h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Most millionaires invest in annuities. I wish I'd gotten on to them younger.

Sounds like something involving a flightless bird.

Part the key to prosperity is knowing a good bargain when you see it.

Penny wise... and pound wise.

It would help if I had any facility with numbers.
I am mathematically dyslexic.

I'm considered gifted. I've never been fast or had much intuitive flair. Instead, I'm patient and dogged and check everything carefully as many ways as I can think of to do it.

I'm not dyslexic. I am ambidextrous. Two of my nephews are dyslexic. One is a talented mechanic and craftsman. The other made my jaw drop when I saw his math scores.

I'm considered a genius by those who have no idea how depressing that is.
If I don't perform a certain task for awhile, I have to relearn it.

It took me thirty years to grasp the concept of paying bills.
It took me almost twenty nine to learn how to tie an apron.

I still have trouble with left and right.

I have no sense of direction.

My organizational skills are based on keeping things in the same area of the house or room for decades. They get moved, they get lost.

I learned how to tell left from right living on the beaches in southern California. If I faced the North Star, the sea was on my left. Later I got onto the point that if I faced the setting sun, North was on my right (This doesn't necessarily work in polar latitudes.)

My big problem is depth perception. Neither my eyes nor my ears match in acuity.

I used to be incredibly clumsy. The bicycle pretty much solved that, I think.

My fear of heights has diminished with my altered hearing. I hear less well than I did ten years ago, but I can still hear more than most people. Super hearing was a pain. I had trouble filtering.

I still have trouble with graphic intensity. If I am trying to read or find something in an area or on a page that is too busy, it takes me days to get used to it. I had serious trouble with business forms and computer pages for years.

Back home I knew there was moss on the north side of the garage. If I could figure out where the garage was in relation to where I was, I knew where north was. If I couldn't, then I couldn't.

I've some idea what you mean on hearing. I've had serious hearing loss in my right ear since my latter childhood years and in both more recently. I recently got two hearing aids and the first thing I noticed was that the changes somewhat upset my balance, next, filtering problems.

Graphic intensity... like enormous crowds (especially if in motion), a boat filled with fish of more or less variegated types, fresh hauled in.... Fields of visual complexity. Maybe I haven't quite got this right. Is that something like what you mean? When I was working in graphic arts I used to get a kick out material like this, all kinds of potentials for optical illusion.

With an excessively complicated computer page, sometimes it helps to reduce the size of the window to something that will conveniently display just the part you're interest in. Minimize, place the tip of cursor arrow on the margin of the window, left click, hold and drag. Makes it easier to have several documents on the screen at once, though more than three or four or so at time increases potential for a crash (system seizes up, buttons won't operate). Other preventive measure on crash: refresh screen after every task.

Moss grows on the north side of things in the northern hemisphere because its the shady side. It grows on the south side of things in the southern hemisphere.

Graphic intensity...
Like a badly designed textbook page or a complicated job application or one of those forms they give you at the hospital to fill in your insurance information.

Poorly designed paper pages are as bad as poorly designed computer pages.
I can handle visual density, like a creative piece of art, or a good comic book page. But when it comes to shop shelves or displays, I have trouble seperating objects or text when it is too busy or poorly coloured.

Sometimes just working with a more limited field helps. When I was doing graphics work once upon a time, I noticed that some of our people were using masks with windows cut out of them to limit the field under study to just that they were actually working on, and have seen them applied in clerical and library work too; A covering page with a hole cut in it matching the section under work or study. Easy to do with windows.

While this works for the printed page or the computer screen, its a mental exercise when working with a shop display or merchandise on the shelves; establish limits, restrict the study to objects within those limits, then when done, treat the different sectors as separate blocks when checking for overall effect.

A technique similar to the first mentioned is currently used in astronomy for studies of distant galaxies. In order to cut out the clutter, for example if doing a spectrographic study, the astronomer uses a template with pinholes in it matching the locations of the objects in the field under study, restricting the study to the specific object of interest.

Afterthought: Have you ever seen paintings by Modrian? Something evocative of the effect I was remarking on.

Other afterthought, rough and ready masking technique I sometimes use. Split a couple of sheets of stiff paper or thin cardboard somewhat larger that the page you're going to work with, one lengthwise, one crosswise and use them to create a box around the section you're interested in.

Or, shelves and displays, use sticky tabs to mark off corners of the section you're working on.

ah, masking.

I would have to mask up my entire day.

I've got to say I know the feeling. Trying to set up UBUNTU on my pc, page after page of explanations... so I'm carefully bookmarking everything in order and hopefully may later be able condense to a step by step process.