iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 06/08/2026

This is excellent and has me re-evaluating my well-intended (but unwittingly harmful) efforts at precision in collecting demographic data from participants in experiments. [h/t @steveharoz.com]

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 27/07/2026

The offer of book credits is worse than nothing at all. Either ask for free labor or pay the actual value of your time.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 16/07/2026

This is a great organization that is committed to supporting early-career clinician scientists. Not just for MD/PhDs! Straight MDs, DOs, and even veterinarians. Please share with anyone you know who might be eligible.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 02/07/2026

This week we completed an elusive measurement: the flat fielding function of the wide-angle camera on our wearable light-logger. To do so, we visited the Fels Planetarium at the @franklininstitute.bsky.social. 1/6

Sophia, a UPenn undergrad, takes measurements with a to-be-calibrated camera while standing in the center of the Fels Planetarium.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 02/07/2026

We placed our camera on a tripod in the dead center of the space, pointed at the zenith, and recorded as the camera rotated on its optical axis. This gave us exactly the measurement we needed. Thanks to Derrick Pitts, Chief Astronomer for the Franklin (right) and the Fels staff. 6/6

A group photo. In the front in a pinkish shirt is Geoff Aguirre. On the left is Sophia, a UPenn undergrad who led this measurement. On the right is Derrick Pitts, Chief Astronomer and Director of the Fels Planetarium at the Franklin Institute. In the back row are three members of the technical crew that run the Fels. Their help in setting the lighting conditions of the dome was invaluable.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 02/07/2026

How about a simulated twilight sky?! When built in 1933, the Fels planetarium was heralded as one of the few truly hemispheric planetariums, 65' in diameter. We visited and, using a spectrophotometer, confirmed that the dome had minimal variation in luminance across points on the surface. 5/6

science.org

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 02/07/2026

We did learn that astronomers flat-field telescopes using the near-uniform illumination of the cloudless sky at the zenith just after twilight. We tried this, but were foiled by city lights and the wide FOV of the camera that left us sensitive to uneven illumination of the sky. 4/6

cdn.diffractionlimited.com

Flat-Field Frame Calibration

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 02/07/2026

Typically, a fielding function is measured in a light-integrating sphere, which provides the camera with a view of a hemisphere with uniform illumination. We needed a big sphere (with no visible baffles) given the 120 degree FOV of our camera. No one at @upenn.edu had a big enough sphere. 3/6

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 02/07/2026

The fielding function measures variation in pixel intensity across a camera sensor due to the optics and circuitry. This is one of many calibrations we are performing on our sensor array to support measurement of visual experience in physical, radiometric units. 2/6

The fielding correction we ultimately calculated for our camera. The value at each point is the multiplicative correction that is applied to each pixel across the sensor. The “thickness” of the surface is due to the intermixing of the R, G, and B sensors in a Bayer pattern, each of which has a different correction surface due to variation in radiometric sensitivity and the effect of chromatic aberration.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 02/07/2026

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 29/06/2026

In honor of Mel Brooks turning 100, I would like to again note that young Dr. Frankenstein gives a pretty good brainstem lecture.

A still from Young Frankenstein, with Gene Wilder gesticulating in front of a chalkboard with labeled components of the brainstem.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 17/06/2026

Jackie Brown is one of the greats.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 06/06/2026

Brave man! And for a good cause.

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Michelle Greene @mgreenephd.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

🚨New dataset just dropped🚨 Introducing Places in the Wild: 67,000 RAW-format photographs (45 mpix) densely sampled from 810 places (260 basic-level categories). This is 11x the number of pixels in ImageNet! Preprint is here: arxiv.org/abs/2606.02481 1/

arxiv.org

Places in the Wild: A Large, High-Resolution RAW Photograph Dataset for Ecologically Valid Vision Research

Large image datasets have accelerated progress in cognitive neuroscience and computer vision. However, most datasets are low-resolution, internet-sourced JPEGs with unknown capture conditions and limi...

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Tom Baden @neurofishh.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Delighted that a new online talk is up for viewz on Youtube: "Evolution of the Vertebrate Eye". Thanks to Marion Silies and Luisa Ramirez for hosting! www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrYJ....

youtube.com

Tom Baden - Evolution of the Eye

YouTube video by BadenLab

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 21/05/2026

Thanks very much @greenlee-markw.bsky.social for making this resource! It was just what I needed. Hope the board invites you to contribute something for the meeting next year.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 15/05/2026

Oh great! Gonna try this now.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 14/05/2026

Bummer! Sorry to hear it, and totally understand. Will miss seeing you!

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 13/05/2026

Thanks @greenlee-markw.bsky.social ! I am, however, having trouble getting this working. I installed Expo Go on my iPhone and then tried the QR code on the GitHub page, got the error "signed-in Expo account does not have access to the account that owns this project". Any suggestions?

