One handed computing
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I'll be very interested to hear how you do. I'm seeing an orthapaedic surgeon in 2 weeks to diagnose my shoulders properly, one is much worse than the other, suspected tear. The work may not bother me, I just hope to be on the line of scrimmage before the season finishes in september :)
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
You'll be lucky ... 9 months to get shoulder strength back too 100%
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ian dennis wrote:
Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem,
There's an accessibility feature called "sticky keys" that might be able to help with this. It makes the ctrl-alt-shift-win keys stick so that until you press a normal key they stay down. It's presented as an option by pressing the shift key 5 times in rapid succession (and buried on the control panel somewhere). My brush with RSI was in HS. I was taking a typing class at the time, and despite the fact that I had one hand in a softcast the creep teaching (and I use the term very loosely) the class insisted I still have both hands on the keyboard for exercises* unless I wanted to repeat the class next year (totally fubaring my schedule in the process). the way the cast held my thumb the cast itself was resting in contact with the keyboard in the space/b/n area making it trivial to crap typos all over my assignments that weren't my fault. I was able to get away with blaming most of the rest on the cast as well. Creep never figured out that while his favorite program (written circa 1980) disabled the backspace the left arrow worked fine. After my wrist was back to normal all of my typing assignments ended with something like afslkj13ds but were otherwise perfect, so I only had a single point knocked off. :mad: * this was one of his more endearing qualities
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
I got sticky keys working ... thanks for the advice, does exactly what I wanted it to
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Sorry about your surgery, my mother in law had that and I know it was a long recovery for her. My suggestions... 1. Buy a couple of cheap pants and install velcro rather than messing with a belt. 2. There is a mouse from Ergonomics.com that has a lot of programmable clicks on it; you could program ctrl/alt/delete in it. Bad side, it's about $70.
"Well, we're getting "F"'d at work. WPF, WCF, and WWF... WTF?" --John Simmons
#1 sounds good ... I'll get my wife to do something :)
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I've just found out that I've got to have surgery to repair two tears in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. I had similar surgery on my left shoulder some years back while I was between jobs, so I was able to recover at my own pace. Also, I know what the recovery involves (3 days not moving, 3 weeks in a sling, 4 months building up range of motion, 4 months building up strength). This time, I don't have the luxury to be off-work during my recovery (apart from the 1st 3 days) as I'm hourly-paid. So I'm learning to do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) one-handed. I'm left handed anyway, but - up to now - I've used my right hand for a lot of stuff. I moused with my right hand, and using my left instead took a lot of getting used to. I ended up not changing the buttons round because I do a lot of remote desktopping and, while I do, the buttons revert to their default state. I've got a game where a left-click builds a wall and a right-click knocks a wall down ... I've been getting it hopelessly wrong :doh: I expected that wiping my butt with my left hand rather than my right as usual would be a problem, but I'm adapting well :-D - the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards. Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem, as does using the num pad (I moved my portable pad on my laptop over to my left, but my office keyboard is a pain [literally]). Someone suggested I use Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing but, as an ex-pat Scouser living in California, my accent has become so bastardized that I spend more time laughing over DNS trying to understand me than it would take to type one-handed anyway! Anyway, it's only 3 weeks so I can be grateful it's not permanent. Does anyone else have some (hopefully funny) stories of using computers with some kind of activity restriction?
ian dennis wrote:
the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards.
Have you considered wearing a kilt instead? Just trying to be helpful. :-D
m.bergman
-- For Bruce Schneier, quanta only have one state : afraid.
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I've just found out that I've got to have surgery to repair two tears in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. I had similar surgery on my left shoulder some years back while I was between jobs, so I was able to recover at my own pace. Also, I know what the recovery involves (3 days not moving, 3 weeks in a sling, 4 months building up range of motion, 4 months building up strength). This time, I don't have the luxury to be off-work during my recovery (apart from the 1st 3 days) as I'm hourly-paid. So I'm learning to do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) one-handed. I'm left handed anyway, but - up to now - I've used my right hand for a lot of stuff. I moused with my right hand, and using my left instead took a lot of getting used to. I ended up not changing the buttons round because I do a lot of remote desktopping and, while I do, the buttons revert to their default state. I've got a game where a left-click builds a wall and a right-click knocks a wall down ... I've been getting it hopelessly wrong :doh: I expected that wiping my butt with my left hand rather than my right as usual would be a problem, but I'm adapting well :-D - the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards. Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem, as does using the num pad (I moved my portable pad on my laptop over to my left, but my office keyboard is a pain [literally]). Someone suggested I use Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing but, as an ex-pat Scouser living in California, my accent has become so bastardized that I spend more time laughing over DNS trying to understand me than it would take to type one-handed anyway! Anyway, it's only 3 weeks so I can be grateful it's not permanent. Does anyone else have some (hopefully funny) stories of using computers with some kind of activity restriction?
