TIL about "aphantasia"

On my commute to work this morning, I checked Twitter mostly for football scores (MUFC vs CPFC for the FA Cup final!); and I came across a Facebook post about a man who discovers he has "aphantasia."

Man discovers he has "aphantasia" - he can't picture things in his head - and that everyone else can: https://t.co/DMy6NVOgnx

— Kate Gray (@hownottodraw) April 24, 2016

And it blew my goddamned mind as well!

I struggled to imagine what goes on in his mind. It just comes so natural. It's much easier, for me, to "see" things before thinking up facts. If someone asks me to describe a person, I would first picture said person in my mind, and then describe what I "see," and I would find it difficult to give any sort of description if my mental image isn't very clear.

When someone gives me directions, I would "see" the route in my head. Or at least imagine it somewhat like a navigation app's display, with almost all square blocks unless noted otherwise. Then I would kinda overlay my in-head navigation to the real route to figure out where I'm going. (Side note: can't wait for AR to be a thing so I don't have to imagine this)

I wondered how he "gets" the world when reading fiction. I often correlate the quality of a fictional story with how vividly I can imagine the world (hence why the Harry Potter series is one of my favorites). Seeing this fantastical universe is the only way I know to be able to live in it and fully experience the story. How can I relate to it if I can't see it? Would it move me emotionally at all?

In college, I learned that some people can't imagine three-dimensional figures as easily as I could, which I thought was quite interesting –– wouldn't it make learning some parts of Calculus more challenging? –– but this, aphantasia, is much more fascinating. I'm having trouble imagining his world as he was finding it difficult to understand that other people can "see" things in their minds. Can he even comprehend how that works? Because I can't imagine what my mind would be like without it.

2048

That game, that's so popular right now, I've been playing it quite a bit these past few days. I finally managed to get 2048 this past weekend, and then 4096 the day after. Haven't been able to go further than that, and I'm not sure I could. Once I got to 2048 the first time, getting there again seemed pretty easy. Getting to 4096 is slightly tougher, but it's pretty attainable. I'm still unsure if 8192 is even possible, so I googled other challenges I can do instead. The one that interested me the most was to get the lowest, winning score. I think this means using the least steps necessary. My current record is 20192.

Buy all the iThings!

I wasn't expecting much from yesterday's Apple event; I wasn't too interested in an iPad Mini. But now, dammit Apple, I want everything. Because, according to Phil, all the iThings I already own look old now.

The new iMac looks super sexy. The lack of a firewire port, though, is quite disappointing. But I'm not a power user or whatever those people are called so I'm okay with USB and thunderbolt.

My sedentary life

I've started a new blog, My Sedentary Life, which is basically where I will post anything relating to TV shows and movies that I watch. Just thought it would be nice to have a blog that has a focus and that this one would be less of a mess. Although, looking at my labels, I don't know what else I would post here...

What's wrong with the current generation

These images have been floating around the internets these past couple of days:

I tried to be understanding. Assuming that these people are pre-teens and teens, I can understand why they don't know who Paul McCartney (or The Beatles) is. But I couldn't stand the fact that a lot of them dismiss him because he's "old" even before his performance started.

And then there's this. I...don't... I can't even...

I think Blogger is lying to me

I've always been suspicious of the Blogger Stats because, well, it's telling me that there are people who actually view my posts. I mean, seriously, why would anyone do that? I know most of it is because I posted my homework answers for the Astronomy classes that I took (even though most of the answers are wrong. I really didn't do well in college). But I just checked and it told me that there were 155 pageviews today alone. That is such a lie! I'm pretty sure no one actually views anything except for those homework answers, and the numbers seem way too high. And 130k+ all time views? There is just no way.

But then there's also AdSense. I signed up for it about 3 months ago, because why not? There's that tiny box of ads over there ---->

And they're telling me that it made me $13 last month? I had 3 new posts last month, and only 5 in October. Those were random posts too, mostly about TV shows that I watch. I'm not gonna complain if they're sending me $15 for doing absolutely nothing. But I am curious about how accurate these numbers are, though. I just find them very strange and unbelievable.

Tributes to Steve Jobs around the web

[By designer Jonathan Mak]

Shopping at Target

Right before Irene hit New Jersey. I think people went a little overboard there...

Learning vs. Studying

I'm a big fan of learning. I love it. There are just so many interesting things that we can learn at any moment in our lives. That's why I'm so quiet, I think. Well that, and the fact that I'm incredibly (and stupidly) shy and self-conscious. Do you know how much you can learn just by listening and observing? What can I say, I'm a lurker by heart.

On the other hand, studying, not loving it as much. As many of my friends would attest, I really can't be much lazier. I just hate studying.

What's the difference between learning and studying? Well in my opinion, studying is the act of searching for information that you can learn. You know, as in sitting there reading textbooks for an exam. While learning is simply the passive act of acquiring said information. Like sitting there listening to someone talking and you learn lots of things about that person. Or I guess whatever/whoever the person's talking about.

So, yeah, love learning, hate studying. I'm just that lazy.

I finally did it!

