Commander, you really should try out a Kinesis... I got my first about a decade ago when tendonitis threatened to keep me from working. It was a fortune ($700) and non-reimbursable but it was that or no more programming. I've got three now and each cost 1/2 what the previous one did. I kept working and the tendonitis never came back. I also custom-made a tilted stand for a Trackman Marble trackball since I found that mousing could cause as much pain as typing. (The newer Marble FX has much the same pronation-correcting effect.) I do miss a true numberpad on the Kinesis boards and the function keys are not great, but you'll get used to using your thumbs for the "meta" keys... and you can do Control-Alt-Delete with one hand!
Look around for a Northgate keyboard... I think they were made by the same folks who made the IBMs, and they have the same feel, plus extensive programmability in some models. They had a female PS/2 port on the keyboard and a cable that went to an AT connector. Just substitute a male-male PS/2 cable (the kind used with multiple-PC KVM switch boxes) and hook it up to your new PC. I forget just where all the keys are, but they did have models with the F-keys on the left. They are invaluable for anyone still using WordPerfect for DOS. (YES, it's still in use.) Our lab heads, a husband-and-wife team, still use their twin Northgates with XyWrite II!
If your students have arthritis or a little shakiness in their hands, they'll find that a "double-click" becomes a single-click, a drag, and a single-click. Most annoying. A trackball may help.
Setting the monitor at a low resolution makes fonts and icons bigger. Windows, unfortunately, doesn't scale up application fonts automatically even if a "large" display scheme is used.
Keyboards? Most folk I know like "clicky" ones. (Remember Northgate?)
Teaching folks who (like me) didn't grow up with PC's can teach you a lot about how much we assume unthinkingly. I can second the comment about explaining system hierarchies clearly, especially RAM vs. disk. (Why doesn't Random Access Memory "remember" past a reboot?) I set up a PC for a *very* intelligent scientist. He typed a paragraph onto the 25-line screen; as it scrolled off the top, he thought the machine had erased the first sentence! Be prepared to realize how much you've learned -- and forgotten that you ever didn't know. Best wishes!
I believe Douglas Engelbart's original mouse-and-keyboard setup was to use a left-handed keyboard and keep his right hand free for the mouse. The half-keyboard was a little much for people, though, so most of us use a setup that's ideal if you've got three hands.
I'm not surprised to see good feedback about the Kinesis keyboards. I got my first (of three, all working still) about ten years ago when tendonitis spreading up my right arm threatened to keep me from working. It's never reappeared. But I did find (when I started using Windows extensively) that mousing could get quite painful.
I switched to a trackball, but even the most comfortable for me, the original Logitech Marble, hurt after a while. After a little experimentation (and after reading the discussion of pronation in the Kinesis manual) I built a bracket that lifts my trackball about 30 degrees above the horizontal, tilting it clockwise as I face it. (The "marble" side is lifted about 5 cm.) Hold your hands in the air in front of you and you'll see that they settle at about that angle.
The result is not perfect -- the "marble" still demands a fair amount of thumb movement and my fingers are a little more extended than I'd like -- but it's far better for me than any mouse. If my fingers do tire, I often find curling my hand a bit (cupping my hand around the trackball) helps. Of devices I've tried, only the more recent (and more radical) "Marble FX" is nearly as comfortable.
I made my first bracket out of a few of the thin steel "knockouts" from computer drive bays, but wood or the odd piece of plastic works well too. Double-stick foam core tape or velcro holds the trackball in place. I've made my contraptions with the old three-button Marbles; they're great for Linux. I suspect the scroll-wheel middle button on the newer ones might be harder to press than the old kind, but I've never used the newer model for long. For me the most comfortable place for the trackball is well forward of the keyboard so I can rest my arm on the table, but I'm sure a little experimenting will show what's best for you.
I'm supposed to know Japanese and I can't make a lot of sense of it either. OK, my J'ese is pretty rusty, but here's the best I could do with the opening couple of paragraphs:
Product Overview:
M-stage visual service interface (EGGY):
In order to communicate with this machine:
(1) P-in Comp@ct or Pardio 611S/341S
(2) 32K/64K Pardio series and Pardio connecting cable
(3) Either a Docchimo series [portable telephone] or
[another type of] portable telephone and a Docchimo
portable cable (not included) is required.
