inordinate percentage of the time, the moment I opened my eyes was the same moment lightning would flash around the house! I wish I had had a oculamoto-thingy to control that.
-- phundug, Oct 10 2005


In 1976, for a psych class, I did some investigation into blink duration vs. simuli (bright flash vs. loud noise, vs. the two together.) The average blink is on the order of 100 ms (1/10 second.)

One of the journal articles I read in relation to this research seemed to indicate that the entire brain took a short "nap" during eyeblinks, analogous to rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep (!).

It would be delightful to learn if anyone has taken this research further!
-- csea, Oct 11 2005


//23 minutes based on how many hours and on what blink duration// I really have no idea, it's just one of those things that I read.

//in gaze detection work a few years ago we discovered// Was that about the same time as you came up with the "Gazer"?
-- wagster, Oct 11 2005



random, halfbakery