Good posture

I've mentioned before about good posture. You may as well search the internet, there are many sites that gives this kind of information, including pictures.

The highlighted items are:

1. Your back should be straight, you shouldn't need to lean forward to reach your keyboard/mouse/to read.
2. Your neck should also be straight - adjust the position of your monitor if necessary.
3. Your shoulder should be relaxed, hence your elbow should be on the desk.
4. Your feet should be supported - adjust the height of your chair if necessary.
5. You should be careful that your wrists aren't bent.
6. It's better to have your keyboard and mouse next to each other.
7. etc
   

The point about elbow made me noticed one thing:
In Indonesia almost all computer desks have keyboard tray - and most mice are on the desks. However, I couldn't remember seeing a single desk with keyboard tray in The Netherlands. Mostly I saw people put their computer on the corner of their L-shape desks -- but I've NEVER saw them using keyboard tray. Have you seen one?

Fibromyalgia

I went to see a neurologist yesterday and his diagnosis was: fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is widespread pain in the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. It was developed by bad habitual posture and worsen by lack of exercises, more common in female than male (some said the ratio is 4:1).

Improving my condition means changing into good posture, exercise, going for physiotherapy, and medicine will only support the other means.

He then sent me to a female physiotherapist and she ran a physical examination described in many websites that discusses fibromyalgia. She pressed her thumb in many spots on my body (head to toe). Surprisingly enough, though I thought my problem is on my neck, shoulder, and upper arm, I was hurt in ALL (!) spots -- yeah, head to toe! I jokingly 'begged' the doctor to stop pressing her thumb, otherwise she'll find more and more :-P

Good news is, when I mentioned my concern about this illness might hinder me from doing certain things in my career, he assured me that it will NOT. :-) I just need to diligently and continuously do all the recommended things and that's it. :-)

AntiRSI

Suffering symptoms of RSI and haven't fully recovered after several weeks, I remembered a software used in NLR. It was called workpace, it reminds its user to take breaks as well as guiding him/her to do exercises in the scheduled time.

Last Friday I found a free similar program, called workrave. I installed it in the office's computer this morning and it looks fine for me.

However, as I'm privately a Macintosh-ian, I'd like to have similar program for my Mac. Browsing around, I found AntiRSI. It is a break reminder, you can plan your own break, but it doesn't have the exercise feature.

RSI

I've been suffering from Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) for some time. For info about RSI see here or here.

About three years ago I got my first attack. It was 'resolved' with a new mouse and a different way of holding the mouse, plus using more shortcuts instead of mouse.

Then, few weeks ago, I got another attack. It was quite serious this time. Perhaps it's been there for sometime without my realising it ... and it became quite bad. I was treated by a physioterapist, thought it's ok ... and then, after a week, I felt the pain again. :-(

The physical pain made me think of something else: my future. If working with computers give me such pain, will I ever get a PhD? Am I physically able to do the required job for getting a PhD? I do hope to get well soon. (There is no instant cure for RSI though.)