User:Prime Lemur

My real name is Aaron.

I am colour blind. I wish more computer programmers were familiar with what colour vision deficiency is and how apparently insignificant, whimsical and/or aesthetically appealing choices in colour palette can mean the difference between usable and unusable user interfaces for the (surprisingly large) fraction of the population with a CVD.

I have Attention Deficit Disorder, which was only diagnosed in adulthood. It pretty much ruined the first 25 years of my life. Today it is reasonably well-controlled by medication. Everyone has, to varying degrees, some familiarity & experience with deficits in attention. One of the clinical criteria of ADD is that the problem is so substantial, systematic and pervasive that it interferes with education, employment, relationships, day to day responsibilities and/or goals & aspirations. Medication helps put people with ADD back in control of their lives, but those diagnosed in adulthood can find themselves at considerable disadvantage (in education, employment, finances, relationships) in comparison to their peers, and that's something medication can't fix.

History
My first experience of on-line gaming (and the dangers of addiction) was through MUDs: an acronym for multi user dungeons. Not content to merely play MUDs for 12 hours a day, I eventually became a programmer and designer of the scripted frontend user experience, and with growing experience, helped maintain the backend server codebase.



Hobbies and Interests
A far from exhaustive list of things that interest me:
 * Geology
 * Geology & geological history of Australia
 * Minerals
 * Collecting minerals
 * Boulder opal
 * Sapphires of Australian origin
 * Tourmaline
 * Fossicking for minerals
 * Participating in mineral-related forums, assisting with identifying minerals
 * Boring people senseless by going on, and on, and on about minerals
 * Botany
 * Orchids
 * Cultivating species orchids
 * Studying the natural ecology, evolutionary history & taxonomy of orchids
 * Methods & history of orchid hybridisation
 * Australian native orchids
 * Australian native plants
 * Organic chemistry
 * Flavour & fragrance chemistry
 * Essential oils
 * Distillation & other separation techniques
 * Brewing & distilling alcoholic beverages
 * Mycology
 * Ethnopharmacology
 * Linguistics