I broke my right arm about 7 years ago. Couldn't use it for any thing for 6 months. I was self employed so I had to do the best I could. I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking (too much like talking to yourself), sticky keys, telling my kids what to type (like a secretary/junior programmer). Nothing worked except using my left hand for all typing. The first thing I did was to setup the mouse for left handed (at least it wasn't ergonomic). I learned to stretch my fingers like a piano player shift and control key combinations. My wife signed my name wherever needed (checks, credit cards). I still can't write anything with my left hand. I could do most things, but my wife had to help getting the brace on and off, and she had to cut any meat I had. I stopped eating steaks, and only ate things that I could cut with a fork. Now the funny parts. I had an airplane brace (where your arm is straight out to the side, but my elbow was bent 90 degrees). I was at church talking to friends, and my kids would come up and hang their coats on my arm like a coat hanger. The guy that was setting up my brace told me about someone else with an airplane brace on his left arm. He needed to drive in to see the guy about something and his car was a Volkswagen bug, so the only way he could do it was to put the brace out the driver side window. The only problem was that it was snowing, and by the time he got there, he had snow up his sleeve almost to his elbow. Good luck on the recovery. Try to find ways to read more for 3 weeks. Actually you can be pretty productive; I just found more reasons to cut/paste and let the IDE do more work for me.
SS => Qualified in Submarines "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm". Winston Churchill
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You'll be lucky ... 9 months to get shoulder strength back too 100%
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I broke my right arm about 7 years ago. Couldn't use it for any thing for 6 months. I was self employed so I had to do the best I could. I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking (too much like talking to yourself), sticky keys, telling my kids what to type (like a secretary/junior programmer). Nothing worked except using my left hand for all typing. The first thing I did was to setup the mouse for left handed (at least it wasn't ergonomic). I learned to stretch my fingers like a piano player shift and control key combinations. My wife signed my name wherever needed (checks, credit cards). I still can't write anything with my left hand. I could do most things, but my wife had to help getting the brace on and off, and she had to cut any meat I had. I stopped eating steaks, and only ate things that I could cut with a fork. Now the funny parts. I had an airplane brace (where your arm is straight out to the side, but my elbow was bent 90 degrees). I was at church talking to friends, and my kids would come up and hang their coats on my arm like a coat hanger. The guy that was setting up my brace told me about someone else with an airplane brace on his left arm. He needed to drive in to see the guy about something and his car was a Volkswagen bug, so the only way he could do it was to put the brace out the driver side window. The only problem was that it was snowing, and by the time he got there, he had snow up his sleeve almost to his elbow. Good luck on the recovery. Try to find ways to read more for 3 weeks. Actually you can be pretty productive; I just found more reasons to cut/paste and let the IDE do more work for me.
SS => Qualified in Submarines "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm". Winston Churchill
Jim (SS) wrote:
I was self employed so I had to do the best I could. I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking (too much like talking to yourself)
when I work at home I use the speech recognition tools my stepson yells "he is talking to the computer again!" as if it is the signal of some mental disease. :-D I am a programmer and a geek, there is additional proof required??
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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You'll be lucky ... 9 months to get shoulder strength back too 100%
Yeah, it took me a year after I spilled my bike and landed on my shoulder.
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^] -
Jim (SS) wrote:
I was self employed so I had to do the best I could. I tried Dragon Naturally Speaking (too much like talking to yourself)
when I work at home I use the speech recognition tools my stepson yells "he is talking to the computer again!" as if it is the signal of some mental disease. :-D I am a programmer and a geek, there is additional proof required??
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
El Corazon wrote:
he is talking to the computer again
The appropriate response is of course "yes, because the computer does what I tell it to!!"
-------------------------------------------------------- Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad!!
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El Corazon wrote:
he is talking to the computer again
The appropriate response is of course "yes, because the computer does what I tell it to!!"
-------------------------------------------------------- Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad!!
