[consulting] OT: Keyboards and RSI

[Bèr Kessels]

Hello,

Op vrijdag 11 augustus 2006 17:41, schreef Andrew Cohill: 
> --Finally, few doctors know a darn thing about any of this stuff, and
> are often too eager to recommend surgery.  The stats on RSI surgery
> are very grim--surgery often makes the problem MUCH WORSE.  There is
> a huge bundle of nerves passing through the muscle sheath on your
> wrist, and going in their and hacking away is extremely risky.
> Surgery should be a last resort only after spending as much as needed
> on better furniture and giving your body time to repair itself.

As I have been on the brim of getting serious RSI too, my doctor gave me but 
one real advice. Off course she recommended me to get a proper environment, 
but since I had everything set up balanced already that is not a lot of work.

Breaks. Get a break of ten seconds every 6 minutes and a 2 minute break every 
40minutes. This is very annoying to get used to. I use some special software 
that simply locks my environment for the required minutes completely. Sure, 
its annoying. But once your are used to the rithm, its something to 
anticipate on (my RSI helper notifies me for about one minute that I need to 
break, before forcing me to break). And during the break it shows me nice 
pics of my holidays :)

 * RSI break, KDE http://www.rsibreak.org/index.php/Main_Page
 * Workrave, KDE, Gnome, Windows: http://www.workrave.org/welcome/ (features 
very good animated excercises to do while forcing the break)

Again: most people are turned off by the forced break (damn, I was just 
finishing that Jabber conversation...) But its something to simply get used 
to. After a few months you will notice the difference in your wrists, while 
the breaks feel like something natural by then.

Bèr

PS only danger is a coffee overdose: Don't grab every 6 min break to get a new 
cup :)