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Look, no hands

looknohands.me

111–120 of 148 posts

Re: Look, no hands

#111
post #97
post #17

The elasticity of the brain is incredibly impressive. Very neat solution. My parents are surgeons, and I know they worry at least a little bit about the safety of their hands. While my hands are definitely very important to my being able to work I know I don't worry as much as they do. That's funny, because for the most part I think about Carpal Tunnel Syndrome as a career-ending condition. I recently suffered some a…

I used to have lots of issues in the neck and shoulders. I started going to a gym and focused mainly on training neck, back and arms carefully. It has completely removed all my symptoms in the last 6 years. I also started using a wacom tablet as a mouse replacement. The absolute positioning of the pen removes all these small-dragging-motions.

The small Intuos tablet?

https://store.wacom.com/us/en/product/CTL480/

Which tablet is most effective as a mouse replacement?

Re: Look, no hands

#112

I stopped using mice, knobs (IBM/Lenovo) and touchpads (built-in or external) probably twenty years ago. A few months into an intense design project I started to feel burning pain on my wrists. I was working 18 hour days, 7 days a week. Yes, if I was awake I was in front of the computer. This was a hardware and software project and I was doing it all. This meant lots of precise motion at times. Running Solidworks or…

Here's a good picture of the desk:

http://i.imgur.com/tFVcegp.jpg

That's what a garage hardware startup looks like! A bit of a mess but some of my most productive time was spent in that room designing hardware, writing FPGA, embedded and workstation code. Oh, yes, doing our website too. Crazy times.

It was a year and a half of 14 to 18 hour days, 7 days a week from inception to launch. Behind the camera there's the rest of the garage (two cars wide) full of manufacturing equipment. No cars have ever entered my garages in my life. No room for them.

Re: Look, no hands

#113

I stopped using mice, knobs (IBM/Lenovo) and touchpads (built-in or external) probably twenty years ago. A few months into an intense design project I started to feel burning pain on my wrists. I was working 18 hour days, 7 days a week. Yes, if I was awake I was in front of the computer. This was a hardware and software project and I was doing it all. This meant lots of precise motion at times. Running Solidworks or…

I'd love to see a photo of that!

Image posted, see comment for link.

Re: Look, no hands

#114
This is something that might sound tangential, but using nose as an input medium is not the worst idea, even with perfectly capable hands.

I've been using my nose awkwardly a lot on Android Wear, and honestly, this article makes me much better about it. We have so many screens, so many interfaces, yet only two hands. Anytime I'm typing, driving, running, my nose does the job on the smartwatch. I'm sure a lot of people have been doing it.

I wish there was more studies regarding these, most that I find keep talking about gestures, which I think is overdoing things, which humans tend to do at first with every problem we try to solve.

Re: Look, no hands

#115
post #98

I stopped using mice, knobs (IBM/Lenovo) and touchpads (built-in or external) probably twenty years ago. A few months into an intense design project I started to feel burning pain on my wrists. I was working 18 hour days, 7 days a week. Yes, if I was awake I was in front of the computer. This was a hardware and software project and I was doing it all. This meant lots of precise motion at times. Running Solidworks or…

second the photo request....

Image posted, see comment for link.

Re: Look, no hands

#116
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have lots of issues in the neck and shoulders. I started going to a gym and focused mainly on training neck, back and arms carefully. It has completely removed all my symptoms in the last 6 years. I also started using a wacom tablet as a mouse replacement. The absolute positioning of the pen removes all these small-dragging-motions.

The small Intuos tablet? https://store.wacom.com/us/en/product/CTL480/ Which tablet is most effective as a mouse replacement?

I don't use a tablet regularly as a mouse replacement, but from my experience of using it for image manipulation:

1) Small sizes scale up surprisingly well, but one model bigger might be preferable.

2) One should test the feel of the pad -> there are different surface types (some are very glas-like, others offer more resistance), and different styles of pens, which all feel different.

3) I feel like many of the pens are quite uncomfortable to hold. If I had to use them for longer I'd probably look into finding 3rd party alternatives or a small pen I can embed into a custom grip. Different styles to exchange regularly (every 30 min or so) would also be nice.

Re: Look, no hands

#117
post #69

I'm Michelle (the girl in the video). This thread is really fascinating to me. I'll add some more details to the discussion below. I was diagnosed with epicodylitis (tennis albow) and I tried a range of different treatments: electrical therapy, accipunture, anti-inflammatory tablets and some kind of light therapy(?) But without any results (probably why I can't remember the last treatment). Also notised there were so…

Michelle, you are a beautiful person inside and out. Most people would have quit and gone on to have a miserable life away from their occupation of choice. You did not. That's commendable.

And sharing this. Bold. Lots of people would be afraid of ridicule. Remarkable.

Finally, much must be said about Omada Health, a company that looked past your handicap and allowed you to do things your way in a nurturing environment. They deserve huge praise and recognition for this.

I hope you are able to reach out to others who might be able to benefit from your ideas. I am sure your story will be inspiring to many even when not exactly in your shoes. Sometimes people just need to realize there might just be other ways to see their problems.

You need to be a featured speaker at a TED conference.

In case it helps others, here's a picture of a custom desk I designed and built many years ago as I started to suffer from carpal tunnel, elbow, shoulder and back problems. I am convinced paying attention to ergonomics saved my hands.

http://i.imgur.com/tFVcegp.jpg

Re: Look, no hands

#118
Wow, impressive!

Had pain in my arm as well in the past (it was not very severe but annoying). Using a mouse with a trackball solved the issue for me.

Re: Look, no hands

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not something about her capabilities, but about the limitation of current input devices regarding our hands. I think it's more a story about our adaptability in general. Many years ago, I worked with a developer who happened to be blind. While coding, he used an audio screen reader. If you've ever heard one, you know that they can be set to read incredibly fast, such that it sounds like absolute gibberish t…

A few years ago I took a tech support call from a guy who was visually impaired and had voice over turned on. It read incredibly fast, he had no problems following instructions, and was familiar enough with what we were doing to make the call easy for both of us. I also used to work as a personal assistant for a guy in a wheelchair who used Dragon Speakeasy, I think that was back in 2005 - '06ish, and was surprised h…

>I wonder if it's possible to generate a sound stream from video, and what sort of resolution and colour depth could be encoded in to the sound.

There was some work done on this. I don't remember how well it worked. I think this is it: http://www.seeingwithsound.com/sonar.htm

Re: Look, no hands

#120
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing story. Necessity is the mother of invention. I use crazy input devices on crazy ways too. Magic trackpad and a 3d connection 3d mouse on a TV arm screwed to the wall along the computer screen so I can work standing up or with a stool. A a lap-along wearable stenotype device instead of keyboard. Speech recognition for other things. I can work much better, more comfortable and faster than anybody else after yea…

It seems to me the more different input devices, the better, because one can quickly switch the input device when it becomes too repetitive. I’m currently experimenting with a vertical mouse (Anchor), a handheld trackball (IMAGE), a handheld touchpad (Perixx), a vertical keyboard (Kinesis Freestyle2), an ergonomic keyboard (Kinesis Advantage), a sitting/standing desk (IKEA) and a sitting ball. The most effective chan…

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