alt Hacker NewsThe flipping-between is a great hack -- as you said your eyes (really, brain) just do the work for you.
I learnt about it in Japan where proof-readers and editors would (or do) quickly lift a top page up and down to spot mistakes with kanji (pictographs). And sure enough, even from a page of dense script the dissonance of the error really does pop out at you.
I likewise tucked that little trick into my belt -- it comes in useful anytime you're trying to manually spot a pattern across complex data. This technique has the same "vibe" as FFTs to me: it's just neat feeling like you're getting computation from the universe for free.
Solar PV in a similar category: free electrons if you can arrange the magic rocks just right :)
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I use ScreenFloat[0] in a similar way to catch differences between GUI settings, like the cPanel PHP extensions selector, which has tons of checkboxes. Position a screenshot of settings for site A over the settings for site B, adjust the transparency, and any differences will jump out.
Whoa that's fascinating! Thank you so much for sharing this, I never would've thought of it that way at all.
If you put two proofs side by side, you can view from the right distance then uncross or cross your eyes like a stereogram till they converge, which makes differences shimmer.
Instant "spot the difference" solve.
// Long time in print and digital agency