(4) A portable telephone cannot be used. Depending on
the particular environment, the connection will probably
be at 32K [baud rate]. If a 32K Pardio is used, the
connection will be at 32K.
Enjoy the smooth, beautiful screen of M-stage visual:
Thanks to its 64K high-speed communication, the various
image information of the M-stage visual is displayed
smoothly.
You can enjoy vivid, beautiful images thanks to the
version 2.0 low-temperature polysilicon color TFT monitor.
It's possible to peruse the internet with the included
easy-to-use browser.
That was all I could stand of the description, but I think I did a little better with the specs:
Product specifications:
External dimensions: 131mm(W)×81mm(H)×39mm(D) (excepting
protruberances)
Weight: 225g (including lithium-ion battery)
Input method: Touch panel (software keyboard),
cross-operated key and push-button operation [meaning
one makes an "X" next to an on-screen selection and/or
pushes a button??]
Display unit: TFT low-temperature polysilicon LED (557x234
pixels, backlit)
Camera / lens unit: 350,000-pixel progressive-scan CCD
Circuit used: NTT DoCoMo PHS circuit (64kbps/32kbps)
Communication speed: 64kbps (58.4kbps effective speed);
32kbps (29.2kbps effective speed)
Included functions: M-stage visual service interaction,
easy-to-use browser, Pardio email, mopera [?] POP mail /
internet mail, address book, video / still picture
photography, video / still picture album, video /
still picture editing
Media: Physical memory (approx. 6 Mb) / compact flash
memory cards (purchased separately)
Card insertion unit: compact flash card slot (Type: 3.3v)
Connection cable connector unit: PHS connection connector
[OK, "communication cable connector" is what they're
talking about]
Power: Exclusive lithium-ion battery (included), exclusive
AC adapter (included)
Operating time / number of images: Continuous display of
still images, approx. 70 min; of video: approx. 70 min.
Continuous video photography: approx. 65 min. Continuous
still-picture photography: approx. 140 images (when
using 32K / 64K Pardio and exclusive connecting cable);
approx. 60 min. (when using P-in Comp@ct, Pardio
611S / 341S)
Recharging time: Approx. 2.5 hrs (exclusive lithium-ion
battery, exclusive AC adapter
As for translating Japanese, Jim Breen of Monash University has done more than anyone to help readers & translators of Japanese put their computers to good use. His page:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.html
includes links to on-line dictionary lookup and text translation pages. They both came in very handy in struggling through the scrambled EGGY page.
Implementing a Turing machine in Life isn't such a conceptual leap if you remember that Conway invented the game by simplifying the designs for cellular automata that John Von Neumann invented as a conceptual tool for designing computing machines. (Von Neumann's automata had many possible values for each cell, and his goal was to create a system in which the operating instructions were protected by the structure itself from corruption. He also imagined a system that would fully reproduce itself on demand.)
I think Gaute Lindkvist's warning is apt. Clearly we're somewhere in the middle, and that usually calls for more creative thinking (or engineering) -- in this case, to come up with a portable, linkable, updatable, comfortable medium. Here's another analogy, though: the very slow move to online academic journals. Far more than software publishers and users, academic journals and libraries have been clobbered by astronomical publishing prices. But notwithstanding an intense effort by some journal editors to break with high-priced publishers, printed articles are the currency of academic prestige for several reasons. First, most of the cost of publishing is in the editing, not the printing and distribution. I'd expect this to be true of software documentation as well if enough effort is spent to make the documentation useful. (Clearly that's not always the case.) Second, printed articles are respected by colleagues and tenure committees -- there is a sense that anyone can slap something up online, despite peer-review of the best online journals. That's not so important to software documentation, but legitimacy of ownership is, at base, an analogous _social_ consideration. Finally, researchers want to know that their work will be accessible decades from now. This is far less crucial for software manuals, but lack of printed records has already consigned some software history to obscurity -- which caused some trouble in hunting Y2K bugs. This is a tough question -- and a fertile discussion -- precisely because media involve technical, economic, ergonomic _and_ social factors.
