oO_

“I don’t know why I’m being so silly, we weren’t together long enough for anything to really happen.”

“Sometimes the most powerful feelings can come from the promise of what might happen. Just the anticipation is enough to make all the little hairs on your neck stand on end.”

…

lovely picture, although probably not so much in person

i’ve seen lots of pictures with lots of green, but these trees look especially peculiar? don’t think we have trees like that around here

tehran

amsterdam

hemsedal, norway

waterfall in munich? path of least resistance

“One exception to this rule is in the realm of quantum physics, where particles behave in a probabilistic rather than deterministic manner.”

this looks good

like this one, for reason i do not know

i want a pet lion =[

desserts…

Current song: Goo Goo Dolls - Hate This Place

i guess this is worth a share

physical manifestation of psychological illness

been listening to shakira lately

been attempting to figure out the guitar solo at the end of this:

got it mostly figured out besides the fast part… not that i have the technical ability to play it anyway…

i oughta get guitar lessons ;)

Word per minute: 415
Comprehension: 67%

I guess it’s an improvement! Didn’t use any fancy meta-guide pattern thing.. cause it gives me a headache and nothing goes in. Just did other basic stuff.

still practicing the fancy patterns though! would be nice to get comprehension up too.. but I guess that will improve together along with speed.

I’ve been trying the “loop” method.. not really getting anywhere and it just makes my head hurt. I think every night I’ll just practice it at hyper-speed or something? In the meantime I’ll use multiple-line reading for my reading. It is a little bit easier on the eyes/head.. speed/comprehension not so great at the moment.

Not even half way through the book and I’ve run into some real difficulty. I guess the big idea is completely changing the way you read. It’s not just reading faster, it’s “growing up” and reading in different way.

Chapter 7 introduced people, dead and alive that were speed readers. This chapter is a bit technical so I’m not going to talk about most of it. I don’t know if I’ve already blogged about it, but I was talking to someone about subvocalization. For me, and I would assume, for the average person, it is hard to even imagine what it would be like to read without subvocalizing. I suspect most of us even think “out loud”. The whole thing becomes even more interesting when you take the case of the person who is deaf from birth; suddenly the notion of non-subvocalization is less absurd when you consider the deaf.

Anyway, chapter 8 is about “meta-guiding”. It talks a little about photographic memory capacity and the way the brain pieces together what the eyes see, but I am not going to get into detail. The meat of it all is reading/”visual guiding movement” techniques (and with this things start to approach the absurd… )- from the most basic “double line sweep” where you take in two lines at once, to advanced techniques where you are supposed to start reading backwards, from right to left, that which was written left to write… Eventually I think the goal is to “read down the middle of the page” moving only slightly left and right.

Practicing these ridiculous techniques: First practice at very high speeds, with pretty much no comprehension. I’m using my finger as a guide (pretty sure you’re supposed to use a guide with these). Then slow down to normal speeds.

Frankly, I’m not getting my hopes up, but we’ll see.

theme… “fixed” the transparency problem.. but now it doesn’t display correctly in IE. haven’t decided what to do yet

heard this on the radio today: eric benet, you’re the only one

305 WPM, 67%

Chapter 5 was more about proper conditions.. such as light ideally coming from over the shoulder opposite your writing hand, and the room being well-lit without strong contrast. Posture, etc.

Chapter 6 claims using a reading guide may improve reading speed. The guide should move along the line smoothly. You should also read lines starting after the beginning and stopping before the end of the line, using your peripheral vision to read down the middle of the page.