Praise for Workrave

[elfs]

Workrave screenshot.

For a long time, I've used Dr Wright, a program that reminds me to take breaks every now and then to rest my wrists and shoulders and generally to relax. Dr. Wright is a very simple program that does little more than lock up your screen after an interval with the warning "Take a break!"

I've switched recently to Workrave, which I like a whole lot more. It has a micro-break feature (about every five minutes, but configurable) which I should use but don't, and its hourly (or so, again configurable) breaks have a nifty "exercises you can do" guide (complete with anime girl with fluffy sheep logo... how cool is that?) that leads you through three of about ten different stretches and relaxation exercises meant to minimize damage both to your bones and to your eyes. It also tracks your total computer usage throughout the day, so you can eventually get the message that it's time to turn off your computer and go outside.

Workrave advertises that they have a distributed model, where a server keeps track of your time and the clients all intercommunicate so no matter how many machines you work on throughout the day, they're all keeping track of your total keyboardage so you can't cheat. It's not a true client/server model in that one client is basically allocated as "master" and all the others record their interactions to it. It would be better if there were a true server with no UI; I could run it on my laptop and have all the other boxes I use talk to it. It's also poorly documented; I can't figure out how to make it go.

But that's a quibble. The core functionality, designed to prevent RSI like my tendonitis, is better than any other product I've used in the past, such as Dr. Wright or the obnoxious XWrits, and it's cute mascots definitely make it a keeper.

Comments

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

But that's a quibble. The core functionality, designed to prevent RSI like my tendonitis, is better than any other product I've used in the past, such as Dr. Wright or the obnoxious XWrits, and it's cute mascots definitely make it a keeper.

If you still type in qwerty, have you considered switching to dvorak? I had really horrid chronic tendonitis in both wrists (rest breaks...my whole _day_ was a rest break; I could get maybe an hour a day of typing, period), but it got better when I switched to dvorak, and I never really had a bad attack again. I haven't had to wear wristbraces at all since I switched a couple years ago.

The program looks neat, too. Cute little anime chick.

Velvet

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I've been a Dvorak typist for about five years now. I still have to consciously think about not slamming the keys when I type, and I still think my fingers move too far, but my own tendonitis is not nearly so bad as it was when I was a QWERTY typist.

Kouryou-chan finds the fact that my keyboard is Dvorak but the keys are not relabled very frustrating.

*giggle*

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

My son has the exact same opinion of my keyboard. I get really dirty looks when he sits down and starts typing and then realizes that gibberish is coming out. So, being a clever boy, he caught me out of the room one day, went into the control panel, and set it back to qwerty. So the next time I sat down and started typing away, I was the one producing gibberish, and he was standing right there, looking smug, and said, "See!? How do _you_ like it?" So I set up the ctrl-shift to switch between languages function, as a peace offering. My husband was extremely grateful, too. Of course, people no longer avoid my computer, so now I frequently have to evict a small child from it before I can use it, but as we just bought him his own, that problem should be solved. :) I'm curious...I got a really _good_ speed boost when I switched to dvorak (from a top speed of 105 to a top speed of 155), as well as the relief from tendonitis...how'd it do for you, and how long did it take? Took me about a month to get back to speed, then another six weeks to reach top speed. I'm trying to persuade my husband, who is a sysadmin/perl scripter, as well as my writing partner (I think you're familiar with Shalon...wrote the Noriko stories?), so is on the computer 12+ hours a day, to switch over. As he's the one who basically bullied me into making the switch, promising that he'd do it with me, then backed out after I'd already done enough to ruin my qwerty typing, I think it's only fair he should have to go through that week or two of being utterly, miserably, slow, too. The more data I have to indicate that it's a worthwile thing, the more likely I am to persuade him to make the switch.

And I _really_ wish I could persuade the school/computer teacher to teach the kids dvorak instead of qwerty. I mean, teaching qwerty to a generation that's growing up attached to computers seems to be a cruel idea...we're going to have kids ending up with RSI and carpal tunnel before they're even out of school. It's essentially the same thing as intentionally crippling them from the very beginning...retarding their typing speed as well as making it more likely they'll have problems with their wrists.

Whoops, rambling again...had to take migraine meds this morning, and it makes me loquacious. Sorry.

Vel