Slashdot Mirror
Commander, you really should try out a Kinesis... I got my first about a decade ago when tendonitis threatened to keep me from working. It was a fortune ($700) and non-reimbursable but it was that or no more programming. I've got three now and each cost 1/2 what the previous one did. I kept working and the tendonitis never came back. I also custom-made a tilted stand for a Trackman Marble trackball since I found that mousing could cause as much pain as typing. (The newer Marble FX has much the same pronation-correcting effect.) I do miss a true numberpad on the Kinesis boards and the function keys are not great, but you'll get used to using your thumbs for the "meta" keys... and you can do Control-Alt-Delete with one hand!
Look around for a Northgate keyboard... I think they were made by the same folks who made the IBMs, and they have the same feel, plus extensive programmability in some models. They had a female PS/2 port on the keyboard and a cable that went to an AT connector. Just substitute a male-male PS/2 cable (the kind used with multiple-PC KVM switch boxes) and hook it up to your new PC. I forget just where all the keys are, but they did have models with the F-keys on the left. They are invaluable for anyone still using WordPerfect for DOS. (YES, it's still in use.) Our lab heads, a husband-and-wife team, still use their twin Northgates with XyWrite II!
If your students have arthritis or a little shakiness in their hands, they'll find that a "double-click" becomes a single-click, a drag, and a single-click. Most annoying. A trackball may help. Setting the monitor at a low resolution makes fonts and icons bigger. Windows, unfortunately, doesn't scale up application fonts automatically even if a "large" display scheme is used. Keyboards? Most folk I know like "clicky" ones. (Remember Northgate?) Teaching folks who (like me) didn't grow up with PC's can teach you a lot about how much we assume unthinkingly. I can second the comment about explaining system hierarchies clearly, especially RAM vs. disk. (Why doesn't Random Access Memory "remember" past a reboot?) I set up a PC for a *very* intelligent scientist. He typed a paragraph onto the 25-line screen; as it scrolled off the top, he thought the machine had erased the first sentence! Be prepared to realize how much you've learned -- and forgotten that you ever didn't know. Best wishes!
I believe Douglas Engelbart's original mouse-and-keyboard setup was to use a left-handed keyboard and keep his right hand free for the mouse. The half-keyboard was a little much for people, though, so most of us use a setup that's ideal if you've got three hands.
I'm not surprised to see good feedback about the Kinesis keyboards. I got my first (of three, all working still) about ten years ago when tendonitis spreading up my right arm threatened to keep me from working. It's never reappeared. But I did find (when I started using Windows extensively) that mousing could get quite painful. I switched to a trackball, but even the most comfortable for me, the original Logitech Marble, hurt after a while. After a little experimentation (and after reading the discussion of pronation in the Kinesis manual) I built a bracket that lifts my trackball about 30 degrees above the horizontal, tilting it clockwise as I face it. (The "marble" side is lifted about 5 cm.) Hold your hands in the air in front of you and you'll see that they settle at about that angle. The result is not perfect -- the "marble" still demands a fair amount of thumb movement and my fingers are a little more extended than I'd like -- but it's far better for me than any mouse. If my fingers do tire, I often find curling my hand a bit (cupping my hand around the trackball) helps. Of devices I've tried, only the more recent (and more radical) "Marble FX" is nearly as comfortable. I made my first bracket out of a few of the thin steel "knockouts" from computer drive bays, but wood or the odd piece of plastic works well too. Double-stick foam core tape or velcro holds the trackball in place. I've made my contraptions with the old three-button Marbles; they're great for Linux. I suspect the scroll-wheel middle button on the newer ones might be harder to press than the old kind, but I've never used the newer model for long. For me the most comfortable place for the trackball is well forward of the keyboard so I can rest my arm on the table, but I'm sure a little experimenting will show what's best for you.
I'm supposed to know Japanese and I can't make a lot of sense of it either. OK, my J'ese is pretty rusty, but here's the best I could do with the opening couple of paragraphs:
l
Product Overview:
M-stage visual service interface (EGGY):
In order to communicate with this machine:
(1) P-in Comp@ct or Pardio 611S/341S
(2) 32K/64K Pardio series and Pardio connecting cable
(3) Either a Docchimo series [portable telephone] or
[another type of] portable telephone and a Docchimo
portable cable (not included) is required.
