On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 11:41, stan via users <users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 24 May 2021 11:45:27 -0400
"Eddie O'Connor" <eoconnor25@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Looking this up now!.....(old age...is scary!....turning 50 this
> year....and all the things I took for granted?...are starting to play
> "catch-up!....sitting for long hours in a dimly lit room?...paying
> for that with my eyesight....long sessions sitting in my desk
> chair?...paying for that with my aching back, typing all manner of
> documents for hours at a time?....paying for that with my aching
> finger-joints!) and that last point made it necessary to switch from
> my beloved dasKeyboard, to a Red Dragon K557, yeah...its got
> RGB...something I wasn't interested in....but the FEEL of the
> keys!?...and the tactile touch without the massive amount of forced
> needed for the dsKeyboard, make it a godsend!
Yeah, the way of all flesh. I'm reminded of a sign I used to see. It
was a back country road, and there was a long, steep hill with a sharp
turn at the bottom. It was common to pick up a lot of speed
coming down the hill. Someone had placed a sign at the bottom of the
hill, just before the turn, that said, "Prepare to meet thy Lord." :-)
There was a hill like that within a few 100 meters of my childhood home.
A dump truck owner who knew his brakes were bad tried to navigate the
hill by staying in the lowest gear, but his driveshaft broke and he left the road
at speed, taking off tops of some big pines before meeting his Lord.
"Growing old is horrible, but it sure beats the alternative" (John Kenneth
Galbraith). Personally, I plan to live forever or die trying.
We're still using the venerable Mark I version of the body. At some
point we'll have enough knowledge of the system to start correcting its
design flaws (it's designed to make lots of babies early and often, not
for longevity) in Mark II. But we're not there yet, my guess is
sometime within the next century, no major upsets occurring. After
that, the sky is the limit. In five centuries, we would probably think
the 'people' (won't be homo sapiens) of that time are aliens.
At work they put in doors that required you to swipe your ID to
unlatch the lock but then pull on a handle to open the door. If your
hands were full, acrobatics and juggling were needed. Mark II should
take hints from the octopus.
You might want to look into an ergonomic keyboard, and using a
different keyboard layout. QWERTY was designed to slow down typists so
they wouldn't go too fast for the mechanical typewriters of the time and
jam them up, but it is terrible for the hands. Common alternatives are
Colemak or Dvorak. A good way to learn a new keyboard layout is to play
the old text game nethack with the keypad turned off. It then uses the
keys of the keyboard for movement and everything else. I went a step
farther and designed my own custom key mapping that fits my use case.
Approximately 80% home row, and the most frequently used keys under the
strongest fingers.
Think about some way to change your setup so you can alternate standing
and sitting. Probably not easy, easier to just go for a walk, or do
some of the restorative exercises available for viewing on the web to
counter the long fixed positions of your muscles.
Eyes, use dark themes, and if you wear glasses, get some specially made
for looking at close objects like computer screens. Optometrists will
be familiar with the requirement.
Again, these work for me, but your mileage might differ.
Good suggestions. I found sitting on an exercise ball helpful, but
you can't easily swivel around to face someone who wants to talk to your face.
Then safety people banned them because they weren't on the list of approved
ergonomic chairs (I think there had been reports of falls), so I switched to a
standing desk.
I never messed with keyboard layouts -- my work often involved working
on whatever keyboard was attached to a server or old laptop used as a
terminal for headless boxes and UPS's, connected to lab gear, etc. It
was bad enough dealing with differences in the locations of control and
alt keys. I did have a keyboard with a trackpad and both USB and PS2
connecters on a Y-cable that I could bring with me if I expected to be doing
a lot of typing. Chorded keyboards might be helpful.
Things my colleagues and I found helpful:
Avoid elevators and, if you want to talk to a colleague, walk to their office
or agree to meet and walk together. When going to meetings or the lunch
room, pick a roundabout route with stairs.
If you can't walk or bike to work, get off the bus a stop early or park your
car at the far edge of the lot. Take time at lunch to go for a walk or swim.
George N. White III
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