Navigating

Oh, a storm is threat’ning/ My very life today/ If I don’t get some shelter/Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away/

–“Gimme Shelter” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

The site has two central parts:

I. The theme

II. Digressions (anything not related directly to the theme; for the purpose of the site my daughters Joanna and Amelia [you may ask “You really regard your family as a digression?), my stories, essays, career achievements, poems, and other flights of fancy and whimsy are off message.

Now and then being a nerd, as I am, can get in the way or as the Tibetan Book of the Dead notes sometimes you (by which I mean I) become so intense that the intensity becomes “intense pride, and the pride turns into an ice-cold environment which reinforced by self –satisfaction begins to get into the system. It does not allow us to dance or smile or hear the music.” At the risk of not hearing the music, I will leave you, dear reader, to find order in Diversions as you will. Right now, the task at hand is the order the theme.

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Navigating the theme: No shelter from the storm

  1. Where do I want to go?

To a neighborhood which must be developed to serve as a global model for providing independent living so elderly and disabled individuals can age in place.

  1. What would the neighborhood consist of?

a)      It would consist of an experimental residence for an individual or an individual family. The example of the Blueroof Experimental Cottage in McKeesport, PA is a good example. The cottage consists of a one story residence built on inexpensive land in a downtown burned out section of town where rotting buildings could be razed and a community developed.

b)      The individual residence could be built out of factory housing (the fashionable term for mobile home) where sensors and other off-the-shelf technology can be embedded in the walls to monitor and protect the resident. Including building the foundation, each residence can be constructed in three days.

c)      Technology in the residence would include:

  • Security system to protect elderly and disabled residents in high-crime areas such as exist throughout the Rust Belt of Pennsylvania—where the neighborhood would gradually change to a family friendly area attracting economic growth.
  • Motion detectors to monitor falls throughout the residence, especially high risk areas such as the shower.
  • Computer voice simulation which combined with a wireless communication system can have, in effect, the walls of the building calling family or other emergency services for help.
  • Monitoring devices to detect, for example, whether the refrigerator has been opened and to call for help after an adjusted period of time. Example of a computer generated call, “Hello, your grandmother has not opened her refrigerator in over 24 hours. You might want to look in on her.”
  • Remote medical monitoring, including taking blood pressure and other health measurements and transmitting the results automatically to a physician’s office.
Blueroof”s trial pill dispenser which monitors whether the resident has taken each required pill and after computer simulated warnings, reports failure to do so.
  • Computer terminals and other equipment to provide the resident with job training (one is never too old to learn) and work opportunities from home.

d)      A research facility at a major university, such as Penn State, where the Immersive Construction (ICon) lab develops a 3-D model of the experimental model so stakeholders can suggest design changes.

 

Stakeholders would include:

  • Prospective residents of future neighborhood (or elsewhere) housing
  • Members of the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) community
  • Caregivers

The research facility would also be able to process data collected at the experimental facility, such as remote medical monitoring and activities of daily living (ADL) so future construction can benefit.

e)      Creation of an inter-generational accessible community with shopping, recreation, and other services which make a community a community.

Stay tuned for further navigational aids which link posts on this site to the issues raised here and which answers the question: Why is creation of a new kind of neighborhood (with a variety of other options to be presented) so critical to dealing with the housing shortage throughout the world as the largest generation in history begins to retire in an environment where a previous generation of elderly and disabled individuals (including, of course, veterans) are so poorly served at a great expense to society and at a loss of dignity among people whose talents are not being developed adequately.]

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I tell you love, sister, it’s just a kiss away/ It’s just a kiss away….

–“Gimme Shelter” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nU4aiqvyt4&feature=watch_response

Random Thoughts: January 30, 2013

Time for more random updates and personal revelations out of date to everyone but me

January 30, 2013: Someone stole Goya’s head. (The fact that his happened in the 19th Century is irrelevant.)

“On a November morning of 1888 in the cemetery of the Grande Chartreuse, Bordeaux, the Spanish counsel resident in that opulent city received the shock of his life. Hastening to the nearest telegraph he dispatched a wire to Madrid: GOYA SKELETON HEADLESS.

From Goya's Disasters of War, soldier cutting off head. Other Goya drawings show heads on spikes.
From Goya’s Disasters of War, soldier cutting off head. Other Goya drawings show heads on spikes.

”In a less agitated condition and able to recall the master’s whimsical etching of a seated corpse pushing up the lid of a tomb bearing the one word Nada (‘Nothing’), the counsel might pardonably begun his telegram TYPICAL GOYAESQUE SITUATION….