(4) A portable telephone cannot be used. Depending on
the particular environment, the connection will probably
be at 32K [baud rate]. If a 32K Pardio is used, the
connection will be at 32K.
Enjoy the smooth, beautiful screen of M-stage visual:
Thanks to its 64K high-speed communication, the various
image information of the M-stage visual is displayed
smoothly.
You can enjoy vivid, beautiful images thanks to the
version 2.0 low-temperature polysilicon color TFT monitor.
It's possible to peruse the internet with the included
easy-to-use browser.
That was all I could stand of the description, but I think I did a little better with the specs:
Product specifications:
External dimensions: 131mm(W)×81mm(H)×39mm(D) (excepting
protruberances)
Weight: 225g (including lithium-ion battery)
Input method: Touch panel (software keyboard),
cross-operated key and push-button operation [meaning
one makes an "X" next to an on-screen selection and/or
pushes a button??]
Display unit: TFT low-temperature polysilicon LED (557x234
pixels, backlit)
Camera / lens unit: 350,000-pixel progressive-scan CCD
Circuit used: NTT DoCoMo PHS circuit (64kbps/32kbps)
Communication speed: 64kbps (58.4kbps effective speed);
32kbps (29.2kbps effective speed)
Included functions: M-stage visual service interaction,
easy-to-use browser, Pardio email, mopera [?] POP mail /
internet mail, address book, video / still picture
photography, video / still picture album, video /
still picture editing
Media: Physical memory (approx. 6 Mb) / compact flash
memory cards (purchased separately)
Card insertion unit: compact flash card slot (Type: 3.3v)
Connection cable connector unit: PHS connection connector
[OK, "communication cable connector" is what they're
talking about]
Power: Exclusive lithium-ion battery (included), exclusive
AC adapter (included)
Operating time / number of images: Continuous display of
still images, approx. 70 min; of video: approx. 70 min.
Continuous video photography: approx. 65 min. Continuous
still-picture photography: approx. 140 images (when
using 32K / 64K Pardio and exclusive connecting cable);
approx. 60 min. (when using P-in Comp@ct, Pardio
611S / 341S)
Recharging time: Approx. 2.5 hrs (exclusive lithium-ion
battery, exclusive AC adapter
As for translating Japanese, Jim Breen of Monash University has done more than anyone to help readers & translators of Japanese put their computers to good use. His page:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/japanese.htm
includes links to on-line dictionary lookup and text translation pages. They both came in very handy in struggling through the scrambled EGGY page.
Implementing a Turing machine in Life isn't such a conceptual leap if you remember that Conway invented the game by simplifying the designs for cellular automata that John Von Neumann invented as a conceptual tool for designing computing machines. (Von Neumann's automata had many possible values for each cell, and his goal was to create a system in which the operating instructions were protected by the structure itself from corruption. He also imagined a system that would fully reproduce itself on demand.)
I think Gaute Lindkvist's warning is apt. Clearly we're somewhere in the middle, and that usually calls for more creative thinking (or engineering) -- in this case, to come up with a portable, linkable, updatable, comfortable medium. Here's another analogy, though: the very slow move to online academic journals. Far more than software publishers and users, academic journals and libraries have been clobbered by astronomical publishing prices. But notwithstanding an intense effort by some journal editors to break with high-priced publishers, printed articles are the currency of academic prestige for several reasons. First, most of the cost of publishing is in the editing, not the printing and distribution. I'd expect this to be true of software documentation as well if enough effort is spent to make the documentation useful. (Clearly that's not always the case.) Second, printed articles are respected by colleagues and tenure committees -- there is a sense that anyone can slap something up online, despite peer-review of the best online journals. That's not so important to software documentation, but legitimacy of ownership is, at base, an analogous _social_ consideration. Finally, researchers want to know that their work will be accessible decades from now. This is far less crucial for software manuals, but lack of printed records has already consigned some software history to obscurity -- which caused some trouble in hunting Y2K bugs. This is a tough question -- and a fertile discussion -- precisely because media involve technical, economic, ergonomic _and_ social factors.