I've been thinking about doing a clean install on my Mac for quite a while now because I feel like it's too cluttered and I was running out of disk space. I do feel like I'm too attached to this laptop and if I do erase everything, I'd be losing a little piece of me. Yeah, it's sad. I'm so dependent on it that I think cleaning everything up would actually be good for me. I do have two backups on separate harddrives of my MacBook so really, I'm not gonna lose much! But still I was so nervous when I clicked "erase" on Disk Utility. But I did it.

I planned on doing a Lion clean install but upon Googling, I found that it wasn't possible without having a bootable USB Lion installer. And I don't have the 8GB USB drive that's required to create one. So I just erased my drive and re-installed Snow Leopard, before upgrading to Lion. The process was fine; it took a couple hours with practically no problems. I do like this feeling I get when it's empty. It's like a brand new computer but not really.

Anyways, welcome, Lion!

The first things I installed after doing the clean install: Google Chrome, VLC Player, Twitter, Microsoft Office. I'm trying to not install as much crap as I probably would, but I do miss having my games and songs and all the crap!!

Read it on reddit.

12 Offices of Famous Companies

In our days, companies are still trying to get more and more distinctive in people’s mind. Although the main difference is made through the brands they create, the important companies are beginning to use their corporate identity as part of the big competition. And a major role in a business’s identity is represented by the look of their offices, the place where everything happens.

The more distinguishing the headquarters are, the more interesting the company becomes for the large public and the more appealing it turns out to be for the potential employees. Here are some of the greatest architectural examples ever created to host a company’s office.

Tina Fey: Authors@Google

Google's Eric Schmidt interviewing Tina Fey, that itself has got to be comedy! She's hilarious as always.

Zach Wahls Speaks About Family

Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old University of Iowa student spoke about the strength of his family during a public forum on House Joint Resolution 6 in the Iowa House of Representatives. Wahls has two mothers, and came to oppose House Joint Resolution 6 which would end civil unions in Iowa.

Amazing speech. He's 19 and is amazing at public speaking, better than many public figures! He's gonna have a bright future ahead of him. And he's actually in engineering, not something that does too much public speaking! Anyways, the speech that he gave was powerful and touching. He delivered it really well, too!

Time.com: 140 Best Twitter Feed

[source] Some people I already follow or interested in:

Neil Patrick Harris

[Celebrities]
Followers: 1.2 million
Sample tweet: "Excited for my 1st Grammys! What should I wear? I'm thinking a black tux with that metal robot headpiece will.i.am wore at the Super Bowl."

He may play overconfident on How I Met Your Mother, but Neil Patrick Harris proves he's nothing if not a nice guy on his Twitter account. The new father gets personal on his account, tweeting about parenthood, his acting projects and life in the public eye. He gives more than 1 million followers a dose of his trademark self-deprecating wit

Corning: A Day Made of Glass

This is just very, very cool! I mean, I was very impressed with the Savant Experience (well that's already real) and it's somewhat my dream to built something like that in my home. I say somewhat because it'd probably a while since I can actually own my own place and not just renting a tiny apartment and even then I don't know if I have enough money to buy all the stuff.

But this is really something else!

Happy Pi Day!! :D

[Found from @WriteRCastle]

I'm having apple pie with Tante Philia and fam to celebrate! :]

iPad 2

Apple announced it yesterday and pegged 2011 as "The Year of iPad 2."

It uses the dual-core A5 chip, making it twice faster than the first iPad. It's redesigned and is 33% thinner and 15% lighter. As expected, it has two cameras, enables FaceTime and HD video recording, plus Photo Booth, something that I'm quite excited about.

Another thing that I think is pretty cool: the smart cover. It looks nice, uses magnet to snap it into place and covers the screen and only the screen (I hate it when something covers the beauty of Apple products), can be used as a stand, and keeps it clean. The iPad also automatically goes to sleep when the cover is on and wakes up when cover is opened. I just think it's brilliant.

Scoble: Getting ready for SXSW: Order your “geek cards”

[Read the article here.]

I am really interested in these! They just look really cool!

New MacBook Pro is here

Happy Birthday, Steve! Just like the rumors stated, Apple refreshed the entire line of MacBook Pros today, which just so happened to be Steve Jobs’ birthday. These new models aren’t exactly revolutionary with the same basic unibody casing, layout, and batteries. The updates are evolutionary in nature, just steps towards the next generation of MacBook Pros.

Gone are Nvidia graphics as the latest MBP models feature Sandy Bridge Intel CPUs paired with switchable graphics between an integrated Intel chip or a discrete AMD GPU. (The 13-inch only has integrated graphics) The mini DisplayPort interface now shares its port with Apple’s impentation of Intel’s Light Peak technology re-dubbed Thunderbolt. Base RAM levels remained the same, although 1333MHz chips are used rather than the 1066MHz type used in the previous generation. Besides the SD slot now supporting SDXC, the rest of the connectivity options are a carryover from the previous crop.

source

So the new line of MacBook Pros has a new processor, next generation I/O, awesome graphics, HD FaceTime, bla bla bla... I WANT ONE!! My 2006 MacBook needs an upgrade! I'm gonna wait until this summer, for Mac OS X Lion, and then get the 13" MBP! xD

Name something that gets passed around!

We really are going to hell, aren't we?