Frog Pad.
After my last post I decided to try out a frog pad. It's a one handed input device consisting of 3 rows of 5 keys and 5 additional 'modifier' keys. There is one primary 'modifier' key used to extend the basic key set, and 4 that primarilly toggle the current input mode.
The basic layout is relatively intuitive, and even with the cording I was able to hit 10 words a minute inside an hours practice. However I haven't gotten much faster since, I suspect this is a result of not using it exclusively. I'm going to give exclusivity a shot this week.
Even without the week of practice, it's fairly obvious the frog pad will be a lousy input device for programming, both numbers and symbols are accessed via mode changes. Where as the normal shift key returns to a normal input state after a single additional key press, the symbol and number keys toggle in and out of the modes. While this makes some sense for numbers since it is common to type more than one, I fail to see where this is the case for symbols, either in regular text input or while programming.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Life repetitive strain injuries, and ergonomic keyboards.
I've been having shoulder problems while working for a while now, so I finally went to see a Doctor about it. It wasn't a real shock when the doctor diagnosed a host of RSI related issues, I've been pretty consciously living denial about most of them for a while now.
The Doctor making it official did make me decide to so something about it, so I'm seeing a physical therapist, and doing my stretches like a good patient, and I figured I should try and make my workspace (at home and work) more ergonomic.
Now I don't actually type very well, I taught myself 20 odd years ago, I don't use home keys, and although my speed is OK my accuracy has always been abysmal. Because of my somewhat unique typing style where hands wonder to both sides of the keyboard, I've always hated split keyboards, but now I've finally decided I'll make the effort and re-learn to type to reduce the strain on my wrists and shoulders.
So I started looking at various ergonomic keyboard options and I was somewhat surprised to find how limited the variation and selection is and how expensive they are (not a price sensitive market I guess). There were also no real studies on what's good and what's not. Pretty much anything it seems can be called an ergonomic keyboard.
It seems to me looking at the mechanics involved, I want something with a relatively steep angle between the split halves and yet relatively few keyboards seem to support this, so either I'm completely off base, different to everyone else or ergonomic keyboards are for the most part useless for my wrist problems.
Of course I have to learn to type all over on whatever keyboard I get, so foreign or extreme layouts, don't put me off the same way they might someone who is trying to avoid problems and already types adequately.
I ended up buying a Comfort keyboard http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,115946-page,1/article.html, and I'll see how it goes. At least if my theory about wanting higher angle of split turns out to be totally off base I can arrange it in a more conventional way.
I was also surprised at the lack of real alternatives to conventional keyboards there were a couple of cording keyboards, and the data-hand, that looked pretty interesting, but looking at the manuals they were very heavily optimized for text entry, which to me seems to make them next to useless for programming.
I understand how it's hard to sell a none conventional keyboard but I would have thought that with computers being commonplace in the workplace now and the associated growing problem with RSI and related issues, there would be some real effort put into finding workable alternatives. Maybe there is and it's just not well publicized.
I've been having shoulder problems while working for a while now, so I finally went to see a Doctor about it. It wasn't a real shock when the doctor diagnosed a host of RSI related issues, I've been pretty consciously living denial about most of them for a while now.
The Doctor making it official did make me decide to so something about it, so I'm seeing a physical therapist, and doing my stretches like a good patient, and I figured I should try and make my workspace (at home and work) more ergonomic.
Now I don't actually type very well, I taught myself 20 odd years ago, I don't use home keys, and although my speed is OK my accuracy has always been abysmal. Because of my somewhat unique typing style where hands wonder to both sides of the keyboard, I've always hated split keyboards, but now I've finally decided I'll make the effort and re-learn to type to reduce the strain on my wrists and shoulders.
So I started looking at various ergonomic keyboard options and I was somewhat surprised to find how limited the variation and selection is and how expensive they are (not a price sensitive market I guess). There were also no real studies on what's good and what's not. Pretty much anything it seems can be called an ergonomic keyboard.
It seems to me looking at the mechanics involved, I want something with a relatively steep angle between the split halves and yet relatively few keyboards seem to support this, so either I'm completely off base, different to everyone else or ergonomic keyboards are for the most part useless for my wrist problems.
Of course I have to learn to type all over on whatever keyboard I get, so foreign or extreme layouts, don't put me off the same way they might someone who is trying to avoid problems and already types adequately.
I ended up buying a Comfort keyboard http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,115946-page,1/article.html, and I'll see how it goes. At least if my theory about wanting higher angle of split turns out to be totally off base I can arrange it in a more conventional way.
I was also surprised at the lack of real alternatives to conventional keyboards there were a couple of cording keyboards, and the data-hand, that looked pretty interesting, but looking at the manuals they were very heavily optimized for text entry, which to me seems to make them next to useless for programming.
I understand how it's hard to sell a none conventional keyboard but I would have thought that with computers being commonplace in the workplace now and the associated growing problem with RSI and related issues, there would be some real effort put into finding workable alternatives. Maybe there is and it's just not well publicized.
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