_Damian S_ wrote:
"yes, because the computer does what I tell it to!!"
as it types that into what ever I am doing then. :-D
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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I've got a good friend who was in a motorcycle accident about 9 months ago lost the use of his right arm (he was right-handed before). I've been quite surprised at how well he has adapted to everything with only having one arm. This isn't exactly a funny story but I certainly understand most of what you are saying and what you are going through. On the other hand, there was this one time a few months back when he called me up and asked if I wanted to go shoot some pool. Neither of us even thought about the fact that its pretty hard to do with only one arm until the balls were racked and deciding who was gonna break.
kinar wrote:
On the other hand
Dude, that wasn't the right phrase... :doh: :laugh:
Cheers, Vıkram.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every moment of it.
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Huh, when I saw the title of One Handed Computing I was expecting a completely different subject matter.... :) me and my dirty mind. Well, somebody had to say it.
Haha, me too When i worked in IS that was a something of a code word to describe what people got up to on the web.
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I've just found out that I've got to have surgery to repair two tears in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. I had similar surgery on my left shoulder some years back while I was between jobs, so I was able to recover at my own pace. Also, I know what the recovery involves (3 days not moving, 3 weeks in a sling, 4 months building up range of motion, 4 months building up strength). This time, I don't have the luxury to be off-work during my recovery (apart from the 1st 3 days) as I'm hourly-paid. So I'm learning to do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) one-handed. I'm left handed anyway, but - up to now - I've used my right hand for a lot of stuff. I moused with my right hand, and using my left instead took a lot of getting used to. I ended up not changing the buttons round because I do a lot of remote desktopping and, while I do, the buttons revert to their default state. I've got a game where a left-click builds a wall and a right-click knocks a wall down ... I've been getting it hopelessly wrong :doh: I expected that wiping my butt with my left hand rather than my right as usual would be a problem, but I'm adapting well :-D - the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards. Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem, as does using the num pad (I moved my portable pad on my laptop over to my left, but my office keyboard is a pain [literally]). Someone suggested I use Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing but, as an ex-pat Scouser living in California, my accent has become so bastardized that I spend more time laughing over DNS trying to understand me than it would take to type one-handed anyway! Anyway, it's only 3 weeks so I can be grateful it's not permanent. Does anyone else have some (hopefully funny) stories of using computers with some kind of activity restriction?
The on-screen keyboard is also usefull - you can enter keystrokes using your mouse Accessories\Accessibility\On Screen Keyboard Regards Another Scouser
==================================== Transvestites - Roberts in Disguise! ====================================
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Huh, when I saw the title of One Handed Computing I was expecting a completely different subject matter.... :) me and my dirty mind. Well, somebody had to say it.
You know what they say, a dirty mind is joy forever :laugh:
Harvey Saayman - South Africa Junior Developer .Net, C#, SQL
you.suck = (you.Passion != Programming & you.Occupation == jobTitles.Programmer)1000100 1101111 1100101 1110011 100000 1110100 1101000 1101001 1110011 100000 1101101 1100101 1100001 1101110 100000 1101001 1101101 100000 1100001 100000 1100111 1100101 1100101 1101011 111111 -
I've just found out that I've got to have surgery to repair two tears in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. I had similar surgery on my left shoulder some years back while I was between jobs, so I was able to recover at my own pace. Also, I know what the recovery involves (3 days not moving, 3 weeks in a sling, 4 months building up range of motion, 4 months building up strength). This time, I don't have the luxury to be off-work during my recovery (apart from the 1st 3 days) as I'm hourly-paid. So I'm learning to do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) one-handed. I'm left handed anyway, but - up to now - I've used my right hand for a lot of stuff. I moused with my right hand, and using my left instead took a lot of getting used to. I ended up not changing the buttons round because I do a lot of remote desktopping and, while I do, the buttons revert to their default state. I've got a game where a left-click builds a wall and a right-click knocks a wall down ... I've been getting it hopelessly wrong :doh: I expected that wiping my butt with my left hand rather than my right as usual would be a problem, but I'm adapting well :-D - the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards. Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem, as does using the num pad (I moved my portable pad on my laptop over to my left, but my office keyboard is a pain [literally]). Someone suggested I use Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing but, as an ex-pat Scouser living in California, my accent has become so bastardized that I spend more time laughing over DNS trying to understand me than it would take to type one-handed anyway! Anyway, it's only 3 weeks so I can be grateful it's not permanent. Does anyone else have some (hopefully funny) stories of using computers with some kind of activity restriction?
