How i reserch with dyslexia

Again this post is less about the actual project and more about how i deal with reserch. 

First thing to note about me reserhing is that i have A "severe case of dyslexia". Im not just saying this , i took a test which said that. If you have been following my blog a lot you'l notice a lot of spelling mistakes and this is the main reason. my spasific problem is reading and spelling. When trying to read i sped too much time andenergy trying to decode the words of the actual text insted of gaining the meaning from it and ever after a few reads and hours lateri could be just as lost as i was when i started reading. 

Other things I learned from this test is that my visual perception/ perceptual organisation is very good, the test said that i was in beond the top 99.9 percentile  for this section which could explain how some people cant understand how i can lookat something and just know how to recreate it or do it quickly. But talking about quickly , my speed on the test was a little slower then the average as there was reading involved at some parts. 

for those who are interested basically this is one of the things that effects me, its called text rivers

I used to get this a lot when my mum draged me to church and we looked at the Hymm books. Instead of seeing the actual words i focused more on the spaces between the words and saw pictures emerge casing me to lose concentration on the text. (its very distracting)

During college I got this test which made me eligible for a disabled student allowance to buy a new laptop and ome software to help with reading. The software i received was read and write gold. Which is a really good pice of software but i always felt it ran too slow and some of the features required you to read to get things working. Like it gives you definitions but sometimes dosn't let u use the reader to hear them, plus this just takes a lot of time which i dont like wasting.

I was also given prescription glasses with red lenses to redice the contrast between black and white text. this is a condition called "scotopic sensitivity syndrome" and is known to cause migraines which i also suffer from regularly.

(not my glasses just to illustrate point)

Instead i use a small pice of software which reads the last thing copied to your clipboard  Its called Free Natural Reader, there is a payed version but the fre one dose everything i need it to do, which is just read. Then i can sit back and listen and understand stuff. This dose take longer than people who can read quick but its the way i have to do stuff. 

http://www.naturalreaders.com/download.php

Also i went with a Hp touch smart laptop with built in graphics tablet, it was small enough to be realy portable and it has been the best laptop for me, allowing me to sketch anywhere, ie i used to doodle on the train on the way home to visit my family. This really got me into drawing again and helped me get through my 2nd year group project. 

So as you may have guessed i dont really like books, there is no button to make it speak fror you on a book. I really like flicking through a book and looking at the pictures but if there is not a good picture for the topic im looking for i often overlook it. Also it should explain how most of my references are from online, because its a lot more accessible to me because i can actually read/ listen to it.

I like learning and watch a lot of tutorial videos on youtube. Sometimes i just have them on the background and it just sinks in. I usually watch most of the making of on films and stuff aswell.

Operating systems?

this may not be  big deal to many people but i has been for me. For a while i have wanted to switch to linux as my primary operating system but after using text to speech on windows so much I miss it a lot when its not there. I dont have a problem with windows, i just like the openness and community around linux. [My dad was having a lot of troubles on windows with viruses so i put him on linux and he loves it, he can read so lack of text to speech dosent effect him] 

Installing text to speech correctly for the applications i use it is so complicated and quite counterintuitive as it requires a lot of reading to get it working. As i mentioned in a recent post i just bought a new mac and might see how it goes as it has a great text to speech built into the operating system, just highlight some text and press a button and thats it. 

Practice based Reserch ? :D

Now this is my area. If iv learned anything form robins lectures its that its ok to be a practice based researcher  Creating original stuff is a research method and for me i can sometimes learn a lot more than reading lengthy papers on the topic. Like i mentioned in a previous post i like making things and always have. 

all that being said I feel im slowly getting better at reading with the right dim lighting conditions and nothing else to think about i can drag my way through a passage or two. I like reading terms and conditions as they are so prosise in there use of langage. i have read/ listend to a lot of stuff in this first semester of 4th year and have also learned a lot.