(no subject)

Ha! I started up another of the laptops I've had sitting around here for years and was having trouble getting the optical drive to open. When I finally did, I found my copy of Darik's Boot and Nuke that I'd been wondering what happened to. I figured it must be in one of the computers sitting around here, but it's been long enough that I'd kind of forgotten about it in general. And I haven't really needed the program for a long time. (But if it's something you have need of, it's a great program. You can check it out here: http://www.dban.org/)

(no subject)

I think there are some newer folks reading me here. I was asking earlier about whether and how people visualize people who they know only through text or voice (like a phone call). But I don't think I noted that the reason this interests me particularly is that I have a neurological facial recognition deficit known as prosopagnosia, or faceblindness. I don't recognize people by face very well at all, and someone's face, to me, is not a very important element of my awareness and memory of them.

Typically, I refer people looking for more info about faceblindess to an excellent primer on the topic written by Bill Choisser, whose novelette was one of the first things I found once I learned of the existence of the condition. It was with little exaggeration, a revelation. I guess that's why I'd never thought until now to go and look at the Wikipedia article about faceblindness. The section about children with developmental prosopagnosia, fits my childhood to a T. It's something that has profoundly affected the course of my life. I used to be dead certain that I was a high-functioning autistic. Now, I wonder if it wasn't simply difficulties that stemmed from the inability to tell people apart.

Yet, when I was tested by a neurologist for faceblindness, I was told that I was perfectly normal. I wish that I'd pursued it further at the time, asked for further verification, or an alternate explanation of the problems I have, but I didn't. Instead, I gave up on getting anything useful from that facility since, as far as I was concerned, they were dead wrong. Someday, when I have health insurance again, I might look into a diagnosis again.

in the meantime, here's that primer I mentioned. It really was an unexaggerated revelation to discover this kind of material. With no baseline for comparison, I hadn't figured out that there was anything wrong with my facial recognition until my first horribly unsuccessful attempt at college. All I knew was I was terrified of people and didn't now how to interact with them. You really wouldn't recognize the deeply shy, socially-avoidant person I was then.

http://www.choisser.com/faceblind/