Playing with Pigs

Playing with Pigs: Pig Chase from Utrecht School of the Arts on Vimeo.


I want this game. A company in the Netherlands is working on an iPad app that will let people interact remotely with pigs on a farm. Apparently pigs like to interact with bright balls of light. This app creates bright spheres of colored light on a panel in a pig sty. The pig touches the light with his snout, which scores a point. The number of touches racks up a score, and at the end of the game the high scores get displayed on the iPad. I'm not sure if the human is training the pig to touch the screen, or if the pig is training the human to play longer with an iPad. Either way, it looks like a lot more fun than Angry Birds.

Here's the web site for the video:

Playing With Pigs

And the other amazing thing is that we already have a "pig" label on the blog. Have we really talked about pigs here before?

And for Jesse, a hamster:




And here's one from Roy with ants...

He's Gone

At 8:30 last night I got the news. It came from somebody who knew me quite well and knew my hardcore loyalty to Apple, enough to call me a "Steve Jobs Apple toady bootlicker." A good friend, yes. He told me: Steve Jobs was dead.

Wow. I remember when John Lennon was killed and I'll remember getting this news.

Steve Jobs has been part of my professional and personal lives for 25 years. I got my first Mac in 1986, during my second year of medical school. It was a huge decision, and even with a student discount a tremendously expensive thing to do. It was a decision I've never regretted. I still have that machine.

The day I went to pick up my new machine they held a special event at the university hockey stadium. The whole place was filled with aisles of Macs stacked six feet high. People were lined up around the block to pick up their new machines. The only time I've seen anything like that was at the opening of the first Apple store in 2001. I was standing in line at Tyson's Corner, fortunately not at the end which curled around the second floor and down the stairs. The waiting time to get in was rumored to be three hours, and there was security in place to make sure the store stayed below the fire marshal's limit of people in the store.

The Apple years without Steve Jobs were grim. A series of five CEO's successively drove the company into the ground. The quality of the machines dropped, there were recalls for broken parts, bad monitors, stuff that never would have happened under Steve. (OK, the Apple Newton eventually became the prototype for the Palm Pilot---using an operating system designed by former Apple engineers---but it never quite got it right.)

Then he came back. Just in time, like Superman coming back just as the bomb is about to explode, to save the world. We got that weird-looking first-ever all-in-one pyramidal iMac. We got OS X, one of the most stable operating systems I've ever used. We got iPods and iPhones and iTunes (without which our My Three Shrinks podcast would never have happened). We got the iPad. We got the software. It just happened.

So here we are. We three Shrink Rappers all use Apple products. We edit podcasts with Garage Band, have iPhones, use MacBooks. Our iPhone edition of Grand Rounds was one of most popular posts (complete with clickable iPhone buttons). Technology for non-geeks.

There's not much else to say. If there is, the Twittersphere has it covered---it's been nothing but mourning for hours after the news broke.

He's gone.

Goodbye.

And thanks.

The Angry Birds

You always think it can't happen to you. Addiction is something that happens to other people, other families.

Let me first talk about anger, because it's an emotion we commonly address in psychotherapy. Anger is a normal human emotion, but it's gotten a bad rap, and the inappropriate expression of anger can make life very difficult. When anger is recognized and used wisely, it can help us to solve problems, to stand up for what we believe in, and to change the world. It's never a terribly comfortable emotion, and often people strive to decrease their comfort by discharging anger.

So tonight I downloaded the Angry Birds app to my iTouch. Oh, I'm not so sure about this. I've catapulting these little animated critters at piggys in pens all night. I spent over an hour on level twelve. I can't stop. I posted on my Facebook about it, and an old high school friend--who's now a physicist at Stanford-- told me not to do it..."It's like crack." It's late and I want to go to bed. But what about the piggys in the stone pens on Level 15? Doesn't some angry bird need to smash them? If you know any shortcuts, please do share. Not sure I'll ever blog again....

Dinah's Away, Clink Will Play

So Dinah has gone off on vacation and left Roy and I in charge of the blog. Doesn't she know what a really really bad idea that is??

The day started off with her calling me to help with a computer problem. Dinah wanted to download a movie to watch on her iPod on the plane. No problem, except that she needed to upgrade iTunes to do this. She downloaded iTunes but for some reason it didn't install (she later asked me which password she was supposed to enter during the install process, that may have been part of the problem). So I talked her through the upgrade and told her how to open system preferences and get to the software upgrade control panel:

"Go down to the bottom of the screen until the little launch bar pops up. Then click on the little picture that looks like a gear."

"Deer??" Dinah said. "I don't have any deer!"

"No no, click on the gear," I said. "Gear with a 'g'." I'm hollering this into the dashboard of my car as I'm trying to drive on the beltway in the rain. I wonder if my other tech savvy friends (meaning Roy) end up in situations like this, trying to solve computer problems from memory while multitasking other things. I also wonder how I'm going to teach Dinah how to use GarageBand so she can edit our podcasts when she gets lost looking for deer on her laptop. O gods of computer tech support, have mercy!

Well, she got the upgrade done, went to iTunes and bought her movie then found out it was going to take two hours to download. At that point my tech support was done. I don't know if she ever got her movie or not, but I do know I'm going to schedule an entire afternoon for the GarageBand training.

In Treatment: Season2, Episode 3: The Turtle in Therapy

Oliver is back for therapy because of his parents' separation. All three family members are in the waiting room plugged into their iPods (Oliver has a shuffle). A smiling couple walks out of the office, "That wasn't so bad." Beacons of hope: Paul cured them, perhaps he can cure the Oliver family.

