This Entry took Fourteen Edits to Get Right

As fewer people than I’m hoping will have already noticed, recently I’ve changed from updating my journal with the regularity of, for example, changing my T-shirt, and begun to update with the regularity of changing the colour of my T-shirt. Yes, it’s been fully three weeks now, my LJ has remained with a post about Computer Science at the top, and I am still wearing a black shirt with a Chinese message, the meaning of which I’m only dimly aware. The reason for this is that Whitney visited me during the last fortnight to remind me that there was still life outside the five minute route between my room and the Junior Honours Lab.

Because quite a lot happened in those two weeks, I anticipate that this is going to be rather a long entry. The amount I write depends on how far my interest in this outweighs my interest in going to bed, but I remember that danii_ellie managed one that was upwards of 3,000 words not so long ago and that seems a limit to aim for.

( Will I make it? No. )

Photic Sneeze Reflex (or An Interesting Entry, Honest)

I had a dream about Bill Bailey turning in to a zombie last night. Perhaps it was because I'd been playing King's Quest 2 all day yesterday (so that I could hear the MIDI strings instrument in my ears for hours afterwards). But that's not the point of this entry - I realised a while ago that even though I'd mentioned it to many people before, I haven't asked people on LJ about photic sneeze reflex. I find this a fascinating condition, because even though a significant number of people have it it's hardly noticeable to others, and those who have it don't tend to think anything special of it. I am one of them, and so is my father, but not the rest of my family.

Photic sneeze reflex is a condition where you sneeze in bright light - often when stepping outside on a bright day after being indoors for a while. Because of the way that light causes sneezing, sufferers also tend to turn to lights when they feel a sneeze coming on, to speed it up. It occurs because the nerves for light reception and sneezing are very close to each other in the brain, and if they are close enough, then light can trigger a sneeze.

I'd like to find out how common this is among people reading this - does sunlight make you sneeze? Or is this all entirely new to you? When Whitney made a post about it in Philip's forum they all thought she was just mad. Personally, I had assumed that it happened to everyone, so didn't think to even ask people about it until last year.