Author Topic: Hi from Canberra  (Read 1026 times)

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Offline csirac2

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  • Posts: 3
  • Location: Canberra, Australia
Hi from Canberra
« on: Wed, 01 January 2014, 23:30:29 »
Hello!

I've been reading geekhack for a while now. I own a DataHand Personal II, which I obtained in 2012 during a very tough time in my career where I had two jobs, mounting deadlines, and typing discomfort which threatened to derail everything.

They helped enormously and were worth every cent. However, in the beginning they actually made things worse. It's not easy to adjust properly and find the best posture for them. I wonder how many people have tried DataHands that didn't see any benefit because of this. In the end I mounted mine on the sides of my chair much like this guy did: http://octopup.org/img/computer/datahand/m/20021103-0000-P45Q9--Datahand--Chair.jpg. The muscular effort required to hold my hands in a position/posture that produces best typing accuracy dropped almost to zero and it became a dream to use.

My particular unit is far from perfect though: it's more than a little dated, and the magnets aren't of uniform (or sufficient) strength which affects typing accuracy and happiness.

So, having some electronic engineering experience (though I'm now mostly a software guy), I've been dreaming about what the ideal DataHand unit should look like in 2014.

Recently I discovered OldDataHands' work here on GH which aims to produce an open source DH clone - I'm impressed at the work that's been done already!

Looking forward to helping make it work :)

Offline dram

  • Posts: 0
  • Location: Bay Area
Re: Hi from Canberra
« Reply #1 on: Fri, 10 January 2014, 16:17:57 »
Hey. I'm new here too.

I've seen the DataHand a few times around the net. It's the most unique input devices around, made even more epic by your custom positioning. Mind blown.

How long did it take you to get used to using it and what made you select that model? Had you tried other ergo boards before going balls-out? Given your circumstance at the time you acquired it, I'll bet you picked it up A.F.A.P. - because, you know, it meant your livelihood.

Mount it to this thing and you'll be the poster child for ergo: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/411F98R8FNL._SY300_.jpg (I have one of these and they're awesome)

You're an EE? Do you have any recommendations for good foundational material for someone who wants to dabble in electronics? Is "The Art of Electronics" an appropriate place to begin?

Offline csirac2

  • Thread Starter
  • Posts: 3
  • Location: Canberra, Australia
Re: Hi from Canberra
« Reply #2 on: Sat, 11 January 2014, 18:46:22 »
I think I normally type around 80-90wpm and can normally hit 110wpm on those silly typing speed tests (my record is 117wpm typing a passage from Terry Pratchett's "Reaper Man").

I had been bracing myself for a big period of adaptation but I was happy to discover that writing english prose and E-mails was actually not too bad to get used to - apart from the different fingers used to hit the B and N keys. It took a lot of effort to undo ~20 years of muscle memory! In some ways that was even harder than learning the somewhat alien (albeit logical) layout for numbers and symbols. In any case, after 1-2 weeks I was pretty happy with my progress and didn't consciously feel frustrated doing E-mail and doc writing, although I've yet to break ~65 wpm.

Programming was another story. At the time I was working mostly in perl, a punctuation-heavy language. So it was more like 6 weeks before I felt that I wasn't struggling all the time.

The mouse emulation kinda works but not well enough to rely on. Thanks to this I installed and am now a full-time user of the Pentadactyl plugin for Firefox http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/ and vimium in chrome (I prefer Pentadactyl though, even if it's annoying as hell).

Fun fact: my brain seemed to be re-wiring the B and N keys for *all* my keyboarding use. I eventually found myself using the wrong fingers (thus hitting the wrong keys) whenever I went back to using a normal keyboard.

That's gone away since I've been using "normal" keyboards at my last couple of office jobs, mainly because I'm nervous about starting conversations around overuse and RSI. Sadly I've seen a few employees make a lot of noise about overuse injuries and that's somewhat impacted them negatively because managers tend to think of you as a liability...