what I need is a waterproof computer

The nice thing about a large computer monitor is that it's big enough to watch HD subs. Also nice is setting up the sofa so I don't have to sit up straight while watching, but can be appropriately lazy, while still able to see the subtitles clearly, even from six or seven feet away.

The problem is that the desk is no longer within easy reach... and it's damn hard to see subtitles through the fuzzy ass of a cat determined to find that Very Last Bit of Jerky that he's convinced must be hidden somewhere under the keyboard. I'm thinking maybe a watershooter. Except that this means if my aim's not perfect, I'll be soaking the screen instead. Maybe I could just wrap the monitor in saran wrap?

You think the cat'd know by now what it means when I yell at him that he's not made out of muddy water.

new layout [revised post]

Did this new layout over the weekend, which might sound like a lot but it's really just a riff off a redesign I did for a non-DW site, so the basics were already in place. (Well, mostly, given that all LJ-clones have the same wacky multiple-multiple-multiple divs coming out of the ears.)

The font is entirely em-based, and the width is fluid, with a fixed left column. This is only the first draft, so there's no flipping columns and no double-column -- not sure I'd do a double-column with this layout, but having the option to flip might be nice, for anyone who prefers sidebars on the right. Anyway, here's how I got what you see on my pages.

( Steps and files for duplicating the layout. )

Alright, those are all the setups I've got currently, so if you run into trouble, I'll dig deeper on what it might be... but I'm hoping the extra bits do the trick.

until we see faces: recognition

I've been considering this for several weeks now, but coming at it rather obliquely in terms of posting about it, and I think I may have been unclear in a previous post about familiarity-of-faces. I had followed that up with a second post (now deleted, which in hindsight was rather stupid of me to let my temper with myself get the best of me, but anyway), and I think some of the frustration I've been feeling recently (with myself, that is) can be traced to the lack of context. Part of that context is in providing a better definition of what I mean when I talk about recognition.

First off, here's the definition of faceblindness, from Wiki:

Prosopagnosia (sometimes known as face blindness) is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively intact....

Few successful therapies have so far been developed for affected people, although individuals often learn to use 'piecemeal' or 'feature by feature' recognition strategies. This may involve secondary clues such as clothing, hair color, body shape, and voice. Because the face seems to function as an important identifying feature in memory, it can also be difficult for people with this condition to keep track of information about people, and socialize normally with others.

...but I get the impression this is not the same as something else -- the term of which, I'm not sure -- in which faces are simply, well, not-there. It's a situation in which someone doesn't register facial expressions, or can't interpret the expressions seen; that seems to be related to empathy-issues. (This is not an issue for me, but I'm mentioning it because the two -- face-recognition versus facial-based-empathy -- seem to get conflated, sometimes.)

( A few demonstrations of the process of recognition. )

That's the first big chunk, but I'm going to break this into parts, because there's a lot to work through and a lot to unpack, and I want to take my time considering each part carefully.

until we see faces: seeing the fall of light

previous part

Meeting CP had a profound effect on the way I see faces. The first has taken much longer to quantify, but the second was almost immediate, and it's that one that I think might provide another level of context. CP, like my father and his father, is a photographer, and both our fathers -- while never more than hobbyists slash recorders of their many travels -- had/have an amazing instinct when it came to candid portraiture. CP shows the same instinct, and when we started dating, I had just bought a new Canon Rebel. It was under CP's tutelage that I started learning about the intricacies of aperture and depth-of-field and all these other mysterious things...

Except that I freaking sucked at candid portraiture. If I had any instinct when it comes to capturing faces, it was the innate ability to capture people at their absolute worst expression, at the most bizarre angle, and every person ended up looking... well, like a mutant, really. It's all optical illusion, but if you get a person at the just-so angle, the nose looks abnormal, the cheekbones tilted, the jawline extended. So frustrating! I couldn't seem to anticipate, the way CP (or our fathers) could. More than that, even when the person was perfectly still, I couldn't get a decent image. I know I'm hard on myself as a student, but I'm talking way beyond just being slightly critical. Even from a objective stance, I was getting something totally wrong.

( The issue wasn't anticipation. The issue was that I didn't understand light. )