7 ms·

I messed up my wrists from typing/mousing too much a number of years ago, so I spent a couple years working at a grocery store while building a new kind of text

I messed up my wrists from typing/mousing too much a number of years ago, so I spent a couple years working at a grocery store while building a new kind of text editor meant for efficiently writing code with motion sensors (e.g. Leap Motion, Kinect). It made it to the front page here, which was an interesting experience, but my end game with the project was basically, "get far enough, post to HN and the world will see how cool this is, and somehow you'll be able to continue working on it"—and that did not materialize. Project: http://symbolflux.com/projects/tiledtext http://symbolflux.com/projects/tiledtext [video] Original Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5306155 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5306155

house9-2 9y ago
Just watched the video, really cool. Sorry about your wrists, I also suffer from RSI issues; recently I have started using voicecode which has allowed me to use voice for about 80% of my coding/computer use instead of typing/mousing. You might want to check it out? It does have a large learning curve, is not cheap (Dragon + voicecode) and currently runs on Mac only (windows/linux in the pipeline), I am using that in conjunction with SmartNav for mousing. - http://voicecode.io/ http://voicecode.io/
- westoncb 9y ago
  Thanks house9-2. I briefly tried Dragon like six years ago and didn't have a very good experience with it—though I imagine it's improved since then. Probably the bigger issue for me though is that I just don't personally like speaking as an interface to coding. SmartNav looks cool. IIRC I looked into it way back when but it was prohibitively expensive for me, though I might be thinking of something else. I'm mostly just using mouse/keyboard now, but I have learned some things about how to do it. Partly it's about not freaking out about things—seems like the added tension makes it a lot worse. That has been much more difficult than I can describe briefly here, but it was important at least in my case. Additionally, having some mindfulness about how I was feeling physically at the computer and letting that direct break-taking has been very useful. Same with various stretching/yoga things I do regularly. I spent a lot of time learning/practicing meditation in order to getter better, unadulterated feedback about physical problems (and to help stay relaxed while computing). It's interesting how oblivious we can be to discomforts from posture etc., and how automatic correcting them can be once you just tune in. Anyway, I'm still not fully recovered either, but computing is a much more pleasant thing these days than it has been for many years.
  - mvleming 9y ago
    Sounds like you might like the book A Guide to Better Movement by Todd Hargrove.
    - westoncb 9y ago
      That does look interesting—I'll check it out!
  - jxramos 9y ago
    I switched to the DVORAK layout some years ago. And I engage my foot pedal programmed to "copy" and "paste" when those operations get heavy during a large refactor or something. I also switch between an "Adesso iMouse E1" and a "Countour Roller Mouse Free2" to mix it up.
300bps 9y ago
I had RSI issues for years until someone pointed me to this link on Slashdot about 14 years ago: http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu
- westoncb 9y ago
  Anything in particular from it that helped you? I'm looking through now. Looks like a good general resource in any case.
  - 300bps 9y ago
    Unfortunately there's no shortcut to it. They basically follow the principles outlined by Dr. Sarno that has treated RSI patients as if RSI is a real physical malady with psychogenic origins. http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html
j_s 9y ago
If you are looking for more discussions on RSI, HN user melling has been sharing his research on many such threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ErgonomicNotes&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ErgonomicNotes&type=comment Unfortunately tools like the Jouse3 mouth-operated mouse cost too much to be experiments.

house9-2 9y ago

Just watched the video, really cool. Sorry about your wrists, I also suffer from RSI issues; recently I have started using voicecode which has allowed me to use voice for about 80% of my coding/computer use instead of typing/mousing. You might want to check it out? It does have a large learning curve, is not cheap (Dragon + voicecode) and currently runs on Mac only (windows/linux in the pipeline), I am using that in conjunction with SmartNav for mousing. - http://voicecode.io/ http://voicecode.io/

westoncb 9y ago
Thanks house9-2. I briefly tried Dragon like six years ago and didn't have a very good experience with it—though I imagine it's improved since then. Probably the bigger issue for me though is that I just don't personally like speaking as an interface to coding. SmartNav looks cool. IIRC I looked into it way back when but it was prohibitively expensive for me, though I might be thinking of something else. I'm mostly just using mouse/keyboard now, but I have learned some things about how to do it. Partly it's about not freaking out about things—seems like the added tension makes it a lot worse. That has been much more difficult than I can describe briefly here, but it was important at least in my case. Additionally, having some mindfulness about how I was feeling physically at the computer and letting that direct break-taking has been very useful. Same with various stretching/yoga things I do regularly. I spent a lot of time learning/practicing meditation in order to getter better, unadulterated feedback about physical problems (and to help stay relaxed while computing). It's interesting how oblivious we can be to discomforts from posture etc., and how automatic correcting them can be once you just tune in. Anyway, I'm still not fully recovered either, but computing is a much more pleasant thing these days than it has been for many years.
- mvleming 9y ago
  Sounds like you might like the book A Guide to Better Movement by Todd Hargrove.
  - westoncb 9y ago
    That does look interesting—I'll check it out!
- jxramos 9y ago
  I switched to the DVORAK layout some years ago. And I engage my foot pedal programmed to "copy" and "paste" when those operations get heavy during a large refactor or something. I also switch between an "Adesso iMouse E1" and a "Countour Roller Mouse Free2" to mix it up.

300bps 9y ago

I had RSI issues for years until someone pointed me to this link on Slashdot about 14 years ago: http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu

westoncb 9y ago
Anything in particular from it that helped you? I'm looking through now. Looks like a good general resource in any case.
- 300bps 9y ago
  Unfortunately there's no shortcut to it. They basically follow the principles outlined by Dr. Sarno that has treated RSI patients as if RSI is a real physical malady with psychogenic origins. http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html

j_s 9y ago

If you are looking for more discussions on RSI, HN user melling has been sharing his research on many such threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ErgonomicNotes&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=ErgonomicNotes&type=comment Unfortunately tools like the Jouse3 mouth-operated mouse cost too much to be experiments.