Oliver's having a rough time. He's reading Lord of the Flies, people think he's fat, and oh, he has the class turtle with him, one he's sure he can't keep alive. To every question, Oliver says, "Because my mom would call my dad and they would fight." Paul does a good job in addressing Oliver's questions about the happy couple who left-- "I don't talk to my other patients about you and I can't talk to you about them."

Bess (Oliver's mom) distorts Paul's words: "You don't think we should get divorced....parents should stay together no matter how unhappy they are and ultimately it would be better for the children?" Ah, this has to be pushing newly-divorced Paul's buttons. And it's suddenly clear that one of the issues here is that Mom is still hung up on Dad. It's a kind of ugly session when dad announces he has a new girlfriend... kind of amazing it isn't bloodier. Little Oliver gives Paul's next patient a rather hopeless look and the forgotten turtle remains in the office with Paul. He (?) retracts his turtly little head into his shell.
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Escape To New York

OK, I'm out of prison. After a few months of listening to guys talk about stabbing people, firebombing houses and other general nasty things, I've escaped to New York. I walked through Central Park, saw a couple art galleries and went to a Broadway play (Speed The Plow, it was great). Oh yeah, and had some delicious food.

So now I'm blogging from the Mac-users mecca, the Fifth Avenue Apple store. The one that looks like a big glass cube. I've just bought my new 16 gigabyte iPod touch and am happy as a clam. Yes, I'm out of prison...and mildly out of control in this store. I've got pictures to send my co-bloggers.

And now a request---soon there is a play opening here called Zombie. It's about a serial killer. They're giving discount tickets to folks interested in forensic psychiatry. I'm going to be gone before it opens. I need somebody to see this thing and post a review. Thanks

"Going Mental" for iPhone

Leander Kahney, the managing editor of Wired magazine, was quoted as saying, "They are going to go mental for it." He also predicted iPhone-inspired muggings and selling of first-borns. Folks have been waiting in lines all week just to get first dibs on Apple's new digital wunderkind. It is only a matter of time before i see an iPhone-inspired psychiatric problem in my E.R. And i know just the type of medication to use: an SSRi (or, iSSR?).

John Paczkowski from Digital Daily has dubbed the iPhone obsession iOCD -- and apparently this diagnosis is now in the DSM! Funny... the AMA stopped short of calling video game addiction a disorder, but there is clearly an overboard quality to the iPhone hype. Google "iPhone" and you get 118 million hits this evening, which is 50% more than yesterday. This is more than Paris Hilton and Britney Spears combined. And, it is certainly a few million more than "My Three Shrinks".

This video documents some of the iPhone hysteria...

And speaking of hype, how often do you think the iPhone is paired with some sort of psychiatric symptom? Let's see...

• iPhone crazy: 2,440,000 hits
  
• iPhone addiction: 1,900,000 hits
• iPhone suicide: 1,810,000 hits
  
• iPhone madness: 1,620,000 hits
• iPhone depression: 1,520,000 hits
  
• iPhone mania: 1,500,000 hits
• iPhone paranoia: 1,030,000 hits
  
• iPhone obsessions: 710,000 hits
  
• iPhone hysteria: 475,000 hits
• iPhone delusions: 272,000 hits
• iPhone compulsions: 141,000 hits
• iPhone hallucinations: 121,000 hits
  
• iPhone anhedonia: 181 hits

Clearly, the iPhone is one of the coolest tech toys on the planet today. Lack of interest is definitely NOT going to inspire many hits.

EDIT: But it may inspire a new religion (Xenu beware).

Other blogs and links worth checking out:

• iPhone dissected
• quick review on Kottke.org
• Dave Winer not gushing
• Top 10 iPhone apps suck

EDIT: Must-see YouTube Chris Pirillo here, with an iPod and a Zune going at it under the covers ... Zune doesn't satisfy like iPhone (Warning: Graphic Gadget Adult Situations).

My Three Shrinks Podcast 25: Sibling Reveille

[24] . . . [25] . . . [26] . . . [All]

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We were expecting to have Doctor Anonymous on as a guest (not one of those soundboard guests) today, but he couldn't make it and sends his regards. We'll try another time. Happy Father's Day.

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June 17, 2007: #25 Sibling Reveille

Topics include:

• Clink wonders if iPod users have more musical auditory hallucinations. But, can deaf people get auditory hallucinations, or do they hallucinate people signing at them? "Yes, We Have No Bananas" seems to be a popular musical hallucination with older folks. Wonder if "Reveille" is heard by folks who were in the military? This is clearly a wake-up call for all you iPod users.
  
  
• KevinMD placed us on his "Power 8" list of medical blogs with an "exceptional week" of blogging, particularly noting Clink's post on forensic psychiatry issues raised by the latest Paris Hilton saga, which also leads to a discussion of the Goldwater Rule, of high profile cases (like Cho... see Face to Face and Unspeakable), and of freedom of speech.
  
  
• Dinah talks a bit about Dr Melfi's firing of Tony Soprano.
  
  
• We talk at length about a June 2007 AJP article by Waldinger, Vaillant, and Orav, entitled "Childhood Sibling Relationships as a Predictor of Major Depression in Adulthood: A 30-Year Prospective Study." This is an amazing study in that they followed a group of some 229 men from age 20 to age 50, doing lots of interviews and tests along the way. In this analysis, they looked at the quality of their sibling and parental relationships, as well as family history of mood disorder, and made a surprising finding.

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Find show notes with links at: http://mythreeshrinks.com/. The address to send us your Q&A's is there, as well. This podcast is available on iTunes (feel free to post a review) or as an RSS feed. You can also listen to or download the .mp3 or the MPEG-4 file from mythreeshrinks.com. (Note: beginning with this podcast, I am encoding the .mp3's as mono files to reduce bandwidth. Let me know if that's a problem for anyone.) Thank you for listening.