“Dying in self-chosen exile in 1828, at the age of eighty-two, Francisco Joseph Goya y Luciente had been buried in the tomb of a close friend and fellow-expatriate, Miguel Martin Goicoichea, deceased three years previously, the memorial tablet accurately proclaimed him Hispaniensis Peritisimus Pictor. His skull, stolen at some time unknown, has not been seen or heard of since. The exhumation duly proceeded, and Goya’s truncated remains were returned with honour to his native land after an absence of sixty-six years.”

The World of Goya by D.B. Wyndham Lewis

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It reminded me of the night when on the George Washington Bridge, bound for Manhattan, I encountered a raccoon determinedly padding his way back to the New Jersey shore. –A. J. Liebling

Amelia as a torch singer at her high school graduation

Designing a trip and a way of life

On Wednesday, I will take the longest trip since I first arrived in State College, PA about six years ago. I will be attending my daughter Amelia Altalena Solkoff’s graduation ceremony at the University of North Carolina in Ashville. Amelia has already earned her bachelor’s degree in Spanish and while the ceremony may be a mere formality, it is not a formality I can miss. Many of the people I love most in the world will be there, including Amelia’s older sister Joanna who received her bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she is currently completing nursing school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last time I was in Ashville was 19 years ago before I lost the ability to walk as a result of a spinal cord injury. Both my daughters have visited me here in State College, but while I have driven to other places, the 900 mile drive has eluded me to the place where F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning.”

My elder daughter Joanna visiting me at State College.

My trip to Ashville marks a new feature for the joelsolkoff.com site. Here I will finally take my best friend David Phillips’ advice and begin a consumer book on scooters, power chairs, and peripheral devices. Al Thieme, who invented the power operated vehicle (POV) scooter and the chief executive officer of Amigo Mobility has supplied me with his latest travel scooter, which I will be evaluating on the trip. Other manufacturers are invited to supply equipment for evaluation.

I assembled the scooter myself in my messy apartment.

The fact that this feature begins with equipment for disability travel is especially appropriate. I have been writing about disability travel for a while now and this trip to Amelia’s ceremony provides the opportunity to focus on the importance of people with disabilities being able to visit loved ones, obtain employment, and function in this mobile society. Each of my daughters has extensive experience over the past 18 years of my paraplegia riding mobility devices, figuring out inventive ways of providing me with access to the world, and indeed helping me put out a fire when an electrician installed a wheel chair lift to my car using faulty wiring and burning down my red Buick.

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The word “design” is actually the primary theme of this website, of my career, and indeed of my personal life. As anyone who knows me will testify, I am by nature an impulsive person, but impulsivity can lead to danger for those of us who are disabled. We need to put aside basic parts of our personality (as I have done and failed to do to my regret) in order to consider the consequences and redesign ourselves for a world that is not built for the elderly and disabled.

–Joel Solkoff, April 28, 2012, State College, PA

Method acting classes have made a new man of me.

Stay tuned to this posting for more, which contrary to traditional blog chronological custom, will appear as I write my story. Links will be dropped in without warning. Become a frequent flyer and subscribe to this site.

The answer to A.J. Liebling’s remark: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

Some books are to be tasted: WorkPress overview by Jessica and Matt Beck, March 26, 2012

By Joel Solkoff (State College, PA United States) http://www.amazon.com/review/R334DOKHWPN31W

One of my father’s favorite quotations was “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

The now famous quote from Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), so famous keyboard “Some books are…” at the Google prompt to find the quote as the first hit. Bacon’s 17th century prescience is: Multi-tasking will be a requirement to read some books in the future.

You cannot read Jessica Neuman Beck and Matt Beck’s WordPress Second Edition without at least one browser tab open. The problem with any introductory book, there are pages of WordPress usual manuals on Amazon’s website (many introductory), is how basic it should be without losing readers who are already familiar with WordPress but do not know how to, for example, FTP an hour-long audio tape to the web site, which the Becks assume I know how to do.

WordPress is the answer to 20th Century New Yorker critic A.J. Liebling’s remark: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Now, thanks to Word Press, I am blogging on the problems of housing disabled and elderly low-income individuals.To own one’s press one must have knowledge of available tools. Fortunately, Kathy Forer, a New York-area-based computer professional (with excellent design experience), said, “Joel, you need WordPress.”

