Date: Fri, 28 Oct 1994 10:29:14 -0500 From: Mary Lindstrom Subject: Kinesis keybrd and other RSI adaptations To: Multiple recipients of list SOREHAND Well, I've had my Kinesis key board for about a month and I thought I'd give a report. It seems to be helping me quite a bit and I've decided to keep it. I'm using it with a Sun Sparc and the Sun adaptor box. My only complaint is that sometimes one of the keys will stick. Has anyone else seen this? I haven't called Kinesis about it yet so I don't know if they know about it. My biggest problem with my regular keyboard was the reaching for things with my little fingers (I have very small hands). I tried to train my self to move my hand rather than bending my wrists out but I was never very successful. The Kinesis eliminates most of the keys I was stretching for and the ones that are left (like shift) are much closer in. I really like the fact that you can reprogram the keys. I've moved 5 or 6 keys including moving escape to the left thumb pad since I use vi emulation within emacs. I would be happy to share my key layout if anyone is interested. I also like the fact that the number keys are easy to reach. I can touch type them for the first time. I can also almost touch type the function keys. It doesn't bother me that they are small. Someone once said it looked like the Kinesis was designed to be used with your wrists resting on it. This is not true. They recommend that you only rest your wrists when not typing. I find it very easy to use without resting my wrists. I learned the alpha numeric keys in about 2 days. The hard part was teaching my right thumb the difference between space and enter. It's pretty stupid since it never had to hit more than one key before. I'm just now getting very accurate there. Some history: I have tendon rather than nerve problems that started after a particularly stressful 2 weeks where I was writing a talk under time pressure. This was in late May. I'm a statistician and spend most of the day writing, programming, or doing data analysis on a Sun workstation. Here are the things that I did that seemed to make an appreciable difference (in roughly the order I did them): o Caught it early - about a month after it started. o Started using typewatch with 2 minute breaks every 20 minutes. I decided on this because at 20 minutes I didn't feel any pain but at 30 minutes I often would. o Stopped resting my wrists on a wrist rest when typing. I now hold them up in the air and rest them only when not typing. This made a huge difference. o Got a Mouse Paw wrist rest for the mouse. o Saw a sports medicine doctor and got stretching and very low weight high rep exercises (my starting weight was a role of pennies, I'm up to nickels now). I had seen other "health care professionals" but the sports med guy was the first who gave me exercises that helped. (I tried sports med because of recommendations on this list.) o Switched to the Fvwm window manager and eliminated almost all use of the mouse. I still can't use a mouse without causing pain. I would be happy to share what I know about customizing Fvwm. I don't know how to install it. o Made a foot rest with books so I can sit at the right height for my table (I've got an adjustable height table on order.) o Got a adjustable chair (Marvel) o Got a Kinesis keyboard. The new keyboard seems to have stopped the pain on the outside of my wrists and helped with my other symptoms. An important lesson I learned is to be very careful with pain killers. I never had to take pain killers during the day for my RSI but I learned that if I'm taking an anti-inflammatory for something else then I'm at great risk of overdoing it and bringing on my RSI symptoms. I've had a couple of major set backs this way. Most of the useful advise and information that I've received has been either through this list or through the FAQ's and other info at the typing injury archive. Thanks for all the help! - Mary Lindstrom