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Keyboarding Love Or Keyboarding Pain
flyingember writes "Over on Ars, they've done the ultimate review for anyone who sits at a computer more than someone on AOL does, the IMAK Smart Gloves. These gloves are supposed to both prevent and help ease pain associated with conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrome. Read it to see if our code monkey enjoys the gloves or if they're just something for him to throw at the gawking crowd."
Glasses? Check.
Dorky parted hair? Check.
High-pitched, nasally voice? Check.
Skinny fragile body? Check.
Computer gloves? Check.
Sigh.
So much for useful innovation...
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I had a moderate case of tendonitis from keyboarding and mousing about 2 years ago, and this thing does work.
I like the fact that you can still bend your wrist as much as you want, but you are gently reminded that you are bending, so you eventually stop doing it. It's not constricting like those braces.
switching to dvorak would probably help more than theses gloves...
I admit it. I'm a big perv. But when I read "keyboarding love," I thought it was a new euphemism for cybersex.
Man, that is flagrant false advertising.
I write in my journal
Also try switching to Dvorak.
You probably won't be any faster, but your fingers *will* travel less. I know I used to have pain in my hands after long coding sessions at work on Querty - after switching to Dvorak I can say I have regained my previous speed (after three months or so) and long coding sessions no longer produce painful fingers!
Of course, you should see your doctor immediately upon RSI-type pain.
Thanks,
--
Matt
Obligatory UserFriendly comic.
...but if your computer is causing you pain, I speak the truth:
- check your insulin levels (no, it's not about diabetes)
- learn how to relax (body asleep/mind awake)
- get some exercise
It's taken me three years to put this puzzle together, and that first point is probably the most important (I learned it last week, and cutting out the carbohydrates has already started to make a difference). email me if you need more guidance, i'll be happy to dish out some knowledge..links:
on the subject of insulin - invert the frickin food pyramid
why relaxin' is important - and some suggestions for getting started
the exercise one - well, that one's kinda obvious, but is worthless without the other two.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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My ex-boss (who had CTS surgery) noticed I was having serious pain one day and suggested I change my posture. This involved several things:
1) Elevating my arms above my keyboard
Having my arms below my keyboard resulted in my wrists resting on the desk or keyboard and puting more pressure on the tendan (sp?). This can simply be done by raising your chair or lowering your keyboard.
2) Elevating my monitor above my keyboard. Having both the monitor and they keyboard on the same level resulted in my head being pointed down and my arms raised up. In general this is bad.
3) Having my legs at a 90 degree angle. That is your chair should be at the correct height so that your legs come straight down at a 90 degree angle.
4) Not slouching back. This is soooooo bad for your back. If you have a chair that allows you to lean back, make sure to stick it up right and in place. Slouching will result in lower back pain..
In general sitting at a computer all day writing code is bad for your health. Poor circulation and repetitive motion is not good. Take some time to make sure your workstation is setup ergonomically and it will improve whatever work related pain is ailing you. In aidditon splits do help, at least they helped me. I have to say though, just setting my workstation up right did more help than any doctor or splint.
1. Over in Ars Technica's forum someone named Figa made an excellent point:
Figa (quoted above) then proceeded to explain why other people's advice was bad and then gave a 15 point treatment plan :)
That said, if you're going to self-medicate with gadgetry, my vote would be to check out Kinesis's Contoured Keyboards
The keys are arranged in lines in pits in the shell of the key board. Your fingers naturally droop into the pits and then move forward and backward (rarely to the sides) to depress the appropriate key.
Claimed to make the activity of typing simulate CTS reducing exercises. I have a co-worker who has one and loves it.
My solution to wrist pain has been to use a break reminder program like xwrits to remind me to take a 5 minute break for every hour of computer use. I would use those five minutes to get out of my chair and walk around for a while, so not only was I resting my hands, but my whole body as well.
It's also a good idea to look out the window at something distant while taking your breaks, you can avoid eye strain by not focusing on something 18 inches from your head all the time.
JWZ has some good advice about this stuff on his site which I found very useful.
A buddhist walks up to a hot dog stand and says ``Make me one with everything.''
The problem comes into play when playing some games - most Quake derivatives (Half-Life, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, etc.) use hard-coded Querty key layouts, so your keys revert back to Querty. Just something to keep in mind.
,AEO automatically. Some games like Jedi Knight go the opposite route, and read QWERTY in the menu and during gameplay. Not as good, but at least I can press a key during configuration and have the same key perform that function during gameplay.
This is why I switched to linux/wine for quake and quake derivatives (mostly Half-Life for me). Well, that and that I like to be able to individually tweak per-game opengl settings like FSAA in startup scripts. Anyway, keypresses in X are always translated before they get to the program, so I don't have to worry about using qwerty on my own machine.
It's not all that hard to switch back and forth, but there's a huge amount of inconsistency in windows. Most 3D games come with their keybindings preset for the popular WADS layout (w for forward, a for strafe left, d for strafe right, s for back, e for use, r for reload, etc...). Nicer, more modern games like Hitman II (the demo at least) automatically set themselves for your keyboard layout. I was incredibly pleased when I installed the game, got ready to reconfigure the key bindings, entered the menu, and found that the game had replaced WADS with
Wine fixes all of those problems, but what I really appreciate is what it does for Half-Life. In windows 2000 with the keyboard mapping set for dvorak, Half-Life reads dvorak in the menus and qwerty during gameplay. ARG! That means than I have to configure the game by entering a qwerty layout using a dvorak keyboard, and then play as if my keyboard weren't remapped. I tried HL under wine, saw that games worked like they should, and never went back.
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As for the parent post's question about how easy it is to switch, I didn't get really comfortable with dvorak until I had been using it for about two months. Now that I'm comfortable with it, I find that I type significantly faster than I did with qwerty; I'm probably about 10-20% faster, but I've never done a benchmark or anything (before or after). The most significant benefit, I think, is that I got to re-learn how to type and get rid of some bad habbits I could never shake. Before I switched, I would hit shift with the same hand I used to type the capital letter; now I hit shift with one hand and hit the letter key with the other.
As for how hard it is to switch back and forth between qwerty and dvorak, I have some direct experience with that. I use dvorak on my home computer and on a friend's computer (he switched about the same time I did), but I'm forced to use qwerty on the computers at my college. I spend much more time typing at home than I do at school, so using qwerty is fairly awkward for the first few minutes. After that I probably type at about 80-90% the speed I did before (again, that's just a guess).
Switching to dvorak is an improvement over qwerty, but it's a very minor improvement compared to using correct typing posture. You'll get RSI typing in dvorak just the same as qwerty if you have your wrists bent while typing, though it might take longer. I type dvorak and have for a good four years, but I still see a pair of these gloves in my future.
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