I want to be able to put the images I want in the exact place that I want with cut lines and the like; I also want mail merge to work correctly.
I also want duplex color printing. I'm fairly close; Microsoft Publisher almost does what I want. I may end up writing a PDF generator or something.
I'm using A4 cardstock (for now) and the postcards need to be 6" wide and 4.25" tall. I print the image larger than that, so that I get full edge-to-edge printing.
I bought a paper cutter[0] to get the clean edges I want. Getting the mail merge to work how I want is a struggle.
Do you have suggestions? Any PDF generator I could feed images and restraints to and generate a printable PDF from zsh on my Mac, or WSL2 on a Windows machine, would be awesome.
I don't really have a system -- or anything that would make worthwhile reading.
I just practice, a lot. I exercise my brain like a power lifter exercises their body.
For instance, I know the names and some basic information of everyone at the bank branch I frequent. I go up, say, "Hi ____, how're the kids, did you have a good time last weekend?" It's nice for them and a little mental workout for me.
When I'm out and about, I briefly memorize random things: movie showtimes, things I heard on the radio and want to look up, prices of things in the store (so I can price-compare later; e.g. I know Safeway has my cereal for $3.99/box with the club card discount, which is slightly better than regular price but not as good as the occasional 2-for-$4.99 sale at Raley's). I try to really look at the people around me and memorize different facial features and notice different things about them, and if I'm not distracted, then I try to flip through them all mentally when I get in the car. (But this also makes big crowds more overwhelming.)
I play Go. I have a small local club with some friends, and we play religiously once a week, and I play or study more often in my spare time. It's a game where you can improve quite a lot by visualizing the game board several moves in advance, and the game board can get pretty complicated. It's a really good workout for my working memory.
When I'm reading, I try to memorize most of the previous paragraph immediately, memorize the bullet points of the previous page when I get to the next page, and the next day I try to remember the gist of what I read. If I can't, I go back and re-read it until it gels.
Stuff like that. It all sounds silly written out, and like a lot of work, but it's second-nature now. I just do it automatically.
Exercising memory is kind of a two-part process. You have to be able to put things in your brain (typically this just means practicing paying attention), and you have to be able to recall them later. I think the recall part might be the bit that a lot of people forget to do. I quiz myself all the time on what I just memorized, so my recall is pretty good.
Oddly, the harder thing I've been struggling with more recently is forgetting on purpose: there's a bunch of stuff in my brain that I don't need, and learning how to forget that stuff is a trick I haven't figured out yet.
If anyone has used both, please let me know some overall impressions. I am considering building a game soon and am curious about the best platform moving forward.
