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RSI was really beginning to affect my ability to type. I had experienced no symptoms, right up until about 6 months ago. I remember attending a lecture at University about RSI slightly beforehand by two students who had all but lost their ability to type due to RSI. I remember thinking "Thank god that'll never happen to me..". How wrong I was.

It just sort of happened - slight pain at first, but quickly got worse. The biggest pain was in my wrists where your arms meet your hands, with some slight pain in the lower arms. I don't believe it was related to the use of the mouse, although some days using the mouse did agrivate it.

I had tried giving typing a break - doing no typing for a few weeks. This didn't seem to help much.

However a month or so ago we decided to do up one of our houses, and I spent a week doing nothing but intense DIY. This involved using my hands a lot - lots of lifting, squeezing, twisting, etc. Each day I could feel the muscles in my hands ache - but was it RSI pain? Surprisingly, no! It was the same muscle pains I was getting all over, I was getting a real workout.

And the result? My RSI was temporarily cured.

It has started to get slightly worse, but not nearly as bad as it was. I intend to find ways to ensure I'm getting plenty of hand-based exercise. Infact, I just ordered some heat sensitive putty from http://www.puttyworld.com/ :)

In conclusion - exercise your hands with a real workout. Build up your hand muscles. Hopefully it'll help you as much as it did I.

Can it be fooled simply and easily by a piece of jelly, like most fingerprint scanners on the market. Surely you can drag the jelly across.

Here are some good links about the security of fingerprint based systems:

The stuff from Crayola is a bit expensive. I ordered two pounds of Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty and absolutely love it.

Nice markup they got there. $12 for what this guy sells for $9. It's even in the same container, just has a sticker on it that says "Thinkgeek".

Silly Putty (R) is a registered trademark of Binney & Smith / Crayola. See www.sillyputty.com.

You can also buy tins of a similar stuff in really neat colors from www.puttyworld.com.

This is an understatement! Among other cool things they have Magnetic Putty and pocket blacklights ...

This is an understatement! Among other cool things they have Magnetic Putty and pocket blacklights ...

How about different colors of silly putty? You can buy bulk quantities of putty from Crazy Aaron's Puttyworld, http://www.puttyworld.com/index.html. You could then give everyone a portion, and they could play with color mixing and other fun uses for putty.

People will stand in line at your booth to enter most any contest that has a prize worth about $150 or more. An entire set of golf clubs generally works well with crowds older than about 30. A laptop or high-end palm pilot works well with younger crowds.

At tech shows (comdex, cebit, etc.) that kind of stuff usually doesnt work as well (though the golf club thing is still very popular.) If it's a show with an audience of mostly men, some good looking females in the booth will do a lot for you.

The gimmies are usually pretty tricky. The most effective ones are the ones that people have never seen before. We gave away cell phone chairs one time, which was pretty stupid, but they worked really well because nobody at the oil and gas show had ever seen them before -- even though there were tens of booths giving them away at the tech shows for a couple years, it was still effective. The CD cases we gave away, by contrast, cost nearly four times as much and were not effective.

The new gimmie we're going to use is silly putty we bought in bulk from Crazy Aaron (www.puttyworld.com) ... haven't seen anyone giving it away yet, but someone's probably done it. Anyway, we sliced it up into small chunks, put it in some inexpensive tins... It's actually very very close to the least expensive thing we've ever given away and it will likely be the most effective thing we have ever used. Just in case, though, we have some sticky notes and a drawing for a set of golf clubs too :)

~GoRK

Puttyworld.com is where you can find Crazy Arron.

One of the cooler potato cannon videos.

Puttyworld.com is where you can find Crazy Arron.

One of the cooler potato cannon videos.

or you can just buy a couple of tubs of Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty. take some to work, it's Instant Popularity!

And it's more fun to play with than pitch.