Mouse Alternatives?

*frowns*

I'm sorry to hear. RSI is a very scare and very real ailment. I agree with the others.

Cut back on PC time.

All your body parts should be in 90 degrees -- knees, elbows, head looking straight ahead etc.

Burn your conventional mousie or give him to me to eat.

Try vertical mouse, WACOM pen tablet, Kensington track ball, Cirque cat, or anything else that YOU are comfortable with -- everyone is different. Try different things, but understand what works for one person may not work for you.

IBUPROFEN and lots of it. It's a reasonably safe med and you need to keep the swelling down or the damage to your soft tissue will be irreversible (I know from experience).

Exercise. Get your blood pumping to keep your insides clean. Walk, move about etc.

Diet. Iron, fibre, vitamins, glucosamine, and cod liver oil (cod liver is great for tendons).

Be kind to your body.



Contact me in world if you want to chat. *hearts you*

My problem isn't my wrist getting sore, it's that my fingers start having pain. I switch up which hand I'm using, and I even switch up which finger is pressing the button, but it alarms me how my fingers are going bad and I'm not even 30 yet.

@chosen: Thanks so much for the detailed post. I've long been on high alert for good information about this stuff, and I've long found you to be more reliable than other sources of information.




Y'know I never thought about it until you mentioned it, but I actually often hold my hand sideways while using a mouse. I simply place my thumb on it to move it around, and since I'm using the mouse left-handed (oh right, this only applies to when I'm using the mouse left-handed) I can reach the button with my index finger. Basically, I'm holding the mouse from the side like a gun, instead of on top like normal.

It really IS time someone came up with a better way to interact with computers. The keyboard/mouse is so...last-century. I wanna plug me in. Somebody, please: come up with a way to let me think INSIDE the box.

There is always speech recognition, but most people find the learning curve of Dragon NaturallySpeaking too steep. I know a number of people in SL who use Dragon successfully, but most are exceptionally proficient users prior to SL. SL doesn't react very well with Dragon, but it can be very helpful for some things.

Eventually there will be body suits that one can move in and interact with the virtual environment. But that's a ways away, I think.

Man speech recognition isn't even remotely enough. I so agree with Lindal, and it's why my mouth waters so much for control-the-cursor-with-your-mind stuff researchers at Brown are working on.

Of course, at that point any ergonomic problems could cause central neurological damage, so maybe that's actually worse...


ADDITION: Oh incidentally I just remembered something else that helps. Go into the settings for your computer and turn up the mouse tracking speed. The faster the pointer moves, the less you need to move the mouse around. Frankly, I wish I could set the mouse even faster than the maximum speed in Windows.

Great. I went for the 9x12 as a balance between price and its my first time with a tablet. Thanks for expanding my world; really excited about trying this out.

I've been out-of-pocket on some RL projects and was not aware of the RL changes...great to know about.

One of my favorite scenes of all time:



Scotty: Computer. Computer? Hello, Computer?

Dr. Nichols: Just use the keyboard.

Scotty: Ah, keyboard. How quaint.


I agree with you, Lindal, but realistically, my guess is we'll still be using keyboards, in one form oar another, well into the next century. Even on Star Trek, where the computer can understand plain English, and do anything you tell it without ever having to stop to ask you what you mean, they still use keyboards of a sort. (If they didn't, what else would they have that would inexplicably explode every time the ship gets hit?) It's pretty hard to imagine not having use for keys at all.

Mice will probably go extinct, though. In the coming years, as touch-screens, video-gesture-tracking, and other pointer interfaces become more sophisticated and more reliable, I can't imagine there will be much need for anything so comparatively clunky and far-removed as a mouse.

As for plugging in directly, I'm pretty sure I don't want to go there. My poor little brain has enough trouble just controlling my body. I don't need to tax it any further by asking it to control a whole other machine.