Oops...I suspect I have a rotator cuff tear which I have been slowly nursing for some months now, I dont get much pain for normal activities but movement is restricted and it hurts like hell trying to get those bloomin tickets in and out of the car park machines when driving :( I dont like the sounds of the surgery or recovery process either. I broke my right wrist a couple of years back and (I am also right handed) then started a new contract job a week later, the face on my new employer was pretty good when I walked in on day 1 as I was all fine the week before at the interview. I actually managed and adapted pretty quickly to the laft handed approach, I never type long documents anyway so the one handed typing was ok. The most dificault part was remembering to wipe from front to back and not the other way around which did happen on the odd occasion to begin with :~
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I've just found out that I've got to have surgery to repair two tears in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. I had similar surgery on my left shoulder some years back while I was between jobs, so I was able to recover at my own pace. Also, I know what the recovery involves (3 days not moving, 3 weeks in a sling, 4 months building up range of motion, 4 months building up strength). This time, I don't have the luxury to be off-work during my recovery (apart from the 1st 3 days) as I'm hourly-paid. So I'm learning to do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) one-handed. I'm left handed anyway, but - up to now - I've used my right hand for a lot of stuff. I moused with my right hand, and using my left instead took a lot of getting used to. I ended up not changing the buttons round because I do a lot of remote desktopping and, while I do, the buttons revert to their default state. I've got a game where a left-click builds a wall and a right-click knocks a wall down ... I've been getting it hopelessly wrong :doh: I expected that wiping my butt with my left hand rather than my right as usual would be a problem, but I'm adapting well :-D - the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards. Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem, as does using the num pad (I moved my portable pad on my laptop over to my left, but my office keyboard is a pain [literally]). Someone suggested I use Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing but, as an ex-pat Scouser living in California, my accent has become so bastardized that I spend more time laughing over DNS trying to understand me than it would take to type one-handed anyway! Anyway, it's only 3 weeks so I can be grateful it's not permanent. Does anyone else have some (hopefully funny) stories of using computers with some kind of activity restriction?
Since many years back, I use my left hand for the mouse, without having switched any buttons on it. The reason is that I got problems with carpal tunnel syndroms in the right, both due to typing and for mousing. The worst was the mousing though, so I switched. If I go back to the right, which happens sometimes when I am at a customers computer where the mouse is on the right side and I don't lift it over to the left, then I quickly feel the carpal problems again after a few minutes. Anyway, I am totally used to using the left hand (I am otherwise right-handed), and it feels strange to use the right hand. In the beginning when the problems came I even typed with only my left hand, and got up to a considerable speed, but I had to look at the keyboard while typing that way. A potential problem with doing everything with the left hand is that it puts a big strain on it, and you can start to develop problems with that hand. I have felt tendencies like that when I was doing the typing too with the left. But in general, adapting is not a big problem, we seem to be well equipped for doing things in unconventional ways if needed, if we practice for a while. Just be aware of that potential problem I mentioned. So be careful. Yes, I did try speech recognition also at that time, it worked but not so good. Today, many years later, I guess the technique is better so perhaps today it would be a feasable option. Good luck! Magnus Stockholm, Sweden.
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I've just found out that I've got to have surgery to repair two tears in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. I had similar surgery on my left shoulder some years back while I was between jobs, so I was able to recover at my own pace. Also, I know what the recovery involves (3 days not moving, 3 weeks in a sling, 4 months building up range of motion, 4 months building up strength). This time, I don't have the luxury to be off-work during my recovery (apart from the 1st 3 days) as I'm hourly-paid. So I'm learning to do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) one-handed. I'm left handed anyway, but - up to now - I've used my right hand for a lot of stuff. I moused with my right hand, and using my left instead took a lot of getting used to. I ended up not changing the buttons round because I do a lot of remote desktopping and, while I do, the buttons revert to their default state. I've got a game where a left-click builds a wall and a right-click knocks a wall down ... I've been getting it hopelessly wrong :doh: I expected that wiping my butt with my left hand rather than my right as usual would be a problem, but I'm adapting well :-D - the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards. Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem, as does using the num pad (I moved my portable pad on my laptop over to my left, but my office keyboard is a pain [literally]). Someone suggested I use Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing but, as an ex-pat Scouser living in California, my accent has become so bastardized that I spend more time laughing over DNS trying to understand me than it would take to type one-handed anyway! Anyway, it's only 3 weeks so I can be grateful it's not permanent. Does anyone else have some (hopefully funny) stories of using computers with some kind of activity restriction?
You could also look at technology like Dasher - from Cambridge Uni somewhere http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/[^]. It's a word processor that you only use the mouse with, and it uses predictive text to offer the most likely alternatives. I tried it but couldn't get on with it but my son thinks it is great - esp as his spelling is rubbish. Not sure how you'd get to use it for coding though. Last time I looked there was other stuff related to disabilities on that site as well some of which may help (YMMV).