I had never heard of it. Last month, to understand my site better, I had the good fortune to have this book recommended by Penn State’s Engineering Library, headed by the ever-helpful Thomas Conkling. Not everyone has excellent resources available. WordPress Second Edition is certainly a good start.

Virtual reality cuts costs and increases satisfaction

Put on your 3-D glasses
The following appeared in HME News, the publication for the home medical industry, on July 26, 2011. This year and last, I asked the residents of Addison Court, the low-income apartment for disabled and elderly in State College where I live, to attend a demonstration at the Immersive Construction Lab, described here. One of the participants was Lilian Hutchison, who celebrated her 87th birthday in January. No one can say for sure whether Lilian would have fallen several times in her apartment if this kind of technology were in place. However, the hope is that the future will be kinder to those of us who can benefit from design which residents are able to modify in advance. 

The projectors behind the three, 8-foot screens show a virtual reality world that can improve the environment where home medical equipment HME is used. Professor John I. Messner’s Immersive Construction (ICon) Laboratory at Penn States Architectural Engineering Department is a dark, windowless room where the healthcare facilities being viewed seem so real there is a special world for it: immersion.

When Kaiser-Permanente began constructing a medical building in downtown Washington, D.C., pharmacists traveled 140 miles to State College to see how their workplace would appear. Among their suggestions: a partition so when two patients are served simultaneously, their privacy is insured.

There is substantial growth in constructing healthcare facilities from hospitals to housing for the elderly. Previously, a model of how a building would look required physical materials like wood and nails. By comparison, virtual reality offers interactive models early in the design process. The resulting efficiency and cost savings (making changes to a building before it is built) are creating a boom in the use of virtual reality in the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. Expectations exceed the ability of the AEC industry to have virtual reality applications ready as quickly as desired.

 

Gala with residents of Addison Court at the Immersive Construction Lab


Sonali Kumar, a graduate research assistant at Penn State, is developing a 3-D model for an independent living facility for elderly and disabled individuals based on the concept of experience-based design. Experience-based design often refers to a body of academic literature, primarily health-care related. Designers are urged to consider the perspective of the individuals who build, maintain, work and reside in the facility, including patients and residents. A common example is the decision of a Philadelphia hospital to build its bathrooms closer to patients beds.

My perspective on Sonali’s effort comes from my status as a disabled resident of a primarily elderly independent living facility. For example, I look at an early version of Sonali’s model showing a bathtub in the bathroom and say, No. There should be a roll-in shower here. I show an early prototype to Travis Barr, co-owner of T & B Medical here in State College. While fixing my scooter, Travis says, “There should not be cabinet doors in the kitchen. Doors are a nuisance for people with disabilities.”

Sonali’s model is based on a Blue Roof Technologies cottage in McKeesport, Pa. Pennsylvania has a larger number of elderly people in its population than any other state except Florida. The need for elderly housing is acute. In McKeesport, where the factory for steel pipes closed down leaving a near-ghost town and an elderly population of more than 20%, Robert Walters, a retired Penn State professor, created Blueroof. The cottages are constructed of pre-fabricated housing and have special sensors inserted in the walls to remind residents when to take their medicine (the walls talk) and to call 911 if a resident falls and does not get up in a timely fashion.

Sonali’s model of a Blue Roof cottage makes use of interaction, the most significant new development in virtual reality. Look at the screen shot Sonali took of the power chair inside the kitchen of her model cottage. For those readers who have not spent their productive hours playing video games, an avatar is a virtual reality representation of an actor functioning in a 3-D environment. The avatar in the Sonali’s kitchen is a power chair. The power chair makes coffee and toast, opening the refrigerator door to get eggs and milk, and scrambles eggs on a stove the avatar has just turned on. Interactivity is key to understanding how practical people in the construction industry have come to use 3-D technology for practical purposes.

Interactivity is arrived at slowly as Sonali experiments with a wide range of software. I suggested that Sonali replace the 3-D power chair with a scooter. In my experience, a scooter is more mobile and less likely to damage walls and take bathroom doors off their hinges. I ask a manufacturer to provide a 3-D scooter file, but for reasons I cannot explain (because I do not understand), the file does not yet open. Sonali explains, “We are in the process of integrating the computer model obtained from Amigo Mobility.” Keep your 3-D glasses on and await future developments.

Joel Solkoff writes about disability issues from a customer perspective. He is an adjunct research assistant at the Department of Architectural Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University.

