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A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

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Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#51
post #44

You can measure my productivity by how slouched I am. Sitting up straight at my desk, chair locked, perfect posture? I’m doing nothing, maybe looking through System Preferences to change the system highlight color. Sliding down in my chair like jelly, with my shoulders where my butt should be and my head resting on the lumbar support? I’m building the next iPhone and it’ll be done by 2 AM.

this is the way

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi - this is the author. I can explain that, ha! Right now I'm using a vision library to detect head height which was good enough. I went down a tangent where I hooked it up to my Claude Code instance to take a screen shot and have Claude Code assess how bad my slouch was. Claude would watch a folder for screen shots, read it in, and if it detected bad posture, write to a file the program was watching to adjust blur.…

Cool, thanks for the clarification. Indeed it's a good and practical idea for a small app. As other comments have said, (some) people might happily pay for this app. I luckily won't need such feedback loop anymore, had some mild lower back pain show up over 10 years ago and bought a chair without a backrest that, after 3-4 weeks of struggling, trained me to sit up straight. Now I have some random cheap office chair w…

Care to share an example of this backrestless chair? Is it like a regular chair just without the backrest, or has some other differences? Does it have armrests for example, and if not - does it bother you?

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#54
post #44

You can measure my productivity by how slouched I am. Sitting up straight at my desk, chair locked, perfect posture? I’m doing nothing, maybe looking through System Preferences to change the system highlight color. Sliding down in my chair like jelly, with my shoulders where my butt should be and my head resting on the lumbar support? I’m building the next iPhone and it’ll be done by 2 AM.

[deleted]

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#55
post #33

Does anyone ever reach a high level of productivity with correct posture? I can't.

Sure, but getting the right environment is a prerequisite. In my case it’s a Herman Miller Embody chair [1] that stops me getting into a bad position (it’s not impossible, it just encourages good posture). [1] https://www.hermanmiller.com/en_gb/products/seating/office-c...

The embodiment of overpriced and mediocre

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#56
post #34
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but getting the right environment is a prerequisite. In my case it’s a Herman Miller Embody chair [1] that stops me getting into a bad position (it’s not impossible, it just encourages good posture). [1] https://www.hermanmiller.com/en_gb/products/seating/office-c...

Totally a tangent here but it amazes me how a company as big as Herman Miller could screw a product page up so much by not even having a picture of the damn product.

It's the first thing on the page. Your browser is doing something funky.

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#57
post #44

You can measure my productivity by how slouched I am. Sitting up straight at my desk, chair locked, perfect posture? I’m doing nothing, maybe looking through System Preferences to change the system highlight color. Sliding down in my chair like jelly, with my shoulders where my butt should be and my head resting on the lumbar support? I’m building the next iPhone and it’ll be done by 2 AM.

This is how things get built for me as well. I have a standing desk and like using it occasionally but if you see me standing at it you can bet I'm doing something typical like emails or chat and not thinking deeply.

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#58

I'm not sure how you can use a laptop with good posture. An external monitor at the right height seems like a necessity. I'm also optimistic about monitors in the form of glasses- even less effort needed to set yourself up for perfect posture. But the sweet spot problem is still very much a thing from what I've seen- can't wait until it's normal for them to have eye tracking, foveated rendering and streaming, and be…

[deleted]

Re: A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch

#60
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, thanks for the clarification. Indeed it's a good and practical idea for a small app. As other comments have said, (some) people might happily pay for this app. I luckily won't need such feedback loop anymore, had some mild lower back pain show up over 10 years ago and bought a chair without a backrest that, after 3-4 weeks of struggling, trained me to sit up straight. Now I have some random cheap office chair w…

Care to share an example of this backrestless chair? Is it like a regular chair just without the backrest, or has some other differences? Does it have armrests for example, and if not - does it bother you?

I went with an overkill approach at first (as I often do :-) and bought some expensive nicely designed "active chair" / stool that was adjustable high enough so that I could lean on it even when using my desk as a standing desk. It was interesting, but not a game changer at all for me. I don't use standing desks now at all.

But what I have now is this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002FL3LY4

Just don't assemble the backrest at first. If sitting up straight, I just lean wrists on my keyboard wristpad and part of forearms on the desk, no armrests needed either.

Edit: I still use my height-adjustable standing desk, but now it's value is that I could adjust it for the perfect height for my sitting-up-straight position (so no chair armrests needed) and it's been fixed at that height for the last 7 years...

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