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I've just found out that I've got to have surgery to repair two tears in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. I had similar surgery on my left shoulder some years back while I was between jobs, so I was able to recover at my own pace. Also, I know what the recovery involves (3 days not moving, 3 weeks in a sling, 4 months building up range of motion, 4 months building up strength). This time, I don't have the luxury to be off-work during my recovery (apart from the 1st 3 days) as I'm hourly-paid. So I'm learning to do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) one-handed. I'm left handed anyway, but - up to now - I've used my right hand for a lot of stuff. I moused with my right hand, and using my left instead took a lot of getting used to. I ended up not changing the buttons round because I do a lot of remote desktopping and, while I do, the buttons revert to their default state. I've got a game where a left-click builds a wall and a right-click knocks a wall down ... I've been getting it hopelessly wrong :doh: I expected that wiping my butt with my left hand rather than my right as usual would be a problem, but I'm adapting well :-D - the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards. Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem, as does using the num pad (I moved my portable pad on my laptop over to my left, but my office keyboard is a pain [literally]). Someone suggested I use Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing but, as an ex-pat Scouser living in California, my accent has become so bastardized that I spend more time laughing over DNS trying to understand me than it would take to type one-handed anyway! Anyway, it's only 3 weeks so I can be grateful it's not permanent. Does anyone else have some (hopefully funny) stories of using computers with some kind of activity restriction?
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: Sorry about laughing at your disgrace, but man, your cracked the hell out of me. VERY VERY funny story!
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I've just found out that I've got to have surgery to repair two tears in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. I had similar surgery on my left shoulder some years back while I was between jobs, so I was able to recover at my own pace. Also, I know what the recovery involves (3 days not moving, 3 weeks in a sling, 4 months building up range of motion, 4 months building up strength). This time, I don't have the luxury to be off-work during my recovery (apart from the 1st 3 days) as I'm hourly-paid. So I'm learning to do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) one-handed. I'm left handed anyway, but - up to now - I've used my right hand for a lot of stuff. I moused with my right hand, and using my left instead took a lot of getting used to. I ended up not changing the buttons round because I do a lot of remote desktopping and, while I do, the buttons revert to their default state. I've got a game where a left-click builds a wall and a right-click knocks a wall down ... I've been getting it hopelessly wrong :doh: I expected that wiping my butt with my left hand rather than my right as usual would be a problem, but I'm adapting well :-D - the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards. Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem, as does using the num pad (I moved my portable pad on my laptop over to my left, but my office keyboard is a pain [literally]). Someone suggested I use Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing but, as an ex-pat Scouser living in California, my accent has become so bastardized that I spend more time laughing over DNS trying to understand me than it would take to type one-handed anyway! Anyway, it's only 3 weeks so I can be grateful it's not permanent. Does anyone else have some (hopefully funny) stories of using computers with some kind of activity restriction?
If you'll be mainly typing English text (as opposed to code), consider reconfiguring your keyboard to use the Dvorak left handed layout. It's optimised for typing English left handed.
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I've just found out that I've got to have surgery to repair two tears in the rotator cuff on my right shoulder. I had similar surgery on my left shoulder some years back while I was between jobs, so I was able to recover at my own pace. Also, I know what the recovery involves (3 days not moving, 3 weeks in a sling, 4 months building up range of motion, 4 months building up strength). This time, I don't have the luxury to be off-work during my recovery (apart from the 1st 3 days) as I'm hourly-paid. So I'm learning to do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) one-handed. I'm left handed anyway, but - up to now - I've used my right hand for a lot of stuff. I moused with my right hand, and using my left instead took a lot of getting used to. I ended up not changing the buttons round because I do a lot of remote desktopping and, while I do, the buttons revert to their default state. I've got a game where a left-click builds a wall and a right-click knocks a wall down ... I've been getting it hopelessly wrong :doh: I expected that wiping my butt with my left hand rather than my right as usual would be a problem, but I'm adapting well :-D - the problem is pulling up my pants and doing up my belt one-handed afterwards. Back to coding ... CTRL-ALT-DEL causes a problem, as does using the num pad (I moved my portable pad on my laptop over to my left, but my office keyboard is a pain [literally]). Someone suggested I use Dragon Naturally Speaking instead of typing but, as an ex-pat Scouser living in California, my accent has become so bastardized that I spend more time laughing over DNS trying to understand me than it would take to type one-handed anyway! Anyway, it's only 3 weeks so I can be grateful it's not permanent. Does anyone else have some (hopefully funny) stories of using computers with some kind of activity restriction?