Synesthesia- Coloring the boring

Only recently did I come to realize that my strange sensory condition has a name. Synesthesia (according to Wikipedia) is a neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Basically the condition associates two unlike senses together. Some people hear a sound and visualize a color or see a color and sense a taste their mouth. You get the picture.

In particular, I have Grapheme-color synesthesia. Allow me to describe it to you: each letter and number I read has a color. For instance, my brain reads the letter A like A. I don't hallucinate, it is more like in my mind's eye. Here is basically what I see (O is white/q has no color):

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS
TUVWXYZ 123456789

Some letters are distinct and bright colors like J is solidly green, some letters can change slightly depending on the letters next to it like S. Notice the different shades of purple and yellow. Names and words take on the dominant and first few letter colors. So for instance Christi is yellowish-orangey-white, John is green and white. Maybe this is why I always thought I should blonde hair and have dyed it for most of my life?

Months are the exception to the rule and I am not sure why. Perhaps experiences during the month or from lots of use writing the months, they have their own colors not a collection of the color letters that make them up. January February March April May June July August September October November December

I don't consider this a detriment, in fact I actually enjoy this extra injection of color into my everyday life. It does not affect my learning or processing at all. In fact no one would ever know unless I told them.

The only time I do sense it is when two associates clash. For instance, July 4th has always bothered me. July is a light blue color (not sure why because the collected letters do not add up to the color but that is the way it is.) plus 4= July 4. This has always bothered me because the USA's colors are red white and blue and so every year I think, our Independence Day should be July 5. However Christmas is perfect on December 25. Strange I know.

Anyway, I recently discovered this watching a TED video. I finished the video and actually was shaking from excitement. I had never told anyone that I do this in my head and it was such a relief that this had a name and that other people also had this!!

I think I came to these associations because when I was learning letters at a young age I played with magnet letters on the fridge. Those letters and colors probably cemented in my mind together. If I had had a different brand of magnet letters perhaps the colors would be different. As I got older, I must have muddled the end of the alphabet somewhat because that part doesn't follow the red, orange, yellow... pattern so much.

Anyway drop me a line if you experience it too!

For more information see:

www.ted.com/index.php/talksvilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html

www.synesthesia.info

Fixing Web Design Problems- Why isn't the code working?

I know how frustrating it is! You feel lonely and frustrated because you can't figure out why the code isn't working. Either you working by yourself or the code is too complex for someone to simply take a look and see the error. You want to scream!!!!!

First of all, take a breath, take a break, and sleep on it. I can't tell you how many times I went to bed and woke up with the answer. Apparently your brain will try to work out the problem in your sleep if you actually fall asleep with that nagging feeling of failure hanging all over you.

In creating web pages with HTML, I have found that the simplest solution is usually correct. Computers generally do exactly what they are told so if your HTML is not working properly it probably is your code. 9 times out of 10 you spelled something incorrectly or left off a quote mark. Validate your code through Dreamweaver (Shift F6 on MAC) before you go too crazy.

The best way to find the offending area is to comment out "...-->" parts of the code until you find which section is running amok. Then look over the code line by line and character by character. If you have to write the code over again or write it in a new way. It shouldn't be too much trouble if you honed the offending code down to a small area.

If after all of that, the code still doesn't work... then it's probably a browser bug, mostly in IE. This is my favorite websites to figure out which bug: www.positioniseverything.net.

And most importantly, keep up-to-date with web design standards. Here are my favorite sites at the moment:

www.smashingmagazine.com

www.alistapart.com

Good luck!