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Roger Watt @rjwatt42.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Peak retired academic moment. 1. One of those emails: Are you the R Watt who wrote xxxxxx? 2. Nope, but it sounds vaguely interesting. Wonder what they found. 3. Google - read it and discover that I did write it.

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jerrytang.bsky.social @jerrytang.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

We're excited to share our new study on decoding brain activity in participants with post-stroke aphasia! We think this is an important step towards cognitive brain-computer interfaces for patients with language disorders www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/8

biorxiv.org

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 10/04/2026

A gabor of vision scientists.

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Jonathan Peelle @jpeelle.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Somehow this must be useful for vision science 🧠

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 07/04/2026

Very cool. The white matter connectivity of early visual cortex recapitulates the polar angle variation of retinal structure. One look at this figure and you know you are in the world of retinal meridians and that Marisa Carrasco will be making an appearance.

A portion of Figure 3a of Amorosino et al that has the signature of polar angle retinal variation.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 01/04/2026

I am standing for election to the VSS board. The slate of candidates [with 25% immodesty] is fantastic. Please consider engaging in the difficult decision process of identifying a just-noticeable-difference in great folks who are eager to serve vision science.

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Jamie Reilly 🦜 @reilly-coglab.com · 01/04/2026

Man I missed out on being on that 900 author paper. I’m holding out for a 9000 author paper.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 01/04/2026

The mega-author biz has been falling off. As of 2015 we were on a good trend to hit a 100k author paper by 2041, but then the physics community became more insular and retreated to 3000 author papers.

Plot of the maximum number of authors on a paper in each year from 1970 to current day, with an exponential fit to the data between 1970 and 2015 (log y-axis). Plot generated using Gemini, so that this with an AI-sized grain of salt.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 01/04/2026

Yah. Not a good policy change.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 28/03/2026

A very influential book for me was “Animal Eyes” by Nilsson and Land. It led me to understand how exquisitely visual systems are engineered to squeeze every bit of relevant information for a given ecological niche.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 27/03/2026

I read bioRxiv titles in all caps as the scientist excitedly yelling the result to their colleagues. Can you believe it?? SENSORY MAPS IN THE TELENCEPHALIC PALLIUM!!

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Russell Epstein @russellepstein.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Congratulations to @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, winner of the 2026 Ken Nakayama medal from @vssmtg.bsky.social! Nancy is not only a brilliant scientist, she has also been an inspiring mentor to several generations of vision scientists (including me).

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Jesse Sheidlower @jessesword.com · 12/03/2026

Beautiful essay from @samhenri.gold about the joy of hacking, disguised as a review of the MacBook Neo. samhenri.gold/blog/2026031...

samhenri.gold

“This Is Not The Computer For You” · Sam Henri Gold

Sam Henri Gold is a product design engineer building playful, useful software.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 27/02/2026

Ah, thank you. I will go back and read this again more carefully.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 27/02/2026

I'm enjoying reading this. FYI: I think there is a typo in the second paragraph of page 3, in which an r value is given as 0.56 twice. If not a typo, then I have trouble understanding the associated p values.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 24/02/2026

The BCBL would be an amazing place to work. Great colleagues in a gorgeous location with some of the finest food in the world.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 09/02/2026

Set up a table right there and start doing some subway science. Put out a hat, and busk for lab funding.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 09/02/2026

An apparatus of some kind!

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Joshua Sokol @joshuasokol.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

There’s an interesting lawsuit out of Connecticut I’ve been following that rests on the question of whether darkness — yes, darkness, the primordial Erebus himself— is a natural resource. Here’s why that’s potentially a big deal.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 04/02/2026

There are also temporal processing differences between L/M cones and S cones (and in the post-receptoral red-green vs blue-yellow channels). I am curious if this could give rise to such effects.

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Johan Nohr @nohr.se · 01/02/2026

Take me down to the Parallax city where the far moves slow and the near moves quickly

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 22/12/2025

How many menorahs have you got going here?

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Jorge Morales @jorgemorales.me · 02/12/2025

Happy VSS deadline extension to all the vision scientists out there.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 25/11/2025

Remarkable data. Really unusual clinical circumstance to place electrodes in the LGN for occipital epilepsy. And to have TWO patients! Any chance you can record from the DBS electrodes post op? So much more to measure!

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 14/11/2025

I read this as saying that there will be a date in the near future by which one could submit (e.g.) a new R01 proposal, and that the proposal would still be considered as part of the October / Cycle III due date. That would be remarkable.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 13/11/2025

This is really cool. There is some interesting thinking to be done regarding optimal temporal experimental design within this framework.

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Geoffrey Aguirre @gkaguirre.com · 11/11/2025

Closely following this thread

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