 

 

Sonali Kumar, virtual reality modeller and designer

Sonali Kumar created this 3-D model of the Blueroof Cottage using AutoDesk’s Revit virtual reality imaging tool a Unity gaming engine. See Unity’s 3-D website: http://unity3d.com/create-games/?gclid=CPnkpYKZnK0CFVCR7QodWnKPnw.

As the authoritative Wikipedia notes: ”

A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine (“renderer”) for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, and a scene graph. ”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine

What does this mean and how does it apply to the problem of designing low-income housing for disabled and elderly Pennsylvanians, Americans, and citizens of the world.?

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Sonali Kumar in her office next to her model Blueroof Cottage

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Developing an experienced-based design review application for healthcare facilities using a 3d game engine

From The Journal of Information Technology in Construction (Icon). a peer-reviewed scholarly journal on the use of IT in architecture, civil engineering and facility management.

PUBLISHED: January 2011

EDITOR: Turk Z

Sonali Kumar, Graduate Research Assistant,
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
[email protected]

Matthew Hedrick, Graduate Student
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
[email protected]

Christopher Wiacek, Graduate Student
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA [email protected]

John I. Messner, PhD The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
[email protected]

SUMMARY:Virtual Prototypes are increasingly being used during design reviews of specialized buildings such as healthcare facilities. However, most of these virtual prototyping approaches do not allow the reviewers and end users to interact directly, in real-time with elements and objects within the virtual model. This paper focuses on a method to combine the use of 3D game engines with the emerging experience based design approach for healthcare facilities to develop a systematic approach to scenario-based design review of healthcare facilities in an interactive virtual environment. First, a virtual facility prototyping framework for rapid creation of a scenario based design review system is defined. Next, strategies to implement this framework to develop an Experience based Virtual Prototyping Simulator (EVPS) application are described. Design information workflows were developed and tested between various BIM authoring tools and the Unity game engine that is used for developing the interactive virtual prototype system. Finally, some lessons learned and issues are highlighted that help direct future research and implementation.

For complete text see: http://www.itcon.org/cgi-bin/works/Show?2011_6

–From Special Report: Use of Gaming Technology in Architecture, Engineering and Construction.

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Sonali Kumar on television

Here Sonali discusses a virtual reality model she is creating for a new children’s’ hospital at Hershey Medical Center by the Fox affiliate WPMT Channel 43 serving York, Harrisburg, Lancaster and Lebanon, PA. The program aired Tuesday, March 6, 2012, at 10pm.
http://www.fox43.com/health/building-blocks/

Scroll to the right to building blocks dated 3/6.

Floor plan Blueroof Experimental Cottage

High-tech elderly and disability housing in the real world; namely McKeesport, Pennsylvania:

McKeesport is the home of Blue Roof Technologies. http://www.bluerooftechnologies.com/


Yes, it is wheelchair accessible.

This is a floor plan of the inside. I have driven my scooter through all of it, so I know it exists. I also know that right now there is an elderly individual living in a cottage of this design and more cottages are becoming available for residence as I key in these words.

Sensors command that 911  be called automatically if a resident falls. The apartment reminds (the apartment reminds? here walls talk) the resident when to take medication.

Llike an old rock star….

Like an old rock star who does not know when to quit:

 This disabilities journalist continues to blog through the night to describe how 3-and 4-D technology will help elderly and disabled individuals lead better and more productive lives as a result of novel engineering techniques that make your head feel as if it will explode. Of course, the fourth dimension is Time.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0qnt5rTCoo

Rolling Stones “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in 1969 [Reelin’ In The Years Archives]

                                                  

Bill

 

I am waving from over here trying to reply to your reply of my reply on the Voices of Central Pennsylvania site.
Other readers: http://voicesweb.org/won%E2%80%99t-ride-%E2%80%98em-cowboy-my-final-column#comment-2634 
Start at the beginning to keep up to date on my ongoing correspondence with Bill Eichman, President of Voices and its brilliant webmaster, regarding why I have stopped writing a column on disability and elderly related issues.
Joel
                                                 

Regarding: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,”  I can.

Right now, I am publishing a blog on 3- and 4-D technology instrumental in improving the design of elderly and disability housing, a subject on which I have some experience since I live in housing intended for elderly and disabled people such as myself.

The blog will discuss such tools as:

  • WOW

.

Sketchup is a favorite.  I just made my first 3-D drawing. It is not exactly a drawing. It is OY VAY! in what appears to be 40  foot 3-D letters. I can see Oy Vey! from:

  • Top
  • Bottom
  • Forward
  • Back

It iis a strange experience to draw huge letters and look at the drawing from underneath the letters, creating a paranoid fantasy of being crushed by letters (or more conventional objects like wheelchairs).

