Unmatched computers+redundancy=need redundant brain?

[Diver0001]

Found it.

CPSC, UWATEC AG Announce Recall of 1995 Aladin Air X NitrOx Dive Computers

It's a computer from 1995 and since I remember that as having happened recently enough to be relevant I now feel embarrassingly old and crusty.

R..

 

[Diver0001]

@aquacat8 I'm still unclear as to why you find it such a challenge to navigate the information your computer is giving you. I think it would be very interesting to understand that. Care to elaborate?

R..

 

[boulderjohn]

I thought the Prime instructions were difficult myself. It was years ago, but I seem to remember diagrams that were circles of functions, and they were very confusing. I think that in general, most computer manuals are hard to read and understand. It helps a lot if you know what you are looking for. If you really know the key features you need, you can zero in on those key features and dispense with everything else. If you don't look for specific features and instead try to take everything in, you can be overwhelmed.

 

[aquacat8]

I thought the Prime instructions were difficult myself. It was years ago, but I seem to remember diagrams that were circles of functions, and they were very confusing. I think that in general, most computer manuals are hard to read and understand. It helps a lot if you know what you are looking for. If you really know the key features you need, you can zero in on those key features and dispense with everything else. If you don't look for specific features and instead try to take everything in, you can be overwhelmed.

What he said

 

[aquacat8]

If it is not the recall computer I will attempt to sell it to someone with young eyes. On dry land I literally am using a magnifying glass on top of my 1.50 readers to decipher the icons. Underwater I can still read a Datamax Pro without even a gauge reader mask

 

[Diver0001]

What he said

I'm still trying to understand this because I have beta-brain that has no trouble with numbers -- despite the fact that university mathematics were so soul-crushingly boring that some days it almost caused an existential crisis.....

In the past I've also played some of the most complex computer games ever invented so I have a strong ability to be bombarded with vast amounts of information at high speed and in real-time from a very "rich" interface and pick out the ONE critical thing that I needed to be paying attention to.

So to me a dive computer is an exceedingly simple device. I realize that we are very different but that's where my curiosity is coming from.

If I understand you well, for someone with an artistic brain like yours all the numbers are confusing and you have trouble understanding what you can ignore and what you should be paying attention to because it all seems to have the same priority due to the manner in which it is presented.

If that's the case then I can understand your trouble. In actual fact I think computers were made by (and for) people like me who can easily learn to prioritize information without being shown, for example, with a colour, where to look.

Is this the core of your trouble?

R..

 

[boulderjohn]

The problem with manuals is that they were written BY people like you FOR people like you. It is not the numbers that are confusing to the rest of the world--it is the way the material is presented.

When I was in high school, I was very much a math whiz, and I went to college originally planning to major in chemistry. That idea went awaybefore too long, and I became an English major. I still scored in the 93d percentile on my math SATs when I graduated. A few years later I was in graduate school, and I worked several days a week as a substitute teacher to earn money. Because I could still speak math at that point in my life, I was usually called on to substitute for math teachers. As I helped students with their problems, I had to read the textbooks both to help them and to remind myself of content I had not seen in many years. I was now looking at those textbooks through the eyes of an English major and English teacher! Holy cow! I could not believe how horribly written they were. No wonder students were struggling!

 

[aquacat8]

I'm still trying to understand this because I have beta-brain that has no trouble with numbers -- despite the fact that university mathematics were so soul-crushingly boring that some days it almost caused an existential crisis.....

In the past I've also played some of the most complex computer games ever invented so I have a strong ability to be bombarded with vast amounts of information at high speed and in real-time from a very "rich" interface and pick out the ONE critical thing that I needed to be paying attention to.

So to me a dive computer is an exceedingly simple device. I realize that we are very different but that's where my curiosity is coming from.

If I understand you well, for someone with an artistic brain like yours all the numbers are confusing and you have trouble understanding what you can ignore and what you should be paying attention to because it all seems to have the same priority due to the manner in which it is presented.

If that's the case then I can understand your trouble. In actual fact I think computers were made by (and for) people like me who can easily learn to prioritize information without being shown, for example, with a colour, where to look.

Is this the core of your trouble?

R..

Yes! Very well said. Also I readily grasp shapes and colors and can probably see nuances of color you can’t even imagine. I am easily overstimulated and take steps to limit information inflow (like permanent news media diet, and driving with Iphone in trunk). I will leave/not spend money at/ not work in a building if it has bad lighting. I dove in California with a pink Seavision color correcting mask, and the most important thing on my Datamax Pro Plus besides the Dive time remaining number (I CAN handle limited numerical input) is four BIG COLORFUL bar graphs. Often I glance at my computer and see only those. Meanwhile I am turning into a fish and processing the underwater world of shapes and colors with a highly complex, highly trained (13 years college, also taught, exhibited, in museum collections) artist’s brain.

 

[KeithG]

Found it.

CPSC, UWATEC AG Announce Recall of 1995 Aladin Air X NitrOx Dive Computers

It's a computer from 1995 and since I remember that as having happened recently enough to be relevant I now feel embarrassingly old and crusty.

R..

You should not have to worry about these computers as their batteries will all be dead by now.

The case on these computers was glued together making it very hard to open without breaking the case.

 

[stuartv]

I'm still trying to understand this

Because she said it was READING THE MANUAL that was the problem for her.

it was reading the pdf manual that was daunting,