 I make the letters take shape. Type fonts such as Arial black begin to take over my world.

Join me in my new world at Disability Beat Covers Virtual Reality. http://disabilitybeatcoversvirtualreality.blogspot.com/

Won’t ride ‘em cowboy: This is my final column

Note: The following is the text of my February, 2011 column at Voices where I announce the end of my From Where I Sit column. The hard copy text, complete with a photograph of me, is available at newsstands in Centre County. I am reproducing it here for two reasons. First a reader insisted that I was required to explain my rationale more fully or, in her words, “face a grilling.” I therefore intend to call my next blog Grilling in which I not only explain but provide the reader with reassurance that the issues of the elderly and disabled will continue to be covered at Voices–only not from me. Not within the context of this From Where I Sit monthly column. Writers interested in covering such subjects are requested to get in touch with me at the email address below.]

The handler applies the fully charged cattle prod to the rear of a bull bred for ferocity. The cowboy—Slim really is his name—holds onto his hat with his left hand. In his right hand are the reigns, two strips of leather held on tightly at first, but capable of falling apart to help the rider jump away from the bucking bull to safety after the regulation eight second ride is complete.

The maximum score is 100 points; 50 for the rider and 50 for the bull. A mean angry bull is the most desirable because he gives the rider the opportunity to make the most money. This bull is mean. When the bull jumps higher after the cattle prod, Slim smiles with optimism. The gate leading to the ring fails to open. Historically, when the gate sticks, a confined maddened bull has been known to break both legs of a rider. Slim, who attended rodeo schools, is aware of the danger.As a reporter at the World Series of Rodeo at Oklahoma City (before it moved to Los Vegas), I am sitting next to the handlers on the inside wooden planks of the chute. It took considerable effort to get permission to be this close to Slim—close enough to watch his pupils dilate into huge ovals displaying a fear he cannot disguise. The lead handler asks Slim if he would like to wait 20 minutes before beginning the ride. Slim nods him off. The gate opens.

Sometimes it is prudent to know when to give up. I have been writing this column since October, 2009. One reader observed that my columns made her suspicious because of their apparent clarity, establishing a formula where I said clearly what I was going to write about and wrote it. She asked if I were hiding something amid this seeming clarity. I have been hiding my overall intention; namely, the necessity for the physically disabled, regardless of age, to achieve independence—independence for those of us whose bodies may not work, but whose minds do. The requirements for getting a good job include the tools to do the job, the income necessary to get off public assistance, and the opportunity to develop our talents so we can improve the nation’s economy. This is a complex set of tasks and does not fit neatly onto a piece of paper affixed with a magnet to the refrigerator.

For those of us unable to walk, hear, or see the first task of necessity must be to rid ourselves of anger or at least pretend it isn’t there. Whatever the virtues of expressing how I feel, I have learned that when I am angry in public, I am on the express lane to defeat.

The Roman poet Catullus wrote, “I love and I hate. Do not ask me why I do so, but I am in torment.” Often when I write this column I am overwhelmed by the fluctuations (depending on my mood over the day) of love and hate projected on to a specific person or situation. Often I write multiple drafts of the same column, each thousands of words long until the emotion subsides and I can describe calmly a discrete 800 word section of my overall objective.Today’s current political situation leads me to despair that independence for individuals with physical difficulties will not come in my lifetime. It will not come because Democratic and Republican leaders do not regard it as a priority given our country’s other pressing problems.

Fortunately, I have the opportunity to leave my anger with the present and work on a training program at the virtual reality lab where Dr. John Messner has been creating 3-D programs showing how to construct accessible buildings before workers even begin to dig the foundation. Specifically, I am working with Sonali Kumar on what she calls “the bleeding edge” of technology to design models for independent elderly housing.

I am providing advice based on my experience as a disabled person who lives in independent elderly housing. Instead of maintaining the self-destructive illusion that I know more than everyone else, I am returning to a land of technology where what I don’t know fills the air like the thick steam on the top bench of a Turkish bath. There is so much to learn and all of it will help my people—individuals with disabilities. It is time for this cowboy to stop riding. I do not have the energy to both write this column and plunge into the future.

When I am sufficiently trained, I will report to Voices on what the future will be like.

Joel Solkoff, author of The Politics of Food. Contact him at [email protected]